I tightened my arms around myself, back in the yellow room on the bed, tears filling my eyes again. “I’m not ready to leave them.”

Though my emotions had been dulled again, the grief still tinged my thoughts. “They’ll be here one day.”

“They won’t remember anything.”

“It’s very traumatic remembering your life. The memories come back when people are ready. But sometimes seeing a person you knew can help spark it. You never know. Nash may remember you quickly when he comes. Usually parents remember their children right away. Sometimes it’s the same for lovers.”

I didn't want to grieve. I finally had reached the gods. Gods who might be able to help. Right now, I didn’t need to worry about Nash remembering one day. I needed to help him. It didn't matter that Dr. Drake said I had time. I had to see this through before I could do anything else, including mourn the life I'd lost.

“I can’t fall apart now.” I sat up and clutched my aching chest. “Dr. Henderson is in control of our world and she’s fucked up. I have to help them. I can’t leave them trapped with her.”

“We’ll report it. Right now.”

“Who do we tell?”

Dr. Drake sighed. “I don’t like to give so much information at once. You’re already overwhelmed.”

“Please. Please, the only thing I care about right are my people.”

“We could go to the Collective. They control forty-nine percent of the voting rights for the council. It’s the easiest place to start.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “Who are they? What’s that mean?”

“This is so much to explain.” She pushed her dark hair behind her ears. “In the highest dimension, you experience all of time and space, as one. It’s like you become one with our universe. And the people who want to live in that plane are unified as well. Collective consciousness.”

I’d told her that I could handle it, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around anything she just said. Piercey would have been all over this. “They’re like one giant mind?”

“Yes. They have all the wisdom of humankind.”

My breathing sharpened. “And they know about my world?”

She hesitated and then nodded. “The experiments never would have been approved without their vote.”

“Fuck!” I did slam my fist this time, hard against the bed. “All of the wisdom of humankind and they dreamed up this shitstorm?” I doubled over. "I just want to go home to Nash and Elsie.”

“I can ease the pain,” Dr. Drake said. “I can take it all away.”

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“The pain will keep me focused.”

“Right now it’s going to make you lose your mind. Let me.”

I closed my eyes. The acute panic and grief distanced from my mind, as if it had been locked away in a room inside me. “How did you do that?”

“We can do anything here, Max. Your world had to follow the natural laws of the universe for validity. There’s no reason for that here. We can simulate anything.”

“This is a simulation too?”

“Everything is a simulation now, really. Except for the people still evolving out in the physical world.”

I had so many questions, but with my grief now muted, I had the ability to focus on what mattered. I couldn’t squander that. The haze of death cleared from my mind. "I know it probably doesn’t make sense to you, because my world isn’t even real, but I don’t want it to end. I can't fail at this.”

“I do understand. And it is real because you’re real. It’s your experience. I told you… I’ve lived so many lives, and only one of them in the physical world. Every life I lived is as real to me as the first.”

I swallowed hard. “Do you really believe that?”

“Yes. You know, my world where I was first born is gone now." She smiled. “But it still matters to me as much as it did then. All the things I saw, the good, the horrible, it matters that it happened. For the Collective, my world exists today. All time exists as one. Every day you lived in your world was real and will forever be a part of the Collective. They can’t access individual memories for privacy, but the sum of your existence is with them. Now it will forever be a part of at least one person’s memory. Yours.”

"I need to speak to the Collective. I’m going to ask them to send me back.”

Dr. Drake shook her head. “We talked about this. They can’t send you back. Your world operates under physical laws.”

“Dr. Henderson’s avatar doesn’t.”

Her eyes widened. “You want an avatar?”

“If she gets one, why can’t I? It’s my world. I’m the one who was unfairly experimented on. They owe me the chance to clean up the mess they made. If the individual is important, then the Collective has to see that my perspective is critical.”

"We can't let what happened with Dr. Henderson happen to other supervisors."

"I'll petition them to leave our worlds alone. I used to hate the silence of the gods. Dr. Henderson showed me how much worse it can be when they listen."

"Let's go for a walk and calm your spirit before we see them."

----------------------------------------

Crystal clear water lapped over my feet as I walked along the shore of a gentle ocean. Dr. Drake walked with me.

“Dr. Henderson said Nash and I died as babies,” I said.

“You did. Your world is populated by young souls who died as infants during a certain time period. It’s best for the subjects to actually be from the same world and time. For validity.”

“Validity. Of course.”

She smiled. “You were born on Earth in 2027.”

“And Nash?”

“I don’t have access to his record, but it would have been within a three decade span of your life.”

Warm sand squished between my toes. “Why babies?”

“It’s our policy that people live at least one life to adulthood, so that you can develop properly. Normally, we would place infants and children together in a simulated world just like their own. Of course, your world was different.”

“Lucky us.” I stuck my hands in my pockets, because, apparently, I had pockets in the after-life. “Why didn’t you just run simulations with fake people?”

“You can’t fake consciousness. Either you have it or you don’t. And conscious beings are very hard to predict. For valid results, we needed conscious people. The argument was that your life in the experimental worlds would probably be of a similar quality to your natural world.”

“Except we don’t get our lives reset in an actual world.”

“That’s true. Dr. Henderson has been lying in her reports.”

A sliver of pain managed to slip into my heart. “I just want to go back home.”

We walked quietly for some time.

“Am I healed enough to see the Collective now?”

“Already? You’re strong-willed. Not everyone can come back from the after-life, you know.”

“When will you ask them to meet with me?"

“Already did." She smiled. "Come on. They’re waiting.”

“Thank you.” I swallowed hard, palms sweaty. Time for another battle.