Incremental Progress

[airah]

Did a bit of an upload story to try and shake some of the cobwebs out.
Posted initially to my main page, but also linking here. <3

It isn’t to say that older folks uploading is a particularly rare occurrence, but just that they are not nearly as common as younger folks. Generally, or so at as least the statistics tend, if a person was the sort to be interested in uploading they tended to do it as soon as possible. Even after the attack, after the climate began to stabilize, people generally uploaded early or not at all. Especially once it became nearly free to do so, or at least funded in such a way to be widely available to the masses regardless of wealth.

 

In that way it was fair for the upload technicians to be surprised by the presence of a man in his sixties. Time and the environment had not been kind to him, he walked slowly and slightly pigeon-toed, the trademark swelling and unevenness of arthritis was plain to see in his scarred hands. His arms and shoulders were pockmarked with tattoos of various styles, of various meanings. The technicians did not ask and he did not volunteer anything, but the old industrial worker’s union symbol etched into his upper arm marked him as a friend. He laid down upon the upload table, jacked in one last time, and willfully met his end upon the planet. A hell of a retirement party, he called it, moments before his motor control was cut off and his heart stopped.

 
The construct in the upload room was entirely unsurprised to meet him, as constructs tend to be.