“Bizarre,” the scientist muttered to himself. Tears streamed down the apprentice’s face with no signs of stopping. Suddenly a loud robotic voice resounded from the heavens.
“You setup with the Time Machine has expired. Would you like to add 3 minutes to your allotment, or would you like to enable proper exit protocol? What the- the apprentice glanced, shocked, at the scientist, who didn’t appear to question the voice.
“Begin proper exit protocol please.” He glanced at the apprentice and smiled fully for the first time. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your experience. See you on the other side.”
The event ended.
The apprentice pushed the headset off her head, no longer the apprentice. Now she was simply a curious young woman who had truly believed in the good of humankind before viewing through time.
“Do you understand now? Have you given up on your foolish fantasies? Humankind is doomed, like it has been for centuries. It would be kinder to us to kill ourselves off,” the scientist said. He was still a scientist, with dark hair and brooding dark eyes. On the intercom an alarm went off, giving the woman an opportunity to observe her surroundings. She was still in a laboratory, but as memories returned to the woman, she remembered how she had arrived here. In 3278. The truth was, she had never left the time, she just thought she did. The machine had created a whole another universe just inside her head. And the machine created the events, and her brain tricked her into believing she was truly there, jumping through time in the 1980s.
“Your payment was prearranged, and like promised, your Reality Check appointment didn’t exceed the allotted hour.”
“Thank you, sir,” the woman muttered to the scientist. In the Machine, she had been tricked into thinking she was familiar with the man. That she enjoyed his company and thought he was valuable to learn from. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
She swung her legs off the curved mattress on which she had experienced a whole another lifetime in the matter of an hour. The Outer Temp-Reg tunic beeped for activation as she pulled it over her shoulders and left the sterile white room, sending a rush of warmth through her that did little to comfort her.
“Send in the next patient,” she heard the scientist instruct the AI assistant. Another patient to be brainwashed and crushed. A lump rose to her throat and the tears threatened to return.
“Hello ma’am, your transportation is ready.” This was said by an ageless-looking humanoid creature of another species. Her eyes really did well up at this. Without thinking, she pulled it into a hug.
“I’m so sorry,” She murmured, trying to convey unsaid feelings through the hug. The creature awkwardly patted her back, not resisting. It all they could do, if they dared resist it would only end in misery. Once again, like always, human greed persists.
“Uh, thank you ma’am..?”
She released it, wiping her tears. “And my parents have been told that I was spending time at the pleasure huts with my friends?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Take me home.”
They got into a bullet car and she shuddered from the déjà vu. Emily had done the same action every day until her brother died. Bullet cars were the transportation method built on Mars, headed by Selene the Wise’s children. And now, upon arriving in Orbana, a planet in a completely different galaxy, bullet cars were used. Only the poor had the autonomous ones; the rich were driven around by the native Orbanians. She had never questioned that. She had been raised to believe that humans were the superior race. That earthlings could do nothing wrong. The Machine had taught her that wasn’t true.
These Reality Check appointments were a new fad, trendy, but frowned upon. They rejected everything the society had been raised to believe, and more people treated it as a made-up story. But the Machine had created a universe too real to be true. She had felt the reddish rocks of Mars. She had lived through the pain Vanessa and Emily experienced. She understood the dread Professor Nora felt, and the awe that her knowledge allowed her to feel. She knew how insignificant the human race was when standing on the horizon of Mars, staring into the infinite space. No wonder those who experienced the Reality Check Clinic merely passed it off as an elaborate 4d movie. They couldn’t bear to accept the fact that they were insignificant specks and their whole life was a lie, even after living another one.
But was it even a lie? How did she know that that life wasn’t the real one and this one was the Machine’s simulation. There was no way. It could all just be an elaborate simulation, and she only existed in her own mind. And even if this was all somehow real, which is more unlikely than not, I still exist for so little of the universe it is almost nothing.
The woman, or the apprentice, she was unsure of which was the real her, or if either of them were the real her, knew that she could never go back to ignorance after this.
