I had this really vivid dream where I was falling off the roof of a skyscraper. I was experiencing all sorts of emotions. It felt like I was really alive for the first time, but then I hit the ground and everything changed. When I woke up, I found out that it wasn’t a dream at all…
I woke up on what looked like a spaceship, with an old man telling me that my entire life up until this point had been part of a computer simulation. Then he told me that my body is in stasis on Earth while my consciousness is here with him on this ship. He put me in what looked like a life support pod and told me to lay there while he got back to business.
It was hard to tell how long he had been gone. He told me that time moves faster out here in the real world, so it could have been days or weeks for all I know. When he came back, he told me that this ship is on its way to colonise a distant planet. That’s why they created these simulations on Earth – they wanted to make sure the process would work before actually starting the colony. I guess my body is in stasis for that long because it takes so long just to get there.
When he left again, I started looking around the ship for something to do. There’s no windows or anything, just grey walls everywhere you go. There’s a room with some computers, but I can’t really access them without his access codes or something.
After that didn’t work out, I tried sleeping to pass the time again. When I woke up, he was back talking about how this ship has gone past Pluto and is starting to head towards the outer rim of the solar system. He didn’t say much after that, just talked about how he needed to go back to sleep and I should do the same.
I tried sleeping for a long time after that, but there’s nothing else to do around here so it was kind of boring. When I woke up this morning, he told me that we made a course correction towards a planet “in the next star system over.” They’re going to wake my body up from stasis soon since they don’t need me anymore. It’s good news though because now I can survive on this ship until they reach their destination.
The old man came back hours later with some news: apparently, the systems weren’t as stable as he thought and my body didn’t survive stasis. I’m dead now, and the computer simulation is over for good.
Author’s note
Charlie told me that he wanted to tell his story because people said that the life support pods were actually outfitted with a camera in case something like this happened. He also told me to make sure they know what happens in his final hours before they put him back into stasis.
They went through his memories after he died physically, looking for stories to write down and share with everyone since there’s nothing else really going on besides repairing broken equipment. Charlie thought it would be interesting if we heard about how he spent his last moments alive instead of reading about someone’s vacation or something.