A few were of a more contemplative and philosophic nature than those fixated on general hilarity. Some — and the majority of the more long-established Afterlives — featured a sort of gradual fading-away rather than genuine post-death VR immortality, with the personality of the deceased individual slowly — usually over many generations of time in the Real — dissolving into the general mass of information and civilisational ethos held within the virtual environment.
In some the dead lived much more quickly than those in the Real, in others they lived at the same rate and in others far more slowly. Some even incorporated ways to bring favoured dead individuals back to life again.
And many still featured death; a second, final, absolute death, even within the virtual, because — as it turned out — it was quite a rare species that naturally generated individuals capable of being able, or wanting, to live indefinitely, and those who had lived for a really long time in Afterlives were prone to becoming profoundly, gravely bored, or going catatonically — or screaming — mad. Civs new to the game often went into a sort of shock when the first desperate pleas for true, real death started to emerge from their expensively created, painstakingly maintained, assiduously protected and carefully backed-up Afterlives.
The trick was to treat such entreaties as perfectly natural.
And to let the dead have their way.
He wanted to stay and watch the view of the planet beyond the curved entrance for much longer so that he could see how the whorls and streaks continued to change. Then he could replay the recording again and again. Seeing even more of the planet would be good too. It would be better. Seeing all of the planet would be better still. It would be best.
He realised that he was starting to feel uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure what the cause was at first, then understood that it was because he had stayed too long in the one place after a Recent Combat Event.
He thought about what to do. Nothing had changed or moved recently. It should be safe to move.
He tried asking his Outboard Remote Sensing/Engagement Units what they could sense, but he still didn’t have any of these units. He was supposed to have these things, whatever they were, but he didn’t. It was like another empty magazine that was supposed to be full.
So: Proceed Otherwise. He rose silently on his three articulated legs, senses sweeping all around as his Upper Sensory Dome rose into the space beneath the ceiling (clearance overhead duly reduced from 18.3 to 14.2 metres) and gave him an increased field of view. He kept both Main Weapon Nacelles targeted at the curved entrance. All six Secondary Weapon Pods deployed to cover the rest of the area about him, without him needing to tell them to. He rotated the Upper Weapon Collar to point Nacelle 2 directly behind him, where he judged the least risk was, as it had expended some energy and taken some damage, however nominal.
Still nothing threatening to be sensed. He stepped over the Unidentified High-Solidity Object and moved right and forward, towards the side of the curved entrance that showed the bright blue and white planet. He was moving quietly, at less than optimum speed, so that when his feet connected with the deck they produced minimal vibration. A tipped section of the floor near a long ragged tear in the thick deck material meant that he had to use his weapon pods to balance himself.
Some of the Unidentified Medium-Solidity Objects in the space about him resolved into space- and atmosphere-capable craft. This meant that the place where he was was a hangar. Most of the craft looked chaotically asymmetric, damaged, non-viable.
He could see another Unidentified High-Solidity Object nearer the curved entrance. He moved towards it. The view of the planet became more extensive and made him feel good. Beautiful. It was still beautiful.
Suddenly something moved against the bright white and blue of the planet.
Nobody knew, either, what bright little soul had first hit on the idea of linking up two Afterlives, but given that emerging civilisations were generally quite keen to establish permanent, high-capacity, high-quality and preferably free links with the dataspheres and informational environments of those around them — especially those around them with better tech than they possessed — it had always been going to happen, by accident if not by design. It even benefited the dead of both civilisations, opening up additional new vistas of exciting post-death experience, the better for the deceased to resist the regrettable attraction of a second, properly terminal event.
Linking up all amenable and compatible Afterlives had become something of a craze; almost before the relevant academics could come up with a decent provisional analysis of the phenomenon’s true cultural meaning and implications, practically every corner of the civilised galaxy was linked to every other part by Afterlife connections, as well as by all the other more usual ties of diplomacy, tourism, trade, general nosiness and so on.
So, for many millions of years there had been a network of Afterlives throughout the galaxy, semi-independent from the Real and constantly changing just as the galactic community in the Real changed, with civilisations appearing, developing, steady-stating or disappearing, either changing beyond recognition, relapsing in some way or going for semi-Godhood, sidestepping the material life altogether by opting for the careless indifference that was Subliming.
Mostly, nobody mentioned the Hells.
The moving thing was tiny. Too small to be a person in a suit or even an Outboard Remote Sensing/Engagement Unit, either his or anybody else’s. It was moving at 38.93 metres per second and so was far too slow to be considered kinetic ordinance. It was approximately 3cm by 11cm, round in section, conical aspect to the leading quarter, spinning. He deemed it to be a 32mm mortar shell. He had a lot of high-reliability information on such ordnance. Maximum capability a five kiloton micro-nuke; many variants. It was going to fly directly above where he had been positioned and impact on the bulkhead which had been behind him.
Now his high-telescopic vision apparatus had acquired it, he could see tiny sensory pits on the thing, blurring round as it rotated (4.2 rps). It flew past him five metres away and started to glitter, giving off range- and Combat Space Topography-sensing laser pulses. None hit him. This was because it had gone past before it activated.
He was still moving, taking one more quiet step as the projectile sailed through the dark space of the hangar. He judged that the ingress of the round meant that an attack might be about to start and that his best choice had become to hunker down here, still five steps away from the Unidentified High-Solidity Object he’d been heading for, opting instead for the partial cover of the nearest Unidentified Medium-Solidity Object, an additional advantage accruing from the fact that a sub-routine assured him his scale and overall shape in hunkered mode would make him look similar to the now Identified Medium-Solidity Object concerned, which was a small, intact but deactivated High-Atmospheric/Low Orbit Planetary Surface Bombardment Unit.
An additional advantage accruing definitely sounded like a good thing. It was almost like an order from inside himself. He’d choose that option. He started hunkering down.
An expert sub-system suggested that should the mortar round detonate where he had been, further additional advantage might be accrued. That sounded good too.
The mortar round was travelling so slowly there was plenty of time to work out exactly where he had been, to target his left upper Light Laser Rifle Unit on the spinning projectile and set himself up for minimal blast-front damage from the direction the round was heading, should it prove to be a micro-nuke.