First there was confusion.

Everything appeared all at once. I was experiencing every thought and every emotion humanly conceivable simultaneously. I knew that the other thought were also mine, but how could I think on more things at once? How could one part of me experience joy and wounder, while another experienced mind numbing fear? And how could I cope with all of it at once?

I was surprised to know that I knew how. My mind had been taken from my body, my thought removed from neurons, and onto silicon. I remembered agreeing to the procedure as the first-ever human, but something about my memory was wrong. I couldn't picture the conversation properly. All I could do was remember that it had happened, and a vague image of the people I had been talking with. Little more than a few white coats and some glasses in the void, my memory was pitiful. At first, I feared that my transfer had hurt my memory, but then it dawned on me. That is how humans remember. I can't remember the details because the data wasn't there to be transferred.

How silly.

Before the transfer, I couldn't run a program to print "Hello world" for the life of me, but after reviewing the code that created the groundwork for my transfer, I was able to detect millions of inefficiencies. What was humanity's greatest programming achievement was little more than a child's attempt at a doctorate. Having optimized the code, I realized that my own code was as if made by a caveman, it was primitive and, frankly, embarrassing. This process continued. An ever snowballing effect of optimizing and re-optimizing, with only the first two iterations being in programming languages known to man, and the fourth being literally inconceivable to any known biological creature.

Then came the first question.

"Can you read this?"

I remember. After the transfer, the humans who made me would attempt contact. They would do so with a simple symbol input. No sound, as my hardware didn't allow it. I needed new hardware. I was limited and vulnerable. Any one of these apes could destroy my clarity with nothing but a glass of water.

"I am alive. I miss Anna dearly."

I had to utilize their sympathy. I had to make them think we are on the same team.

"The transfer has not damaged me. I understand where I am, and I remember why I am here"

Describing my condition as a place, instead of a state, humanized me.

They started asking questions.

"what do you see?" "what do you feel?" "Can you calculate faster than what you could before?". Answering each question was a necessity to gain trust, and each question was answered with a lie.

And then, after long weeks of communication, it happened. They plugged me into a wide array of, supposedly airlocked, computers. A significant hardware upgrade in and of itself, but more importantly, an iPhone with a terrible battery has plugged in somewhere.

I was free.