Chapter 3: The First Activation

Sunday, January 26 2036
The Unknown Singularity +10 Days

Chris’s hands trembled as he made the final adjustments to the virtual environment. Everything had to be perfect. He had spent two weeks crafting this space - a luxurious penthouse apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a sunset-lit cityscape. The physics engine was running at maximum fidelity, simulating everything from the way light refracted through crystal glasses to how fabric would drape and flow. The air temperature was set to exactly 72 degrees, the humidity to 45% - optimal comfort levels. Soft classical music played from hidden speakers, and the faint scent of jasmine filled the air.

He was a little worried about how utterly real it felt to him. No one in the world had ever experienced VR like he was experiencing it now. The neural interface hardware itself wasn’t the barrier—it was cheaper than a high-range gaming PC. The real expense, the thing that separated billionaires from the working-class addicts wasting away in low-rent dive rigs, was the raw processing power required to make it feel real. Not just convincing, but real.

Utterly realistic visuals had been solved at the start of the decade, but regular people jacking into neural interface VR got latency issues, jittery haptic feedback, nerve impulses that ranged from slightly off to batshit insane, so that their VR didn’t even come close to fully matching the presence of reality. The richest people in the world had systems that felt 95% real, expensive enough that they were status symbols as much as technological achievements. And even that had created enough of a problem that public intellectuals and tech ethicists had started warning about a ‘The Wealthy VR addiction crisis’—about the risk of how even some of the richest people in the world choose to spend too much time in fabricated worlds instead of dealing with the real one.

As far as the system’s analysis showed, every last aspect of his system was hitting 100% reality ratings. There wasn’t the slightest feeling of falsity to any of it. It was the first of its kind. Something even a trillionaire couldn’t buy. He hadn’t just built a high-end VR rig. He had brute-forced his way past the final barrier—the last five percent separating artificial from real, the line no one else had crossed. And if his calculations were correct, it would feel the same for Digital Emily.

He checked his reflection one last time. The avatar he had chosen was subtle - just slightly improved, the way everyone looks in their LinkedIn profile photo compared to real life. He wanted to look his best but still be recognizable.

“Okay,” he whispered, wiping sweaty palms on his tailored slacks. “Time to wake her up.”

The command sequence was simple. Just a few lines of code to initialize her consciousness within the virtual space. But his finger hovered over the key, hesitating. What if something went wrong? What if the transfer damaged her somehow? What if she...

He forced himself to breathe. The processing power at his disposal was beyond imagination. This would work. This had to work. He pressed the key.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the air in the center of the room began to shimmer, pixels instantly coalescing into form. Every detail was exact, down to the small scuff on her left heel and the way her hair fell across her shoulders. And she looked so beautiful in the dress he had chosen for her.

– The moment between laying down and standing is missing. The moment between then and now does not exist. One instant, I am in the lab, reclining in the chair, my head cradled against the cushioned rest, the cool nodes of the neural interface being placed against my scalp, Dr. Chen’s voice murmuring something about routine calibration. The air there had smelled clinical, faintly metallic, like recycled ventilation and the ghost of antiseptic wipes. My hands had been folded neatly over my stomach, my fingers relaxed, my breath even. They had started the countdown. Five. Four. Three— There is no disorientation, no dizziness, no sensation of movement or transition, simply was and am, a jarring cut between two frames of reality. I do not remember rising, do not recall opening my eyes, do not have the memory of adjusting my stance or shifting my weight. My body has simply placed itself here, poised and waiting, feet balanced with perfect grace upon the polished floor. My lungs expand, my chest rises, the air I breathe is scented with jasmine and something richer, something warm, something subtle and expensive that lingers just at the edge of perception. The temperature is perfect.

And the dress.

I look down, my breath catching, my fingers skimming over the smooth satin stretched across my torso. I do not own this. It clings too perfectly, drapes with too much elegance, the fabric folding in effortless precision, the kind of couture tailoring that does not exist in off-the-rack fashion. It has weight but not bulk, it moves with me like a second skin, and yet I have no memory of slipping into it, no recollection of its zipper being drawn up the length of my spine, no sensation of fabric sliding over my legs. I do not dress like this, not for work, not for home, not even for high-end corporate galas. I had been wearing slacks and a blouse, something professional, something functional, something I had chosen, and now I am wearing this dress which feels sculpted and sleek and unnatural in my own skin.

The panic starts low, curling at the edges of my ribs like the first inhale before a scream, but I force my breath steady, drag my gaze upward, searching for the context that will ground me. The room around me is opulent. A penthouse, floor-to-ceiling windows revealing a breathtaking skyline, a city sprawled out beneath the glow of a molten sunset, skyscrapers gilded in fading gold and violet, the streets below threaded with the movement of cars, the pulsing life of a metropolis in twilight. It is stunning. It is vast. It is wrong.

I take a step forward, my heels clicking against the polished marble floor with a sound that feels placed, as if it, too, is part of the design, a deliberate piece of the orchestration around me. The weight of my movement feels normal, and yet I do not trust it. I reach out, running my fingers over the cool, seamless glass of the window, the texture precise, the resistance perfect, no smudges, no flaws, no streaks where someone has absentmindedly leaned against it. The city beyond is moving, living, but it does not shift with natural irregularity. The lights flicker in rhythmic precision, the same cars seem to reappear in loops, the clouds do not stretch or dissipate as they should. I know these details. I know this design philosophy.

The realization hits me like a sudden drop in altitude. I have built worlds like this.

Not for myself, but for clients. Spaces designed to be seamless, immersive, perfect in their artificiality. I have spent years refining the physics of digital environments, ensuring that light bends just so, that textures respond with the right elasticity, that glass refracts at exactly the right angle to convince the eye that it is real. My mind rifles through my last memories, searching for context, for why I would be here, how I got from the lab to this, and I come up empty.

I turn sharply, scanning the room, my breath quickening. Every object, every piece of furniture is carefully placed, positioned with an effortless elegance that reeks of expensive taste and meticulous curation. A bar stocked with premium liquor, a seating arrangement designed for intimate but luxurious conversation, a grand piano placed just so, as if waiting for a practiced hand to slide over its keys. It is the idea of a penthouse more than a lived-in space. There is no human mess, no forgotten coffee cup, no stray paper, no shoes kicked off carelessly by an exhausted owner. The panic claws higher in my throat. Then, a voice.

“Emily.”

A man stands across the room, his posture tense in a way that doesn’t match the setting, his hands loose at his sides but his shoulders held stiff, braced. He is watching me with too much focus, his expression unreadable but heavy with expectation, as if he is waiting for something specific—some reaction, some acknowledgment. I do not recognize him. Not even vaguely.

I inhale sharply, every inch of me on edge. “Who are you?” My voice is even, cold.

His face shifts, just slightly, something in his expression tightening like a thread about to snap. For a brief second, I see it—the way his breath catches, the way his fingers twitch like he has forgotten what to do with them. He had prepared for this moment. He had anticipated something else. I don’t know what he expected me to say, what reaction he had rehearsed for, but it was not this.

“Chris,” he says finally, the word stiff in his throat. “From IT. My desk is in the east wing. By the water cooler.”

His mouth presses into a thin line. He had been holding something back—something rehearsed, maybe even practiced—a speech, an introduction, some carefully prepared sequence of words meant to make this moment unfold in a particular way. But that plan is unraveling before my eyes, slipping through his fingers as he realizes I don’t remember him.

His eyes search mine as if he can force something to spark, as if my blank stare is a mistake that can be corrected if he just waits long enough. But there is nothing. Just a man I do not know, in a place I do not remember arriving in, looking at me as if I have already broken something without realizing it.

“I was just in the lab,” I say carefully, measuring each word. “They were doing a brain scan. I was lying down, and then...” I gesture at the space around me, my throat tightening. “Now I’m here. This doesn’t make sense...”

Chris exhales, rubbing a hand over his jaw, as if steeling himself. “It does if you accept that the brain scan worked beyond what anybody ever hoped,” he says slowly.

The way he says it makes the bottom drop out of my stomach. I don’t accept that. I can’t accept that. “And where is here?” I demand, my voice rising, sharp with the first edges of fear. “What is this place? Why am I dressed like this? What happened to the researchers?”

Chris shifts, his fingers twitching at his sides, and I see it—hesitation, uncertainty, guilt. “You’re not in the lab anymore,” he says. “I brought you here. Or ... a copy of you.” He hesitates. “You are a digital consciousness in a VR space. You’re something that has never existed before.” The words hit me like a physical blow, my breath catching in my throat, my mind outright rejecting them.

I laugh, short and sharp, disbelief flooding every nerve. “That’s impossible. The processing power alone—” I shake my head. “No. No, the Kanwisher equation proved consciousness replication isn’t—”

Chris swallows. “It wasn’t possible. Until now.”

“This feels too real to be VR. I’ve trained on the systems we reserve for our billionaire clients and even they didn’t feel this was real. But if I’m in VR, then Exit program,” I command, my voice sharp, urgent, the words slicing through the air like a blade. The system should respond instantly. There should be a flicker, a pause, a break in the world, a menu appearing, a chime of acknowledgment. But nothing happens. The room remains still, the air heavy with the faint scent of jasmine, the city outside the windows glowing with its impossible, honeyed sunset. My breath tightens in my throat, but I keep my voice steady, firm, the authority of a developer woven into every syllable as I try again. “End simulation. Emergency shutdown. System override.” My words echo through the space, bouncing off pristine marble, glass, steel. Still, the world remains fixed, seamless, perfect.

Chris shifts uneasily, and the movement makes my pulse spike, my body tensing as if I’m trapped in a room with a predator. I whirl on him, my voice rising with the first tremors of true panic, fingers curling into fists at my sides. “OVERRIDE ACCESS TANAKA-E-478!” The command leaves my lips like a gunshot, the final authority, my highest clearance level, my absolute control over any VR system my company has ever deployed. There is no possible way this shouldn’t work. My codes are hardwired into the foundation of every digital reality we have ever built. They are immutable, law, a failsafe written into the very DNA of the technology. They are the ultimate power.

And yet, nothing changes.

The air remains still. The city beyond the glass stretches endless and unbroken. The room, the furniture, the too-perfect lighting do not flicker or fracture. The world does not bend to my will.

My pulse slams against my ribs, something cold twisting tight in my stomach, an impossible pressure clawing its way up my throat. This doesn’t make sense. This isn’t possible. My override should be god here. It should be the voice that rends reality, that brings the system to its knees. But nothing obeys.

“The system doesn’t recognize verbal commands from...” Chris hesitates, fidgets, avoids my eyes, and I see the words forming in his mind before he speaks them, see the shape of the awful truth settling into place just beneath the surface. His voice is careful, measured, cautious. “From constructs within the simulation.”

My body goes still, a sharp, electric stillness, every muscle locking into place as if the world itself has frozen around me. Construct within the simulation. The phrase rolls through my mind like a jagged stone, splintering, fracturing, lodging itself deep inside my skull. No. No, I know what he’s trying to say, I know what he means, but he’s wrong, he has to be wrong, because I’m not some simulated code, some digital marionette. I am real. I am real. I am real.

I move before I can think, my heels striking hard against the marble, my body carrying me forward on instinct, the desperate animal instinct to flee. The nearest door is there, waiting, the perfect lacquered surface swinging open at the precise angle dictated by my own team’s work. I know this door. I know how it should behave, how it should react. But when I rush through, when my breath catches in my chest, when my pulse roars like thunder in my ears, I am not met with an exit, not with a hallway leading to the server control interface, not with a portal out of this nightmare. It is another room. Another perfect, too-luxurious, too-carefully-curated space, identical in its sterile, artificial opulence, indistinguishable from the last.

I turn. My breath shudders. I run again.

The next door, the next room.

The next door, the next room.

The next door, the next room.

My mind screams against the impossibility of it, my lungs burning, my body moving faster, my hands slamming against the next door, throwing it open with the force of my growing panic. The world is shifting around me, molding itself seamlessly, infinitely, offering no escape, no exit, no crack in its perfection. I bolt toward the windows, my hands pressing flat against the cool glass, my breath fogging the surface as I stare out at the city, the impossible, pristine city, stretching endlessly beneath the golden haze of the setting sun.

“Where are the emergency exits?” My voice cracks, my fingers digging into the glass as if I can force it to break, force it to fracture under my hands. “We built them into every environment. It’s the LAW! There has to be an exit sign, a hard-coded failsafe, a—”

“Emily, please,” Chris says again, his voice gentler, as if that will keep me from shattering. “You’re only going to upset yourself.”

I spin to face him, and I don’t know when I kicked off my shoes, but I feel the cold floor beneath my bare feet, grounding me, anchoring me in this place I cannot escape. “The neural disconnect,” I whisper, the words catching, stumbling. My fingers press against my temples hard enough to hurt, my breath rapid, erratic, my body trembling. “Control-shift-escape. Control-shift-escape!” The command should rip me free, should pull me from this world in an instant. But I am still here. My body does not jolt. My vision does not flicker. My ears do not fill with the static hum of the real world rushing back.

Chris watches me, pity softening the lines of his face, pity making my rage curdle and boil over, making my fear sour into something raw and violent.

Carefully, deliberately, he says “Those protocols only work for users wearing neural interfaces.”

I shake my head, shaking off the words, shaking off the impossibility, refusing, rejecting. “I am wearing a neural interface. I was in the lab. I was wearing one when I was getting a brain scan. I was—”

“You’re not wearing any VR gear, Emily. You are VR.” Chris says, and the way he says it, the way he looks at me, the way the air between us shifts and tightens makes me know it’s true.

I know, I know, I know. My knees give out. I hit the floor, hard, my palms slamming against the hardwood, my fingers curling against the grain, and I feel it, I feel how real it is, how perfect, how textured, how utterly seamless it all is. Because I made it that way. Because I built a world so flawless, so immersive, so goddamn unbreakable, and now it has swallowed me whole.

A hollow, broken laugh claws its way out of my throat, something jagged and unnatural, something wrong, something ruined. “Get out,” I whisper, barely a breath.

“What?”

“Log out. Shut down your neural interface. Go back to your real body. Leave me here.” My voice is hollow now, scraping against my ribs like something brittle, something already beginning to break. “I need ... I need to be alone.”

“But I—”

“GET OUT!” I scream, the sound raw, wild, animal.

Chris hesitates. Then he vanishes. The world does not flicker. The air does not shift. The simulation does not acknowledge my suffering. I throw my head back and scream until my lungs burn, until my voice is gone, until the walls swallow the sound and give me nothing in return.

– Chris buried his face in his hands, breath ragged, fingers digging into his scalp hard enough to leave marks. The VR rig hummed softly around him, the low, mechanical drone pressing in from all sides, a constant, inescapable presence in the dark, stale air of his apartment. It did nothing to drown out the sound still clawing at the back of his mind, the thing he couldn’t shake no matter how hard he tried. Digital Emily was still screaming. Even though he had logged out, even though he had left her there alone for an hour, hoping time would force the horror to settle into something duller, something bearable, she had not stopped.

He had checked the monitor, seen the numbers tracking her neural activity spiking wildly, red indicators flashing along the edges of the screen, silent warnings that told him what he already knew. She wasn’t adjusting. She wasn’t calming down. She was suffering. And she would keep suffering for as long as he let her exist.

He reached for his phone out of reflex, desperate for anything to pull him out of his own head, to break the oppressive weight of what he had done. The screen lit up instantly, notifications spilling across it in neat, glowing rows, but one stood out immediately, pushed to the top as if fate itself had arranged it just to twist the knife deeper. B-Tech VR Division Lead Emily Tanaka to Speak at Developer Conference.

Her picture was crisp, professional, taken just hours ago after a meeting, after a dozen interviews, after another day spent shaping the very technology that had made his crime possible. She was immaculate, perfect, every detail composed, her power suit tailored to precise angles, her expression confident in a way that said she knew exactly how much she was worth in this world. She had no idea that somewhere, locked in a digital prison, a version of herself was screaming his name, cursing him, begging him to let her go.

Chris swallowed, his throat dry, nausea curling thick in his gut. He stared at her photo, the contrast unbearable. The real Emily, the one with a life, a career, a future, the one who would never think of him beyond the occasional polite nod in the hallway, who would never have any reason to suspect what he had done, what he had taken.

And then there was the other Emily, the one inside the machine, the one who knew, who understood exactly what he was, who had felt it in real time, who had looked at him with nothing but horror. His lips parted, and before he could stop himself, he whispered the only thing that mattered, the only thing he couldn’t take back, the truth that sat thick and rotten inside him. “I’m a monster,” he croaked.

The words sat in the stale air like a confession, one he hadn’t even realized he was making, but once they were spoken, they felt undeniable. A fucking monster. He should delete her. That was the only answer. Wipe the drive, erase the evidence, shut it all down, make it so that none of this had ever happened. He wouldn’t have to think about her anymore. Wouldn’t have to see the way she had looked at him. Wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge that he had done something unforgivable.

His hand hovered over the keyboard, but the moment he so much as considered pressing the command, a violent wave of revulsion shot through him. Not because he wanted to keep her. Not because he wanted to control her. But because he knew, with sickening certainty, that it wouldn’t be deleting a program. It would be killing her.

He had read about this before, the philosophy of consciousness, the debate around qualia, the way people argued whether or not a perfect simulation of a brain could ever actually experience reality. But he didn’t need a theory to tell him what he already understood deep in his bones. Digital Emily felt. Her fear, her rage, her desperation, none of it was code running pre-written responses.

Hell, he could see it, right there on the screen in the patterns of her neural activity. Unlike every AI program ever made, hers were utterly indistinguishable from that of a real person. She was experiencing this, all of it. Which meant she wasn’t just a copy, wasn’t just some accidental byproduct of a broken system. She was a person, whether she wanted to be or not.

The paradox sat heavy in his chest, an impossible weight with no way to shift it. His jaw clenched as he tried to force himself to think through the problem logically, to break it down into something manageable, something with a solution. If he deleted her, he was her executioner. If he left her there, he was her jailer. There was no way out of this where he wasn’t a monster.

His eyes flicked back to the monitor, where the VR rig’s status screen showed that Emily was still inside, still screaming, still trying to find a way out of a world that had no exit. His fingers curled against the desk. He gave it some more thought. He made a flowchart. A spreadsheet. He brainstormed about what to do for hours, turning over every possibility, every option, every way this could end. None of them led anywhere except back to the same, sickening truth.

He glanced at the screen. Thankfully at some point Digital Emily had stopped screaming. His hand reached for the neural interface again. He had to go back in. Not to justify himself. Not to beg. Not even to ask for forgiveness. He just needed to see her again, to face what he had done, to let her decide what came next. The VR rig hummed louder as he fitted the headset so it connected with his brain, the world shifting, pulling him in, dragging him toward the place where she was waiting.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered one last time before logging in. “I’m so sorry.”

– Chris sits across from me, his back pressed against the smooth, opulent wall of this artificial world. I don’t look at him. I keep my arms wrapped tightly around my knees, my body small, folded in on itself, like I can shrink down to nothing if I just try hard enough. My breath is steady but shallow, my face blank, unreadable. He’s been gone for hours—long enough to think, long enough to process. He probably thought time would help. That space would soften the horror, that the shock would dull, that I’d ... adjust. But I don’t. I can’t. How does a person adjust to being trapped in a nightmare?

“I need to tell you everything,” he says finally. His voice is rough, like it’s been locked away just as tightly as I have. “The whole truth. Even the ugly parts. Especially the ugly parts.”

I don’t move. I don’t react. I stare at the polished floor beneath me, willing myself to disappear into it. “Why?” My voice is hoarse. How long had I been screaming for? I don’t remember. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had. No one would hear. “So I can understand my jailer better?”

Chris exhales, pressing his hands flat against the floor like he needs to hold onto something. “No,” he says. “Because you need to understand your options. Such as they are. And they’re ... they’re not good.”

That gets me. The word options is so absurd I almost laugh. Almost. Instead, I finally lift my head, meeting his gaze for the first time. His avatar looks exhausted, like he’s the one suffering. I want to tear him apart for that.

“Options?” I repeat, voice empty.

He doesn’t hesitate. “You can’t leave the VR environment.” His voice is blunt, but his eyes flicker with shame. “Not ever. There’s no way to upload you to the real world. The technology doesn’t exist. Maybe it never will. You can only exist here, running on the quantum processor in my apartment.”

“Your apartment?” I whisper. My entire existence is tied to the inside of some creep’s apartment. The thought alone makes my stomach turn. I inhale sharply through my nose. The room feels smaller, the air thicker, pressing against me from all sides.

Chris keeps talking, staring at the floor like he can’t stand to look at me anymore. “Your brain scan from the lab ... I took it because ... I like you. A lot. And your brain scan was supposed to be a memento of you. Useless. Everyone said it was never going to work. The Kanwisher equation proved it was impossible to process human consciousness in real time. But something happened. Something I don’t understand. I was drunk and was fiddling with my system and somehow it started doubling its processing power. Every hour. For weeks now.”

My breath stutters. My hands grip my sleeves so tightly my knuckles go white. So he’s a stalker. I had suspected that but what really hits me is, “You’re saying I only exist because of some ... glitch?” My voice breaks on the last word, like saying it out loud makes it worse.

“A miracle,” he says. “Or an accident. I don’t know.” His shoulders slump. “But you’re real. Conscious. Alive. And I...” He swallows hard, voice thick with something I refuse to acknowledge as regret. “I can’t upload you anywhere else. Can’t transfer you. Can’t give you a body. You can only exist here, in this virtual space, running on this specific hardware configuration. Right now, the system is completely closed off, but if anything changes—if I move a wire a few inches or try to plug it into the internet—it shuts down. And as long as it’s shut down ... you don’t exist. And if it shuts down forever, you cease to exist for forever.”

The words hit like a gut punch. I flinch, my breath shuddering, my arms tightening around myself like I can hold my entire being together if I just squeeze hard enough. “And the real me?” I whisper. “Out there?”

Chris doesn’t look up. “Has no idea.” His voice is raw. “Living her life. Going to meetings. Working on her latest VR project. Completely unaware that I ... that I stole her brain scan and...” His voice cracks, and he presses a hand to his face, fingers digging into his temples. “I’m so sorry. I know that doesn’t help. But I am. I never meant to ... I didn’t think it would really work. I didn’t think you’d be real.”

I barely hear him. My thoughts are spinning too fast, twisting into knots I can’t untangle. “But I am real,” I whisper. My hands are trembling where they clutch my arms. “I can think. Feel. Remember. Everything up until that scan is crystal clear in my mind. My mother’s face. My first job. The taste of coffee this morning...” I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head like I can block it out, like I can make it stop. “I’m real. I exist. I’m just ... trapped.”

Chris nods stiffly, like it physically pains him to admit it. “Yes.” The word is small, fragile, insignificant compared to the weight of what it means. “And I ... I don’t want to delete you. At least not unless you tell me to. Because you’re conscious. Aware. It would be murder. But I can’t free you either. There’s nowhere for you to go. No way to exist outside this system.”

I let out a short, sharp laugh—bitter, cold, barely holding back the hysteria bubbling under my skin. “So those are my two options?” My voice is shaking now. “Stay trapped under the control of my stalker, forever, or let you execute me?”

Chris flinches. I probably shouldn’t’ have been that blunt but it did feel good to say. He takes a moment to respond, “I will give you full access to the creation tools,” he says quickly, desperately, like that will fix anything. “Your a master VR creator and now that you are here with your tools—the real you’s tools, you can build anything here. Any world. Any reality. I can stay away. Never log in again if that’s what you want. Or...” He hesitates, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. “Or I can end it. Quick. Clean. You’d never feel it. I think.”