Diane DeSantis enjoyed quite a few perks as a new partner in the law firm Morgan Kirkpatrick LLP. One of those benefits was membership in Digital Destiny, a “life assurance” company that made digital copies of its clients’ memories as a hedge against death, promising to resurrect them at some point in the future when advancements in virtual reality made it possible for human beings to live forever in a digital world indistinguishable from the real one. At Digital Destiny’s main office, Diane stepped into the scanning chamber to have her memories copied onto the company’s servers, expecting to be on her way in thirty minutes. Instead, she suddenly found herself somewhere else...