To begin with Scott felt quite serene. He awoke slowly; the surroundings were familiar: light bursting through the newly formed leaves, the subtle fragrant smell, gentle birdsong. It was the strangest thing, though. He was sat against a tree in a woods he would normally visit, about ten ks away from his home. The problem was, he had no memory of how he got here. And what troubled him additionally was the absence of his bike.
He got up, looked around wondering if he had driven to this area, hoping for it all to fit back into place.
But now something was coming back: flashes of images of being on a spacecraft. Exciting at first: a once-in-a-lifetime project. Yet there was also fear associated – anxiety, confusion. There was death, people he knew – friends. And then the loneliness and despair; he knew he thought he might also die. The problem was, none of that explained how he could be back here safe and well. In fact, it all seemed no different to a rather vivid dream. Except ... now it was coming back. He'd escaped, miraculously got back here in a shuttle – an escape pod.
No. Not possible. He remembered he was so far out, some freak accident.
My god, he thought. He'd never been religious but ... my god. I died in that escape pod!
No one had ever been able to verify the existence of an after-life, despite so much already known – or at least some decent observationally-driven theories – about the fate of the universe. It was as if the fate of humans was still out of bounds, perhaps as nature's way of preventing insanity. Or did that really still apply? Now death from old age could be delayed beyond the horizon; even with a terminal disease the process of dying itself slowed to a virtual standstill, and the experience of terminal decline replaced by a virtual heaven. At least in this rich part of the world. There were still many troubled people on Earth, places where life remained nasty brutish and short. And here he was, in a place he remembered fondly.
Perhaps I'm a ghost in the real world Again. No definitive evidence either way. People still saw apparitions, and there were attempts at scientific explanations: recorded events within the local electromagnetic field, relying on repeated conditions to be replayed; trans-dimensional feed-through. Now he thought about it the notion of nothingness after death was absurd, it was always inconceivable.
‘Am I dead?’ he shouted. He was sure his voice carried a faint echo. The chirping of birds changed, becoming more frantic.
He picked up a small twig and ran its sharp end across his hand. It felt real. It left a mark. Finally Scott was convinced that wherever he now existed was real for him. But at that point of realisation, a more chilling thought occurred to him. I never did make it back; all of this is a simulation. In reality he could be in stasis on the shuttle, and this simulation was keeping his mind active ... until eventually its power runs down and he dies.
Might as well head toward (virtual) home, he decided, to be with a virtual Deanna.
When Scott got up a light-headed feeling struck him and his legs felt curiously weak. Some realistic quirk of the sim? These days the realism of artificial reality allowed for inconsequential occurrences, minor coincidence, the general day to day happenstance that could sour a good mood. Scott struggled to understand why anyone would choose that level of realism – to have something so similar to their original life that they actually started to believe in its reality. It was as if they wanted to preserve a life, an admittedly comfortable life (since it was only the preserve of the wealthy), to live for a perceived thousand years, when in reality it was only a hundred. It occurred to him how wealth can warp the mind, make you feel that life is no longer enough. Others chose space travel; these were the people Scott admired: to truly risk one's life. For him there did exist the possibility of wealth: the bigger, more prestigious contracts, he was making a steady progression, his name known to millions. Well, surely that was the case now: the first and last human to be stranded over a thousand light years from Earth.
Scott fell back down against the tree. The possibility of it suddenly made perfect sense. There was never any project to planet Eludi-4, with its strange occurrences. And even less likely that he would try to return there only to be whisked away into deep space. He felt dumb for not having thought of it sooner. How it made so much more sense that he was some wealthy fantasist, someone who had perhaps inherited a sizeable fortune but whose life felt empty; or, equally plausibly, he had done something terrible and had sought escape in this total immersion. What better method of escape than to become immersed in the latest, most realistic sim. And now that simulation was beginning to fall apart. It had all been too good to be true, at least up to a point, and now his brain was starting to reject the increasing implausibility of it.
I have to get back to my old life, he thought. But how?
Scott found himself to be walking now, at quite a considerable pace. Away from this delusion of a forest, perhaps itself a metaphor for his state of mind. After twenty-five minutes he got to a busport. Only now had he thought to check for a credit tat. But it was there, on the back of his right hand, a smart-ink triangle about three millimetres a side.
After another five minutes the bus arrived. He took a few seconds to check its itinerary before swiping his hand over the scanner. He felt relieved it was accepted, though he had some knowledge of a considerable credit limit.
The police station was a further ten minute walk from the nearest bus stop in Calgary. The building was reassuringly unchanged by modern technology: over four hundred years old. To complete the traditional style a person greeted at the desk: ‘Hello sir, how can I help?’
Scott took a deep breath. ‘My name is Scott Alendry, and I would like to turn myself in.’
***