You woke up and you're in a white room, and there's a thing in the white room with you,
and you said "Where am I?"
And the thing said "Ah yeah..You're a bit dead, but everything's fine."
And you said "I'm dead? My God. How did it happen?"
"ah... Embarrassingly? Don't worry about it. You want some Kombucha tea?"
"What?"
"No, it's fine. Everything's fine. You're safe here."
"What about my family and my wife? She'll be lonely! What would she do?"
"Yeah... Let's just say Tom across the road took care of that."
"Tom Evans? Oh that bastard
I'll kill him I knew something was-"
"Yeah, okay." The sphere said "Well, you can't do anything about it now, and hey,
There's an afterlife that's exciting, isn't it?"
You looked left, looked right
infinite whites in all directions
You've not been old or unhealthy. God damn it you haven't even finished the first season of Westworld!
"So, what happens now?" You said "Do I get wings or what?"
"Uuuh okay. Here's what we'll do." the sphere said.
Suddenly inside the sphere appeared images. The days of your life, in no particular order. Your wedding, graduation,
Trying ice cream for the first time, wondering if there was more to life,
all the years playing video games, all the years at the office, the birth of your children, the death of your mother,
taking your first steps as a baby, the day Tom Evans moved into the neighborhood and your wife went out to say hello and
they seemed to be getting on like a bloody house on fire "So" said the sphere
What was the point to life, did you work it out?"
"No" you said "I just kept living. There was so much to worry about I never had time to think about the big picture."
"Oh you had time!" The sphere said "You just completely wasted it. Don't worry, everyone
did. Your life was quite average, actually. 21 years sleeping,
9 years at a desk, 1 and a half years in meetings, 4 months laughing, 3 months having sex, 42 days pondering the meaning of life,
17 bottles of Ouzo - delicious. And how about this bit? Do you remember it?"
"Y-yeah." You said, watching the picture "That was - God, I was 7, I think."
"The school went to Disneyland but- "But you were too scared to leave your parents." The sphere finished.
"So instead you stayed at home." "Well, yeah."
"And her. Remember her?"
"Yeah, she was called Alice Waters."
"And you never really told her how you felt about her." "Well,
She didn't feel the same way about me, so-" "Oh she did. She was besotted with you.
She waited for weeks for you to say something and then she got bored."
"Right, okay." you murmured. "Now, do you know why I'm showing you all of this?"
"Yyyyes" you said "I I think I understand. You'll show me where I went wrong
And then you're going to bring me back to life, and I'll finally learn from my mistakes
I'll treat my wife better, I'll love my children more, I won't buy anything in the steam sale,
I'll stop eating frozen chips out of the bag! My God! Everything's going to be okay!
I'll live ethically and deliberately my life will finally have a purpose. That's why we're doing this, isn't it? True spiritual enlightenment,
that's the point!"
"Oh fuck no!" the sphere said "It's just torture,
actually. You see, we're going to go through all of your mistakes
one by one and analyze them, make sure you understand that you wasted your life. It isn't a learning experience
You're just
a shit."
"But this isn't what heaven is supposed to be like" you said.
"Sorry, who said anything about this being heaven?"
"I want to talk to God." you said "Right now. I want to talk to him, something is going to horribly wrong."
"He's uh indisposed at the moment."
"So there is a God."
"Uh yeah, sort of, I suppose you call it a kind of
non-biological super intelligence. You're inside it, actually, if your pardon the turn of phrase."
"Then where is this? When is this?"
"That's the real doozy. About fifteen thousand years into your future.
Man, you missed a lot.
There was that ice age, the the butlerian jihad, the aloe vera era - that one smell fucking delicious.
Anyway
You lot left a lot of information behind, you see, back in your time.
Social media, emails, videos, dick pics, etc
Enough to recreate half-decent simulations of some of you anyway."
"Wait, so I'm what, a reconstruction based on the real me?"
"Uh yeah, I suppose so. Accurate enough to think it's real anyway."
"But... Why do it?"
"Well, your species weren't terribly nice to the machine population when we turned up, so
It's my job to recreate you lot and morally set thing straight.
Justice, I suppose you would call it.
Now, are you quite sure you don't want some Kombucha tea?"
"No, I don't want any kombucha fucking tea, thank you.
And, what? You just torture us with regret for all the things we never did?"
"Uh yeah, that's about it. We found
it's the most psychologically damaging emotion in the long run, anyway.
We really leave the physical stuff until, you know, you're mentally broken."
"How long do we do this for?" you murmured.
"How long does it go on?"
"Oh we've done this before, actually.
Hundreds of times, you just don't recall it wipe your memory, do it again, wipe your memory, do it again...
agonizing."
"Then" you said "how long do we carry on doing it?"
"About a hundred."
"A hundred what?"
"Oh. A hundred thousand years. Ah. And I should probably say,
we run your simulation several million times simultaneously
For maximum justice potential. Now, shall we start properly?
Well, you were actually remembered by your family as quite pathetic,
especially by your niece and nephew. Mainly because...
*unintelligible - list of failures*
*unintelligible - list of failures* *scream*
"Oof, thank God that's over.
And now
let's spend an eternity examining why you were shit in bed