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>Player: Jack Portman
>
>SCORE: 98
>
>TOP ACHIEVEMENT: FAMILY MONARCH- Have at least 7 grandkids by the time you die!
>
>Highlight: Marriage to Kirsten Mackenzie, July 16th, 2007.
>
>Would you like to Spectate, Play in Creative, Start A New File, or Return to Hub?

I was dead. I knew it. I heard the flatline, felt the tears hit my face with a splash as my sister, in her old age, saw her lifelong best friend and closest confidant pass from this world. I heard my son scream, wishing he had a punching bag, as he fell to the ground in tears. The room smelled homeless, sterile and insincere, but the aura of the room was anything but. Poor little Jack Jr, my daughter Lilly's kid, had only been born a month before, and didn't know what was going on. I was happy to see my successor before I passed.

The words haunted me.

>Spectate, Creative, New File, Return to Hub

I remembered everything. My birth, if hazy, was there. My brain knew that I was human, I had to be. I'd just lived a solid 98 years, after all! It wasn't like I was just... playing a game. No, I had a wife I loved, a construction job that I had done for 35 years, and a management job I had done until I was 73 and broke my hip. I had grandkids, my daughter Lilly was a lawyer, my younger son was a wonderful househusband, and my older son was a human rights advocate and had spoken to the UN. My family was successful. It wasn't just... simulation. It couldn't be.

My family was real.

Kay-baby was real.

I felt the helmet get yanked off of me, as bright lights blinded me.

The face staring down at me was one that took me a real good while to recognize.

Feeling came over me again. My limbs felt awkward to move, after having two very mobile arms and grippy fingers to work with. My own skin felt slimy, gross, like I was leaking. My body felt flat, lumpy, like it was falling apart. I could feel each and every wrinkle in the... table I was laying on. I felt my eyes shift around, muscles in my head moving them into different sockets so I could see from a wider angle. The idea that I had hands, and feet, solid, flowing together perfectly, felt foreign, as the muscle memory I had developed tried to find precise, detailed ligaments failed to work properly.

(the dialogue in this scene has been translated from Ygriggian in order to provide reading pleasure)

"How do you feel?"

The voice was tangy, tinted with a scent of orange that scraped against my very soul that I thought I'd had. My core shivered, as my memory of my old life failed to materialize. It was all I could do to scream.

"Are you okay?" He- no, it- placed a ligament on me, and the slimy gross feeling that I was experiencing was nothing but torture. I tried to smell, but recognized I had nothing to smell with. I opened what I thought was my mouth, to feel no tongue. Little but rows and rows of sharp teeth.

"Hey, hey, man, watch it!" he backed off. "I know it may be rough, but-"

I screamed.

I screamed, screamed, and screamed again. I made sure that the God I now knew was fictional, created by a machine, could hear me. I made sure that whoever created this machine, to convince me of a world where I was happy, cared for, and loved, would know the hell of leaving it.

Deep in my subconscious, I saw them.

>Spectate, Creative, New File, Return to Hub

Deep in my subconscious, I knew what I had to do. If the last world was a simulation, all I could hope for was that this one was too. Simply returning to that fantasy would give me nothing now.

Somehow, somewhere, the being opposite me in the room reacted. "No, stop that! You can't! Please, I have a family, don't-"

Deep in my soul, something clicked "Return To Hub"

I heard another flatline, and my eldritch body went limp.

Kay-baby, I know you aren't real. You're a character created by my mind.

But I am too.

And I'm going to wake up.

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