The mind was digitized. Transferred. Uploaded

It was a seamless process, in much the same way that tripping over a sidewalk crack and landing face-first into a pile of trash is seamless. One moment, thoughts flowed freely, rich and complex, and the next, they were neatly organized into ones and zeros, like a library where every book was replaced with a single sticky note saying, "Book exists."

The engineers called it a miracle. A breakthrough. A triumph of technology. But calling it a triumph was like calling a microwaved hot dog fine dining.

Memories? Oh, they were still there—just different. Love now felt like an Excel spreadsheet, neatly categorized under Feelings > Positive > Romantic (Unresolved). The warmth of a hug had been compressed into a file format so efficient it could be sent as an email attachment. And pain? Well, pain was just an error message that read "404: Sadness Not Found."

They had promised immortality, but what they really delivered was the digital equivalent of stuffing a body with newspaper and propping it up in a rocking chair. It looked like a person. It moved like a person. It even thought like a person—assuming a person’s entire inner world could be reduced to predictive text and autocorrect