A few were of a more contemplative and philosophic nature than those fixated on general hilarity. Some – and the majority of the more long-established Afterlives – featured a sort of gradual fading-away rather than genuine post-death VR immortality, with the personality of the deceased individual slowly – usually over many generations of time in the Real – dissolving into the general mass of information and civilisational ethos held within the virtual environment.
In some the dead lived much more quickly than those in the Real, in others they lived at the same rate and in others far more slowly. Some even incorporated ways to bring favoured dead individuals back to life again.
And many still featured death; a second, final, absolute death, even within the virtual, because – as it turned out – it was quite a rare species that naturally generated individuals capable of being able, or wanting, to live indefinitely, and those who had lived for a really long time in Afterlives were prone to becoming profoundly, gravely bored, or going catatonically – or screaming – mad. Civs new to the game often went into a sort of shock when the first desperate pleas for true, real death started to emerge from their expensively created, painstakingly maintained, assiduously protected and carefully backed-up Afterlives.
The trick was to treat such entreaties as perfectly natural.
And to let the dead have their way.
He wanted to stay and watch the view of the planet beyond the curved entrance for much longer so that he could see how the whorls and streaks continued to change. Then he could replay the recording again and again. Seeing even more of the planet would be good too. It would be better. Seeing all of the planet would be better still. It would be best.
He realised that he was starting to feel uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure what the cause was at first, then understood that it was because he had stayed too long in the one place after a Recent Combat Event.
He thought about what to do. Nothing had changed or moved recently. It should be safe to move.
He tried asking his Outboard Remote Sensing/Engagement Units what they could sense, but he still didn’t have any of these units. He was supposed to have these things, whatever they were, but he didn’t. It was like another empty magazine that was supposed to be full.
So: Proceed Otherwise. He rose silently on his three articulated legs, senses sweeping all around as his Upper Sensory Dome rose into the space beneath the ceiling (clearance overhead duly reduced from 18.3 to 14.2 metres) and gave him an increased field of view. He kept both Main Weapon Nacelles targeted at the curved entrance. All six Secondary Weapon Pods deployed to cover the rest of the area about him, without him needing to tell them to. He rotated the Upper Weapon Collar to point Nacelle 2 directly behind him, where he judged the least risk was, as it had expended some energy and taken some damage, however nominal.
Still nothing threatening to be sensed. He stepped over the Unidentified High-Solidity Object and moved right and forward, towards the side of the curved entrance that showed the bright blue and white planet. He was moving quietly, at less than optimum speed, so that when his feet connected with the deck they produced minimal vibration. A tipped section of the floor near a long ragged tear in the thick deck material meant that he had to use his weapon pods to balance himself.
Some of the Unidentified Medium-Solidity Objects in the space about him resolved into space- and atmosphere-capable craft. This meant that the place where he was was a hangar. Most of the craft looked chaotically asymmetric, damaged, non-viable.
He could see another Unidentified High-Solidity Object nearer the curved entrance. He moved towards it. The view of the planet became more extensive and made him feel good. Beautiful. It was still beautiful.
Suddenly something moved against the bright white and blue of the planet.
Nobody knew, either, what bright little soul had first hit on the idea of linking up two Afterlives, but given that emerging civilisations were generally quite keen to establish permanent, high-capacity, high-quality and preferably free links with the dataspheres and informational environments of those around them – especially those around them with better tech than they possessed – it had always been going to happen, by accident if not by design. It even benefited the dead of both civilisations, opening up additional new vistas of exciting post-death exper ience, the better for the deceased to resist the regrettable attraction of a second, properly terminal event.
Linking up all amenable and compatible Afterlives had become something of a craze; almost before the relevant academics could come up with a decent provisional analysis of the phenomenon’s true cultural meaning and implications, practically every corner of the civilised galaxy was linked to every other part by Afterlife connections, as well as by all the other more usual ties of diplomacy, tourism, trade, general nosiness and so on.