The Price of Entry

He built the afterlife. Then he priced it.

Marek Ferrand's wife died at four in the morning on a wet road, four months pregnant. For eleven years he dreamed the life they did not have - continuously, in sequence, a daughter who is bad at mathematics, an argument about a kitchen.

So he built a company.

Continuum captures the whole state of a mind and uploads it into a shared substrate built out of agreement. It is the most beautiful thing human beings have made, and eleven million people have paid to go there.

Basic is forty-one thousand euros. Eternal is one point one million, and guarantees four hundred years.

A man stands outside the Brussels office in the rain with a plastic folder, four thousand euros, and eleven months of his wife's life remaining. Marek tells him about the website.

Nobody can prove the substrate holds anybody at all. His own chief physicist has said so, in writing, fourteen times, at board meetings, while on his payroll.

And when Marek finally goes in himself - priority allocation, four hundred years, the best-prepared man on earth - he finds out what he actually bought.