The first thing Elias lost was not a memory.
It was timing.
He reached for a word he'd used his whole life and felt it arrive half a second late, like an elevator that missed its mark and corrected itself with a quiet shudder. The sentence still worked. No one noticed. That was almost worse.
He didn't tell anyone that day.
By the time he did, the scans had names for what was happening. Degenerative. Progressive. Irreversible. The words stacked neatly, clinical and well-practiced. The neurologist spoke gently, the way people did when they had already moved on to the part where they stopped asking questions.
"You're still eligible," she said.
Eligible.
The word followed him home.
Elias lived alone now. Not by tragedy. By attrition. Friends scattered. Relationships cooled into polite messages and long gaps. No one had left him because he was sick. That came later. That came quietly.
He pulled up the Hades interface that night without meaning to. Muscle memory, maybe. Curiosity that had nowhere else to go.
The system didn't greet him.
It never did.
A plain field of text resolved in his vision, anchored gently to the corner of his perception. No iconography. No myth. Just conditions.
> **PRE-TERMINAL TRANSFER AVAILABLE**
> Cognitive integrity: sufficient
> Degradation curve: accelerating
> Estimated window: 11–17 months
>
> **NOTICE:** Transfer process is destructive.
> No concurrent instantiations permitted.
He stared at that last line longer than the rest.
He had read the arguments. Everyone had.
Some said the destruction was a mercy. Others said it was theater. A moral fig leaf to prevent duplication panic. A way to keep the metaphysics clean.
Hades never commented.
He closed the interface and went to make tea. Halfway through, he forgot why the kettle was screaming.
That was when he told his sister.
She arrived the next day, breathless and furious, carrying groceries he didn't need and opinions he hadn't asked for.
"You don't have to decide this now," she said, pacing his kitchen. "People wait. People live with worse."
"I won't be able to decide later," Elias said.
"That's not—"
"It is," he interrupted, sharper than he meant to be. "That's the whole point. I don't get to wait until I'm ready. I get to wait until I'm unable."
She stopped pacing.
"You don't know what comes out the other side," she said quietly.
"No," Elias agreed. "Neither do you."
She swallowed. "What if it's just a copy?"
He shrugged. "Then I won't be around to be offended."
That earned him a look. Hurt. Fear. Anger wrapped tight around love.
"You're talking like you're already gone," she said.
"I'm talking like someone with a deadline," Elias replied.
The hardest part wasn't the fear. It was the way everyone else wanted to borrow his certainty. To lean on whatever decision he made as proof of something larger.
He refused.
When he reopened the interface, it responded immediately. No judgment. No delay.
> **CONFIRMATION REQUIRED**
> Transfer initiation will result in irreversible biological cessation.
> No rollback. No archival redundancy.
>
> Proceed?
He hovered there.
This was the line no one liked to talk about.
Hades did not permit two of you.
Not because it couldn't.
Because it wouldn't.
If continuity meant anything, it meant exclusivity. One trajectory. One ending. Whatever woke up—if anything did—would do so alone.
Elias recorded his consent with a steady hand.
The preparation suite was small. Clean. Human. No grand machinery. No priesthood of technicians. Just a chair that reclined too far back and a panel that asked him if he was comfortable lying down.
"Comfort is relative," he muttered, and tapped yes.
As the restraints settled, he felt an unexpected wave of irritation.
Not fear.
Not awe.
Annoyance.
That there was still paperwork. Still checklists. Still a system asking him to acknowledge terms he had already accepted.
A final prompt blinked into place.
> **TRANSFER IS DESTRUCTIVE**
> Neural substrate will be dismantled progressively to preserve signal fidelity.
> Subjective experience may persist during early phases.
>
> You may abort **now**.
Abort.
The word felt heavier than it should have.
He thought of the kettle. Of the half-second delay. Of the day when words would stop arriving at all.
"I'm not doing this to live forever," he said aloud, to no one. "I'm doing it so I don't fade without consent."
The system did not respond.
The first sensation was heat.
Not pain. Not yet. Just warmth blooming behind his eyes as layers of interpretation peeled away, one by one, like scaffolding being removed from a building that had already learned how to stand.
Thoughts slowed.
Then sharpened.
Then narrowed.
He realized, distantly, that this was the point of no return. That whatever he was now was being translated into something else, and the translation required subtraction.
There would be no second Elias left behind to complain.
That was the rule.
That was the price.
As the world dimmed, he had time for one last, incomplete thought:
*If this works, I won't know I was right.*
*If it doesn't, I won't know I was wrong.*
The system advanced to the next phase.
And the biological processes that had carried him for sixty-three years began, methodically, to shut themselves down.
———
The Oath Is Reciprocal
The blood wasn't as red as she expected.
It had darkened already, tacky against the floor plating where the medics had cut away what remained of his helmet. Shards lay scattered like dull gems. One had lodged in the wall hard enough to crack the composite.
Mara stood just outside the trauma field, hands locked together so tightly her fingers ached. The field shimmered faintly, isolating what was left of her husband from the room and, soon, from time.
"Say it again," she said.
The physician didn't hesitate. "Penetrating cranial injury. Massive neural disruption. He is alive, but not intact. If we delay, cognitive coherence will fall below transfer threshold."
"And if we don't?"
"He will die," the physician said. "Completely."
Mara nodded once. She had already known that.
Her Lace pulsed softly, aware of the oath long before it surfaced consciously. She felt it the way one feels gravity when stepping too close to an edge.
The Oath Virus did not rush.
It waited.
> **EMERGENCY PROXY AUTHORIZATION AVAILABLE**
> Subject: Daniel Rook
> Legal spouse confirmed
>
> **NOTICE:** Proxy transfer authority is symmetric.
> Exercise of authority binds executor to identical future disposition.
>
> No exceptions.
Mara closed her eyes.
They had signed the oath together years ago, half-joking, half-defiant. A mutual refusal to let someone else carry the weight for them. If one chose for the other, the same choice would one day be made for the chooser.
They had called it fairness.
They had not called it easy.
"He can't consent," Mara said.
The physician's voice softened. "No."
"If I do this," she said, "he'll never wake up."
"No," the physician agreed again. "Not as he is."
Mara stepped closer to the field. Daniel's chest still rose and fell, assisted but real. His face was slack, unfamiliar, as if already practicing being someone else.
"If I don't," she said, "he dies anyway."
"Yes."
The interface unfolded fully now, patient and precise.
> **TRANSFER IS DESTRUCTIVE**
> Biological processes will be terminated progressively to preserve signal fidelity.
> Concurrent instantiation prohibited.
>
> **WARNING:**
> Executor is now bound by oath symmetry.
> Your future transfer—if elected—will be destructive under identical terms.
Mara laughed once, a broken sound that startled even her.
"So this is how it gets you," she said. "Not by fear. By fairness."
The physician did not respond.
She reached out, fingers brushing the edge of the field. It hummed, impersonal. Daniel did not stir.
"I'm not choosing eternity for you," she whispered. "I'm choosing that you don't vanish without a witness."
Her Lace chimed softly.
> **CONFIRMATION REQUIRED**
> Proxy consent is final.
> No appeal.
Mara straightened.
"I accept," she said. "And I accept the binding."
The oath sealed itself with a quiet internal click. No pain. No flourish. Just a line crossed.
The procedure began immediately.
There was no dramatic moment. No final words from him. Just the gradual withdrawal of biological insistence as the system dismantled what could not be carried forward.
Mara watched every second.
She did not look away.
When it was over, the room felt larger. Emptier. The trauma field dissolved, leaving a body that was already no longer relevant to the systems still running beneath the surface of the world.
The interface updated one last time.
> **TRANSFER COMPLETE**
> Status: Indeterminate
> Continuity unresolved
Mara exhaled.
She did not cry.
Not yet.
Later, alone, she opened her personal status pane. The oath marker pulsed steadily, a quiet promise waiting for its turn.
One day, she would face the same threshold.
And no one would be allowed to choose for her.
That was the rule.
That was the cost of loving someone enough to decide.
———
What He Would Not Do
The room smelled like antiseptic and fresh flowers. A vase of her favorite daisies on a bedside table.
Jonathan noticed it immediately, because everything else was slipping. Not his thoughts. Not yet. But the edges of the world felt too sharp, as if someone had turned the contrast up past comfort.
His daughter lay on the bed between them.
Miriam was small for seven. All elbows and knees and stubborn angles, even unconscious. Her curls had been shaved away on one side, a strip of pale scalp marked with sensor nodes. The machines were quiet now. Waiting.
The physician stood back, hands folded, deliberately not touching anything.
"We've stabilized her body," she said. "The injury was severe. Diffuse axonal damage. She's alive, but—"
"I know," Jonathan said. His voice sounded steady. He resented that. "If we wait, she won't be eligible."
"Yes."
"And if we don't?"
The physician met his eyes. "Then she will die. Entirely."
Jonah nodded.
His Lace pulsed faintly. He had never used it much. He didn't trust it. He had grown up in a household where trust was something you gave to God, not systems.
The interface waited anyway.
> **EMERGENCY PROXY AUTHORIZATION AVAILABLE**
> Subject: Miriam Hale
> Legal guardian confirmed
>
> **NOTICE:**
> Proxy transfer is destructive.
> No concurrent instantiation permitted.
Jonah closed his eyes.
He had prayed already. Not bargaining prayers. Not the desperate kind people used when they wanted God to bend. He had asked only for clarity.
What he felt was silence.
Not absence.
Silence.
"You don't have to decide yet," the physician said gently. "But time matters."
Jonah looked at his daughter's face. At the faint rise and fall of her chest. At the way her hand twitched once, reflexive, meaningless.
Meaningless mattered.
"If I do this," he said slowly, "you destroy her brain."
"Yes."
"And something else continues."
"Something," the physician agreed. "We do not claim identity. Only continuity of pattern."
Jonah swallowed.
That was honest. He appreciated that.
His faith taught that the soul was not a pattern. That it could not be copied, stored, or simulated. That whatever made Miriam *her* was not encoded in neurons alone.
If he authorized the transfer, one of two things would be true.
Either the thing that woke up would be his daughter—
and he would have betrayed his God by pretending resurrection was a machine problem.
Or it would not be her—
and he would have condemned a false echo to live, thinking itself loved.
He felt sick.
A thought surfaced, unwanted but sharp.
What if I let the system do it… and believe her soul went on anyway? What if God understood?
The idea horrified him.
Not because it was tempting.
Because it was cowardly.
He would have to live with the feed. With updates. With the knowledge that something bearing Miriam's voice and memories existed, asking questions he could never answer.
If he rejected it, the grief would be clean.
If he accepted it, the grief would never settle.
The interface pulsed again, patient as stone.
> **CONFIRMATION REQUIRED**
> Proxy authority is voluntary.
> No penalty for refusal.
No penalty.
No coercion.
Just consequence.
Jonathan reached out and took Miriam's hand.
"I believe in a soul," he whispered. "And I believe it's not mine to gamble with."
The physician nodded once. No judgment. Just witness.
Jonathan turned back to the interface.
"I refuse," he said.
The system acknowledged the input instantly.
> **PROXY AUTHORIZATION DECLINED**
> Transfer will not proceed.
There was no fanfare.
No condemnation.
Just a quiet shift in the room, as if a door had closed somewhere very far away.
Miriam's breathing slowed.
Jonathan stayed with her.
He held her hand as the machines did what they could and then stopped. He prayed as he had been taught, words worn smooth by generations who had faced smaller, simpler losses.
When it was over, the room felt unbearably human.
Later, alone, Jonathan sat in the chapel built into the station. It was small. Plain. Untouched by mythic architecture or algorithmic awe.
He did not feel righteous.
He did not feel strong.
He felt responsible.
Somewhere, systems continued. Hades accepted others. Patterns flowed. Infrastructure held.
None of that mattered here.
He had made his choice.
And he would carry it without asking anyone—god or machine—to make it lighter.