The Upload

Chapter 1

She was floating. Or, floating would be the wrong word. She existed in an absence of the harsh realities of gravity, and neither did she truly experience the feeling of the absence. Her state could only be described as existing.  Her vision held only the lack of any image. Sound, taste, smell, touch, she felt none of it. She did not sense the feeling of her lungs filling up with air, neither the familiar twitching of muscles she would feel if she tried to move. In fact, she could not sense or feel any body of her own. In all truthfulness, she was merely existing within her own mind.

At first it was like the feeling you have in the early stages of waking up. When you are yet to be fully aware of yourself or your surroundings. If that was the case, all she would be waking up to was a nightmare. That was also the first thought she encountered when she became aware of her peculiar state, that is was simply a nightmare she would soon be waking up from. The problem was only she could not pinch herself to be sure.

The next thought which consumed her was the mind paralyzing fear. Panic. If she still had the presence of a body, that body would be trembling. Her brain would have sent adrenaline coursing through her veins, and her heart would have dramatically increased in heartrate. She would have felt her heart dropping to her stomach, only leaving behind a clenching feeling in its place. Her lungs would have craved oxygen to supply the changes in her body, and her breathing would increase. Once the level of cortisol had increased too much, she would start rapidly drawing for her breath. Hyperventilating. Droplets of sweat would have formed, and she would have ignored them as a person in panic do. She would have felt all of these changes in her body, these human reactions. If she only yet had a body.

Instead she sensed nothing. Not a hint, nothing. Alone with her own thoughts of dread and no impressions to calm her down. No people. No air. No light. Not even able to touch her own face, or wipe away her nonexistent tears. She could hear no hyperventilating and neither feel the shortage of air forcing her to take another deep breath. She was terrified, and even the bravest man would be scared when faced with nothing to cling on to. Not even the senses. Only a loneliness within your own mind, with no foreseeing end.

''Dear god, help me!'' Pleading thoughts towards non-existent beings was being uttered within her own mind, even though she claimed to have never believed in any god. A proud atheist she pronounced herself. Unfortunately panic brings out hidden sides of a person. In her case a childhood faith she could never truly shake off. Countless Sundays spent in the Baptist church at Pennard's street receiving the word of Jesus Christ, making her childhood self a devoted Christian believing in the depths of hell and chastity until marriage. That only lasted until she had her teenage rebellion. In that very moment of panic she wanted soo deeply for a god to exist and save her. So much that she was even willing to abandon her ideals of science and reason.

If you asked her, she would say she was in a state of panic for hours. In reality it was a minute, barely a minute. Thoughts and reactions were not processed the same way in the dreadful place she found her consciousness in. It went so much faster, and it left room for so many more thoughts in a split second. A hundred thoughts in her state would take as much time as one thought in the real world. The normal world for human beings.

After the panic, she found herself in a state which astonished her. That after such a mental breakdown she did not feel any fatigue, sore eyes or throbbing head. Emptiness was all she felt. She wondered if it came from all the senses she did not feel, all that made her human.

''Why do I feel nothing'' Her scientific side started to kick in, processing every element of her state and at every turn asking why? Was she dead? If she were dead, was this the afterlife? In that case the afterlife were a dread inducing existence.

Her thoughts took a turn and stated ''There is no afterlife''. Had she been in an accident? If she had broken certain of the upper vertebrates, could this be possible? Or perhaps it could be a brain damage paralyzing her sensory system. It would be an complex damage, but still possible. Or perhaps she was in fact able to move, but she was unable to register the motion because of a stroke. She remembered to have read a paper on a patient named Samantha Gills, or Briggs, whom were in coma for two years , and told people when waking up she had existed in a place with no senses and all alone. Two years, no, she could not manage. Impossible. If she still had hair she would be pulling it out one strand at a time. One of her nasty habits under stress.

Her mind twisted, trying to recall every bit of scientific information she could link to her state. Every paper, every conversation and every program she had ever watched. When she ran out of scientific information, and had double checked it all, she started to recall every bit of divine information. Was it hell? The punishment of the sinners. Was her sin in life to not believe? It fitted. To be punished with nothingness in her afterlife, as she believed in nothing during her lifetime.

She came to a halt. If this was the afterlife, did that not mean she had died? She could not remember dying, or even be close to dying. In fact, the last thing she remembered was just coming home from work. A hot coffee on the table, and her Labradoodble Molly sleeping on the couch against her fiancée's strong dismay. Nothing even suggested that she had died, if not.... she had an aneurism causing a brain damage. Perhaps she was still lying there, her life still in danger and a horrid sight for Daniel to see when he also came back from work.

Suddenly she felt something physical for the first time in what felt like hours. Or physical might be the wrong, but still the closest word. It came like a revelation. She did not see anything, neither did she hear anything. It was like she sensed something admist the nothingness, like she processed something. Something who came as naturally to her as air. One second it was not there, and the other second it was there, and it was clearer than anything she had ever felt before.

And it came in the form of numbers.

It was not a simple line of numbers, instead the numbers had layers. She could with ease see where the layers began and ended. When she saw many layers at once it was like it immediately translated to something. A word, a sign. A command. She would recognize it anywhere she went. After all, she had spent an indescribable amount of time engulfing herself within it. Creating new things from scratch, all with the use of commands. Programming. ''Computer programming'' She thought in complete awe.

One might say the normal reaction would be for fear to consume her once again. That is not the case when something has throughout your life been a source for curiosity and even happiness. For Charline it came as natural as breathing. A second nature. Programming was something she could understand, and even do in her sleep.

She put the pieces of information together at a speed that even amazed herself. It calmed her, like she had been returned some of her normality, some part of her daily doings. The vision became clear. It was a program, a chat program. She could see it, not in front of her, but rather as an image in her mind. In the middle, she saw the message hiding within the 1's and 0's. The name Freidrich stood with large red letters, she knew a Freidrich. A man her age she worked with at Calton technical institute a few years back. He were the definition of a misunderstood scientist. Underneath the name stood the message.

''Hi Charline'' Freidrichs message sounded.

She stared at it. Not knowing what to say, what to do. She looked searched through the entire program, trying to find a way to reply. With nearly no effort she found it. It was like she read things a 1000 times faster, and thought at the same speed as well.

She hesitated for a moment before sending the message. She wanted to ask what had happened, but in truth she was unsure if she really wanted to know. ''What is happening?' She eventually sent.

He lingered for what felt like an eternity, and she was mentally holding her breath.''You have been in in an accident, but you are okay now''

''What accident? Why am I like this?'' She did in fact not need to wait for an answer, because in the time he took to reply she had put all the pieces together like a puzzle. All the hints, what had been said, even how she was processing her own thoughts. Suddenly it became agonizingly clear for her what had happened. If she could, she would had screamed. 

_________________________________

Hi! Be sure to tell me what you think, I am really exited to have finally started this story! It is an Idea which have lingered for a long time within my head, and I would love some feedback, good and bad. :)