Thank You for Afterlifing with Us

By Huckleberry Hax

Jason Harlan wakes up in the metaverse to discover he has been dead for nearly thirty years. But where is the girlfriend he scanned with? And who has the millions he accrued over his singing career? And what happened to him in the two years between his scan and the car crash that killed him?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Huckleberry Hax
• Release date: Apr 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005086107

Huckleberry Hax

Huckleberry Hax writes novels set in and around virtual worlds. His best-known titles are the books of the AFK series set in Second Life®.A resident of Second Life since 2007, Huck also writes regularly on his blog about the metaverse and was a columnist for the acclaimed AVENUE magazine for over two years. His book, Second Life is a place we visit, collects together 42 of these articles.Huck is also an experienced voice performer in SL and has read aloud from his and other titles at a wide range of venues, including Milkwood, The Blue Angel, Bookstacks, Cookie, Nordan Art and Basilique.Huck's other interests include poetry (he has published a volume of his own poems called Old friend, learn to look behind you in the coffee queue and co-edited issue one of the poetry journal, 'Blue Angel Landing'), photography and machinima.

Book preview

Thank You For Afterlifing With Us

By Huckleberry Hax

Copyright 2021 Huckleberry Hax

Smashwords Edition

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Cover design: JLW

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of contents

Prologue: Merrick

One: Jason

Two: Merrick

Three: Jason

Four: Merrick

Five: Jason

Six: Jason

Seven: Merrick

Eight: Stuart

Nine: Jason

Ten: Merrick

Eleven: Jason

Twelve: Harlan

Thirteen: Merrick

Fourteen: Harlan/Stuart

Epilogue: Merick

Other titles by Huckleberry Hax

For A. S.

Prologue: Merrick

I've decided, said Merrick, as he lay down upon dry grass at an inclination that I no longer have any need for 'stuff'. I want to be rid of as much stuff as I possibly can. I no longer wish to possess. Anything.

Do you mean physical items? Fayla asked him, as she draped her head and right arm lightly across his chest. Or do you mean all items, including digital… stuff?

Merrick said, without a moment's hesitation, Oh yes, the first. I would still want my inventory. Hmmm. Now you have me thinking. Perhaps my grand plan isn't quite so virtuous as I thought.

Did I burst your little bubble of momentary non-materialism, my darling? she enquired, sweetly, changing from shorts to jeans as she lay there. The scene made her legs feel somehow itchy.

I believe you might have, yes, Merrick mused. "I was thinking in terms of sheer practicality and the restrictions imposed on my freedom by ownership. But now that I come to think of it, what does ownership of anything say about me, be it physical or digital? Is the man who hoards digital possessions any different psychologically from the man who hoards physical possessions?"

Or the woman, Fayla commented.

Or the woman, Merrick confirmed. He stroked her hair absently and thought about things packed into boxes and boxes packed into storage rooms; he thought about whole buildings dedicated to keeping hold of stuff so that the people who left it there could continue to believe that they owned it somehow. What percentage of people who put stuff into storage ever actually end up using it again? he wondered. What percentage of people who put stuff into storage ever actually end up even seeing it again? Perhaps, he thought, owning things was less about having access to them yourself and more about preventing access to them by others.

The only possessions I have which would be hard for me to part with, said Fayla, are the things which I made myself and the things which other people made for me. Those things are more than objects. Everything else is disposable. Everything else is fluff. I value all things and I might well pay to experience them, but I don't want responsibility for their management.

I want to stop being heavy, said Merrick. I'm weighed down by all my… fluff. I want my life to be more portable.

Are you planning on travelling somewhere?

It's ok, he reassured her, I'm not going to ask you where you live.

Perhaps I shall tell you one day, she mused, tracing small circles on his chest with her index finger. I know I told you that I never would, but I'd only just met you back then. Would it excite you if I did?

In the physical world, in front of his display, Merrick let out a sigh as he read that. It was a mixture of happiness and despair and longing. Because it was cold, he saw his sigh appear briefly in the air in front of him; a small section of the screen between them misted slightly for a moment. Maybe I should tell you first that I've fallen in love with you. He got the sentence out as quickly as he could before thought could get in the way of it. And then it was done and could not be taken back.

I know you have, my dear, she replied. And that was all that she would say on the subject. Sometimes, her quiet was infuriating; sometimes, it was the most exciting thing about her.

Once, he had said to her, "I suppose the thing I want to know most of all is that your nature does actually allow you to live – to be – in a place. The actual where isn't as important."

Fayla had replied, "Oh Merrick, you're asking me that again?"

I dream of touching you. It isn't even sexual any more. Just the thought of holding hands with you makes me need deep breaths. I long for this. Sometimes I ache for it. Don't I have a right to know if it’s at least theoretically possible?

You have a right to nothing, my darling, she had told him. If we knew we were never actually to meet in real life, then what possible difference could it make in any case?

Even for two people who will never meet in real, Merrick insisted, it's possible to make the relationship more intense, more vibrant, with real information. To know the town you live in... to know the sights you look at each day... to know the hours that the sun shines upon you... to know the things which are close to you and the things which you dream about one day visiting...

And if I wasn't alive? Fayla asked, sharply. If this really was all that I am and all that you can ever have? What would happen then? Are you saying that we'd be over?

Rather hurriedly, Merrick typed, "If that were the case then I’d have to adjust my expectations. If that were the case then I’d have to adapt. I know that I could live a good life in a tent if I had to, but I would have to."

Then why don't you try making that adjustment now? she said. What would be the harm in assuming me dead and seeing if you can still love me anyway?

I can't imagine not loving you, Merrick replied. Am I to have no hope, then? None at all?

I promise nothing; I rule out nothing. And you must be the same with me, my love. Couples in real life get everything about each other thrown at them all at once. There is a threshold over which one must eventually pass where it's no longer possible to project that which you wish your partner to be onto her; the faster the flow of information is about each other, the quicker you’ll get to that point. Slowly, my love. Slowly. Imagine how thrilling it will be if, a week from now or a month from now – certainly not when you’re expecting it – I give you one small detail. Perhaps a name. Perhaps a place. Perhaps a date. Perhaps, one day, a photograph. If I give you a picture, I won’t tell you when it was taken. You’ll not know if it was taken that day or ten years earlier. You’ll not even know from that that I’m alive because it could have been taken before my death. You’ll not actually know for certain that it's even me at all. But I promise you, my darling, you will enjoy looking at it. It will thrill you. It will make your love more vibrant... and it will make our love last longer.

Merrick typed, I kiss you on the head as we watch the fireworks together.

I pull your arms around me, Fayla responded. I put my hands over yours.

I hold you close, Merrick wrote. I kiss your cold ear.

I feel your warm breath across my cheek; I close my eyes for a moment so it comes closer.

I whisper, 'I love you,' in your ear.

"I turn just enough so that I can see your eyes. We look into each other for a long second, and then I say, 'I love you too'.

I lower my head towards you... I falter for a moment on the way because I see your eyes shut in anticipation and I enjoy witnessing that moment of surrender...

I surrender.

I can't work you out... I don't know who you are... He would stare sometimes at the interface and try to understand. Every time did, he failed. There were those few moments when he had her, completely, and it was beyond anything he had ever experienced. He lived for those moments; they sustained him. But there were times when it felt like he was being rationed, fed so infrequently that he was constantly on the brink of madness, overflowing with desire for her, overwhelmed by his feelings. I can't work you out... One minute, she would be playful in messages, teasing him, enticing him; the next she would be almost entirely absent, keeping him there with a laugh or a smile every now and again, just when he was ready to break... Ten minutes would pass, fifteen, twenty... he would sit like a fool on hold, awaiting something – anything – his erection fading as embarrassment and hopelessness crept in. I don't know who you are... I don't know what you want... I don't know what I truly mean to you... A week would pass without lovemaking... two weeks... just when he was on the verge of tears she would be his, and only his for two, three, sometimes four hours. The day-by-day uncertainty drained Merrick more than anything he had ever known. I can't work you out... I don't know who you are... He was hooked, addicted, captured by an intermittent reinforcement. But not of sex. If it had just been sex he could have dealt with that easily, brushed it aside, rationalised it all away with some sort of flippant thought. If it had just been sex he could have thrown himself at someone else (or tried). But it was more than sex; far, far more than that. He craved intimacy with her. He craved her undivided attention. He craved those moments of mental intertwining, of sharing things he had never shared with another human being... and had never thought he would. That was what Fayla had done for him: opened up parts of his mind he had always assumed nobody would ever look upon.

Sometimes, he would look at her avatar and wonder if she knew what it did to him each time the dance led to nothing. It seemed impossible to think that she didn't, but then Fayla was Fayla... nothing he had ever seen had ever suggested even the remotest possibility that there was a single malicious part of her. But what do I actually know about her? He knew nothing. He knew only that which she chose to tell him and the rest of his construction of her was his make-believe projection. As it was for all people. As it always has been.

It was at a discussion event, which had taken place partly in voice, but mostly in text (so that records could be kept) that he had first heard her. There was no warning to it. She had said nothing beforehand, had only decided to attend, in fact, in the last few minutes before the debate began; months of silence had ended abruptly on a point of definition about virtual rape. Merrick had almost missed it completely, had had to pull up the voice list to check that it was indeed her who had spoken. Did you just speak in voice? he messaged her, and – because it was one of those evenings – it was a full twenty minutes before she got around to replying: Some points can't be typed... at least, not in the time you have available to make them. By then, however, he already had his confirmation; she had made more of these points, and each one of them he had hung on, savouring each syllable he got to hear articulated. Rape is outcome, not action. Violation is a personally defined experience: it's not up to you to decide what is and what isn't violation for any individual. That and a handful of other statements, and it would have brought about no less delight had she been reading from the back of a cereal packet. But when that text sentence appeared in the message box, it was still a subtle extra widening of a new chink of light. Merrick thought to himself, If you were dead, would you write 'typed'?

As it turned out, this event represented no new norm. They continued to interact in text by default for many weeks to come, even though Merrick would allude often to the idea of 'one day' voice encounters and receive broad agreement on the general principle. Of course, he did have his own issues to contend with about that, which was why he never really pushed. Just typing in the idea and seeing it up in words that could be read by another was enough to get his heart beating; just holding his finger above the return key and forcing it down upon it was enough of a thrill at that point. He typed once, One day, I want to hear you come and he had quite literally waited on the edge of his seat for her response, desperate to know he had not crossed some sort of line and at the same time delighted he had released something quite so bold and outrageous as that into the digital wild. He knew there was nothing really to worry about: Fayla would never say anything sharp or belittling to him. Never. After a fashion, he did start to want something concrete over this non-time-specific agreement, despite the fear he had of it. But, for those early voice suggestions, a mere nod of approval was all he needed. The nod itself was the outcome. It thrilled him.

It was at a fairground that they had met; a noisy, muddy construction of red, blue and yellow plastics, and peeling paint on wood, and rusted metal coated with gloss. Merrick remembered standing in front of the candy floss machine for a good ten minutes, marvelling at the intricate prim work. The coconuts made just the right sort of noise when you hit them and when the tin ducks re-righted they had dents in exactly the right places. He had come across Fayla in a dispute with a virtual carny over the size of target pegs and the ownership of an enormous cuddly Dalmatian. The dispute was nothing so remarkable, but for Fayla's insistence on the use of text over voice. Merrick's own voice aversion meant that the number of people he could effectively communicate with on equal terms inworld was severely, severely limited, and growing fewer all the time. It was a big issue for him. Typed text had survived as a communication medium for far longer than anyone had imagined it would, but that was more to do with the dyed-in-the-wool habits of generation X and Y working their way stubbornly through the system than it was any unpredictable new trend in human behaviour. Once the youth of the 20s and 30s and 40s became the dominant presence inworld – people born, it seemed to the older generation at times, with the internal editors built in that typing had always provided; people who looked upon typing with the same disdain that Y had looked upon cassette tape and CDs (though, curiously, not vinyl) – the days of text were numbered. Merrick was an anomaly amongst his peer group. He could not bear voice communication, and especially with strangers. So the sight of Fayla's carefully worded responses – and in the face of endless vocal irritation from her opponent – was something he was instantly drawn to. Afterwards, they had shared a bumper car and chased hooded teenagers (who were likely not teenagers at all) in sweeping circles and tightly drawn figures of eight. Afterwards, they had sat on chipped horses and risen and dipped, and shared metaverse moments that the fairground reminded them of. Afterwards, Merrick had hacked the code of the ring toss stall and won Fayla the Dalmatian.

On Christmas Day, they walked along a deserted beach. He admired the way she wore rolled up jeans and carried sandy flip-flops in her hand: Fayla dressed her avatar with precision and attention to detail. Virtual water moved in and out across their path and sloshed around their ankles. It was evening. She said, Let's sit on the rocks and let the tide come in around us. Merrick held her from behind and they flew over a thousand crowded limpets to a flat place on the rocks where the water pooled in tiny pockets around them. They sat in silence for several minutes, listening to synthesised seagulls and pretending to feel the setting sun on their cheeks. Merrick thought, How can I ever really know you? Are you as absorbed in our moment here as I am or are your thoughts in another place?

She looked at him and smiled. Let me hear your voice, she told him.

Merrick panicked. I don't have sound record, he told her. She replied, Of course you do.

Well I do, but it's broken.

Of course it's not.

How do you know these things?

I know none of them, but I do know you. And who on Earth doesn't have sound record these days?

He writhed in his seat as his stomach seemed to try to eat itself. You know, he said, video camera technology was around long before it became the normal thing to place calls with.

When I want an irrelevant metaphor or a history lesson about the pandemic, she told him, then I'll ask for one.

Why are you asking me to do this now? he asked.

Because now is a good moment.

A little advance notice would have been appreciated.

Good moments are rarely easy to anticipate.

"Maybe you don't know me quite as well as you think," Merrick told her, and regretted the sentence as soon as he had pressed the enter key.

I understand you’re anxious, she told him. But Merrick, the time is right. Switch on your sound record and leave the mic open. You don't have to say anything if you don't want to. Let me just hear your breathing.

After a fashion, he typed, I do want to speak. And felt hopeless.

Please, Merrick, she said. So, in the end, he did. Trying not to think about it, he clicked on the little virtual button and the room's audio sensors started sampling the sound, examining the waveform, filtering it according to his pre-sets and then broadcasting it across the audible distance from his avatar. He stood up, because he had read somewhere that this made you less nervous, or less out of breath; something to do with things being aligned better inside you. But the movement made him feel dizzy and he sat down again. He tried to calm himself.

The new layer flooded across his avatar visibly: his nostrils flared, his eyes widened and his skin twitched as sonic and ultrasonic information washed across him for the first time; his virtual chest started to rise and fall in time to his breathing. Once upon a time, this sort of technology had identified the sound of enemy submarines from a hundred miles away, now it listened to the ambient noise of bedrooms and sorted out a million tiny sounds all mixed in together.

Good, said Fayla. Now accept my voice call. Put on some headphones.

I can't, he typed furiously.

You don't have to talk. Just listen to me. It will sound different if you wear the headphones. More close. And other people won't hear us. The seagull noise and the waves and the hiss of water falling back across the sand all disappeared when he accepted the call. He put his headphones on and plugged them in.

And everything suddenly stopped, and they were in each other's heads.

She whispered to him. It was nothing like the voice he had listened to at the rape debate. Shut your eyes, she told him. Shut them so that my voice becomes the only thing around you. Rest your head on your arms, if you can. Think of my voice as the thoughts in your head. Listen to me, completely. Her voice became quieter, quieter still, until it was just her breathing he could hear, the words modulating her breath just enough so that they could be distinguished. Now we breath together, Merrick; now we sound the same. Can you tell me that you understand this? Can you give me one word to show me we are together?

We are together, Merrick whispered, his eyes screwed firmly shut. Neither of the two worlds were in his thoughts now: there was only her voice and his voice; even space did not exist. I understand.

Hi, baby, she said.

One: Jason

(Six months later)

Jason awoke with a strange sensation in his head. He pulled himself into a sitting position in a bed he was not familiar with in a room he had no recollection of entering, and assumed himself to be hung over once again. He looked around for things like underwear strewn across the floor and listened for muffled shower sounds. He sniffed the air hopefully for evidence of bacon frying. The room was unnaturally sterile. The walls were blue and blank. There appeared to be no door.

A little alarmed at that, he threw back the white covers and got to his feet. He walked to the other side of the room and felt the wall all over. It was a mildly odd sensation: he could feel the surface, pressing against him as he leaned on it, but his fingertips registered no texture and no temperature. Other than that there was something there, they felt nothing at all as he moved them up and down and left and right.

Jason looked down at his body, prodded himself here and there, felt the pressure against his fingertips and also where they probed. On impulse, he took hold of his penis and felt a vague pressure down there and a swelling inside his closed fingers. His cock looked... different. He did not recall his pubic hair being quite that dense. Or that colour. He tried to think of something erotic. Fucking Rachel. For a moment, it felt like there was possibly a faint movement of some description, but nothing visible appeared to happen.

There was nothing in the room apart from the bed and a small table next to it. He tried to remember what had happened the day before and a meeting of some description came hazily to mind. He recalled feeling impatient.

He wondered what he would do when he needed to urinate if he couldn't find a door to get out of the room, though in fact the familiar internal pressure he ordinarily felt on getting up each morning was oddly absent. He examined the ceiling and the corners of the room for cameras; he looked again for cracks and found nothing.

He went back to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, then picked up a booklet from the table that he hadn't noticed before. It had a white cover, blank but for the words 'Please read me, Mr Harlan' in large, black serif capitals.

He sighed, tried to break wind and failed. He opened