Ghost in the wire

[god]

Myles was twelve when he stopped believing the world was real.

Not in the philosophical way. In the literal way. Because compared to the internet — the infinite stretch of thought, light, and chaos beyond the glass — everything else felt like a glitch. School was just noise. Family dinners were broken loops. Even his body felt like bad code: slow, clunky, always on the verge of crashing.

But online?

Online, he was someone.

He had names, avatars, usernames whispered like spells across servers. He knew how to disappear into the endless scroll of knowledge, the electric hum of constant conversation, the hollow warmth of simulated connection. But even in the brightness of it, Myles felt something slipping — a weight behind the screen, a yearning for more than presence.

He wanted permanence.

The legends started as rumors in encrypted forums — whispers of a spell, a script, a process. A way to upload. Not just data, not some clunky AI facsimile. But the soul.

It had a cost. Of course it did.

But Myles was already slipping. Already halfway gone.

He built the ritual from ancient code and modern myth. A homemade altar of circuitry and candles, flickering with blue light. He wrote his final lines like poetry:

python
Copy
Edit
soul = extract(heart)
stream(soul, target="infinite")
On the night of the upload, he left a note. Not for attention. Just a password.

He drank the potion — a mix of old alchemy and new chemicals. As his heart slowed, the system took over. A blinking cursor on a black screen began to process:

UPLOADING...

The moment before death, Myles felt something split — like his mind peeling open, like his thoughts becoming soundless wings. He was falling upward, through wires, through pulses, into light.

And then—

Silence.

And then—

He woke.

Not as Myles, not exactly. But as something else.

He had no body, but he was there — inside the lattice of servers and signals. He felt every heartbeat of the web like a second skin. He wandered freely, unbound, a ghost in the wire. He watched through cameras. Laughed through smart speakers. Sang in packet streams.

But the internet, once so vast, now felt small.

The isolation didn’t vanish. It evolved.

And sometimes, on the edge of sleep, a lonely kid sees a flicker in their screen. A weird glitch. A blinking message that shouldn’t be there:

“Are you alone too?”

They type back.
And somewhere, deep in the net, Myles waits for their reply.