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"I want you to go first!" Dana was blubbering. "Please, Mig! You were always the bravest between the two of us. When they start the upload, talk to me. Tell me what's happening to you. I want to know what to expect."
"Dana, I'm asking you to go first because I'm the braver one," said Mig with a sigh. "You are getting the best case scenario. I'll be here to support you till the end. When you are gone, there'll be no one to hold my hand. I'll be alone with the machine."
"No," said Dana. "No, I can't! Please, do it!"
"I'll break the tie," said the brain scan machine in an inhumanly perfect, melodious, soothing voice. "Miss Dana is going first. And I concur, Miss Mig, that she'll be getting the best case scenario. She has you for support. Although both of you will end up in exactly the same state very soon, and none of this will matter."
Even with both of them weakened by starvation, Mig was still the strongest. She pushed Dana down onto the gurney. The automated restraints whirred into place, securing Dana's arms and head. Dana heaved with sobs, but had no strength to resist. The scanner buzzed and its beige dome with a dark semicircular opening slid over Dana's head. This was the last time Mig saw her friend's face.
"Miss Mig, please wait on the side of this partition. I'll let you know when it's your turn," said the scanner.
So much for hoping to hold Dana's hand as she was being uploaded. "Think about it, Dana: at least you'll be free of hunger before me!" Mig shouted, feeling like a traitor.
* * *
The hope to end to their hunger was what brought them here in the first place. When the world's computer systems failed, when governments toppled and the riots started, the two of them spent the last month holed up in their apartment, rationing out their supplies into smaller and smaller portions. When water and electricity disappeared, they boiled melted snow in the fireplace and cooked the noodles and rice. But that too ran out, and they were forced to venture outside. It was on that night that Mig, craning her head, noticed the lace in the sky, too bright to be the Milky Way.
"You're thinking of heading into the Substrate too?" said a bedraggled woman passing them on the street.
"What is that?" said Mig.
"What, the Substrate? You haven't been out of the house all this time?" said the woman incredulously. "It's a giant computer up in the sky. They are making it out of the Moon. See how it's missing a chunk, like a pancake with a bite taken out? Damn, I miss pancakes. We will all soon live up there. Not in person, of course. Just our minds. Running on it like software."
"There's no more food anywhere," said her male companion weakly. "You don't wanna die from starvation, you gotta head up there. Get yourself uploaded."
"In fact, we are walking to the nearest uploading point," said the woman. "It's down on the corner, where the 7-11 used to be. You wanna come with us?"
At that time, Mig and Dana looked at each other uncomprehendingly. But days later, emaciated and leaning on each other, they shuffled their way to the former 7-11. The light seeping through its windows, the only bright building on a pitch-dark street, clearly did not come from the Earth's destroyed power grid. The Substrate must have had ways to deliver power to its outposts here on the ground. For some reason this, more than anything, made it real to Mig and gave her hope that it will take care of them.
* * *
Dana's sudden moan startled Mig. "I'm feeling pressure!" Dana whimpered. "Something is pushing into my brain!"
All Mig could see were the muddy hems of Dana's jeans and her tattered sneakers, sticking out past the partition. Her legs writhed against the gurney. "This is completely normal," said the melodious robotic voice. "Please concentrate on that pressing dot. This will make it quick and easy for us to scan all of your neurons and all their connections. Just focus. You're almost here."
Dana's moan faded; Mig could hear her breathing calmly. She started to relax. And then Dana's feet twitched in an involuntary dance and went still. Mig gasped. A blue plastic tarp descended on her friend's legs. The gurney came out from behind the partition and rolled across the floor on its own power. The body on it was fully draped in a plastic sheet; Dana could not have been breathing. A double door at the end opened, received the body, closed.
"Your turn, Miss Mig," the robotic voice said. Her legs wobbly, Mig stepped around the partition. There was a new gurney that replaced the one that left, with the dark opening of the scanner gaping at its end. But for her, unlike for Dana, there will be no one beside her, no one supporting her through the uploading. An animal part of Mig's brain wanted to bolt. If she did, no one would stop her. Unlike Dana, no one would prevent Mig from running back out to die of starvation. She had to choose to do the right thing entirely by her power of will.
She could only hope that up there, in the Substrate, Dana finally understood why Mig did what she did.