The training began. The walls of the room expanded and ripped into floating chunks of matter that morphed into people and tables, waiters, chairs, and walls of the Boston restaurant where it all started.

“Do you want to get out?” Naomi asked, tapping her implant. It was her voice!

I tried to nod “yes, let’s get out,” but could not; my memories played like a movie all the way until the fratboy repeated his words. I did the same as before. The guy died, the restaurant dissolved. I got ten years on top, it was now nineteen. I lay on the floor, deciding what was more atrocious: the room that stole Naomi’s voice, or I, who forgot it.

Sworn to never let it happen again, I gave up on art and self-mutilation and began to remember. I lay on the floor for weeks on end, remembering. It never hurts. The floor here is not hard, but it is not soft either. It is nothing. I never eat, but I am never hungry. The place is not real and does not even pretend to be. For that, I am grateful.

I’ve spent years concentrating on the past. Bit by bit, I recalled every detail, every taste of every bite of food we ate that day, every joke, every smell, and every touch. I know them all now, I remember the day more vividly than when I lived through it.

The room “reformed” me once a month. I cracked the guy’s skull a few more times, but when the sentence got over sixty years, I stopped. What’s the point? Who can I impress here? The chip that simulates these skulls in my brain? Myself? What is so honorable about cracking virtual skulls while I, real I, stand there with my eyes wide open, zapped by military-grade time dilation?

From time to time the room threw a curveball. No restaurant, somebody just punches me in the face, and I have to not stab them, and so on. It was mostly grotesque and stupid, but I slipped once: the three fratboys did unspeakable things to Naomi as I stood and watched with a revolver in my hand. I snapped and shot all three. Got thirty years and had to watch that sim only for ten years or so.

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I need to get out. I don’t know what will happen if I live here forever, and I don’t want to find out. Nobody talks much about mind prisons. Everybody just knows they exist, like Alcatraz did. Some philosophers, I heard, love them. Mind-prisons are somehow more ethical, forward simulation ensures no false convictions, no free will debates, no minority report-like conundrums, wada-wada. Politicians are fond of them also — no wonder — with mind prison algorithms in place, petty crimes now make national news; nothing violent to report on. That’s progress, that’s measurable. But then whenever anyone gets out, they refuse to speak. “It will break you” is all they say.

I don’t know about that. It’s not too bad when you get used to it, when you have a purpose. I do: to get out and land my strike, this time for real. I won't kill the brat though, only break his jaw, teach him a lesson. I want to get back to Naomi, after all, not into real prison for murder. Assault is fine though; a few hundred hours of community service is a fair price to stay a man in my woman’s eyes. Besides, we'd make headlines: the first violent crime in decades done in the name of love. Interviews, talk shows, a bestseller autobiography. Naomi gets the first copy, reads the first scene, finds out I was about to propose; just then, I drop on one knee, ring in hand. Quite a story for our grandkids.

My plan is simple. I don’t know when the chip caught me, where was the touted "seamless transition from real criminal intent to simulated criminal action," but it can't be too early: I myself didn't know what my intent was before I grabbed the bottle. I’ll probably be back in the middle of the swing, like in most sims. Pretending to avert the blow as I am trained to do, I will instead redirect it into the jaw and hope the implant won't have the time to react.

As for the room – I figured out what it wants. It drills me to act properly when I’m released. It never tells me how much time is left anymore. It hopes I’ll grow complacent. It hopes I won’t recognize the “real-real” when it comes. Well. . . it is wrong.