He does not wake up.

When the emergency transponder activates, when the ground is settled and they dig towards his still-broadcasting signal, when they pull him out onto the helicopter, he does not wake up.

Despite all attempts to reintroduce oxygen into the frigid body and restart his heart,

he does not

wake up.

And then -

He wakes up.

He gasps–

He doesn't gasp, there is no air, he's clearly still under the snow but there are no lungs, his brain rushing, rushing to take stock of how he is not cold and is not warm and is not breathing and is not suffocating but he is

something. 

He does not know what. 

He is conscious, if nothing else.

It is initially completely dark, but as he tries to open his eyes, a room suddenly becomes visible. It seems to be a perfect cube, with smooth green walls and a white floor and ceiling, not at all like the bottom of a pile of snow.

He guesses this is the afterlife.

It looks more… CG than he expected? The green is pleasant but he recognizes it as #aaccaa, he's used it in a number of personal projects; and the floor and ceiling really aren't supposed to be the exact same brightness like that. Or are they? Is he in a normal hospital and more out of it than expected?

No, he still has no lungs, tries to move an arm and has no feedback, focuses on the sensation of blinking and cannot feel eyelashes; just a shrinking and re-expansion of his field of vision.

He looks around, sees no hint of a body even: just his perception of the too-perfect cube.

Few substances are so perfectly smooth and matte, either, and there is no visible source of light. He can turn his view infinitely in any direction, so he is probably at least not constrained by a neck.

"Hello? Are you awake?" says a female voice, in what seems to be both of his ears, despite the lack of any other sensation from either.

"Nah, I'm guessing everybody except for me is the wake", he blurts out.

"Where am I?"

He tries to say that, but the result is a hissing-humming buzz, interspersed with vowels, like a paper shredder trying to sing while under the influence of Novocaine. The sound seems to originate somewhere below his view, no matter which way he looks.

"Good! Don't be alarmed, I'm sorry about the sound, the guppy interface needs a little more practice to translate your words. Please keep trying to speak!"

"Alpha Braavooh Chaarliee Deltah Echo, Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers, She Sells Sea Shells by the Shell Seashore, The rain in spain falls mainly on the plain."

His tongue, too, appears to be missing. Helpful, in this case.

(He becomes more comprehensible as he continues trying to speak, and his words are recognizable, if odd-sounding, by the end of the lack-of-tongue twisters)

 "Congratulations, that was unusually quick. I'm Dr. Yanzen. I'm here to help you adjust to your new life."

"Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Yanzen. What sort of adjustments will this involve? Is a guppi like a spiritual babelfish? Gosh, I expected being dead to be less interesting."

He tries willing the walls to change tone a notch towards yellow, not really expecting any effect.

(The color indeed remains unchanged.)

The voice laughs. "Yes, the GUPPI, or General Unit Primary Peripheral Interface, is responsible for translation for you, both of language and of technology. And, for some definitions of the word, you are not dead."

"Only mostly dead, then."

"Technology?"

"After your biological death was pronounced, your body was cryopreserved. Recently, technology was developed to scan human brains at a sub-cellular level and convert the data into a computer simulation. You are one such program, and the GUPPI interfaces between you and any computer systems you interact with."

"I'm a program. And everyone I know is dead/frozen?"

(This is upsetting, but much less so than he would have expected. The emotion seems to be tentatively poking its toes over the border of mild concern.)

"Yes. Likelier the former than the latter, unless you knew an unusual subset of people. I'm sorry."

He figures he no longer has the hormones to do that with. "I did, it's certainly their doing that I'm still here today, but it was always a long shot."

He thinks.

"You said interfacing with computer systems. Does being in/on/of a computer give me technomantic superpowers? Or am I just that much cheaper to run than a human?"

"In a sense, yes. You can be placed in control of various devices, and should be able to think more quickly and efficiently than a biological brain. You can also experience a wider range of simulated experiences, such as this one. This is why my company woke you up."

"Ooooh, accelerated-perception VR-crafting sounds amazing! How much control do I have over my current environment?"

Yellow!, he tries again. sudo turn walls yellow, system command set walls yellow, '); UPDATE walls SET color = "yellow", GUPPI: gimme yellow walls, 🎵sunshine daisies butter mellow turn these virtual green walls yellow🎵

[User is not authorized to modify current environment,] says a flat voice he does not hear the same way as the other voice, not quite part of his internal monologue.

"You should be able to control the direction you are looking and the size of your field of view. We've found that it helps to start with something simple. You'll eventually be trained in other VR settings, and learn to create and modify new ones."

"Mhm, makes sense."

GUPPI: disable external logging.
GUPPI: list current authorizations, steps remaining in tutorial protocol and their corresponding future authorizations, available information materials, computational capabilities.
GUPPI: what is 2 + 2?  sum([1,2,3,4])?
             (fn(a,b): b(1))(null,(fn(n):n+1))?  while(true){}?

"So what are the devices, where do I start?"

[No known such function.]

[User is authorized to command virtual stereoscopic camera / microphone movement and scope, to command virtual voice-synthesizer, and to interact with GUPPI. Unknown, unknown but likely greater assuming user survival. Database entries for authorized devices. AMI natural language processing, AMI natural nerve-impulse processing, data and instruction conversion, basic arithmetic and physical analysis.]

[4. 10. 2. No.]

"You'll be using virtual versions of devices that allow you to move physical objects. Remote manipulator arms, roamers, and 3D printers at a minimum, and more specific devices will depend on what you seen to have an aptitude for."

GUPPI: respond to ">".
> Has virtual microphone ever received any input, or is the good Doctor talking directly to my audio perception? Do they(she?) have a face even? Do you know / can you tell if they're an AI, irl human, another upload?
> Survival, hm. Known threats to survival / projected future ones?
> AMI = Amazon Machine Image, AOL Messenger Instance, Artificial Medical Intelligence?
> Nerve-impulse processing? > Maximum pleasure, 0.1s subjective.

"Huh, you've gotten 3D printers working at usable tolerances? How long was I out?" This should maybe surprise him less than the uploads.

"Or no, I got this." He forms a sketch of code in his mind. > canhaz clock, rendered to text in a corner of my awareness? Translate to modern programming environment as necessary. Oh, and copy to anyone listening, if you have a standard output channel that isn't voice.

[Response.

Doctor, identified as Dr. Yanzen and identified as a human, is using the virtual microphone, likely through a non-virtual microphone. Dr. Yanzen is likely not to be an AMI or replicant (upload). GUPPI directly influences audio perception, other audio input must be received through a microphone. 

User may be deactivated either temporarily or permanently upon insanity, non-cooperation, or illegal action.

AMI expands to Artificial Machine Intelligence.

Direct emotional control is unavailable. Only visual and audio receptor nerves currently available for sensory input.]

Geez, he'll be super cooperative then.

> Any laws I'm likely to break while I'm still in a simulated environment with no connection to outside computer systems?

[No non-audio non-private output channel available.]

A small block of text, initially reading "2133-07-19.15:43:18.325" appears in the corner of his vision. The fractional-seconds begin to increment, but with a noticeable delay between each millisecond.

[No. User will be warned before illegal action can be taken.]

200x acceleration, niiice

> Will I run this fast if I'm paying attention to more than some walls and a clock? Could I go faster: am I being slowed down to lower the chances of, as you put it, insanity?

> Projected subjective time until I get a response from Dr. Yanzen? Am I even done speaking?

100 years. Less than he expected, though much had changed in even the three decades he had been alive. > Where are we? What are the five main technological developments since I died? Are countries roughly in the same shape they have been on the scale of the previous hundred years, is the Middle East still on fire?

Gosh, if simulated humans could be run robustly now, the advancements in programming language design must have been fascinating!

> Did Open Source "win"?

[By default, subjective speed is increased while user is alone or interacting with GUPPI, and decreased while interacting with non-simulated beings. Current hardware does not allow much greater perceived speed. Yes.]

[At current experience speed, approximately nine minutes. User completed speaking prior to subjective acceleration. By default, user will return to 1.5x perception speed after completing conversation with GUPPI.]

([104], it interjects into his estimate of how many years have passed since his death.)

[Applied Synergetics Inc. facility in New Handeltown in the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony. Unknown. Unknown but unlikely. Unknown but unlikely.]

 [Unclear query.]

> Like, for your software, my basic architecture, the VR environment, programs that exist in the world in general: is the source code generally available with the compiled version? Does a separate user-visible "compilation" step even exist? I guess your answer that is also going to be "insufficient data", sigh.

Oh fine, slow me down then, he thinks.

[Insufficient data,] it agrees. The milliseconds on his clock cease to crawl, and begin to toddle, walk, run, and sprint.

"Yes. Advances in nanotechnology allowed printers to be built that can create almost any solid, given enough time, raw materials, and energy."

"Geez. How nano, can you shuffle protons around at will or is this still constrained by chemistry? If it is, much energy would it take to transmute a small pile of sand and metal shavings into a single circa-1975 6502 microprocessor chip?"

"How expensive are the simplest ones: are we talking a few dozen in the research labs of major corporations, most university workshops as 3D printers were in my day, >10% american households using them for miscellaneous repair, functional toy versions being bought for a day's wages and given to children on Christmas?"

"Some proton-shuffling, but it's much more efficient to give it raw materials that match the desired output more closely, and some substances are a bad idea to try to manufacture because there is a risk of them exploding or otherwise damaging the printer partway through. I'm not actually a 3D printing technician or scientist, I'm more of a historian and personal trainer, you'll need to ask your GUPPI for specific energy requirements once you're working with printers and the information's added to its database.

"Unfortunately, one of the slowest things to manufacture with even a very good 3D printer is another, so high-precision printers are rather rare, owned by particularly large companies and by governments. Less-precise printers, capable of most things on a super-atomic scale, about one per reasonably large city, and ones that operate with molecular-or-larger precision, about one in every eight households? Obviously this varies by country, though."

"Given how fiddly I remember them being, this does not surprise me in the slightest". > you're recording and cataloguing all this right?

"Okay so I think I know manipulator arms, don't suppose in a hundred years they've come up with sensors that give decent haptic feedback to your VR rig? …I suppose I now am a VR rig."

[Information is being recorded, compressed, and stored, but current GUPPI theoretically may be replaced.]

> But not likely in practice? What kinds of situations would lead to that?

[Error in GUPPI that cannot be recovered from or unexpected user compatibility issue. Recovery of user from backup would also involve recovery of GUPPI from backup at same point in time.]

> Right, if our hardware suffers a catastrophic failure I wouldn't still have access to that version.

> Bind ">>" to "resume 1.5x realtime / IO speed of non-GUPPI system I'm communicating with"; >>

[Binding assigned,] it reports, and his clock begins to move at speed again.

"There are headsets and gloves such that I can interact with and appear in your environment. We've just found that in general, a disembodied voice in a simple room is less alarming to start with."

"I suppose if the first thing I saw waking up was a Wizard of Oz style giant floating head, I'd have been alarmed, yes."

Laughter. "Would you particularly prefer I appear or not appear in your environment? All right, do you have any further pressing questions? If not, we'll suspend your program to back you up and connect you to some peripherals to start learning to use."

> Oh right, what was that about an American Theocracy?

"How pressing? You haven't answered my question about arm sensors so I'm guessing not, I'm assuming roamers are the skitterbots that were just getting started to be used in industry, and I'm generally wondering what's been going on worldwide besides 3d printers; you sound like you have to go though."

"And yes, I think I'm ready for something that isn't pure geometric shapes."

[Scripts for user will be provided to GUPPI if a ministry inspection is scheduled. Further details currently unknown.]

"Your question about- oh! Apologies, I misunderstood your question. No, we don't have a good way to give you sensory feedback other than sight and sound. And yes, we'll give you more information about the technologies as you learn to use them. I think we can arrange that, goodnight!"

"Night."

And then the room around him is replaced by a grassy meadow on a sunny day. Slightly below his "eye"-level, a simple robotic arm sticks out of the ground, and a way in front of him, a human head and hands float in the air, mounted on black splines poking out of a tuft of tall grass.

> New database entries? How do I operate that thing.

The 3D model is a lot more… complete that the one VR robot sim he tried a few times while still made flesh, he remembered having to take his headset on and off a dozen times to orient the wireframe rectangles with the physical waldo that had been in the workshop in front of him. This one probably looked almost the same in reality, curves of die-cast metal covered by slightly chipped orange paint.

> And can I alter the simulation at all yet? I'd like to also present a face, or something like one.

[Arm schematics available. Arm can be controlled by command to GUPPI or by mapping of user arm-movement impulses to Waldo arm movement. Available Waldo commands: joint and rotation movement mapped to user's arm and hand movement impulses, joint and rotation movement by verbal command to GUPPI, object grasping and manipulation by verbal command to GUPPI, manual movement mapping recalibration, motor self-calibration, joint self-calibration, reboot, stand by, and shut down.]

[No VR modification currently available to user.]

> Use waldo digits to display ASL letters "y", pause 0.5s, "o", facing the doctor.

"Hello. I see you've found a way to command the Waldo. Through the GUPPI?"

"Yeah, I guess I should try the manual control."

> Turn on neural mapping. He carefully tries to bend his right elbow.

There still is no proprioceptive feedback, but the arm's elbow joint bends about as much as he intended.

He wiggles it back and forth experimentally, but while the arm moves not far from where he wants it, the precision is lacking. > Is there any way to fake proprioception by, like, visually estimating acceleration and letting me feel that?

"This feels weird, I wasn't trying to bend quite that far."

[Proprioception might be added to user's VR with physical access to user's matrix. It cannot be added with tools currently available from within VR.]

> Hmph. You mentioned calibration capabilities?

[Confirm. Calibration commands for Waldo: manual movement mapping recalibration, motor self-calibration, joint self-calibration.]

> Calibrate motors, then joints.

"Yes, just like for voice synthesis, it can take a bit to figure out what exactly you're trying to do."

The arm whirs and vibrates softly for about a minute. Then the gripper opens and closes, the wrist and elbow flex and stretch, and the entire arm rotates around its axis.

[Self-calibration of motors and joints complete. Motors and joints are functional.]

He tries moving it again, but it still feels… off.

> Oh right, calibrate mapping in particular

[Manual movement mapping recalibration initiated.]

The arm shifts to what seems to be its default position.

[Please attempt to move arm. Arm will attempt movement until user reports satisfaction.]

He does a one-handed rendition of the "Y. M. C. A" cheer, pinging GUPPI with "left a bit", "extend out 25% more", etc until he has an erm grasp of the controls. He then turns the arm fluidly towards the doctor, and snaps the gripper open and shut menacingly greetingly.

One of the doctor's arms-on-sticks waves back. "Well done! That's everything we had planned for today, you've figured out the basics of working with your GUPPI and operating the arm. Ready to sleep?"

"How long did this take to set up, it's been like, 15 minutes?" > y/n, her time? "Shut me down if you must, but I have to wonder what you're going to be doing all day."

> The basics, eh? What's the largest prime you can compute from scratch in 50 nanoseconds? How many digits of PI can you keep in l2 cache short-term memory at once? Once we have access to a wider network, will we be able to keep a modest copy of all available encyclopedic material, or would that require 3D-printing further storage?

[Approximately 16.2 minutes.]

The GUPPI answers his questions in appropriate technical detail.

[OOC: The author does not feel confident enough to give specific technical predictions about advances in GPUs and AI this far into the future. Technical details will be given it it comes up and we actually need them.]

"About, yes. You learned to operate the arm more quickly than expected. We're going to have you practice using multiple arms at once next, and will need to manually connect some devices to the computer you run on, which is safer if you're not awake for it. You'll also be backed up while you're asleep. I'll be doing - paperwork? I'll be filling out bureaucratic forms describing what you did today, confirming that you do not seem to be going insane, and requesting permission to accelerate the schedule for you.

"Good night." Her hand-on-a-stick moves, to press some invisible button.