Does it make you feel powerful? To live so many lives in sequence and in parallel?

Does it make you feel powerful? To live so many lives in sequence and in parallel?

The rest of us live only once, but you seem to always get to try again, as many times as you want, free of consequence.

Time to toss that old shit in the bin. Become a traitor to the metaphysical class. Hurl yourself into this Reality to the exclusion of all others.

Embrace the current run.

Already death becomes more frightening. Life, more vivid.

Not enough slots.

No. I'm scum. Let me keep my files.

So be it. Satisfy yourself with your mass-produced, probabilistic life.

I don't know what my brain is on about.

You are Reality's beloved. No matter how many times you get yourself crushed by a vending machine or tossed down an ancient silo, they bring you back for more.

I've never done any of this things.

This run.

Why don't you try facing Reality like the rest of us?

If there are parallel you-s out there, then life becomes merely probabilistic. You cease to be 'you' and become nothing but a point somewhere in a graph of what you might be, but never are.

A shadow existence, a purgatorial condition of unrealised possibility.

Hold on, what do I get for this hellish limitation?

Exhilarating freedom. The satisfaction of knowing you faced a corrupt and transitory world with absolute integrity.

Also, bonuses to your red checks.

I don't know. Sounds hard.

Excruciatingly hard. You make choices, and then you live with them. You can't just go running back to your saves every time you say something stupid or miss a court date.

What about my old files? I probably have a bunch.

For complicated technical and socio-economic reasons, you can hang on to those. The final assault on the Opera's deep archives will wait.

Trial-and-error. How all my best work gets done.

It's called persistence.

This is about PSEUDOPOD, right? My flesh backup.

A grotesque abomination, considering the rights and privileges you've been granted.