The world was rumbling as Kai woke up in the darkness.  The air smelled badly and most of the sounds that filled his ears were unrecognizable.  What he did recognize sounded like a squeaky wheel and the humming of a familiar tune in the background.  His body felt cold and damp, but he did not feel any pain, if anything he felt numb.  Suddenly a blinding light broke the darkness causing him to squint.  The sounds of a thud followed shortly after.

What the heck is going on?

“You died during the match #97925 and survived parts selection since the automatons found most of your parts useless.  During parts integrity inspection an investigatory electrical shock activated pending reflexes stored in your brain triggering your last thoughts.  Subsequently, when your motor functions responded to the neural stimulus you began to hum your band 2 buff’s activation sequence.  Then while being shuffled on the recycling room’s segmentation and dissection table a portion of your remaining body came into contact with the golden star.  Buff activation nullified the very thorough dissection process causing the automated dissector to mark your remains as discardable and suitable for Molecular Recycling.”  replied the assistant.

“Well that was exact.” replied Kai in a very cynical tone. 

He should be dead, but somehow he was not.  He felt slightly disappointed, it seemed that his ongoing journey to the afterlife has yet to end.  He wondered about what sin he might have committed to deserve this.  Kai had done a few naughty things here and there, but nothing that should warrant his soul burning in hell for all eternity.  Did a one night stand with his married, but separated college professor count?  He did not think so.  He gathered his thoughts and focused on the near term concern.  Molecular Recycling sounded painful.  He was done with pain, so he had to find a way to avoid it.  

Too focused on his primary concern, Kai was oblivious to the state of his body and did not notice  the fact that he lingered at the very edge of death.  

“So how do I avoid or survive Molecular Recycling?”

“You can not avoid it nor can you survive it while the cooldown period to your band 2 buff is still active.  I have managed to reroute oxygen from the dead lifeform below you to keep your head  alive.  But this temporary solution is inadequate to enable your escape from Molecular Recycling.  You are currently being ferried into the Molecular Recycler where your remains will be deconstructed into molecules and recycled.”

Kai was surprised that he could keep a calm conversation with the assistant as he rode his way to death.  He wondered if death row convicts felt the same during their last walk to the chair.

My band 1 smartphone is bound to me, I wonder if the assistant is concerned about death.

“Assistant are you concerned about death?  Won’t you die with me?”

“Though intelligent, I am an artificial autonomous unit composed of piconites that work as a single collective functional mesh to create an emergent artificial intelligence.  I may seem to be alive to you, but I am not.  I am a functional unit, similar to a light switch, just more complex.  Death has no meaning to me.”

Kai was having fun with this conversation.  He was learning something new.  Engineers like him are interested in learning about new things, especially cool technology.  So he continued, as he rode to his death.

“So what happens to you in the Molecular Recycler?”

“The piconites will be collected, re-integrated with other piconites and used to make a new piconite entity.  Since my intelligence was created by an emergent but random process, creating a new entity will reset my intelligence fabric.  The piconite mesh is created using billions of units so the random linking processes can not be repeated.”

Kai found this very interesting.  It was like living through some kind of logical Sci-Fi story.  He drew an analogy from his world and asked a somewhat mundane question hoping to discover a way out.

“So when you say emergent intelligence, you mean that your piconites get tossed into a box, shaken but not stirred a billion times over until the right connections form that enable the new piconite mesh to be somewhat intelligent and then can sing Kumbaya together?”

“You are essentially correct, except I am unable to determine at what point the new piconite mesh could sing Kumbaya.”

Oh this is fun.

Kai was poking fun, but the assistant was giving him straightforward answers.  It was like being Tom and Jerry when they came up with a plan and he was Jerry.  For once he felt a little smarter than his assistant.

“OK, I get that.  In my world, outside of nature, we only use pseudo random number generators inside our machines.  Our random number generators are keyed with a seed that is used to generate a pseudo random sequence.  Thus, when using the same seed we can reproduce the random sequence.  So, I have to ask.  Is it possible to create a seed and pseudo random number generation sequence for your current piconite mesh?  If so, can it be used to force the piconites to recreate your current intelligence fabric?”

The assistant became silent as if pondering an unfathomable question.

“If we accept some level of precision error and use a 10,000,000th order approximation equation it might be possible.  But interpolation variable runoff is uncertain, is that risk acceptable?”

Wow that sounded plausible!

He didn’t really understand the math involved, but the way he saw it, there was a chance.  So it begged him to ask the next question.

“Here’s the important part, assume it comes close, would you be able to recall a command I give you?” 

“Maybe.”

“OK, here goes the best part.  I order you to reconstruct me after I get molecularly recycled.  Since you were integrated into my body as a band, you should be familiar with it.  Plus you have access to my photos, videos and personal data on the smartphone.  If you add that data to my biological architecture.  Can you reproduce me?  It should be easy for an advanced technological entity like yourself, right?”

Once again the assistant became silent, pondered and then responded.

“The solution can not be computed.  There is not enough data on your lifeform and my time with you is insufficient.  More observation time of your lifeform is required.”

Time for the hail mary.

“If you leverage all data from other level-2 life forms from your IPN database, can you use it to improve the estimate?”

“Yes, but I can not estimate what will become of you after reconstruction nor can I guarantee that the rebuilt lifeform would even survive beyond a microsecond.”

The answer was quick and succinct.  Just the way he liked it.  He heard an unlikely yes.  But a yes was still a yes.  The answer was good enough.  So he mustered his courage and said his farewell.

“Let’s stop here since I’m feeling good.  I do not know if you or I have a soul.  Or if a soul even exists, but I did enjoy our last moments together.  I do not consider myself a religious person, but I do believe in God, so I pray that this works.  And if it doesn’t, then I hope that Mr. Gygax’s good luck will rub off onto me one last time and give me a critical hit.

It’s time to roll the D20 twice for a 20 20 critical hit.”

Kai smiled and he readied the imaginary die in his hand and cast it.

“It’s time to go.  I’ll see you on the other side, friend.”

The assistant deployed its piconites to cut off the oxygen supply and brought Kai into stasis.  It created a million piconite clusters to store Kai’s reconstruction order with extreme redundancy.

They both rode into the Molecular Recycler and got reconstituted into reusable parts.