Eternity 3.0 A short story By Jeffrey Schaben Denise was startled from her daydreaming by the ding on her PIT. Technically known as a personal interface tablet. The message was a simple but ominous warning. “Dear user, your Personal Interface Tablet in no longer supported by the latest EOS upgrade. Please upgrade to a newer version of the Personal Interface Tablet.” It wasn’t that she needed the tablet to communicate with anyone. That technology was directly integrated into to the synapses of her mind. However, the tablet was the key card that let her function at this level, and losing it, and she would become an archive on the network, instead of an active member of the network. The PIT held all her financial data, and verified all her history, and was the most important object that any citizen could have. Most people kept their PIT hidden, but always accessible. Because, if anyone gained control of your PIT, they effectively had control of your official identity. And if they were skilled hackers, they could alter that identity. A majority of the citizen that occupied this city, were honest and respectful residents, and would never steal or even hold another person’s PIT. However, there always were Zombies, looking to gain access to PITs. There were two kinds of Zombies, the first were Normal looking people, whose sole purpose was to claim PITs, thus stealing your identity, and then you had the second type of Zombie. The victim of a Zombie attack. Whose identity had been compromised, and erased to be replaced by a zombie bot. And these Zombie bots, were upgraded and moved to the richer cities that are being created today, to acquire even more PITs. You see Denise died 35 years ago, and became a resident of Eternity, 3.0. Her resources kept her online for years, with careful budgeting. The sales pitch was. “You can live forever on our network.” And the brochures made it all seem possible, when a person thinks about the potential, but then ignores the logistics. And the simple logistics is: you are only valuable today, if people are making money from you. If not, you become irrelevant. And eternity last as long as you are relevant and making someone money. Back then the city was new and vibrant, everything had the feel of vitality, it was growing fast, with new buildings and adventures being created daily. Now, otherworld’s have been created, with more complexity, and even more expense had to been built to replace the Eternity 3.0. Leaving this version to fall into a cycle of neglect. And the citizen where helpless to stop this decline. Your only choice was to buy a new PIT, which would allow you access into the newer created worlds. And to buy a new Pit, you had to have a living resident, you could trust, buy it for you. The only people who could program on the platforms, had the distinction of being alive. This was because of the irrational fear held by the living, that if dead people where allowed to program, they may take over the living world. And turn the living into slaves of the dead. Instead the opposite dynamic was created, and the dead lived at the whims of the living. That led to the Zombies, selling you a newer PIT, if you did not have any living connections. Well not all of them were Zombies, they hid among the cheap affordable seller of Pits. The biggest problem Denise had was that she had no one she could trust anymore in the living world. No foundation set up to preserve her memories. Her fate was like most of the other middle-class resident. She had enough money to set up her existence in this realm, but not enough to keep it perpetually going. And no connection left in the living world, so she was at the mercy of the sellers. That left her with two options. The first was to spend out the rest of her eternity on this server, which may fail, or go inactive, or become overrun by spent zombies when there were no longer enough resources from the remaining residents to keep it active. Or spend most of her remaining resources on a new PIT, and hope its seller is not a Zombie. And going to a new server, would mean having to secure a new source of revenue to keep her active, she established that stream on this server, but could she on the new one. Where the maintenance fees were higher, and the competition fiercer. She could ride this server to the end, and have enough saved to move up by then, or leave today, and may be archived in a year on the new server from the lack of funds. “Who thought eternity could be so stressful.” Denise said to herself.