The Simulation

Walking through the dark, creepy alleyways, I start to feel like I’m slowly getting swallowed up by the darkness behind me. My shaking body is filled with paranoia from what is yet to come, and I wonder if anyone will believe me or even realize that I’ve disappeared. Suddenly, I feel someone snatch me by my waist and blindfold me. That’s when it all goes silent. I’ve been tossed into the back of some type of van and the driver quickly speeds off. I feel the car drifting smoothly around all of the turns we hit.

I can tell we are driving on rough roads for about fifteen minutes but then we stop. The people swiftly rip me out of the car and throw me to the ground. The ground feels smooth almost like I am in a garage of some sort. It’s quiet when I shout, “Who are you and why am I here?!” I get no response back. My hands are still free so I finally decide to take the blindfold off. I slowly remove the black fabric from my now pale face and look around. There is nothing around me but four bare walls. I seem to be sitting in the middle of some type of storage unit. The people who kidnapped me have already disappeared and all that is left now is me and my thoughts. The funny thing is I already know who took me. It had to have been the government. I exposed their secrets and now they are trying to punish me for that. I jump when I realize that one of the doors is opening. As the sun starts blaring into the building I can see a tall muscular shadow of a man towering in the doorway.

“Are you going to tell me who you are now?” I quickly blurt out

“You know who I am. Now, let’s cut to the chase. How do you know that the world is a simulation controlled by the government and why would you blab it to the whole world?” says the dark-haired man.

“I’m not as stupid as you think I am. I started noticing all of the signs. Everyone didn’t have a life after I was done talking to them. It didn’t take long to piece it all together. I just assumed the government was in on it. What other entity would benefited so much from total control.”

“Well, don’t you think you’re smart, Enola. Only now you’ve given us no choice but to get rid of you for good. We can’t have someone knowing our secrets and walking around spilling them in the streets. You should’ve kept your mouth shut and it never would’ve come to this.”

The man starts walking toward me with a grimace. In one smooth motion, he pulls out the gun from his waistband and cocks it back. He is staring straight into my eyes as he aligns the gun just above my eyebrows and centers it on my forehead. He is fully prepared to end my life. However, he should have listened to his own words because I, Enola, am smart.

With a burst of strength, I swipe my hand across the gun to send it flying to the floor. I briskly slide my foot through the bottom of his feet causing him to tumble to the ground. I hear a loud thump which I hope was his head. I get up as fast as I can to take off in the opposite direction, then I realize that he has grabbed my legs and is pulling me to the ground with him. In this moment, I know it is going to be a fight for my life and more physically challenging than I had anticipated. Inwardly, I chuckle. I came prepared. I have been living each day in preparation for this moment.

The man slams my head against the ground in an effort to have time to grab the gun. He is on his stomach, dragging both legs and crawling towards the gun. I jump up, with plenty of energy left to spare, and tackle his body back to the ground. Once I have ahold of his head, I yank it to the ground. I use all of my force and imagine I am pushing his head through a permeable surface, a tactic learned in my training. When I see that he isn’t moving, I book it towards the storage doors. As I frantically enter the outside world, I quickly realize where I am. They have only taken me a mere few miles outside of town. A glimmer from a gray vehicle to my right catches my eye. Peering through the window, I see that the strange man has left his keys in the car and I gratefully take the opportunity to drive his car back to town. There’s no time left. We have to do it now.

When I arrive back home, my brother isn’t in his usual spot sitting on the couch, face in his computer and books sprawled around the couch. Instead, I hear rustling upstairs, and loud banging in the kitchen. An unfamiliar face slowly peeks around the corner through the opening.
“Who are you and why are you here?” I yell through the hallway.

No response. Feet shuffle upstairs. I yell, louder this time, “Who ARE you and WHY are you here?” As I begin to make my way to the kitchen I cross the threshold, ready for another fight, but am met with something much different: eight people, men and women dressed in all black. They look tired, but I realize it is just red paint around their eyes as they stand next to rough wooden crates which fill the kitchen. The hurried noises have stopped and they are all looking past me. I turn and see my broher. I know it’s him, but somehow, he is different. He rushes toward me.

“Enola, you are safe! I knew you would be. I wasn’t worried for a second.” He says it with a sly smile I haven’t seen before.

“What do you mean? Did you set all this up? The man, the snatching, was this all to scare me? Some sort of sick joke?” I am screaming now, full of rage.

“No, no, no. No, Enola. But it’s time that we talk. It seems we both discovered the same truth about this world. I had no idea you knew until I heard they were coming. By then it was too late. But I knew you’d make your way back. You have always been a smart young woman, Enola.”
He goes on to explain how he discovered the simulation which explained all those days he spent camped out in the living room that I thought was just a part of his nerdy existence. He introduces me to his crew, every member of which had apparently questioned their existence and eventually, made their way to one another in their search for the truth.

The plan, my brother says, calls for ten members, explainig that it is the sacred number for breaking the simulation in which we are trapped. I look around. Eight in the kitchen, my brother, and me. Then it hits me: I am the tenth member. As the crew opens the crates up, I see that they are full of stage monitors, audio equipment, and artillery for the worst-case scenario. Our destination is the town square. But first, we must wire the city, post the truth and give our enemies the choice to end this fallacy.

If they do not, the whole world will go up in smoke.