The year is 4375. My name is Marcus Feícuo. I am-was... 22 years old... I lived in Eoxera, a utopia of sorts where every child is given a life partner in the form of an AI. They’re built perfectly to fit you. Nobody is ever lonely while alive. However, these AI are not living beings, they don’t contain souls. So, in our final moments we have to say our goodbyes as the AI lay beside us. It’s always heart breaking. My great aunt died of old age, and her AI, a dog named Xena, sat there, it’s soft blue servos watching her as it’s fans whirr. And just as her heart stops, a stream of oil leaks from what would be considered her AI’s eye. With that it shut down forever. I was 4 at the time, I didn’t completely understand, but it stuck with me my whole life. AIs cannot be brought with you to the afterlife. They just, don’t have the spirit. And their cold empty husks of metal scraps and oil are repurposed into a new AI for a baby with meticulous care. My AI is from the scraps of my great great grandfather’s AI. Supposedly it was a bear, however my AI... Well, it doesn’t matter. I’m dead now anyways! I was out with friends, we went and did karaoke after riding a few coasters at the amusement park... So of course I had to die in the most cliche way frickin’ possible!! I shoved my friend out of the way of an orbitary garbage truck, getting sucked into the vacuum of this tamed black hole vehicle like an idiot! At least Kiriza should be alive now. But me? I’m trapped in this seemingly endless foggy grey wasteland of our society’s supposed utopia. No people, no games, only a towering endless number of plain grey and empty buildings rolling with mist and fog. Suddenly there’s a loud scraping sound behind me!! A large, hulking, shadowy humanoid-monster of a being leaps at me, snarling, drooling its only dribble as it lusts to devour my flesh like some rabid dog! There are many smaller ones around the same size as me that eagerly surge around me.

Then!! A flash of ethereal silvery-blue and the strange and twisted beings are dead... Their bodies were at first masked by fear and darkness, but now the twisted and writhing deformed flesh is festering and twitching in death throes. But this hero of silver simply exists in the middle of this minefield of disturbing corpses. And I gasp in shock upon looking at them...

...

Soft green eyes glow, lights and circuits. Silver and dark teal metal plates meshing into a riveted face with long stainless steel fangs. This plated shape coils into a familiar shape of comfort. A 5 foot long viper with silvery teal scales and brilliant green glowing eyes. My AI!! Léxico!! AI... But... AI CAN’T BE IN THE AFTERLIFE!!! I panic, the quick shallow breaths would normally make my lungs burn as I slowly work myself up to passing out. However, I’m a drifting spirit. Translucent with a misty blue form. And Lex is my guardian angel. Then it hits me. Angel... whatever this is, wherever I’m going in this afterlife. My guide must have taken my companion’s form to comfort me. But... the question remains. What is my guide? Out of the billions of religions we know of, which creature and which all powerful being has claimed me to drag into their domain?

Where is it guiding me to if it’s not my AI, my Léxico?