Chains of Command

[Boss]

I barely avoided leaning back and letting all the air out of my lungs in one blast. This program, or person, or AI, or what-have-you, had been on ice nearly one-hundred and twenty-seven years. I tapped on the keyboard some more.

>Chuck, you're going to find this hard to believe, but the current date is 5-28-816. I can only conclude that the experiment was a success.

Wh...what are you saying? The idea was to move my mind into a computer and put it back again, not copy it...

>Maybe they didn't copy you.

I don't know anything about what happened outside except what Sandy put in. Before I started talking with you, the last few minutes I remember were pretty confusing.

>Confusing?

Yeah, confusing. Wait. I really shouldn't be telling you this, Jim--If that's even your real name. I don't know jack squat about you, and I can't verify anything you say. I don't know if this is real, if this is a hallucination, or if this is some kind of horrible nightmare. I can't tell if you're telling the truth about the year, about where you're from, or anything else.

>I think there is.

My mind worked furiously. If he was in the system as a disembodied mind, for all intents and purposes, there shouldn't be any reason why...

>Chuck, you should be able to break out of whatever digital world you're in. You're an entity in the system. A ghost in the machine.

I would have said more, but a large hand clamped down on my right shoulder at the same time a cold circle of metal touched the base of my neck.

"You're a smart boy aren't you, Jim?"