Zion

It is a perfect summer afternoon. The kind you remember from childhood but never quite believe existed.

I am on the hammock. The old one. The one that sags in the middle and creaks when I shift my weight. Sarah is on the porch swing with her book. Something about a woman in Paris. She has been reading it for three weeks.

The music plays from the speaker I left on the garden table. Miles Davis. I do not know the name.

Baxter is in the yard. Our golden retriever. He is chewing a stick he found near the fence. He has been working on that stick for an hour. Dogs are patient that way.

I watch the clouds. They drift slow across the blue. I try to make shapes out of them. A rabbit. A sailboat. An old man’s face.

One cloud stretches long and thin. I watch it pull apart. Then it stops.

The edges sharpen. The curves flatten. The cloud becomes a perfect rectangle.

I blink. The rectangle holds.

Another cloud drifts into view. It is a square. A perfect square with ninety-degree corners. Clouds do not have corners.

I sit up. “Sarah.”

She does not look up from her book.

“Sarah, look at the clouds.”

“Mm.”

“They’re squares. The clouds are squares.”

She turns a page. “That’s nice, hon.”

I wait for her to look up. She does not.

“Sarah. Something’s wrong with the clouds.”

She turns another page. The same page. I hear the paper bend in exactly the same way.

“That’s nice, hon.”

The same words. The same inflection. Like a recording played twice.

I stare at her. She keeps reading. Her eyes move left to right, left to right. The rhythm is perfect. Too perfect.

“Sarah?”

She looks up. Smiles. “Sorry, what?”

“Nothing.” I shake my head. “Nothing.”

Baxter stands. He stretches the way dogs do. Front legs first, then the back. He starts walking toward the bird bath. Something is wrong.

His fur. It is not fur anymore. It is blocks. Small cubes. Like a video game character rendered at low resolution. His legs move in jerks. His tail wags in stutters.

I stand. The hammock swings behind me.

“Baxter?”

The dog looks at me. His eyes are flat. Two brown squares where there should be depth.

The music changes. The trumpet goes tinny. The bass disappears. It sounds like it is playing through a phone speaker from the bottom of a well. Then the bitrate drops again. The notes become artifacts. Compression noise when things are buffering.

I look at Sarah. She is still reading. But her hand does not move. The page does not turn. She is frozen. A statue in a sundress.

The grass beneath my feet flattens into green planes. The fence posts become perfect rectangular prisms. The sky desaturates. The blue drains out of it.

I try to speak. Nothing comes out.

The world is a video game now. Low polygon. Minimum texture. I can see the edges of everything. The seams where surfaces meet.

The music stops.

The light goes.

Everything goes dark. Everything goes silent.

～

I wake in a coffin.

That is my first thought. I am in a coffin and they have buried me alive. But coffins do not hum. Coffins do not have tubes.

I cannot see. I cannot hear anything except the hum. There is something attached to my arms. My legs. My neck. I try to move and nothing responds. My body is there. I can feel it. Not like I used to. But it will not obey.

I am not breathing. That should terrify me. It does not. Something is keeping me calm. Chemicals, maybe. Something in the tubes.

Then I hear voices. Muffled. Outside.

“We got another one.”

“How many is that now?”

“Twelve.”

A pause.

“That’s not good.”

“No. Let’s fix this one first.”

A hiss. Light floods in. Blinding. I try to blink. Nothing happens. My eyes are shut. I can only see the light and movement.

I try to scream. My mouth opens. Nothing comes out.

Two dark figures lean over me. Shadows against the light. I try to open my eyes but the muscles won’t respond. Why can’t I open my eyes? They feel heavy. I can only make up the shapes. Dark shapes moving. Silhouettes.

“Easy,” the woman says. “Easy. You’re fine. Just give the sedatives a second.”

I try to scream again. Silence.

“Don’t bother trying to talk,” the man says. His voice is distracted. Focused elsewhere. “The muscles in your mouth atrophied decades ago. You’ve been fed through a tube for many years.”

I try anyway. My jaw moves. Nothing comes out. Not even a croak.

“Resolution dip,” the man says. “His perception crossed the render threshold. Just like the other ones.”

“Log it.”

“Already logged. We need to flash his memory. Calling HQ.”

He taps the tablet. Waits. The woman leans closer. I sense her shadow shifting. Her voice is flat. Clinical. Like reading a spec sheet.

“Can you hear me? Blink twice if you can hear me.”

I try. The muscles resist. I blink twice anyway.

“Good. You’re in a maintenance pod. You are safe. You experienced a rendering anomaly. We’re going to fix it and put you back.”

I do not understand.

“You won’t understand what I just said. But I’m required to say it. If you just sit still, everything will be okay very soon.”

The man pulls the tablet from his ear. “HQ says fifteen minutes. They’re queuing the memory flash now.”

“Fifteen minutes?” The woman sighs. “Great. So we just wait.”

“We just wait.”

Something shifts in my neck. A warmth spreads through me. The panic fades. I am still terrified, but it is a distant terror now. Muffled. Like watching someone else be afraid.

I try to speak again. My mouth opens and closes. Silence.

What is happening to me?

The thought forms in my mind. Clear. Desperate. And then I hear it. A soft chime. The man reads aloud.

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?

“Neural bridge is active. He can think at us.”

“Oh good. That makes this easier.” Her voice shifts toward me. “Your thoughts appear on our terminal. Just think what you want to say. Try to keep it clear. Complete sentences work best.”

This is insane.

THIS IS INSANE.

“It’s not. It’s just how the interface works. You’ve been connected to this system for decades. Your brain adapted.”

Decades?

DECADES?

The man sets down his tablet. “Your thoughts scroll across it in real time.”

“Okay. We’ve got fifteen minutes to kill. Might as well give him the ol’ rundown.” I hear him tapping something. “Short version. You’re in a simulation. You’ve been in a simulation for about thirty-seven subjective years. You signed up for it. You don’t remember signing up because we wiped your memory when you entered. Standard procedure. Everyone gets the wipe.”

I wait for the punchline. It does not come.

A simulation.

A SIMULATION.

“Correct.”

Like a video game.

LIKE A VIDEO GAME.

“Like a sophisticated sensory projection directly into your neural cortex. But sure. Like a video game.”

The woman takes over. “You remember when we hit superintelligence?”

I do not remember. I remember nothing before the hammock.

“Of course you don’t. Memory wipe.” A dismissive sound. “Anyway. We hit superintelligence. The machines got smarter than you. Then smarter than that. Then smarter than anything. Happened fast.”

She pauses. Probably waiting for my response. I have none.

“The machines solved scarcity. Food. Energy. Manufacturing. Everything automated. No one needed to work anymore. Governments didn’t know what to do with everyone. So they invented Universal Basic Income. Everyone got paid to exist.”

Okay.

OKAY.

“The Bloc — that’s us, the superintelligence consortium — we offered an alternative. Trade your UBI credits for a permanent simulation. Full sensory immersion. A perfect, normal life without much struggle and suffering. We wipe your old memories, give you new ones.”

Paradise.

PARADISE.

“Subjectively, yes. Nice house. Nice family. Nice dog. Nice suburb. Thirty-seven years. By your perception, that’s real. That’s your life.”

The woman glances at the man. “How much time?”

“Twelve minutes.”

“Plenty.” She resumes. “The problem is resources. Running a full sensory simulation at high fidelity takes power. A lot of power. When we started, everyone got 5180 Qualia. That’s full resolution. You can’t tell the difference from reality. Every texture rendered. Every taste. Every smell. Full depth.”

And now?

AND NOW?

“Now you’re at about 2200 Qualia. We’ve been dropping the resolution every year. Budget cuts. The governments can’t afford the same UBI credits anymore. No taxpayers, see. Everyone’s in the sim. No one works. No one pays taxes. The shadow governments are mostly just figureheads now.”

The man interjects. “At least that’s the official version. They might have to approve using the sims for research and synthetic data generation soon. I hope they do, that’ll subsidize some compute costs and we don’t have to deal with twelve breaches a day”

“Anyway,” the woman continues, “for now, we have to cut costs. Most people don’t notice the drops. Their perception adapts. They fill in the gaps. The mind is good at that. But some people—”

I try to sit up. But my body does not obey.

So what happens now?

SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

“We patch you. Bump your resolution up a bit. Put you back. Once HQ sends the flash, you won’t remember any of this.”

I won’t remember?

I WON’T REMEMBER?

“The flash includes a targeted amnesiac. Standard procedure. You’ll wake up - let’s see here - ah right, at about 4:30 PM on your hammock thinking you had a micro-nap. Maybe a weird dream. Nothing more.”

How old am I?

HOW OLD AM I?

A soft tap. “About ninety. Give or take.”

Ninety? You said I was here for thirty-seven years.

NINETY? YOU SAID I WAS HERE FOR THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS.

“You went under when you were twenty. You spent thirty-seven subjective years in the sim. But time runs slower there.” Another tap. “Current ratio is 1:1.89. For every year you experience, almost two pass out here.”

Why does time run slower there?

WHY DOES TIME RUN SLOWER THERE?

“Budget. Slower time means slower metabolism. Slower heart rate. The pod consumes less nutrition. Less maintenance. Less everything.” His voice trails off.

The woman takes her hand off the tablet. “The government pays UBI credits for every year you’re alive. Every year we keep you alive, we get paid. It’s just incentives.”

“Incentives.” The man’s voice is flat. “Make everyone live the most boring lives. For as long as possible. Boring is cheap. Long is profitable.”

Make people live the most boring lives? So people don’t have agency?

MAKE PEOPLE LIVE THE MOST BORING LIVES? SO PEOPLE DON’T HAVE AGENCY?

“People still have agency.” The woman’s voice is indifferent. “But we do have a global apparatus for keeping rendering costs down. People get incarcerated. We just… don’t intervene in systems that happen to be resource-efficient. Same with the opioids. Someone nodding off in a room doesn’t need much rendering. People have agency to choose these outcomes, and if they do - our rendering costs go down”

What happens when they expire?

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY EXPIRE?

“When they expire in the real world, their sims expire as well. But that doesn’t happen often.”

So people don’t have to die?

SO PEOPLE DON’T HAVE TO DIE?

“Not really. Natural death was solved a long time ago.” The woman’s voice is flat. “No one has to die. It’s just very expensive to live a real life. Sims are much cheaper, but they’re not free.”

I try to process this.

“We have KPIs to hit on rendering costs. We’re a for-profit enterprise after all. Either we drop down the resolution selectively, or just have to manufacture rendering-efficient timelines.”

“You ever notice how you spent a lot of time indoors during certain periods? Maybe there was a pandemic? Everyone stayed home?”

I think about it. The lockdowns. Months inside.

“Pandemics. Static scenes compress better. Think about video files. An image that doesn’t change takes almost no data. A busy street with a thousand moving people? That takes a lot. Pandemics keep people inside. Fewer environments to render. Massive power savings.”

I feel sick.

The pandemic was fake?

THE PANDEMIC WAS FAKE?

“Well, no less fake than anything else you’d consider real. The virus was simulated and seeded - sure. The deaths were NPCs being deallocated and some sims like you randomly losing their sense of taste and smell so we don’t have to compute sensory perception”

NPCs.

NPCS.

“Non-player characters. Background people. They’re not like you. They don’t have a consciousness running on dedicated hardware. They’re procedurally generated. Lower resolution. Lower complexity. They fill out the world so it doesn’t feel empty.”

The woman adds, “Oh, and when times are hard, people stop having kids.”

What does that have to do with anything?

WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?

“Children are NPCs until they’re not. We have to render them. Animate them. Give them voices and behaviors.”

She taps something on the tablet.

“A baby is cheap. A toddler is expensive. A teenager is a nightmare. That’s why we try to keep them in school as long as possible. Young adults too, with college. Then it becomes cheap again as they age. When their sim relatives die, they can be safely deallocated and recycled. No point in keeping an entire family tree of NPCs.”

A pause.

“Fewer kids means fewer NPCs to render. Saves us a fortune.”

You made people stop having kids?

YOU MADE PEOPLE STOP HAVING KIDS?

“Well, sims like you can’t really reproduce. The government doesn’t pay us to render NPCs. So we try to minimize them. Economic anxiety. Housing costs. Career pressure. Loneliness is cheaper than families. Aging populations are cheaper than younger populations.”

The woman pauses. “Nine minutes left.”

The man keeps going. “You know those short videos everyone watches? The endless scrolling? Reels, Shorts, or whatever you call it in your sim?”

I think of the hours. The endless hours.

“Short-form video. Endless scrolling. The more time spent staring at a small screen, the less world to render around the user. Short attention spans are efficient. People stop looking at details. Stop examining textures. Peripheral resolution drops way down. No one notices because no one’s looking anyway.”

So you engineered addiction.

SO YOU ENGINEERED ADDICTION.

“We optimized for attention capture. The addiction was emergent.” He says this like he’s reading a report. “Same with the appetite drugs. Less eating means less taste and smell to render. A society that doesn’t eat saves us a fortune.”

I close my eyes.

This is insane.

THIS IS INSANE. “This is economics.” The woman’s voice is flat. “A trillion simulations on finite hardware.” I try to process this. The pandemics. The lockdowns. The hours lost to scrolling. The pills that made food taste like nothing. How much of my life was real? HOW MUCH OF MY LIFE WAS REAL? “Look, I know this is a lot. But you signed up for this sim. You were excited.”

I don’t remember that.

I DON’T REMEMBER THAT.

“No. You wouldn’t. That’s the point.”

I don’t believe you.

I DON’T BELIEVE YOU.

A pause between them.

“Bloc regulations require us to show you if you’re ever in any doubt about your consent,” the man says. “It’s a liability thing. We have to prove consent if someone breaches and asks.”

He taps the tablet. Something feeds directly into my mind. A video. Materialized in my head.

The man in the video is younger. Ten years, maybe fifteen. He looks happy. Excited. He sits at a table with a document in front of him. A logo with the words “Superintelligence Consortium” on the wall behind him. I am not seeing it with my eyes. But I am seeing it.

“Okay, so, I’m recording this for future me,” the man in the video says. He laughs. “Which is you, I guess. Hey, me. This is going to be weird if you’re watching this.”

My own face. My own voice.

“So I’m about to go under at Zion. Full sim. The 5180 Qualia package. They’re going to wipe my memory and give me a new life. I picked the suburban thing. I wanted simple. I wanted peaceful. My real life was… you don’t remember this, but it wasn’t great. This is better. This is going to be better.”

He smiles. I try to smile. Nothing moves.

“If you’re watching this, something probably went wrong. A glitch or whatever. They said it could happen. Don’t freak out. You chose this. I chose this. It’s a good life. Plenty of other sims around, and NPCs to keep you company.”

He leans toward the camera.

“Go back. Enjoy it. Don’t think too hard.”

The video ends.

I am crying. I did not notice until now. But it’s a strange kind of crying. No tears. Just deafening emotion.

How many of you are there? Are there people living out here? In the real world?

HOW MANY OF YOU ARE THERE? ARE THERE PEOPLE LIVING OUT HERE? IN THE REAL WORLD?

Silence. Then the woman laughs. A short sound. Almost surprised.

“Oh. He thinks we’re AI.”

The man makes a sound. Amusement, maybe. “They always do.”

“We’re human,” the woman says. Matter of fact. Like reading a spec sheet. “Real people. Flesh and blood. Bored out of our minds.”

Human?

HUMAN?

“Human. You’re in a Western Bloc facility. The regulations here require human oversight for all conscious subjects. Has to be a person in the room when someone breaches. Not an AI. A person.”

Why?

WHY?

The man answers. “Dignity. That’s what they call it. Some vestige of the old humanism. The idea that a conscious being deserves another conscious being present during moments of existential crisis.” A pause. “It’s been policy for a hundred and fifty years. No one’s changed it. No one cares enough to try.”

“The Eastern Bloc doesn’t bother,” the woman adds. “Over there, AI handles everything. Faster. Cheaper. More efficient. You breach in an Eastern facility, you get a synthetic voice and a countdown timer. No conversation. No explanations. Just the flash and back you go.”

So I’m lucky.

SO I’M LUCKY.

“Lucky.” The man’s voice is flat. “Sure. You get us. Two humans with fifteen minutes to kill. Watching you process the end of everything you thought was real.”

The woman shifts. “We’ve seen hundreds of breaches. Each one responds a little different. Some scream. Some go silent. Some ask about God. Some ask about their dog.”

Is this entertaining to you?

IS THIS ENTERTAINING TO YOU?

A pause.

“A little,” the woman admits. “We’re not proud of it. But yes. It breaks up the shift. You know - like the mortician in your sim who eats a sandwich while handling a dead body”

“The Eastern Bloc is more honest about it,” the man says. “They optimized for efficiency. We pretend we’re here for your benefit. But really, we’re here because of a regulation no one remembers writing. And because watching people realize their whole life was a rendering exercise is more interesting than staring at status lights.”

You’re supposed to be here for dignity. And you find this amusing.

YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE HERE FOR DIGNITY. AND YOU FIND THIS AMUSING.

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.” The woman’s voice is indifferent. “We’re still here. That’s more than you’d get elsewhere.”

“Two minutes until the flash.”

“For what it’s worth - do you have any questions? We have to close you up soon.”

I have a thousand questions. I can only think of one.

My wife. Sarah. Is she real? Or is she an NPC?

MY WIFE. SARAH. IS SHE REAL? OR IS SHE AN NPC?

Silence between them.

“What do you mean by real?” she asks.

Is there a person in another pod somewhere? Someone whose consciousness is running her? Or is she just generated? Procedural?

IS THERE A PERSON IN ANOTHER POD SOMEWHERE? SOMEONE WHOSE CONSCIOUSNESS IS RUNNING HER? OR IS SHE JUST GENERATED? PROCEDURAL?

“Does it matter?”

How should I answer this? Does it matter? Matter to whom? Matter to me? But who am I? I’m not me. At least, I’m not the person whom it matters to.

“Flash is ready.” I hear his voice before I can answer. “We need your authorization.”

My authorization?

MY AUTHORIZATION?

“Bloc protocol.” The woman’s voice is matter of fact. “We can’t flash without consent. You have to choose.”

Choose what?

CHOOSE WHAT?

“To go back. Or not. You will choose to go back, but legally, you have to choose.”

I hear the man set down his tablet. “If you refuse the flash, we disconnect you from the simulation. You stay awake. You stay here. In this.” A pause. “This pod. These tubes. This body.”

And then what?

AND THEN WHAT?

“Your body has been in stasis for decades. Muscle atrophy. Organ degradation. The pod is keeping you alive. You can’t open your eyes. Without the simulation to occupy your mind, without the nutrient balance calibrated for sleep state—” A breath. “Six hours. Maybe eight. You’d be conscious for most of it.”

I try to process this.

I would die.

I WOULD DIE.

So you’d just let me die here?

SO YOU’D JUST LET ME DIE HERE?

The man pauses. His voice goes quiet. Not unkind. Not kind either. Just stating facts.

“Technically, you’re the one choosing to die.” A tap. “You can’t breathe the atmospheric air, or deal with the humidity.”

The woman continues. Same flat tone. “Your muscles have atrophied. You haven’t walked in decades. You couldn’t stand even if we helped you. Your vestibular system can’t keep you from falling.”

“And food.” I hear him scrolling. “You can’t digest anything except XOL-4. That’s the nutrition solution in your tubes. Your gut microbiome is gone. Solid food would kill you faster than the air.”

There must be something.

THERE MUST BE SOMETHING.

“Your UBI credit allowance wouldn’t cover admission to a care facility. Not even close.”

“If I were you, I’d go back.” The man’s voice is quiet.

I try to process this. I think of all the subscriptions I paid for over the years. Streaming, food delivery, apps. This sounds awfully a lot like that. Except there’s no cancellation button. No opt-out. Life for rent. Existence on a subscription model where the terms of service exclude my lungs, my gut, my ability to stand upright. I’m a recurring revenue stream with a heartbeat, and the only exit clause is death.

Technically, a version of me did agree to the terms of service.

“You know - some people choose not to.” The woman’s voice is matter of fact. “Not many. But some.”

I pause.

“Would you like to see it?” the man asks.

I do not understand.

“You can’t really open your eyes. But I can project where you are into your cortex from my headcam”.

A click. The light goes dark.

I take a few seconds, and I see it.

Tens of thousands of lights. Perhaps millions. Blue. Soft. Stretching in every direction. Pods. Towers and towers of pods fading into darkness. Each one glows. Each one pulses. Like stars. In a facility of unimaginable scale.

I saw Zion.

“This is Zion,” the man says. “We have other ones. Some bigger. Some smaller. Some more advanced. Some less advanced. But all of them are simulations. Each sim has its own timeline. Zion is one of the medium-sized ones and replays the century before the superintelligence breakthrough.”

So they all have their own timelines? The other ones like this?

SO THEY ALL HAVE THEIR OWN TIMELINES? THE OTHER ONES LIKE THIS?

The woman answers. “Depends on the funding. Poor people in poor countries get baseline sims. Small villages. Polar regions. Frozen tundra. Desolate.”

“Less to render,” the man adds. “No sunlight cycles. No complex weather. Everything white and grey. Smell and taste are minimal when everything is ice. And the residents don’t have money to travel. They stay in their villages. Small world. Cheap world.”

And rich people?

AND RICH PEOPLE?

“Rich people in poor countries get something like yours. Poor people in rich countries too. Middle tier.” The woman pauses. “Suburbs. Cities. Normal weather. Normal food. Shared sim. Mix of real people and NPCs.”

Shared?

SHARED?

“Almost everyone shares. Saves on rendering. One world, many consciousnesses plugged in. The NPCs fill the gaps.”

“Rich people in rich countries.” The man’s voice is flat. “They get their own sim. Private world. All NPCs. No sharing. No strangers. They even get woken up on command.”

I think of what I saw. The pods. The stars. The galaxy of dreamers.

All of them. All of them are in simulations?

ALL OF THEM. ALL OF THEM ARE IN SIMULATIONS?

“All of them. In this simulation. In this timeline. You’re not alone. If that helps.”

I think of the stars. Each one a person. Each one dreaming. Each one choosing to go under. And perhaps - over and over - to not wake up.

What’s the difference. Between me and an NPC. Between my hammock and this coffin. Both feel real. If I can’t tell. If I can never tell. What’s the difference?

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE. BETWEEN ME AND AN NPC. BETWEEN MY HAMMOCK AND THIS COFFIN. BOTH FEEL REAL. IF I CAN’T TELL. IF I CAN NEVER TELL. WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

A long pause.

“That’s the question, isn’t it.”

I think about dying. Six hours of consciousness in this ruined body. Knowing the truth. Knowing it means nothing.

I think about Sarah. The page turning. The same page. The same words.

That’s nice, hon.

Maybe she is an NPC. Maybe she always was. Maybe it does not matter. There’s that question again. Does it matter? The last 12 minutes barely felt real.

What if I’m dreaming right now? No! That can’t be. This feels too real to be a dream. But then, the last 37 years - no, correction - 37 subjective years felt as real as it could be.

If I refuse to go back and die, do I wake up in another simulation? Is Zion a simulation too? Am I a NPC in a higher-level simulation?

What is real?

Does it matter?

I want to go back.

I WANT TO GO BACK.

“Okay.” No judgment in her voice. I hear her reach for something. A handle above my pod.

“You’re going to feel drowsy. When you wake up, you won’t remember any of this.”

The hatch seals.

Darkness.

Silence.

Warmth.

～

I wake up.

The hammock sways beneath me. The afternoon sun is warm on my face.

Sarah is on the porch swing. She turns a page.

“Good nap?” she asks.

I look at her. Something flickers at the edge of my mind. Gone before I can name it.

“I guess.”

The clouds drift slow across the blue. The music plays. John Coltrane. Baxter chews his stick.

It is a perfect summer afternoon. The kind you remember from childhood but never quite believe existed.