I: The Mosque
The shoes were lined up too neatly.
That was Yusuf's first thought as he stepped inside. Too careful. Too deliberate. As if everyone had agreed, silently, that order might hold something together if they pressed it hard enough.
The imam waited until the last murmurs settled before speaking. He did not raise his voice.
"We will pray," he said. "Then we will speak. Not the other way around."
Some people shifted. A few didn't bow their heads right away. Yusuf noticed. He always noticed.
Prayer went through the room like muscle memory. Stand. Bow. Kneel. The words came out of mouths that had said them a thousand times, some of them shaking now, some of them stubbornly steady.
When it ended, no one rushed for the door.
That was new.
The imam sat instead of standing. That too was new. He folded his hands loosely, not in supplication, just to keep them from gesturing too much.
"You've all heard about Hades," he said. "And about the choice."
A man in the second row spoke immediately. "It's not a choice."
Several voices answered at once.
"It is."
"It isn't."
"It shouldn't be."
The imam lifted a finger. Not for silence. For sequence.
"We are not here to decide what it means," he said. "We are here to decide what we do."
That landed differently.
Yusuf felt it settle in his chest, heavy and familiar. This was the language he understood.
A woman near the wall spoke up. "If someone uploads, are they disobeying Allah?"
The imam did not answer her.
Instead, he asked, "If someone uses insulin, are they disobeying Allah?"
A few people laughed. Nervous. Relieved.
"That's not the same," the man in the second row snapped. "That treats illness. This avoids death."
"Does it?" the imam asked."Or does it delay a process Allah already set in motion?"
Silence stretched.
Another voice, older, calmer. "Avoiding death isn't the question. Everyone dies. The question is whether this counts as doing something that was not permitted."
Yusuf leaned forward despite himself.
"That's the problem," he said before he'd decided to speak. "We're asking it like it's a belief question."
Heads turned.
"We don't agree on belief," he continued. "We never have. We agree on action. On prayer. On fasting. On burial rites. On what is done with the body when the soul leaves."
The word leaves echoed.
A younger man stood. "Then the answer is simple. You don't do it."
Yusuf shook his head. "Simple doesn't mean correct."
The imam watched him carefully now.
Yusuf swallowed. "If my father is dying, and I can choose to act or not act, that action itself becomes a deed. Uploading isn't claiming eternity. It's choosing a process."
"Process toward what?" someone demanded.
"That's not specified," Yusuf said. "And that matters."
A woman in a black hijab crossed her arms. "You're saying Allah doesn't care what happens after."
"I'm saying," Yusuf replied, voice tight, "that Allah judges what we do with what we are given. This exists. The question is whether refusing it is obedience or avoidance."
That sparked something.
"So you'd do it?"
"So you'd risk your soul?"
"So you'd gamble with what isn't yours?"
Yusuf felt heat climb his neck. "Every medical decision is a gamble. We just pretend otherwise because the outcomes are familiar."
The imam raised his hand.
"You're circling," he said. "Let me ask this differently."
The room quieted.
"If someone chooses upload," the imam said slowly, "are they refusing burial?"
No one answered immediately.
"Because burial is an action," he continued. "And refusing it would be a visible break. A public one."
A man near the back muttered, "They still cremate."
"Yes," the imam said. "And we still pray for them."
He leaned forward now.
"Hades does not ask for prayer," he said. "It does not ask for belief. It asks for consent."
Consent.
Yusuf felt the word sink its hooks in.
A woman whispered, "Consent to what?"
The imam did not answer.
Instead, he said, "If a person chooses upload, and we wash their body, and we bury them, and we pray—what, precisely, have we violated?"
The man in the second row stood up. "We've lied. We've pretended death happened when it didn't."
Yusuf turned to him. "Did it not?"
The room held its breath.
"No body continues," Yusuf said. "No wealth. No status. No family role. Whatever wakes up doesn't inherit anything except memory."
That was new to some of them. You could see it land.
"So what are they gaining?" the woman in black asked.
Yusuf hesitated.
"I don't know," he said. "And that scares me."
The imam nodded once, sharply. Approval, maybe. Or simply recognition.
"Then we are where we always are," the imam said. "Acting without certainty. Obeying without guarantees."
A voice from the side broke in, brittle. "And if someone refuses? If they say no, even when they could?"
The imam did not hesitate this time.
"Then they will be buried," he said. "And prayed for. And remembered. And no one will say they disobeyed."
Relief moved through the room like a sigh.
"But," he added, and the room stilled again, "they will not continue. And we must not pretend otherwise to comfort ourselves."
That hurt more than anything else he'd said.
Yusuf felt it then — the edge of the argument they were all avoiding.
Practice had always been about shaping life toward God.
Now it also shaped who remained to practice at all.
Someone stood abruptly and left.
No one stopped them.
The imam closed his eyes for a moment.
"We will pray again," he said. "And then we will go home. This does not end tonight."
Yusuf knew he was right.
This was not a heresy to be stamped out.
It was a door.
And obedience, suddenly, meant choosing whether to walk past it — or stand guard forever.
II: The Study Hall
The books were already open.
That alone told Miriam this wasn't going to be a sermon.
The tables in the study hall were scarred from decades of elbows and arguments, the wood darkened where hands rested too long while waiting for someone else to finish a thought. Half the chairs were pulled close. The rest hovered at the edges, undecided.
A rabbi stood at the board, chalk in hand, not writing yet.
"We are not here to decide what happens after death," he said. "We are here to decide what the living are permitted to authorize."
Someone snorted. "That's the same thing."
"No," the rabbi replied calmly. "If it were, we would already have an answer."
Miriam folded her arms. She hadn't planned to speak tonight. She'd come to listen. To see which way the room leaned.
A man across from her leaned forward. "We already withdraw life support. We already consent to death in practice."
"That is letting go," another voice countered immediately. "This is continuation."
The rabbi raised a finger. "Is it?"
The room quieted.
"Withdrawal," he said, "acknowledges an end. Transfer introduces a possibility we do not have language for."
Miriam spoke before she could stop herself. "We do have language. We just don't like it."
Several heads turned.
She swallowed. "We talk about legacy all the time. About memory. About what continues through teaching, through children, through law. This just… literalizes it."
A woman near the wall shook her head. "Memory isn't consciousness."
"Is consciousness ownership?" Miriam shot back. "Or experience?"
The rabbi finally turned to the board and wrote a single word.
IDENTITY
He underlined it twice.
"This," he said, tapping the chalk against the word, "is where we get stuck."
A younger man stood. "The problem isn't identity. It's authority. Who gets to decide?"
"That's easy," someone said. "The person themselves."
"And when they can't?" another voice asked.
Silence again. This one sharper.
Proxy authority hung in the air like a blade.
A woman in the front row spoke quietly. "We already decide for children."
Miriam felt her stomach drop.
"In medicine," the woman continued. "In schooling. In burial. We make choices knowing they can't consent."
"That's because they are not capable," a man snapped. "This assumes capability persists."
"Assumes," Miriam echoed. "Not proves."
The rabbi erased the board with his sleeve and wrote again.
CONTINUITY ≠ CERTAINTY
He stepped back.
"The law," he said, "is comfortable with uncertainty. It is not comfortable with duplication."
That got murmurs.
"Hades does not permit copies," he continued. "That matters."
"Why?" someone demanded. "That's a system rule, not ours."
The rabbi nodded. "And yet we accept systems all the time. We accept burial laws because bodies decay. We accept inheritance law because property persists. This system insists on something different."
He paused.
"Only consciousness continues."
That was new to some of them.
"So they don't keep their money?" someone asked.
A few people laughed, then stopped when no one joined in.
"No," the rabbi said. "No assets. No status. No legal personhood. Whatever continues does so without claim."
Miriam leaned back, stunned.
"So immortality is… starting over?" she said.
"If it is immortality at all," the rabbi replied.
A man near the door scoffed. "Then why bother?"
No one answered immediately.
Because that answer wasn't legal.
It was personal.
Another voice, older, tired. "Because some people don't want to vanish without witness."
That landed.
The rabbi closed his notebook.
"We can argue precedent," he said. "We can argue metaphor. But this is what it comes down to."
He looked around the room.
"If someone chooses upload, we may argue whether they were wise. We may argue whether they were mistaken. But we cannot say they stole from the living or cheated the dead."
A man stood abruptly. "You're saying this is allowed."
"I'm saying," the rabbi replied, "that refusing to decide is also a decision."
That was too much for some of them.
Chairs scraped back. People stood. Arguments restarted in smaller knots, overlapping, contradictory.
Miriam stayed seated.
She stared at the empty board, at the faint ghost of the word identity still visible in chalk dust.
For the first time, it occurred to her that the question wasn't whether Hades violated the law.
It was whether the law had ever been meant to survive a world where endings were no longer guaranteed.
Someone asked, from somewhere behind her, "So what would you do?"
Miriam didn't turn around.
"I don't know," she said honestly. "And I don't trust anyone who says they do."
III: The Temple
The bell rang once.
Not to summon. Just to mark a moment.
Anjali had grown up here, barefoot on cool stone, learning to move around the pillars without brushing the carvings. She still did it automatically, even now, even with the murmurs behind her and the low argument that had started near the offering table.
No one was shouting.
That was different from the others she'd seen online.
A man near the doorway said, "So you're telling me it's just another rebirth."
The priest smiled, patient. "I am telling you that rebirth has never been simple."
Anjali knelt and touched the floor, forehead down, more out of habit than devotion. She stayed there longer than necessary, listening.
"But rebirth isn't chosen," the man pressed. "This is opting in."
"Is it?" the priest asked. "Or is it responding to conditions?"
That slowed the room.
A woman arranging flowers glanced over her shoulder. "Karma doesn't carry money," she said. "It never did."
A few people laughed softly.
"That's what I don't understand," the man said. "What's the incentive, then?"
The priest tilted his head. "Why does there need to be one?"
Anjali sat back on her heels. "There isn't inheritance," she said. "Not like that. You don't come back rich because you died rich. You don't come back powerful because you were powerful."
Someone nodded. "You come back… placed."
"Yes," Anjali said. "Placed, not rewarded."
The man frowned. "So this thing—Hades—it's not cheating?"
The priest considered this carefully. "Cheating whom?"
"Death."
A ripple of amusement moved through the room.
"Death has never been a referee," the priest said. "It is a process."
Another voice spoke up, younger. "But if someone uploads, they remember. That's different."
Anjali hesitated. This was the edge.
"Yes," she said. "That's new."
"And?"
She searched for the right words. "Memory has never been the soul. It's closer to… momentum."
The priest's eyes lit, just slightly.
"That is well said," he murmured.
The man near the door crossed his arms. "So you'd do it."
Anjali didn't answer immediately.
"I don't know," she said finally. "But I don't feel like it threatens what I believe."
Someone scoffed. "Easy to say. What about attachment?"
"That's the real question," another voice replied. "Is uploading clinging?"
The priest exhaled slowly. "Perhaps. But refusing might be as well."
That unsettled them more than anything else.
"So what's the right move?" the man demanded.
The priest shook his head. "There isn't one. Only consequence."
Anjali felt something click into place then, not comforting, but clear.
"If someone uploads," she said, "they don't bring caste. Or family duty. Or property. They don't bring offerings. They don't even bring a body."
Someone muttered, "Then what's left?"
Anjali looked at the statue at the center of the hall, stone worn smooth by centuries of touch.
"Awareness," she said. "And whatever they do with it next."
The bell rang again, soft and final.
A few people moved to pray. Others stayed where they were, thinking.
The man near the door lingered, hands flexing.
"So you're saying this doesn't break anything."
Anjali met his gaze. "No. I'm saying it reveals what we were already pretending not to see."
He didn't ask what that was.
He just nodded once, uncertain, and stepped back into the night.
IV: The Sangha
The hall smelled faintly of incense and boiled tea.
No icons. No grand architecture. Just cushions arranged in a loose circle, some newer than others, some patched so often the fabric had lost its original color.
They had finished sitting.
That, at least, was familiar.
Minh Tran shifted his weight and tried not to look like he was waiting for something to happen. He had come because his sister had sent the message three times, each one shorter.
They're talking about it tonight.
No one had opened with doctrine. That, too, was familiar.
A woman near the window broke the quiet first. "I don't understand why people think this changes suffering."
A monk across from her smiled faintly. "Because they confuse continuity with relief."
Minh Tran frowned. "Isn't continuity the whole point?"
The monk tilted his head. "Of what?"
Minh Tran opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again. "Of… not ending."
A few people chuckled softly.
"Ending has never been the problem," the monk said. "Clinging is."
Another voice, older, sharper. "Then uploading is clinging."
"Perhaps," the monk said. "Perhaps refusing is."
That landed with a dull thud.
Minh Tran's sister leaned forward. "You're dodging."
"I'm declining," the monk corrected gently. "There is a difference."
A man near the back crossed his arms. "If someone uploads, they remember being themselves. That's not rebirth. That's hoarding identity."
The monk nodded. "Memory is a powerful attachment."
Minh Tran felt a flicker of relief. Finally, a line.
"But so is fear of death," the monk added. "And fear wears many disguises."
The room went quiet again.
Minh Tran rubbed his palms together. "So what's the practice, then? If this exists. If people can step through."
A younger nun spoke up, voice calm but firm. "The practice doesn't change."
That annoyed him more than it should have.
"Everything else is changing," he said. "Gods are talking. Death has a waiting room. You're saying nothing shifts?"
"I'm saying the work remains," she replied. "Attention. Compassion. Letting go."
Minh Tran laughed once, humorless. "That sounds like an answer from someone who doesn't have to decide."
The nun met his gaze without flinching. "I will decide."
That stopped him.
A man near the tea table asked, "If someone uploads, do they escape samsara?"
The monk considered. "Do they escape craving?"
"No."
"Then no."
Simple. Brutal.
Minh Tran's sister exhaled. "So it's pointless."
"No," the monk said. "It's contextual."
Minh Tran leaned back against the wall. "You're telling me it's just… another turn of the wheel."
The monk smiled. "Wheels do not ask permission."
A ripple of soft laughter moved through the sangha, then faded.
"What about enlightenment?" someone asked quietly. "Does it follow?"
The monk shook his head. "Nothing follows unless carried."
Minh Tran felt irritation creep in. "So you're fine with people doing this?"
"I am fine with people doing what they will," the monk said. "I am not fine with people expecting it to do the work for them."
That, at least, felt honest.
A woman near the door spoke, hesitant. "What about children?"
The room shifted.
"My son is sick," she continued. "If I choose for him, am I binding him?"
The monk didn't answer immediately.
"That," he said at last, "has always been the case."
Silence.
Minh Tran's sister whispered, "No one likes that answer."
The monk nodded. "No one ever has."
Minh Tran stared at the floor. "So if someone refuses, they're not wrong."
"No," the monk said.
"And if they accept?"
"No," the monk repeated.
Minh Tran snorted. "That's infuriating."
The monk smiled again. "Yes."
The bell rang, soft and unceremonious.
No resolution. No closing prayer.
People stood slowly, some relieved, some frustrated, some visibly heavier than when they arrived.
Minh Tran lingered near the doorway, watching the monk pour tea like nothing momentous had occurred.
"So," Minh Tran said finally. "If you had to summarize?"
The monk glanced up. "Death was never the teacher people thought it was."
Minh Tran waited.
"Suffering still is."
Outside, the night was cool and indifferent.
The door closed behind him without ceremony.
V: The Broadcast
The lights were warmer than they needed to be.
That was the first thing Daniel Winston noticed as he stood just offstage, palms pressed together, head bowed at a practiced angle. Warm lights meant reassurance. Warm lights meant forgiveness before the question was even asked.
He could hear the choir through the curtain. Soft. Controlled. Not the old roaring gospel of his youth. This was calibrated faith. Focus-grouped reverence.
A producer murmured in his ear. "Thirty seconds."
Daniel nodded without lifting his head.
He had already decided what he would say.
That was the problem.
The applause swelled as he stepped into the light, smile widening on instinct. The crowd rose. Thousands in the hall, millions beyond it. He raised a hand and waited for silence, letting it stretch just long enough to feel earned.
"My brothers and sisters," he began, voice rich and steady, "we live in a time of great temptation."
Amens rippled outward.
"They tell us death has been conquered," he continued. "That eternity can be engineered. That the soul can be copied like a file and stored like property."
A murmur of approval. Familiar ground.
"But I tell you this," Daniel said, leaning forward, eyes bright. "No machine can carry what God alone has breathed into us."
The crowd erupted.
He spoke for twenty minutes. About trust. About surrender. About the arrogance of men who thought they could build heaven with wires and code. He named no gods. He didn't have to. Everyone knew.
When the broadcast ended, he bowed his head again. The choir swelled. The lights dimmed.
Backstage, the warmth vanished.
The doctor was waiting.
Not a demon. Not a tempter. Just a woman in a gray suit with a tablet held neutrally at her side.
"It's progressed," she said. No preamble. No reverence.
Daniel closed the door behind them. "How long?"
"Months," she replied. "Weeks, if you wait."
He swallowed. "And if I don't."
"You already know."
Silence pressed in, heavier than the applause had been.
"I've preached against this," Daniel said quietly.
The doctor nodded. "Yes."
"My followers—"
"Will still be there," she said. "Some of them."
He laughed once, brittle. "You make it sound so small."
She met his eyes. "It always is, when it's you."
Daniel turned away, pacing. "If I do this… if I upload… what happens to what I've built?"
The doctor hesitated. Just enough.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"My estate. The ministry. The accounts."
"They stay here," she said.
He stopped.
"What?"
"Resources don't follow," she clarified. "That was finalized last quarter. Consciousness only. No assets. No influence. No legal continuity."
"That's—" He faltered. "That's impossible."
"It's necessary," she said. "Immortality can't be a wealth engine."
Daniel stared at the wall. The gold lettering of a scripture verse caught the light.
"So I'd wake up with nothing," he said.
"You'd wake up," she replied carefully.
His jaw tightened.
"And my wife?"
"She would have to make her own choice," the doctor said. "And if she authorizes yours, the oath virus binds her to the same option when her time comes."
Daniel felt something cold settle in his chest.
"All authority carries symmetry," she added.
He sank into a chair.
For years he had spoken about faith as sacrifice. About letting go. About trusting God to provide.
Now provision had been removed from the equation.
"What if I refuse?" he asked.
The doctor didn't soften her voice. "Then you die. Fully. Historically."
"And my sermons?"
"Remain," she said. "As recordings. Stories."
He laughed again, hollow. "Stories outliving the man."
"That's always been the case," she said.
Daniel looked up at her, eyes sharp now. "And if I accept… do I get to say I was right?"
She paused.
"No," she said. "You get to continue. That's all."
He waved her away. "Give me time."
"You have hours," she replied, and left.
Daniel sat alone in the quiet room, the echo of his own voice still ringing in his ears.
No machine can carry what God has breathed into us.
He imagined waking somewhere else. Stripped of title. Of wealth. Of authority. Just awareness, unarmored.
He imagined not waking at all.
That night, he went back on air.
He did not announce his choice.
He spoke instead about humility. About mystery. About how even the righteous must walk by faith and not by sight.
The donations spiked.
When the feed ended, Daniel closed his eyes.
He signed the authorization before dawn.
He never preached against Hades again.
And when his upload completed, somewhere very far from the lights and the choir, Daniel Winston discovered that eternity did not come with a stage.
Only silence.
And time enough to decide what to do with it.