Chapter 5

It was dark. But my mind was awake. I realized that I could think. I think, therefore I am.

There was something heavy on my head. I quickly took it off. It was a helmet.

It wasn’t dark anymore. I could see. There was a slight headache, but it didn’t matter. I was breathing heavily. I am alive. That was the only thought that mattered. I let out a high-pitched sound. It was something close to laughter, but not quite. I sat up and grabbed my head with my hands, almost frantically.

“I am alive,” I screamed in the same high-pitched voice, my breathing still uneven, broken by short chuckles. I was high. It felt like surviving a near-death experience, but it was different. I really died. Not just died. I killed myself. And now I was alive.

I lay back on the bed. My breathing slowly steadied. I wasn’t wrong. It was a simulation. The relief was overwhelming. In the previous world, exiting the simulation had been the only real solution. But it wasn’t a clean exit. I killed myself.

Back then, I had no definitive proof that it was a simulation. If I had been wrong, if that world had been real, I would have simply died. Disappeared. Or, if any religion was right, ended up in hell or some other afterlife. But there was no reason to think about any of that now.

Knock knock.

“Luca, is everything alright? I heard you screaming.” It was my mother’s voice.

“I’m fine. Just saw something funny.”

“Okay. Don’t shout too loud. Your father doesn’t like it.”

Her footsteps faded away.

Only then did I look around properly. This place was drastically different from the two previous worlds. I hadn’t woken up in some strange capsule or cabinet. I was in my bedroom. I checked the time. 16:15. Less than thirty minutes had passed in the simulation. The technology here was clearly more advanced.

Another difference was my body. It felt lighter. I stood up and instinctively took a fighting stance, throwing a few punches into the air. It felt good. Really good. I was fifteen and still lived with my parents.

I had retained all my memories, both from the previous worlds and from this one. There were many other differences too, but none of them felt important at the moment.

I noticed something about my thoughts. I kept calling this place “this world” or “the current world” instead of calling it real. I wasn’t stupid. If I counted the very first simulation, the one I had almost completely forgotten, this would be the fourth layer. But it made more sense to call that first one layer zero. Which meant I was now in the third layer.

By this point, I knew that simulations were indistinguishable from reality. There was no reason to assume that this layer was real.

This could just be another simulation. Fuck.

I was slightly surprised by the swear word, even if it was only in my thoughts. But the surprise faded quickly. There was nothing unnatural about it. I had simply been raised differently in the previous worlds.

I sat back on my bed and started scanning through my memories of this world, hoping to find some proof that it was real. After a few minutes, I understood that I wouldn’t find anything.

Fuck.

I was angry. Last time, it had taken me a while to even accept the idea that I was in a simulation. This time, I already knew it was possible. More than that, it was likely. I quickly estimated that the probability of this being another simulation was much higher than the probability of it being the real world.

I didn’t know how high that probability was, and it definitely wasn’t high enough to immediately exit. But it was high.

I stood up and left my room. Our home had two stories. My parents were downstairs in the living room. My dad was sitting on the couch, reading something on his tablet.

“Is this world real?” I asked without any preamble.

“What kind of question is that?” He sounded annoyed that I had interrupted his reading.

“Is this world real?” I repeated. “You probably assume it is. Can you prove it?”

“Oh. I see.” He smirked. “You’ve been reading stupid theories online. Solipsism. Simulation theory. You’re in that phase.”

My jaw tightened. I hated when people assumed I was stupid.

“If you think it’s stupid,” I said, “can you prove that the world is real?”

He scoffed. “You sound like those people who ask you to prove God doesn’t exist. Can you prove that we live in a simulation?”

He laughed. That crossed the line.

“Oh, go to hell.”

His expression changed immediately.

“You don’t talk to me like that,” he said, his voice slightly raised.

I was already leaving when he said it. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. He was an idiot.

To be precise, he was probably an idiot. There was no proof that this was a simulation. The only way to prove it was to exit. For a moment, I imagined doing it right in front of him, just to mock him. I stopped myself almost instantly, as it was both too early, and completely unnecessary.

If I was right, he was just an NPC, so there was no reason to be angry at him.

Something about me had changed in this world. I was more aggressive. That was interesting. My sample size was small, only three worlds, and I discarded layer zero because I didn’t remember it.

I tried to compare my personality across layers and it was surprisingly consistent. The sudden anger could be explained by my age, my relationship with my father, and the stress of exiting the last simulation. The fact that I calmed down so quickly only supported that conclusion.

Almost everything else differed between layers. My appearance, for example. I remembered how I looked, but to be sure, I opened the front camera on my phone. My skin was darker. My hair much darker. My eye color was different. There was no doubt about it. Layers didn’t preserve appearance.

What fascinated me was that despite all of this, I was still human. In every layer. Not just me, but the entire civilization. Two arms, two legs, eyes, ears, a nervous system, a brain.

I kept comparing details in my head. At some point I noticed something else. My thoughts flowed faster here. Much faster. To be sure, I tried a quick calculation.

59 × 61 = 3600 − 1 = 3599.

Half a second. A simple trick, so I tried something harder.

123 × 387 = 47,601.

Less than two seconds.

I couldn’t do that in the previous layer. In all three worlds, I had considered myself smart. Usually the smartest person in the room. Good intuition, strong logic, solid critical thinking. But here it felt like my hard drive had been upgraded.

Part of it was my age. But the main reason was technology. This world had food designed to boost intelligence. I had always taken it for granted. Now I finally had something to compare it to.

For the first time, I felt genuinely grateful for it.

Then another thought crept in. What if I was dumb in the next world? Even if intuition and critical thinking were preserved, I could end up with some disease.

Stop.

I caught myself thinking about the next world when I wasn’t even sure this one was a simulation.

I had been walking the streets while thinking. I registered sounds, cars passing by, birds chirping. I overheard fragments of conversations. They were too boring to pay attention to. Every second spent here only reinforced the feeling that this was a simulation.

I reached a playground. There was a swing and I felt an urge to use it. A few kids were running around, playing. Others were sitting nearby, drawing on the ground. I watched them for a while, then lost interest.

I spent much less time observing and searching for proof than I had in the previous world. Partly because my mind was faster here, partly because I already knew what to look for.

I swung back and forth slowly, planning my next steps. It was already evening, so I would have to go home soon. There was no time for experiments today. I could stop by the café I often visited. It was on the way anyway.

But what after that?

Being a teenager had a major disadvantage. I didn’t fully control my life. I could run away, but I didn’t feel like it. Today was a holiday, but tomorrow I’d have to go to school. That wasn’t terrible. School could even be useful for experiments.

On weekends, I could explore other places. I would exit this world as soon as I was sure it was a simulation. I didn’t need proof. I just needed certainty. Strangely, the idea of exiting didn’t scare me this time.

I jumped off the swing, glanced at the kids one last time, and headed home.

As I walked, I noticed more details. The buildings were massive. In previous worlds they had been tall but slim, but here they occupied almost all available space. Bridges connected different parts of the same building. In a way, the entire city felt like one enormous structure.

Clothing was another detail. Everyone wore the same pale, boring outfits. Gray zip-ups, comfortable trousers, black sneakers. Fashion barely existed.

There was no real need to notice any of this. I already had the memories of this world, but it was still easier to focus on what I could see. Things I had once considered normal now felt strange. Any of these worlds would probably feel strange if I could compare them to the real one.

I wondered what reality looked like. What time it was set in. What people did there. How they lived.

I stopped thinking about it when I reached the café.

I’ll know soon enough.

It couldn’t be far. Maybe the next world. Maybe one layer deeper. I would probably never enter a simulation again. The idea of getting lost in endless layers, with no memory of the real world, felt terrifying.

The café looked like almost any other café, both here and in previous worlds. Tables were arranged efficiently to save space. I sat at an empty one. I had been here many times before and had tried almost everything on the menu.

This would have been a good opportunity for sensory experiments, but there was a problem I hadn’t had before. I was a kid. I didn’t have unlimited money.

In the previous worlds, I’d been wealthy enough not to care. This time, I had to.

I decided to save what I had for potentially more important situations. I ordered my favorite item. A plate appeared from a slot in the table. There were no waiters here, neither human nor robotic.

The food itself was different too. Everything came in bars with different flavors. Mine was simply called Taste 11. Technology had made it possible to mass-produce nutritious bars with almost any taste. Eventually, they had replaced traditional food.

Maybe I should find a way to taste the old food someday.

I drank a glass of water. There was no tea or coffee in this world. No drinks other than water. You could choose flavors, but I stuck with plain.

The meal ended quickly. The bars were dense and efficient. I paid with my phone and left.

At home, my father was still sitting in the same place, reading. I couldn’t tell if it was the same thing. My mother was in the armchair nearby, wearing headphones, watching something. Probably a movie. She liked stupid movies.

I expected my father to say something about earlier. He didn’t. Maybe he forgot. Maybe he never cared.

I went upstairs, then stopped halfway. There was a TV in the living room. None of us ever used it. The strange thing was that I had TV in the previous worlds and I also barely used it. Why do I have a TV in every layer when I never watch it? It wasn’t important, but it fascinated me.

My room felt empty compared to the others I remembered. A bed, a desk, a cupboard, another useless TV. Everything was perfectly tidy. The only thing out of place was the simulation helmet on my bed.

I put it on the top shelf. I didn’t want to look at it.

Ironically, without that helmet I wouldn’t know I was in a simulation. And without a similar device in the real world, none of this would have happened at all.

Should I see this as an adventure?

It wasn’t an unreasonable thought. I had probably entered the first simulation willingly. In every world I remembered, I had done so. But I doubt I expected to go this deep.

While putting the helmet away, I noticed a small toy. A soft ball. I lay on the bed, squeezing it absentmindedly.

It was hard to call this an adventure. The unease was still there. I was getting used to it, but it hadn’t disappeared.

And this annoying unease wasn’t even the worst part.

I had died three times in roughly thirty minutes. That wasn’t entirely accurate. Time had to be measured subjectively, across layers. By that measure, I had died three times in about a week.

That didn’t make it better.

Calling it “exiting” instead of dying didn’t help either.

People used simulations all the time. They always ended with death, but the device erased the memory, so it wasn’t traumatic. In my case, the memory stayed.

Only then did an obvious question hit me.

Why do I remember all of this?

I didn’t have an answer. There was no point obsessing over something I couldn’t solve yet.

It was late.

I went to sleep.