Chapter 6
The weak, soft electric discharge was the first thing I felt in the morning. A smart bracelet on my wrist produced it. That was how alarms worked in this world. It was much better and less unpleasant than sound alarms. Still, I didn’t like the idea of waking up at a specific time because of school. Obviously, this was how I had always lived my life. But that was before. Back then I had been just a regular student. Now I was something more.
All of the simulations I had encountered were generated for the brain of one person. I could assume this one was created the same way. So, in some sense, I was a divine being, the reason this entire world existed. This thought felt somehow embarrassing. There was something wrong about it.
I stopped this silly chain of thought and went to the bathroom to start my morning routine.
My breakfast was already on the table. Another bar, with a different taste this time. I ate alone. My father had gone to work early. My mother was lying on the sofa with a simulation helmet on her head. It was good that I didn’t need to interact with either of them.
I finished quickly and went to school. It wasn’t far. Every child was assigned to a school based on location. The whole city was built efficiently, so nobody had to spend more than ten minutes walking to school.
I didn’t like school. But I didn’t hate it either. I just thought it wasn’t the most efficient way to learn. Even before my last simulation trip, I had found it strange. Humanity had achieved so many technological advances: simulation helmets, AI, artificial food. The entire city functioned like a single ultra-efficient structure. Yet the education system hadn’t changed much. It was still flawed and inefficient, just as it had been hundreds of years ago. It was also nearly identical across different simulation layers. The only real difference was a slight change in subjects.
Going to school now felt like a waste of time. But there was still a reason for it. When I thought about places suitable for testing the simulation, the first place that came to mind was a shopping mall. It was perfect: a massive amount of sensory input, many different people, constant activity. Loud and chaotic, yet extremely mundane at the same time. If you think about it, schools aren’t very different from shopping malls. Replace adults with children and shops with classrooms, and you wouldn’t be able to see the difference.
As soon as I entered the school, I noticed how familiar it felt. It looked very different from schools in previous worlds. The halls were much larger. The entire building was larger. It was also far less colorful. All the walls were painted gray, including those in the classrooms. Every student wore the same uniform. It closely resembled the uniforms adults wore outside.
The place looked different, but it felt exactly the same.
I had about five minutes before the first lesson. The classroom was on the third floor. It was far enough that I needed to start walking. It felt funny how they could make it so the way to school was fast and efficient, but couldn’t do the same inside. The school was loud. Students moved in every direction, each heading toward their own classroom. Conversations overlapped, creating a continuous noise where individual voices blended together.
I caught fragments of speech.
“Did you finish your homework?”
“Are you ready for the test?”
“Oh no, I completely forgot.”
“What are we doing after school?”
I didn’t focus on any single conversation. My ears registered fragments, and that was enough to reconstruct the rest. It all followed the same patterns.
“Hey, Luca.”
I felt a friendly slap on my right shoulder.
“Hey.”
I had known interaction was inevitable, but I had hoped it could wait until at least the end of the first lesson.
I turned my head. It was Marco, my best friend. I didn’t really need to look at him to recognize his voice. The moment I saw him, I felt something similar to what I had felt when I saw Liz. A mix of guilt and sadness. It wasn’t strong, but it was there, and it showed on my face.
“What’s with your face? Someone died?”
“Yes. Me.”
He looked slightly confused, but didn’t dwell on it. He wasn’t the type to ask questions when he didn’t understand a joke.
“Anyway, I had a crazy simulation trip this morning. And I remember a lot of it. Wanna hear?”
“Yeah, sure.” I meant it. The last time someone talked to me about their simulation experience, I had learned something important. Maybe his story would be useful too. “Just don’t forget anything before the end of the class.”
“Can’t promise.” He smiled.
We reached the classroom with one minute left before the lesson started. We were the last to arrive. It was a typical classroom. If not for the pale colors of everything, the clothes, the walls, the desks, the chairs, I could have mistaken it for a classroom from another layer.
Some students were talking, some standing, some sitting on desks. Others were already seated, reading from their tablets. A few were writing something, probably finishing homework at the last moment or doing work for another class. Everything felt familiar.
A few students greeted us. I didn’t respond. I sat at my desk and pretended to be busy.
“Is something wrong with him?”
“Don’t know. Maybe someone died.” Marco’s joke wasn’t any funnier the second time.
The alarm rang, and everyone lazily sat down, while the teacher stood up. The first lesson was physics, which was quite convenient. I had wanted to compare the physics of different worlds for some time, but there had always been something else to do.
The teacher asked if anyone had questions about the previous topic. Several students raised their hands. Their questions followed familiar patterns. Not because I knew the answers, though I did, but because the answers were easily accessible through the internet or AI assistants everyone had. Asking them during class felt unnecessary.
But I already knew school was inefficient, so it didn’t disappoint me. I stopped paying attention. I could still hear the discussion in the background, but my focus shifted to observing.
To my right, a student was playing on his phone, holding it under the desk. The teacher wouldn’t have cared, but the habit of hiding it remained.
To my left was Marco. He looked attentive, but I knew better. His mind was elsewhere, though he was probably still listening in the background, the same way I was.
Two girls behind me were quietly chatting. On another day they might have irritated me. Now they didn’t. They weren’t annoying girls. They were just NPCs, not irritating girls. And I was just an observer, not their fellow classmate.
Some students wrote notes. Some read. A few genuinely followed the lecture.
I watched the teacher. He moved his hands while explaining something, pacing slowly from one side of the room to the other. I wasn’t listening at all. It felt like watching a pantomime.
At some point he moved on to a new topic. I opened the textbook on my tablet and skimmed through it from the beginning.
This law worked the same way.
So did this one.
And this.
Eventually I reached the topic we were studying. I looked up at the board. The teacher had written formulas. I recognized them instantly without listening to a single word.
I finished the book before the class ended.
The conclusion was simple. The laws of physics were the same across layers. I couldn’t test everything. I didn’t know all the laws in this world or the previous one. But the details didn’t matter. The foundations were identical. Every layer had galaxies, stars, planets, orbits. Gravity, relativity, thermodynamics. Even the fundamental constants appeared unchanged.
This knowledge didn’t help me distinguish base reality from simulation. I still had only intuition and the persistent feeling of unease. But it mattered anyway. It told me something about the nature of the simulations.
After physics we went to another classroom. Language class. It was useless for my comparisons. Languages differed completely between layers. They shared some abstract similarities: symbols forming words, spoken and written forms, familiar rhythms. But otherwise they were as different as languages from different countries inside one layer. Probably even more different.
In that sense, I knew several languages at once. Four, actually. Two from the first simulation alone, and two others from second and third layers.
It didn’t affect me much. My brain automatically translated memories and concepts into the current layer’s language. I had noticed this before.
Nothing interesting happened for the rest of the day. There were four more lessons: chemistry, literature, history, and mathematics. Everything I learned could be reduced to two observations.
Everything created by nature was nearly identical across layers. For example, the periodic table contained the same elements. This layer had discovered a few more, but the foundations were the same. The elements behaved the same way and formed molecules by the same rules.
Human creations were different.
History varied dramatically. Literature and mathematics were more subtle. The books themselves were different, but the core ideas, plots, and character archetypes were surprisingly consistent. If you gave me two books without context, I probably wouldn’t know which layer they came from.
Mathematics differed in notation and presentation. It was, after all, a human language. But the concepts, proof structures, axioms, and ideas were universal.
After school I went to Marco. He had promised to tell me about his simulation. He was going to play video games with some other students and invited me to come along.
“I can tell you while we walk.”
I didn’t like the idea of interacting with more classmates, but my curiosity was stronger. That turned out to be a mistake.
The *crazy* part of his simulation was that he had been a celebrity. A singer in a very popular band. According to him, the most popular band in the world. What he remembered best were the details of celebrity life: extravagant parties, drugs, and the women he slept with.
The others listened with interest. I listened only to understand why those were the memories that stayed with him.
That must have been a miserable life.
At some point I slowed down and separated from the group. They probably didn’t notice. Or maybe they did. But did it matter anyway?
I still had time to visit some place to run experiments. But there was no reason. I was sure this was another simulation layer. Just like before, I had no proof. And just like before, the certainty felt stronger than proof. No. It was even more certain this time.
Inevitable. This was the word that came to mind.
The logical step was to exit.
Actually I had to make my choice again. I could wipe my memory instead of killing myself. The thought existed only as an intellectual exercise. I didn’t consider it seriously. And if I ever chose to stay in a simulation, it wouldn’t be this one.
I didn’t exit immediately. Last time I had felt chaotic and anxious, but this time I was calmer. There was no rush. Time in base reality was dilated. An hour or a year here made no real difference.
I went home. Like any other day. Like I was just a student. Like everyone else wasn’t a lifeless NPC.
The days repeated for two months.
Wake up. Eat breakfast. Go to school. Come home. Talk to my parents for a few minutes. Do homework. Sleep.
It felt meaningless. I thought about exiting more than once.
It was scary. Anyone would probably think that killing yourself for the second time would be easier. But that was only partly true. In reality, the idea still felt terrifying.
Have you ever thought about what exactly makes death so frightening? It isn’t really about pain. Pain is temporary. The terror comes from two things: the unknown and irreversibility.
Both were present in my case.
The exit was irreversible. The moment I left the simulation, this world would disappear forever. Every human I had met or never met. Every book, movie, piece of art, every thought ever produced by this civilization. The entire world would simply cease to exist.
The unknown was slightly less terrifying than real death, but it was still there. I knew that I would probably wake up in a simulation device, either in base reality or in another layer. That made it less absolute, less final. But there were still things I couldn’t possibly know.
What if in the next layer I forgot everything? Then I would live inside another simulation, believing it was real, never realizing that I had already been so close to the end.
What if the next layer was something unbearable? A world where I wasn’t an observer, but someone’s property. A slave.
What if I was wrong? What if this layer was base reality? Then there would be no next level. I wouldn’t exit anything. I would simply die. Disappear forever. Or maybe wake up somewhere else entirely. Hell, if it existed.
I didn’t know which outcome was worse.
I told myself I could force the decision at any moment. I wanted to believe that. But when time is unlimited, forcing yourself to do anything becomes difficult.
At school, I stopped listening entirely. I attended only so adults wouldn’t question me. I minimized interactions with classmates.
Most of my time I spent studying. The rational choice would have been to study simulation devices or something that was universal across layers. I chose the opposite.
I read books. Mostly fiction. Sometimes history or biographies. I had never liked history. Too much memorization and too little thinking. But knowing that it would all disappear changed something. When culture stops feeling permanent, you stop taking it for granted.
I didn’t know how many books I read. Too many. I used my enhanced memory and intelligence to their limit.
Until that day.
I was sitting in class, reading about an ancient civilization from before the invention of the simulation device. I stopped in the middle of a sentence.
It felt sudden, but it wasn’t.
I enjoyed learning about this world. But the unease never left. It grew stronger every day. Every book felt familiar. I felt exhausted. Bored. Empty.
I put my tablet down. Looked to my left. To my right. Watched the teacher move.
Everything was exactly the same as it had been on my first day in this layer.
I stood up and left the classroom in the middle of the lesson. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t take my things.
I just left.