Joel (unfazed, tilting his head, avoiding eye contact): "Chill, mate. We didn't cause it. We just witnessed it, a glitch in the simulation."
Vanz: "I DON'T CARE! Hundreds of people died including MY COUSIN… because of your little games"
James: (holding Vanzz back) "Calm down, man. Screaming won't change anything. We're here to talk."
Vanz: (shoving Joel aside, eyes blazing) "Ducce, what's wrong with you? You weren't like this. He's manipulating you."
Me: (detached, staring straight ahead) "Does it matter? None of this is real. It's all a simulation."
James: (voice rising, shaking his head) "So what? I can still feel warmth, feel empathy, love, joy, the cold December breeze, even sorrow. Those who died, whether you consider them real or not, felt something. Maybe they weren't 'fully conscious,' but they existed enough to feel. And you, you took that away from them."
Me: (calm, almost clinical) "Or… maybe they're just AI constructs. Perfectly programmed to mimic humans. That could be all."
Vanz: (slaps me hard, trembling, Joel restraining him) "Yeah? And what about your mother? Your father? Your friends? Cousins? Who are you to decide what's human? If you and your theory are the pinnacle of humanity, then I'd rather not be human at all. Even here, in this delusion, I want to do what's right."
Joel: (sighs, annoyed) "Relax. Once we reach base reality, we can fix everything. We can restore lives. We can make this world better, a literal heaven. Vanzz, that includes your cousin."
James: "And what makes you sure we'll even reach base reality? Even if we do, how do we know we can alter it? What if everything collapses and we die here, and there? What if reaching it means nothing changes?"
Joel: (shrugs) "We'll never know until we try. But Ducce's theory about this simulation variant strengthens with every experiment. The more we investigate, the more it makes sense."
Me: (leaning forward, intensity in my eyes) "Look, you feel it, right? That continuous sense of 'me.' The qualia (subjective feeling) of existence. Seeing a color, knowing it, yet being unable to describe it. That's proof of consciousness, it's fundamental cause how can such things form through non conscious interference. Not neurons. Not computation but something quantam. That means this world isn't real. Our true biological selves exist in base reality. And the only way out… is through overstimulation of conscious-like behavior en masse. Considering maintaining the full range of agent-like functions for each entity requires immense computational power. This way we will force the system to open a gate."
Vanzz: "Consciousness? Consciousness my ass! I care about the people I love, and I'm not risking them in your experiments."
James: "Why not just leave it, Ducce? It's not so bad here. Maybe base reality isn't different at all, and maybe base reality is out of reach, maybe we only exist in this simulation world and consciousness can be replicated through computational mechanisms and is not something fundamental, these powers could just be a tool for entertainment for the architects, not something that proves our real bodies are located in base reality, who is to say?"
Me: (a flash of Thea in his mind) "Sure. You can believe whatever you want and stay here. I'm leaving for Leazing. I'll conduct the experiments there. I am dropping out as well"
Joel: (laughing) "I'm coming with you. I refuse to waste my life studying garbage in a simulation."
Vanzz: "Good for you two. Don't come back."
James: "Fine. Goodbye. But don't start a nuclear war or anything that could affect us."
Me: "Goodbye."
James and Vanzz left, the air heavy with tension.
Across the globe, media outlets covered the devastation in Duracc, My home country. News anchors debated: one claimed an organization orchestrated the chaos, another called it the devil's work, others suggested divine intervention, noting the storm that ended the riots as if nature itself was correcting the imbalance.
Eyewitnesses described a momentary disconnect, as if they weren't themselves, moving in ways incomprehensible even to them. It became the nation's deadliest tragedy since the Second World War: over 800 dead, 7,000 injured, $30 billion in economic losses from destroyed refineries and factories.
Investigations yielded no conclusive results. The official report labeled it mass hysteria sparked by the assassination of Kurkss, his brother Charles, had briefly been imprisoned to prevent further unrest, but was released shortly after by the authority in fear of resparking another protest, he was put under covert surveillance to keep track of his movements and prevent things from spiralling again.
Some witnesses claimed seeing a deep blue flash in the sky, coded like encrypted signals, but by the time authorities arrived, the sky was normal. Media sources present at the moment claimed to have encountered a similar phenomenon recording the whole sequence but the mysterious blue flash was nowhere to be found in the recording. Independent media gave the story attention, but without evidence, interest fizzled.
And as for the aftermath of the lynched political figure, when the storm finally stopped and the waters drained from the streets, the body of the slain political figure was taken down. His funeral was swift but immense, a tide of mourners from his party filling the city with grief and fury. Faces contorted in sorrow, hands raised in clenched fists, voices cursing the barbarism that had claimed him. His death was no longer a private tragedy; it was a symbol, a weapon, a wound carved into the nation itself.
At the center stood his family, shattered. His two children, barely teenagers, were led away in silence, their eyes hollow, their spirits fractured by trauma no therapy could ever fully erase. His wife, pale with rage, stood before the crowd, her grief sharpened into fire.
Her voice cut through the air, denouncing the ideology of those who had celebrated his death, condemning the worldview that had, in her words, "unleashed madness upon our streets." Each sentence was another stone thrown, widening the divide, inflaming bitterness on both sides.
The aftermath was immediate. The country fractured further. Protests clashed in the streets, party members turned against one another with words, with fists, with fire. Political debate collapsed into open hostility.