u/Fragrant-Western-683

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

My critiques: [881][781]

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Some time later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching, and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”

The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”

The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.

The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.

The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”

The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”

The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.

The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.

The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”

The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”

The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.

The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.

The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”

The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”

The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.

The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.

The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”

The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”

The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.

The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.

The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”

The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”

The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.

The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.

The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

My critique: [3087]

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”

The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”

The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.

The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.

The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"