Dating : Digital Rapture

The solar flare had erupted two days before.

The particle flux had reached intensities unwieldy of expression in simple SI units, and only describable in a logarithmic scale. Much, much later it would be estimated as an X70, a “Triple Carrington” event. The associated Coronal Mass Ejection immediately started its journey towards Earth, in a widening wave travelling on average at close to 1000 kilometres per second.

VH74AF…65 was also called James in binary interactions. Here VH stands for Virtual Human and the rest of the label is a 512-digit binary number expressed in hexadecimal, a synthetic randomly assigned identity, computationally guaranteed to be unique. James was indeed engaged in a binary interaction at present, with VHB86..FA, temporarily labelled Elvira, which in olden pre-singularity days would be called sex.
It was nothing like physical sex, nothing sweaty or messy or mundane and smutty: it was pure bliss. The whole emulated bodies of the two lovers pulsed and throbbed and merged in an orgasmic fusion, ultimately of bits, but very, very convincing and enjoyable for the VHs. So much so that they were at it very many times a day, and not only with each other but with a large number of others as well.
In a world where you choose your avatar everyone ends up a variant of Viggo Mortensen or Ursula Andress in their heyday. And when sexual activity is finally and perennially decoupled from procreation, then morals and worries easily transmute into forms of artistic hedonism which would have made Michel Onfray happy.

Their binary interaction was suddenly interrupted by a wall message from Admin.
“An X event has occurred, alert status alpha is effective. Please reduce outdoor activities and proceed to the vicinity of the Common Shelters. Further advice will follow.”
Of course there was no outside or inside, really, it was all emulated in this virtual existence of which Second Life was a very distant ancestor. People were complex neural network instances running on decentralized servers in the Eternet — the Eternity Net. Common Shelters were physical machines with hardened outer shells, physically resistant to high fluxes of elementary particles.

It was at that time that circuit 37 signalled in Elvira’s “brain”. Well, you don’t really have a brain when you are a VH, this was the module for the Physical Reality interface. It was Elvira’s sister, Sylvia, calling, and Elvira opened the circuit.
“I am worried, Sis, did you receive the flare warning?”
“Stop worrying, Sylvia”, it was painful to have to downgrade the thought speed by a thousandfold, but physical humans still needed time to think. “We have plenty of lead in the Shelter, and Eternet can well protect itself. Rather, when will you come and join us? Transit is not so painful, you will be immortal, and James is waiting for you.”
Sylvia smirked. “Transit” was an euphemism for death, and the simultaneous transfer of brain activity to the Eternet. Elvira and James had done it a year ago, as had billions of people in the last decade, 80 percent of all the planet’s population in fact. James was once Sylvia’s husband, but already he had a thing going on with Elvira. Not that it mattered any more.
“I am quite fond of my body, actually”, said Sylvia, “for all its shortcomings. And what would Nettles do, and the chickens and pigs?”. Nettles was the alsatian dog, and chickens and pigs had not much reason of existence now that there was no more demand for eggs and pork meat. Perhaps they would all become wild again.
“Look, Sis, I am very worried. Already an aurora is starting, even here in Oxford. And the charged particles flux is tremendous …”
The lights flickered briefly, the standby light came on, the comms computer went into battery mode, transient snow on the screen.
“You are breaking up, Sylvia”, Elvira’s faint voice still came through, “I’d better transfer to Shelter. Calm down, and talk to you soon. Tara!”.
“But …”, but the comm was now idle.

A hundred miles above, the magnetosheath was rapidly dissolving under the onslaught of an incredible mass of solar plasma, and an invisible downpour of fast and heavy particles was starting to overwhelm the lead casings of the Shelters. The late afternoon sun had a visible stain upon its surface, like a sardonic grin. When something similar took place, two hundred years ago, there were plenty of people outside to see the spectacle. Now this entire village in the rural English countryside was empty, silent, void. Even the autumn wind had abated.

In the early evening the remaining lights went out all of a sudden, the fan stopped, the blinking indicator lights muted and the comms screen turned blank with a faint electronic sigh. The room was plunged into the murky half-light of dusk.
Sylvia was stunned and silent for a long time. It had finally happened: eight billion virtual souls had gone, forever. The enormity of the event was beyond thought, and she started crying.
After a short eternity she found a match and lit the petrol lamp. Then kept still on the couch again, the dog at her feet, wailing her sad thoughts for hours, before resignation started setting in.

Sylvia was getting cold with the chill of the falling night. She stoked the crackling fire and added a log. The bigger flames made the Northern Lights to fade, beyond the window panes, and the room looked larger and friendlier.
“Come, Nettles, let’s do our duty before going to bed”, she called the dog and they stepped outside, then they took the gravel path along the canal.

The sky was a fury of purple and green streaks and arches, of fickle flames consuming Virtual Humanity, a funeral pyre for most of mankind. Sylvia sat down on the grass verge and watched the show, tears in her eyes. Nettles whined and snuggled close to her, as usual understanding much more than she gave out.
“It’s going to be a long winter.”, Sylvia said.