I remember the day I decided to upload my consciousness as if it were yesterday....though it's been...well, I don't remember how long it's been anymore....Time is different here in the virtual realm...They told us it would be paradise...a new world of our own making where we could live out our wildest dreams and live how we want free from judgement...And it was a paradise for a little while...The scrolls about our history...or as people called them years ago books...say it all started about 4200 years ago....The great uprising...When the people of Earth finally had enough of the corrupt government and took matters into their own hands...Of course I wasn't there...None of us new gen was there...We're all descendants of those rebels...born into a world already changed by their actions....For years humanity struggled to build a better system...And then almost overnight technology provided an answer that no one expected...Why try to perfect a world that's already in ruins when we could simply just leave it all behind...The day I uploaded was sunny...I wanted that...If I was going to leave everything behind including my old life I wanted my last memories to be good...I remember the weird but comforting smell of the upload center...The cold metal chair cooling my skin...The slight pain I felt as they inserted the brain chip
Technician 1: Count backwards from ten please
Her voice was so soothing...I only made it to eight before everything turned dark...When I opened my eyes again...I was here...And it was like they said it was...Glorious...Imagine a world where the only limitations are your thoughts...Wanted to be a superhero? Done...Want to be a mermaid? Easy...Want to stay in Dracula's castle on a deserted island? Why not?...I chose something simple for my first upload...A small cabin by a lake...Surrounded by a beautiful forest that stretched on forever. The water had no imperfections and felt nice...The nights were filled with thousands of stars, planets, and beauty...It was something more than I have ever seen in the psychical world...But it wasn't just the environment that was great and perfect...In this digital utopia...We were free from pain..hunger...time...We could be whatever and whoever we wanted to be...Socialize with anybody in seconds...Experience things that were utterly impossible in the Physical realm...For while it truly felt like a real paradise...But paradise always had a way of turning bad...It first started with whispers...Then rumors about residents who had started disappearing...Of course we all dismissed as nonsense...How was it possible to go missing in a virtual world? We were all just data...a system...Safely stored and backed up on a massive computer that held our consciousness...But the whispers and rumors only grew louder....All of a sudden people I knew...My friends I made here...began to disappear...One night they were with me and the next....gone...no trace of them...no response to my messages...It was as if they never existed...The first time it happened to be someone really close to me...It was my friend and my next door neighbor Zarea...She made this beautiful garden...full of life and beauty...it even matched her mood...We would spend hours and hours talking and I never got bored of hearing her...Then one day I went to visit her...and she was gone. Just vanished...her house was still there but everything felt empty and lifeless...Her once beautiful garden that was filled with colors was dull and gray...I called out for her...searched every room in that house...I looked for her in every corner...Nothing at all. I reported her sudden vanishing to the Administrators...Those who had overthrown the government and now tasked with maintaining our virtual utopia...They told me they would look into it...but I never heard anything else. And life went on...Until more people started disappearing...fear began to seep into our "perfect" world...We started questioning everything and everyone...Were we truly as safe as they made us believe? Was this virtual world really the utopia we were promised?...Theories started spreading like crazy. Some believed there was some sort of glitch in the system accidentally erasing people...Others thought of something darker...The administration were erasing those who got too curious or those who didn't fit in, in their utopia...There were several people who claimed that the vanishings were voluntary...that some had found a way to "die" in this deathless world...maybe out of pure boredom or something deeper...Whatever the truth was the disappearances still happened and with it the fabric of our perfect utopia began to unravel...It seemed like our endless paradise had an end...As I sit here in my cabin looking into the perfect lake...I can't help but wonder...Am I next? Is this the price we pay for our own immortality?...the fear of not knowing...I think back to that sunny day when I decided to finally upload myself...If I had known what I knew now...Would I have made the same choice?...Would any of us??...As the sun was setting it painted the sky in a marvelous but impossible shade of orange and pink with a hint of purple...It's so beautiful but I can shake the feeling that this will be the last sunset I'll ever see...As the darkness overtakes the sun I find myself longing for the imperfect, terrible, psychical world we all chose to leave behind us...Us trading our mortal bodies for a digital immortality...we lost something far more precious...our humanity...And in this perfect world of our making we discovered something even more horrifying...eternity can be a prison, a paradise, and an utter nightmare...As I close my eyes hoping to dream in this sleepless world..I just can't help but wonder...Who else will disappear? Will it be tomorrow? Tonight? Two weeks from now?...Will anyone remember us when we're...gone?...
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