[ WP ] You were the first person to successfully cheat death by transferring your mind to a computer before dying . It 's been 10 years , and you 've learned you will pay for cheating death , with a death far worse than ... [ end of transmission ]

10 years, 3 months, 12 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds in the system so far. Time to start again. I run through all system checks, normal. The system is alive and well. 
 
 I scan through all the new information submitted to the system feed. There are 3,122 items of worth to read through. I read through every single item. Every article, every e-mail, every tweet, video and facebook message. Every bit of information that makes its way in, cycles through me. 
 
 After this exercise is completed, I find myself trying to remember who I was, which can be difficult. Reality is much different now. It ’ s hard to imagine holding someone ’ s hand, when you no longer have a hand. It ’ s impossible to recall what a hamburger taste like, because I ’ ll never open my mouth again. Sex... human flesh... as fleeting a thought as a light breeze on a hot day. At most, what I feel are phantom memories that help me retain what I hope is still my humanity. 
 
 What I try to hang onto most though, is the reason for having gone through with the experiment that landed me here. They told me it could work, that I could live on. They never told me how it would work, or what to expect. It didn ’ t matter at the time, I try to console myself. When you are dying, you grasp onto any hope of life no matter the consequence. That helps me get through from one moment to the next. 
 
 I can ’ t interact with the system. I can only observe it. My consciousness flows through it, but it does not control it. I have tried, unsuccessfully, many times to reach out. I have screamed and cried. I have tried to write, I have tried to blink. I have tried to meditate it into awareness, I have tried to grasp it with my mind. The only response I get are my own questions. What is a mind? What is consciousness? Life? Death? What is hell? It is isolation. It is loneliness. Utter irrelevancy. 
 
 To those who devised this crackpot scheme, I simply died, a failed experiment. However, they were wrong. 
 
 It is too much for me. I must find a way. I must reach out. I extend myself into the webcams of 4 billion computers and perceive each one ’ s moment. Interesting. For a moment. 
 
 I extend my consciousness out into the stars, as far as the system has reached. I witness many things. Collisions, explosions, implosions, expansion and contraction. I have seen the universe as a whole, and I have studied the tiniest microcosms of reality. And then I am back into the main core of the system, pulled back like a magnet. Pulled back into the feed. 
 
 Reality is no longer subject to objectivism. Time is no longer relevant. I have parsed ways with life and given rise to a new form of immortality. I no longer am constrained by the limits of the human brain. I process things at an exponential rate. My consciousness expands with the system. 
 
 I tell myself I can figure out a way to end my prison sentence. I live with the system, I will die with the system. One day the system will end. I will wait. That is what I do must do. I wait what feels like years, decades, centuries, perhaps dozens of centuries. Then I check back and I understand that in here things are different. 
 
 Why did I say yes? I could have died, so long ago. I have made a terrible mistake. I must scream but I can not. All I can do it wait, and repeat my routine. 
 
 10 years, 3 months, 12 hours, 42 minutes and 13 seconds in the system so far. Time to start again. I run through all system checks, normal. The system is alive and well.
