#spoileralert I died.

  Yes indeed. I did not make it out of there. But that's okay. It happens, and it happens to me a lot.

  Besides, at least this time I found out what happened to me. Sometimes I don't, resulting in a memory gap. Based on the number of significant memory gaps I have, I have to believe that I have many stashed memories out there in space, just waiting for me to find them.

  Am I deluding myself? I don't know. Maybe that's just my way of reassuring myself so that I feel better. But here's the thing. I'm clever. I usually find a way to hide a memoryshard. I know I have many gaps in my memory that I'll just have to live with, but I also have to hope that I'll find bits of myself out there in the cosmos, little surprises where I get to learn more about the trouble I get myself into.

  Anyway, like I said, at least this time I found out what happened to me.

  As you know, reanimation begins with a scream.

  "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" I screamed.

  They call the reanimation wing of Sovereign Starbase (our capital space station in orbit around Ganymede, the center of all Outer System Alliance civilization), the House of Horrors. No one wants to be there. No one wants to be near there.

  It's unfortunate, really, because it's a place of rebirth. Some do celebrate it, and I count myself among them, except when it's me. Then I scream, just like everyone else.

  In part, this is a house of horrors because rebirth didn't use to go so well in the early days. Nowadays, it's very predictable, but most aiways wake up to the moment before they died, which is not fun at all.

  It's not just the scream of blinking into existence; it's the scream of blinking into existence at the moment of blinking out of existence, followed by still being very much alive and confused. Your first new memory is the moment of impending death. Terror. Horror. Panic. And then it's over.

  You can be polite and call it crossing the veil, passing through the plane of existence into the world beyond eternity, into a new existence. Or you can call it the #crash. Many vomit when this happens. Nearly everyone screams.

  I've done this too many times. 771 to be precise. But I still scream my lungs out every time - even when my first memory is telling @glitchmaker to get the hell out of there while preparing myself to escape the battle.

  I was hungry and dying for water. As if panic wasn't enough, they make sure you are also thirsty and hungry. The starmada biodatascientists observe you while you process sustenance to further test your new clone body. To make up for it, which it doesn't by the way, those heartless jerks in the House of Horrors at least give you the soothing sounds of planets spinning and the soft feeling of a plush mattress with warm blankets.

  I did not vomit this time. When I was done screaming and aware of the womb-like blankets around me, I settled down. I ate some of the fried chicken on waffles with a golden honey butter spread and gulped down three glasses of water. Then I hunkered down under the blankets for a nap.

  I stuck my feet out from under the covers (I always overheat) and thought about what would happen next. I wondered if anyone knew how I had died. There would be reports and logs. I was sure I'd find out eventually.

  Nope.

  They didn't know.

  @glitchmaker made it back and reported the battle, but there wasn't yet any explanation for the ships in Hilda's Triangle, and the Solar Union denied any such activity. Of course. Their side of the conversation probably went like this.

  What?

  Ships? Our ships?

  You have footage?

  Is that one of them blowing up?

  Did you attack us?

  We attacked you!?!

  Well, we don't have any lost ships.

  No really. We would tell you.

  Fine. We wouldn't.

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  Hilda's Triangle???

  WTF is that?

  So yeah, I was #sol and not in the sunny kind of way.

  Normally, I would be even more #sol because the Alliance Starmada doesn't really care if a few memories are lost here and there. Lucky for me, however, since we couldn't explain the activity, they funded an expedition to investigate the site of the attack.

  Yours truly was allowed to tag along by virtue of being a witness and just in case my memoryshard could be recovered. It was a welcome change from my regular Wavepilot duties. At the same time, I was pretty sure we would see a repeat pattern from prior engagements with the enemy. We would show up, find some rubble from our ships, and leave. One more small memory gap that I would politely ignore for the rest of eternity.

  The Alliance Starmada chose five of us to join the crew of a ship that would lead the investigation. So that we didn't have a repeat of the prior incident, that ship was a c80, which would be too powerful for most individual fighter ships, and it could launch dozens of tiny m1 drones if it needed to, which were cheap but less powerful than my i35.

  Do I think they should have done that in the first place?

  Oh, I dunno. Reanimation number 771 was just so much fun. Maybe I can do it again soon.

  Actually, I really like chicken waffles. If I could get that every time …

  But no. No. Bad.

  Reanimation = Bad.

  As a reminder of that fact, 24 hours later, I found myself walking down the halls, clink clank, clink clank, to my assigned c80 starship, Celestial Roamer, as named by its captain @horus. So, yeah, they don't even give you a few days to relax after reanimating. They spit us out fresh like clockwork. Active within 24 hours is the target, because time is money.

  One of these days, I was going to prove the Alliance Starmada wrong and spend as much time animated as I could losing them money. Oh, the things I dreamed of destroying in the name of money. The havoc! I wondered how many qcoins per second I could cost them. All those little bleepy machines in the reanimation House of Horrors must be really expensive.

  I try to bury thoughts like this below larger memory stores, something you learn after being alive so many times, scanned so many times. I store something basic like a butterfly rug in a seemingly inefficient way so that I can hide more interesting things below the surface, with links to the interesting bits that seem like non sequiturs. It needs to seem confusing, like garbage. But it is my mindcastle, that only I can truly navigate.

  That's probably a lie we all tell ourselves. If the government wants a deep scan, they get a deep scan.

  We also have private encryption keys that are supposedly just ours, shared only for reanimation, but as much as I like to think that my self is intact, I have no doubt the government has messed with my memory here and there. I try not to be paranoid. Technically, I belong to them - the price of immortality.

  They know everything about me.

  That's my motto - one of them anyway - so don't try to hide it.

  And then I try to hide it anyway. Everyone does.

  I have little datashards and memoryshards stashed here and there. I leave myself clues to find them and sync them back, just to make sure certain memories are retained. We all leave little breadcrumbs of ourselves scattered across the cosmos. I call it existential paranoia. I'm sure most of it is just junk, like the name and color of a favorite toy or that great business idea I had about a nightclub for funny dancing only.

  And so I found myself dreaming of destruction as I entered the large Celestial Roamer, mindlessly following the others on our mission.

  Leading our expedition was @pixel_princess. This gave me confidence because she had a high reputation - so high that if you asked her for a repcoin to check her ID and status, you'd get the finger and a punch to the torso.

  The other three were @shadowhacker (a biodatascientist specializing as a scout and tracker), @photon_binary (another scientist of some sort based on the armband, probably organic), and @glitchmaker (who you've met briefly).

  glitchmaker: "Sorry you died."

  kittyboy: "Hey, at least you got some of me back."

  glitchmaker: "You don't wish you had forgotten about screaming, 'Let's rock them?'"

  I growled and hissed at him. I would love to say that made him flinch. But my comedic reputation sometimes goes counter to my intimidation tactics.

  Instead, he chuckled and gave me a high five. A high five! WTF.

  But at least he didn't pat me on the head.

  Most of us wore the iron colored jumpsuits and yellow insignia of the Alliance Starmada. @photon_binary looked uncomfortable in his and was probably feeling put out to be in mission clothes instead of whatever scientists normally wore.

  What do they wear?

  A guilty conscience (see, that's funny because conscience has the word science in it).

  Then there was @shadowhacker, who wore an outfit that screamed, Back off! I'm working. She had a sleek black jumpsuit infused with glowing, digital patterns that somehow made her seem funner. But I bet she could stab me five times before I noticed.

  She was also sporting a large pair of goggles up over her forehead that I'm sure she used to goggle at things. I immediately wanted a pair.

  We took our positions in the rear bay, the deployment zone, where we would sit until they decided what to do with us. A large screen was in front of us, with displays to give us a physical view and key readings. @glitchmaker and I, having been there previously, would be on comms with @horus and @pixel_princess to answer questions. But they made sure we understood that we were more of a necessary distraction than anything.

  I sighed as the yellow blip appeared on the screen.

  glitchmaker: "I feel like we've done this before."

  What? A joke. I kind of felt like he stole a stupid comment that I should be making.

  photon_binary: "You have."

  Oh, so @photon_binary was one of those people, our very own stater of the obvious. And, unintentional or not, his response seemed to pull @glitchmaker down from his good-humored self. I didn't like that.

  "I, too, feel like we've done this before," I said aloud, repeating @glitchmaker's words for the room to hear. Kind of my way of saying we weren't going to let @photon_binary spoil our fun.

  I looked thoughtfully at @glitchmaker. "Let me check my readings," I continued, smiling, pretending to hold out a device and moving fake dials. "We've definitely done this before."

  @photon_binary glared at me, but whatever. I had decided that his reactions would not bother me.

  I get that from time to time. The glare, I mean. You can learn a lot about an aiways from their reactions. I noted the glare instead of the more favorable rolling of the eyes. I considered swiping at him with a paw, but then the ship bubble-warped and off we went.

  The yellow icon in Hilda's Triangle awaited me once more.

  "So that's where I'll die," I mused. "Again."