"Twenty-six years almost to the dot. Twenty-six years of failure. Twenty-six years of longing, of striving, of clawing my way to a simple goal. All for this moment. All for me to die, finally."
Soren was dead. At the ripe age of twenty-six and 3 days, he had finally realized his goal of dying. Even if he didn't know that was his goal at the time. Which was definitely not a goal that most people would think of achieving.... normally.
"Well, hell, it's not as bad as I had thought... huh." Jare thought to himself as his consciousness dispersed and floated in a vast, empty nothingness.
Soren was not a normal human being, he was not a human being at all, for that matter. Well, not in the literal since, at east.
Soren was a part of a Collective.. simply put, Collectives were vast networks of integrated human soul data. They were the lifeblood, the workhorses, the guiding light, and the salvation of the current human race. Guiding them through the stars and handling nearly every possible instance of infrastructure retainment and establishment. Generally nestled deep into the cool hearts of dead stars, these Collectives were first established long before anyone can remember. Yes, that's right, "remember". It was established after the first few Collectives were made, and promptly destroyed a few thousand years later, that human souls were never meant to indefinitely store information. That was a fast track to leading a Collective down the path of destruction, losing millions of valuable lives and, you guessed it, workers.
Now, initially, that might sound a bit.. inhumane, or even monstrous, to subject billions upon billions of souls to this sort of grueling, never-ending labor. However, due to the nature of Collectives, the laws of physics and common sense are easily tossed out of the window. This means that members of collectives do not feel time, nor do they feel space, or pressure. They could easily be doing their jobs the same time that they were out in some club, dancing the night away or partaking in dubious activities. They also were not trapped in these Collectives, either. In fact, they were required by Interstellar law to leave their veritable paradises, and go out to live in a corporeal form in order to maintain their sanity, and "refresh" their soul imprints, or in better words, memories.
"Now that I'm out of that disgusting meat-pocket, I can finally go home! Ugh! Why does it have to feel so long when I'm in this thing? It was only twenty years!" Soren lampooned internally. "I can watch a black hole die out naturally over my morning coffee in my Collective, this should feel like absolutely nothing!" Feeling slighted by the laws of physics that ruled the physical universe, Jare would have huffed if he had nostrils to do so.
"Well, at least it's all over now." He thought.
As Soren felt his soul coalesce, dissipate, and converge again, he began to think about all the things he was going to do when he finally integrated back in. "Maybe I'll make or find a mountain range made of marshmallow, or just one massive one.. that sounds like a fun start."
Soren had grown fond of marshmallows while he lived as a human, his father had taken him camping a lot, as he was growing up. Before he went back to his own collective after Jare turned 15. He had died an unceremonious death, and everyone was extremely sad over it. Especially his mother, at the time.
"God, if only they knew that they were just getting refreshed. Well, maybe that's for the better. We'd just stay weird if we always knew where we came from and what our purpose is." Soren frowned. "Wait, 'God'?" "Crap, I really let it get to my head this time, didn't I?"
As his soul, or more accurately, just Soren, was finally done being dragged back into his Collective, he felt himself relax. "Ah whatever, nothing a bit of playing God myself can't fix"
As that thought crossed his mind, his soul finally appeared, not in his Collective, but in hell.