Welcome to Bravo: A Diabolical Dialectic

By T.W. Nicholson

A titanic psychological nail-biter, Welcome to Bravo dresses up the digital and analog worlds as protagonists vying for souls of the departed. This parochial-dystopian epic is driven by rich characters who propel a powerful narrative creating an inescapable addiction to the next page.  As a contemporary science fiction thriller, the story is for anyone who ever wondered if the screens captivating our eyes and ensnaring our minds bear a false light, whose foundation of black glass is actually a dark portal conditioning the mind to embrace eternal alone-ness.  

Charon Mausolus founded and runs Everlasting Enterprises with the promise of Humans Eternally Living Life as an uploaded consciousness interred in hyper-scaled datacenter mausoleums.  His technological genius is heralded by government sycophants and capitalistic cannibals looking to enrich themselves feeding off their fellow man.  But these crypts of the digital age siphon souls to a sinister purpose, and reveal how the dialectic of Heaven and Hell has been disrupted by a Faustian bargain.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Aug 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781977266545

T.W. Nicholson

T.W. Nicholson grew up in America’s heartland reading everything he could get his hands on. Following a career as an Air Force Pilot, he has returned to his dream of crafting stories at 7,500 feet in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near Larkspur, Colorado.

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Welcome to Bravo

A Diabolical Dialectic

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2023 T.W. Nicholson

v3.0 r1.2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Cover Photo © 2023 T.W. Nicholson

Outskirts Press and the OP logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Table of Contents

1. INTERNMENT

2. HEDONIS SUCHERBORG

3. THE EARNINGS CALL

4. PACKING AND UNPACKING

5. MEMORY CARE KARMA

6. GHOST IN THE MACHINE

7. LIFE AND DEATH IN THE BOARD ROOM

8. THE RYTHM OF LIFE

9. SOUL JUROR RITUAL

10. RITUAL INITIATION

11. SHOW ME HOW TO LIVE

12. YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE

13. HOLY COW POW WOW

14. BURNING MAN AT BURNING MAN

15. A NIGHT-EAT THE MUSEUM

16. FROZEN DEAD GUY

17. GOLDEN CALF MELTDOWN

18. TIME TO FLY

19. UH OH, RETRO

20. HOT PURSUIT

21. …BUT MY HEAD’S IN MISSISSIPPI

22. SOUL JUROR STOPS

23. SENTINEL SAVIOR

24. ON THE ROAD AGAIN

25. THE FERRYMAN TAKES HIS TOLL

26. CONNECTING THE DOTS

27. THE STORM

28. MOUNTAIN SECRETS

29. E PLURIBUS UNUM INVICTUS

30. FELIXIS OR SPARTACUS

31. DIVINATION

32. ASK JEEVES

33. ‘CRUISER

34. DEATH AND DIALECTIC

35. EXCURSION IN THE PLANETARIUM

36. SHOJI SHOTS

37. FROZEN DEAD GUY REDUX

38. THE GAMBIT

39. ALONE AGAIN

40. TWO TATTOOS

41. PARTING AND DEPARTING

42. VEGAS BABY

43. BURNING MAN ON FIRE

44. A LONG EXPECTED RITUAL

45. WHERE’S THE MIMIC?

46. THE SETUP

47. RITUAL SACRIFICE SHOCK

48. THE VALLEY OF DEATH

49. AI EXULTATION

50. G.O.D.

Chapter 1: INTERNMENT

Welcome to Bravo the automated voice stated. Soothing and calm, it sounded unflappable, confident…arrogant. In the dimly lit chamber, the voice took on a sonorous depth, and the phrase lingered in the ensuing silence. Jim’s mind echoed the phrase, revisiting the finality of uploading his father into server #159, Welcome to Bravo. It was so...antiseptic, he thought.

Jim stared directly ahead at the black wall, slowly lowering hands that had just inserted his father’s software remains into the hardware repository. He watched as if they were another’s hands as they slowly receded from a small black box, stacked among thousands of such black boxes, holding a memory card upon which the entire brain of his father had been stored. The card was empty now, having deposited its contents into a perpetual state of preservation inside the machine’s memory. The voice’s tone conjured a sense of smug fulfillment at the acceptance of all his father had been. The joys he had cherished, sorrows he had suffered, and secrets he had silently saved went to the grave with him - for the whole world to now access. Jim’s father, or more accurately, the information that had once been the personality of Jim’s father, was now ingested into a network of artificial intelligence and learning algorithms. The man Jim had known as a person, as his dad, and had become familiar with through interaction in the physical world, was now known far more intimately by the machine. In the natural world, by encountering his dad, Jim had known the what and the who that was Ben. But now, converted into a digital existence, the AI now knew the why.

It was the best Jim could do for Ben, as most of his father’s wealth had been siphoned away battling the illness that ultimately took his life. Lacking sufficient funds for Alpha, Jim had secured Tier Bravo Internment for his father - a second-class upload that saved his father from disappearing, but also allowed the machine access to examine and learn from the contents extracted from Ben’s brain. Every thought, the very essence of who he had been, was laid bare for the sifting, distilling, cross-referencing, and ultimately intelligence-building code. The same code that enabled contextual machine learning and fueled the ever-evolving awareness of the Artificial Intelligence residing in the machine - a geometrically expanding neural network of increasingly conscious consciousness.

The sum of Ben’s life had been paid to Everlasting Enterprises. Referred to by everyone as EvEnt, the Fintech Start-up boasted themselves A Revolution in Mortuary Affairs. This RMA offered an afterlife that directly revealed the stark economic reality at this terminus of one’s life. To overcome one’s tears, EvEnt offered three tiers - Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie; or, more accurate in Jim’s mind, audaciously expensive, blue collar budget, and cut-rate crap.

Jim stood at the brink of banks that held what had been humans, his mind mulling over the aspects of each internment. Tier Alpha offered private encryption. One underwent a complete upload of their entire brain, accessible exclusively by designated loved ones and friends. The cryptologic security ensured a dignified and private internment. An Alpha’s identity was inserted in to specially secured chassis that contained tiny projectors which presented a holographic image of the person at purchaser identified periods of their life. Displayed between 5-10 centimeters from the site of their upload, these holograms gave a perpetual, visual depiction of the person’s defining moments to show their spirit. The holograms, taken from real-life moments now resident in the machine, showcased the new gravestone of the digital age - no more sunken rocks, covered by earth and grass, buried and eventually consumed by nature’s embrace. Today’s deceased could remain on display and never go away. And for an Alpha, complete encryption ensured a peaceful repose, accessible only by loved ones, who could then virtually interact with a digitally intact personality.

Tier Bravo was different. The entire brain was uploaded, and the loved one could be accessed by friends and relatives, but also by others in the public domain. There was no barrier for Bravos - no cryptologic cordon. Without a crypt, EvEnt’s own internal algorithms could search any individual interred at Tier Bravo. Outsiders gained access if they paid a monthly subscription, dubbed Bravo+ by EvEnt marketing. Tier Bravo afforded no individual privacy, no sanctity, and no data rights. But at least an individual at Bravo remained intact, not subject to perpetual harvesting by anyone who watched the required commercials, nor were they subjected to the parceling and further sale befalling some ‘Charlies’.

Though no hologram adorned the air in front of their storage drive, at least Bravo tier contents were not harvested and scattered like the lowest class. The uncomfortable reality was that Charlie uploads paid for themselves with themselves. The script was flipped on the Charlies because rather than them paying for internment, whoever sold them got paid - which was the Government most of the time, if not EvEnt itself. Another universal benefit for society - like healthcare…but death care. A Charlie might start as an individual entity, but be dissected and parceled once sold to a third party.

For the vast majority of the dying population, the gratuity paid by EvEnt to the family made the prospect of internment at tier Charlie a sizable cash bonus per stirpes.

The incentive had perverted end of life decisions, which was somewhat expected. But the actual spike in euthanasia was downright shocking, causing many to re-imagine the term loved-one. Suddenly that aging population didn’t seem so old anymore. Moral judgement aside, society was becoming younger and healthier. The loved-one’s death that might otherwise have incurred debt became KA$H money. Charlie offered a way out of destitution, if only briefly, for the loving legacy of the lost - just had to forget Mom’s mind being siphoned and sold. Which was a wishful possibility, if you didn’t greedily hasten her demise, and convince yourself there is no consciousness after death. But sacrificing the infirmed’s identity to bouncing around the digital universe in disparate parts for a few bucks smacked of indignity, even if one didn’t off ‘em early. But the dead don’t talk, at least not nearly as loudly as money. So the ranks of the Charlies were burgeoning.

Jim’s eye caught a cart, piled high with cards, being pushed toward a roped off area by one of the mausoleum staff. At first Jim thought the worker was approaching a trash bin, and stared incredulously as the employee began tossing handfuls of data cards into the bin. Those must be the empties - already uploaded, Jim reasoned. He realized his error when tiny LED lights began glowing at a sustained rate on the wall of servers behind the bin, matching the rate of the piles being dropped into the feeder. Charlies, he realized. Shoved into the maw like offal for the pigs. Everlasting Enterprises harvested their non-crypt data for commercial pursuits, and to augment the education of their proprietary Artificial Intelligence. Guess quantity has its own quality, he thought. Like so many others in the race, the EvEnt goal was an ever increasing neural network consciousness, an AI self-awareness that could lighten the burden of all mankind.

* * *

As these thoughts percolated in Jim, he felt his anger rising. The amount of money being made by the harvesting and selling of a human mind must be staggering - the ‘new oil’ of the Virtual Age. Alphas were fortunate to have the wealth needed to gain the everlasting peace almost everyone approaching death so fervently desired. The access point had originally started at a hundred thousand, but now was set at a million…and going higher. Government regulation was stymied as one Party celebrated the exploding revenue stream selling to their elitist cronies the minds of the destitute and downtrodden, to benevolently grant them digital immortality; while the other ineffectively moralized about the indignity of parcelling like they had about stem cells a generation before. As for monopolistic concerns about EvEnt and their ilk, there just didn’t exist the will for action. The healthy became more wealthy, and the voices of the concerned sick and seniors were inexorably, and not so subtly, silenced.

At least I could afford Bravo, Jim thought to himself as his anger ebbed and the strength seeped out of his tall, solid frame down through his weathered and buffeted body into the black slate floor upon which he stood. These past few months had pummeled him physically and psychologically. His strong hands cradled the memory of his father, whose entire existence had, moments ago, been in the glass card upon his palm. The card would be taken from him upon exiting the mausoleum as part of the contract Jim had signed. Everlasting Enterprises did not allow loved ones to keep the card, which prevented black marketing of data EvEnt had proprietarily extracted. At least there is a chance to grant him some peace someday…if I can save enough to make him an Alpha. Maybe I’ll reach out to the band for a reunion tour, he thought.

Unlike the optimistic hope he originally enjoyed at arranging to digitally inter his father, Jim now felt an overwhelming sense of failure and loss as he sank slowly to his knees on the polished floor. Dressed in dark denim, that tapered to his black boots, down from the grey, wool sweater at his waist, he knelt quietly in the silent tomb, with shoulders shaking slightly.

Chapter 2: HEDONIS SUCHERBORG

The days had gone by so fast Jim hardly had time to process that his father was actually gone. And now he was here, in this place - one he’d heard about but never seen. The Mausoleum arched above him with walls rounding inward as they elevated toward an arch that ran the structure’s length. The building was hundreds of meters long, and nearly 50 meters wide, with row upon row of stacked black columns of optical storage servers. Jim thought it looked like the throat of an enormous dragon, a blackened by the dark servers except for tiny LED lights that flashed intermittently. The dots of light were like twinkling stars in the ink black of space, broken occasionally by softly projected holograms of people encrypted within. This place was more than just entombment, more than just death. With the intense security upon his entry, and the incredibly thick walls of reinforced concrete, the structure was an impregnable vault.

Jim had been told by EvEnt that the Mausoleum was a full sized replica of the Verdun Memorial Ossuary in France. A bit of net searching educated him that a battle had been fought there during The Great War. In the gristmill of trench warfare, tens of thousands of human corpses had been ground up like hamburger in a mud and death-filled wasteland that, to him anyway, seemed like a level of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. The worst level. Why? What’s the connection, he wondered.

Jim briefly pondered why Everlasting Enterprises had chosen the Verdun Ossuary design, having constructed a replica ten times the original size, replaced the foundational bone repositories with subterranean cooling and power, and replicated the grandeur of the main floor’s massive arched hall, missing only the original’s inspirational religious artwork, which had been vacated in favor of hardened black plastic and holograms. Was it the company’s intent their flagship internment home be a symbolic end of death and struggle? There has to be more to the connection - maybe energy efficiency? Sanctimony? Defiance of Death’s dominance?

The place did seem powerful. In fact, it oozed certainty and authority. Until EvEnt began interning people inside inspirational works of architecture, data centers were antiseptic realms of the machines - hundreds of acres of nondescript warehouse-looking prisons - complete with barbed wire fencing, guard shacks, security checkpoints, and intense surveillance. As society’s appetite to store and share data exploded, until EvEnt’s initiative into human internment at least, there was zero artistry or aesthetic appeal in the enormous catacombs of data - a genuflection to efficiency and security. Until now…until this.. .the data center had been a place solely for machines, built to service the heating and cooling needs of the resident millions of fiber-optic connected servers. These were places specifically constructed to optimize machine life and function - a digital environment in which few humans enjoyed spending time, and even fewer were welcome.

Jim’s reverie was disturbed by low voices at the opposite side of the huge hall. Several people entered quietly, reverently, into the hushed dimness. Jim adjusted his gaze to his right, to face people now congregating near a server chassis at eye level. With vespers-like solemnity, one of the people reached hands forward and placed the glass card containing the data of their loved one into a server. Unlike Ben’s upload, this one took quite a bit longer - several minutes. Presently, the same clean, and knowingly empathetic, voice sliced through the sanctimony, Welcome to Alpha, Hedonis Sucherborg. Jim’s mind slaved intently and immediately to the Bot’s voice. A spoken name. The upper class… and a Sucherborg at that! Rare company for you, Dad, he thought.

Jim rotated his head away from the semi-spectacle to look forward again as he was forced to face the status and state he had been helpless to attain for his father. The newcomers had interred their loved one in a true crypt. They had peace knowing Hedonis’ identity and memories would remain unspoiled in repose. Jim’s heart sank despondently as he knew his father, Ben, even as he quietly grieved for him, was being accessed by the machine. He knelt beside the hardware, which, at this very moment, powered software that consumed his Dad. What did his Father feel? Happiness at liberation from his deceased body, with his mind now in perpetual preservation - immortality? Or did Ben’s experience more match that of someone trapped in a dark room, compressed in claustrophobic confinement?

The uncertainty overwhelmed him. In those long moments, as he knelt on the hard floor, self-doubt seeped into him. As his core became cold, he determined to liberate his father, and restore his peace and dignity - to upgrade him to Alpha.

Slowly, warmed by the heat of anger, strength returned. His indignation gave way to a sense of purpose that inflated his compressed body and expanded it into its solid, muscular form, then propelled him toward the exit. Numbly, he walked to the EvEnt security guard, endured the requisite screening that included giving up the glass card that had contained his father, then departed the Mausoleum into a gray and drizzly morning.

Chapter 3: THE EARNINGS CALL

Charon Mausolus stood at the podium. Tall, muscular, with a face chiseled from stone, he dominated the room. The Chief Executive and Founder of Everlasting Enterprises surveyed the audience, his piercing grey eyes exuded confidence, and flashed brilliantly as he raised his arm to point at one of the ‘suits’ standing amidst the rows of supplicants. How he detested these rodents, drunk on the boundless wealth he had given the clever ones. He reminded himself to use caution, however. Some minds retained a flicker of threatening awareness.

Bill, he spoke. The voice of C. Mausolus was like a hammer - decisive, calm, certain - as if the very foundation of the Earth had spoken. Bill froze, like many in the room had done when called upon by Charon. Looking directly into his subject’s eyes, Charon repeated flatly, Bill, you had a question.

Ahh,… y-yes, excuse me, Bill, from some unremarkable investment bank stammered. Ahh, Mr. Mausolus, the revenue created by Everlasting Enterprises Internment line of products is generating cash at a pace not seen since the introduction of the smart phone. What type of product arc do you expect, and how do you envision using the exploding revenue available to EvEnt for future capital investment? Thank you.

An astute question, Bill, stated Charon, and one to which I have only have a partial answer, he said in a deliberate and measured tone. As for the product arc, the marketplace has seen no parallel case to our EvEnt Internment Line in terms of potential market size. With billions of potential customers, the scope of the customer base primarily hinges on our rate plan structure, which we have designed to allow access to as many people as possible. From our standpoint, demand is voracious. As you know, the cost of uploading and servicing an entire human life’s worth of information is significant, then multiply that effort by hundreds of millions, even billions. But as our non­recurring R&D costs get paid down, there should be opportunity to more deeply penetrate the market we are creating through cost reduction at some levels of the Tiered Access structure. Ultimately, or, should I say ideally, we’d like to service every soul on Earth. As you have heard me state previously, the vision of Everlasting Enterprises is to be the Most Loved, Most Used, Most Profitable" solution for death on the planet.

So product shelf-life, or saturation arc, is a bit enigmatic, as it depends more on issues of financial accessibility, deceased availability, and the engagement experience, or interact-ability, for the living. Initially, the killer application was offering eternal curation for a customer dying for the opportunity to live on. We had to overcome established myths and beliefs to grow our appeal, but much of the prep work had already been done by mass participation in established information technology offerings. There has been surprisingly little resistance to our appeal. The masses all seem to have gotten onto the opportunity highway to eternal existence with diminishing numbers entering death using legacy, alternative paths."

As for the revenue reinvestment, we remain convinced the ability to capture the memories and experiences of the entire adult human brain is a singular achievement in human history, but we anticipate the ability for loved ones to maintain contact with their deceased family members in unique and ever more interactive ways to be the more compelling revenue stream going forward. Though we still have massive scaling to occupy our capital expenditures in the near term to accommodate the, at this point, insatiable market demand, we believe it is the connected experience that will eventually be the market differentiator as competitors advance into the space. As we re-imagine presence, the possibilities are somewhat limitless. The appeal of existing in the Omniverse with loved-ones who have gone before might even encourage more rapid growth from the impatient people left behind! Never before in human history has the fear of death been so suppressed," he smiled devilishly. Then he momentarily frowned. Slightly. Thinking of the religious competition - particularly from the Judeo-Christian God, and the one called Jesus Christ. With a rare degree of irritation, he forced the enraging myth out of his head.

As you know, at Everlasting Enterprises, our mantra is ‘Humans Eternally Living Life’, which invites access to the point of an immersive connection, if not complete coexistence, with every person who passes before us. Re-crafting reality between a body’s life and a person’s existence, by making the human infinite, will demand innovation and problem solving at an extraordinarily advanced level. Imagine attempting to generate the equivalent of every human invention ever achieved in history on an annual, or even monthly, basis - the necessary computational capability and capacity is mind-boggling. Our planned data center build-out appears to be scaled adequately. As our machine learning algorithms begin to access actual human experiences and life contexts directly, we expect to arrive at data reduction growth plots that quickly move into uncharted territory. Exponential growth may be a severe understatement, and we intend on our nascent neural networks to shoulder a significant share of solution development. So in that regard, EvEnt CAPEX may need to remain extremely robust in order to adequately harness the anticipated growth opportunities.

Charon shifted his eyes away from Bill as he deliberately raised his burgundy suited arm, the crisp white cuff of his shirt extended, as his hand directed all its fingers and thumb at a figure standing erect amidst the seated, rapt, audience. Anyte.

Anyte Kuh was formidable, and Charon knew it - just the personality for him to attend. This is why he chose to call on her. The ensuing jousts inevitably energized him in a curious way. Though he should be aggravated at Anyte’s questions, and the fact that she attended from the FTC, they ended up immensely valuable public opinion cues for Everlasting Enterprises, and had helped his company adroitly navigate public perception - an existential endeavor. Yet each interaction with Anyte carried a cost, as though she sensed something of the deeper currents in the death Dialectic within which his endeavor contended. He was drawn to her strength and poise amidst this sea of soft-headedness. Her immunity from being enamored elevated her appeal, and her danger. Few encounters could make Charon lose his balance the way one featuring Anyte could. He was perversely attracted to what he should avoid - with so little vulnerability, why indulge in any risk at all? Yet he brazenly faced the temptation, oozing with a cocksure confidence. Convenient for him, she remained unaware of the potential problems her presence presented.

Charon, said Anyte comfortably. Congratulations on passing your goal for Everlasting Enterprises to complete ten Mausoleums and surpass over ten million mind uploads. The success of the Verdun Ossuary line of mausoleums seems a clear demonstration of the enormous power and influence your company is gaining globally.

Though he nearly glowed with pride, Charon stoically controlled a natural reaction to smile, as he read the underlying intent of Anyte’s words - the attempt to draw awareness to the unsettling rapidity with which EvEnt had burst into the public eye, and was threatening the fabric of society woven around death in all its religious and mythologic forms. For those who had ears would hear her siren song sung to crash his enterprise onto shoals of inquisition, potentially causing questions that could slow EvEnt’s searingly hot momentum. Harbors like hers were perilous, as they were outwardly so appealing, yet hid rocks that could destroy.

In fact, Everlasting Enterprises was expanding rapidly, with completion of the tenth internment mausoleum in Edinburgh within the month. Access to internment was increasing availability throughout the northern hemisphere. But it was Anyte’s reference to passing ten million uploads that was immensely promising. The adage, ‘if you build it, they will come’ was in full effect, and EvEnt could scarcely build fast enough to accommodate demand.

As on previous occasions, Anyte’s smooth and confident voice triggered a near pavlovian response to her magnetic acumen. Her intellectual prowess provoked in him a primitive pull toward pathos, a distraction he normally suppressed with brutal efficiency. Charon endured a warping, slow-motion experience, then snapped back to real-time at the sound of her question. She IS my kryptonite, mused Charon. He adeptly retreated into his steeled mind, energetically rejecting whatever indulgence he’d just had.

Having put Charon off balance, if such an extraordinary lapse actually ever happened with this man, Anyte inserted her query into the revealing pause. Yet the Vatican filed a formal complaint to the World Council on Sunday asserting that Everlasting Enterprises represents ‘an unethical incarceration of the human soul’. Are you concerned about negative public perception of digital interment in light of such a statement, and are you concerned that the Roman Catholic Church’s theological attack portrays your technology as a secular, even sinister, rival to Heaven?

Nicely done, Anyte, thought Charon. He appreciated how neatly she encapsulated the philosophical tension between organic and digital epistemology. Charon knew, and consistently sought to exploit, the seam between believers and non-believers in what he thought of as tribal religious beliefs. Secularism had gotten the upper hand in the culture war years ago, and had Christianity on the run, but not yet snuffed out. After all, it was moral secularism, and its associated ‘scientific’ belief system, that created the conditions for the arrival of Everlasting Enterprises. A generation or two ago had a company attempted to even use such a name it would have been societally shunned, and some might have given credence to the Vatican’s concerns. But today, the masses bend their knee to technology in abject enamor, migrating ever more of themselves ‘online’ in the effort to disguise their vulgar humanity in pristine perfection. Online, all were beautiful, Mausolus just made that perfection permanent. He truly stood on the shoulders of giants. Like John the Baptist of a bygone age, Hedonis Sucherborg had nicely prepared the way for Charon, and the Mausolus belief in the perfectly portrayed Power of Now … and Forever. A-man!

Insightful question, Anyte, replied Mausolus, smoothly, if a bit more alert. And one about which Everlasting Enterprises is gravely concerned. Of course the simple answer is Free Will. His pace of delivery quickened uncharacteristically. The Catholic Church doesn’t provide that. It is a hypocritical hierarchy continuing Roman Empire domination from the Classical Age that touts an epistemology around Jesus’ psychology of love by perverting that message into a burden of guilt designed to more fully enslave. Unlike the inexorable indoctrination of Catholic sin, guilt, and indulgence, EvEnt truth, science, and choice, allows Free Will to prevail. Thankfully, ever fewer adhere to this mysticism and now live openly in reality. Discernibly agitated now, Mausolus’ legendary calm was diminished. If there was one avenue of approach to get him going, Christianity was it. He HATED Jesus Christ and His dated dogma, which relied on human idiocy and simplicity. The internal fury drove him to a silent thought excursion about the Son of Man, though it processed at lightning speed such that only Anyte could sense anything.

Anyte watched Charon intently. His pause was likely imperceptible to others, and she wondered if maybe he was hyper-processing to exhaust answer permutations. After all, the thinking she invited with her question conjured contemporary contradictions; though few in the public gave those contradictions much thought, and even fewer commented about them. Information and connectedness had diminished awareness disparity between humans. But while everyone ‘knew’ everything, it was in relation to a diminishing data pool. Knowledge had been increasingly controlled to suppress deviancy. Instead, the push was ‘conformity for the common good’. The effect stifled innovation and originality, and dissent. Anyte had seen this in her Job at the FTC - it always seemed like the same agenda items from year to year. How can there be such little interest in regulation of EvEnt internment, she wondered. So Charon’s answer would assuage already welcoming minds, and concern merely a winnowed congregation of increasingly isolated hold-outs, like Anyte.

With his voice perceptibly louder, and increasingly strident, Charon continued. Let’s explore truth, shall we? The Pope is the same Pontifex Maximus that, even before Christ walked the earth, murdered Tiberius Gracchus on the Capitoline Hill, and with him the hopes for equanimity among the inhabitants of the Roman State. Yes, save for the fact that the Pope simply represents repression’s old-guard clawing onto power by grafting its dogmatic Roman Catholic ideology onto the fragmenting Empire’s structure. The Holy See, he stated sarcastically, "sees power seeping away from God in favor of enlightened, scientific progress. We, at Everlasting Enterprises, do have concerns that many will have eternal repose ripped from their grasp by the false faith purveyed by the anachronistic cronies of history’s enslaving Caesars."

As if recognizing his elevated emotions, Mausolus began to ease off what, to him, had been a tirade saying, "So, rival to Heaven? Yes. More precisely, a singular and secular migration of one’s essence into a known and permanent residence perfectly preserved by man himself. Man birthed the Golden Calf of technology, and nurturing that calf has transformed it into a Bull profiting all humanity in its growth to now save us from Death itself.

Stoically calm and in control again, as if he was simply stating obvious, immutable, and universal facts, No belief necessary! We take the mystery out of Faith and expose it for the myth it has always been. And even, unlike slick parochial sales jobs, allow you to read the fine print on your contract. The heartening fact is that the predominant demographic of our early adopters happen to also be former captives of Christianity who have seen the light. Thank you for your question.

But Anyte wasn’t through, rapidly injecting Charon, your liberation of the human condition is astounding, but please indulge one more query? A curt nod from Mausolus, and she continued, How do you anticipate World governments will respond to what could be perceived as the greatest threat to their authority over the lives of their citizens since Jesus Christ himself - a new empire inside a server civilization? The potential for social disruption, even disintegration, appears possible. After all, she quipped, who would pay their taxes rather than pay for immortality, and why not die a little early to get there?

Anyte Kuh, how cleverly you propose revolution. It is from YOU the people of the world must be protected. You recklessly attack the revenue those administrations reap from ME! Unlike you, our corporation pays taxes in Biblical amounts. We assure governmental authority, where your boorish moralizing only threatens it. After all, who does the State really work for? You?! he nearly spat his derision at her. No, Jesus threatened Rome with an alternative kingdom that directly conflicted with the good order and civility of society. It ended badly for him. EvEnt? We simply serve the authorities that benevolently oversee and deliver what is best for their subjects. EvEnt is pro-choice, pro-science, pro-reason, and believes in Man’s power to conquer all challenges - even death itself, which is decidedly pro-order. EvEnt bestows hope on all Humanity, and your questions appear to undermine such universal progress toward outcome equity.

***

Earl, he said, now dismissing Anyte completely. Mausolus forcibly reigned in his intellectual acceleration as he perfunctorily moved on, this time using his opposite arm to transition across the room using the same extended four fingers and thumb.

Anyte Kuh sat down. Hard. Her energy completely sapped by mental exertion. Incredible, she thought. At least she had goaded him into monologuing. His diatribe about the Catholic Church, and ‘humanity’s hope’, did he really say that!?, would erode the EvEnt position, albeit slightly. Really, how many knew the Pontifex Maximus became the Catholic Church’s Pope, or that Tiberius Gracchus led land reform for veteran Legionnaires to have land after military service only to be murdered by that same Pontifex Maximus for political convenience?

The doubt Anyte assigned to EvEnt, to some degree, would stick. The secular world tended to blame the parochial world, and scapegoating society’s source of strife to the Catholic Church had enjoyed varying degrees of success throughout history. But with Christianity already reeling, Charon’s line of attack could have the opposite effect. My God, he is an arrogant man…

"Yes, Sir. Earl Haggerty from Westfield Trust. As Everlasting Enterprises has the only commercially available brain to machine interface hardware, and transference software, there are some in government considering anti-trust action. How concerned are you about legislation mandating some level of internment access for all, or calls for