S.O.S

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲

Everything is black... It's just as black as if you are in a dark room with your eyes closed. You can't see a single thing, not even the red tinge that appears when a small amount of light passes your eyelids.

Sensory deprivation.

That's how I felt in the simulation. But I knew it wasn't real. I knew I would return to the real world in the event of failure. Now I'm not completely sure where I am.

Am I dead?

It can't be... because I'm still able to think. Is my mind stored in someplace but I just can't sense it for whatever reason...?

I still identify as Dimash Kudaibergen. A man in his mid-twenties, from Kazakhstan. Nothing has changed. I remember everything up until now: who I used to be, whom I used to live with, where I was born, what I did in my life ...

I remember it all perfectly.

Wait. What time is it? Is it day or night? Summer or winter? Does it even matter? Does time exist here, wherever I am?

If I count to three, 'two' comes after 'one', right? I can't say those numbers at the same time but they come after one another... in an order. Isn't order a sign that the time hasn't stopped moving forward?

Who would've guessed I could be so paranoid not seeing the Sun?

I need to pull myself together. I'd say I feel extremely anxious but the worst thing is that I don't actually feel anything. My bodily response to everything is... gone in a puff. Like my mind has been stripped of the physical restraints that keep me in one place at a time. I know how I'm supposed to feel but... That's it. I know a word for it but I really can't wrap my mind around how it felt to have a body.

I can't talk. I can't feel. I can't see. I can't hear. I can't taste. I can't smell. I can't move. Nothing.

If that's uncertain, then how can I know that I don't exist somewhere? Maybe everywhere simultaneously? But why can't I perceive anything around me? Isn't that a dead giveaway that something isn't right?

Has this ever happened to anyone? Do I even have a way to contact someone else? The man that I met - two minutes or two years ago - said something about getting stuck between reality and non-reality...

I can't think about it now. It's too terrifying.

I feel like lying in a dark mute room with absolutely nothing to do. But worse since I can't even feel the limits of my body, my cage that is the only thing that separates me from the outer world. Without my senses, without my body...?

I can't keep my thoughts at bay.

Again, I recall the words of the man in the world of Apocalypse and combine them with those of the alien. Could it be true? That there never was a real world? That we have been living in a simulation this entire time?

But how... How did it feel so real? It was flawless, almost too perfect to be true. Shouldn't there have been some kind of error, code, or glitch that would have given it away?

For instance, a glitch where someone suddenly freezes in place. That sounds creepy... Imagine them just acting like machines - first talking and functioning, then one error code in your system causes you to shut down for a second.

Was I really me? Or a virtual version of me?

Did I ever have a physical body, to begin with? Or was it just my mind? Do I have a body now?