I’ve been too busy to take the time to really think lately, but that didn’t stop my mind from half forming lots of ideas. Still, I push those away one last time, just long enough to settle down properly.

I don’t have any furniture I clear up another flat and dry area to leave my meager belongings. I am the proud owner of a few servings worth of smoked jerky (a non spicy variant, thankfully), a pile of some very flat nuts, a few strange black shriveled things that might just be mushrooms, and star shaped slices of dried fruits. Those all come in small parcels of the local rough cloth, which is nice.

Oh, and there's also a large jug of goat milk. I’m not sure if I’ll actually be able to drink it, downing one cup was hard enough.

At least the river isn’t too far, even with my sluggish pace.

Zaimeia also left me with two large pieces of cloth, one to hang above the entrance like a curtain in the way that seems to be the gilfeith usual version of a door, and the other to serve as a blanket for the night.

I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to attach the entrance curtain somehow but the entrance does have a small overhang with sharp angles where the cloth holds by itself after some coaxing. I still further secure it with small rocks though.

Honestly, it doesn't feel very needed. I've come to realize that a perk of the half underground design of these houses is that even without anything blocking the entrance it’s actually pretty much impossible to see what’s inside without walking down the stairs to go in. But maybe that will be enough to dissuade kids from just walking in my house like they own the place.

Satisfied with this groundwork of a livable habitat, I lie down in the cleared space that will serve as a bed, ignoring the discomfort.

Honestly, the ground is relatively soft, I took of my T-shirt to serve as a tiny pillow and with the blanket around me, this actually marks a clear improvement over my recent sleeping conditions. I mean, sleeping while sitting still wet in the cold wind, while on top of an uncomfortable makeshift sled, or while literally on rocks are experiences I will try my best to never live again.

I’m not really sleepy though, it's barely 6pm afterall. I'm just trying to rest my body somewhat. However, I have some thinking to do.

Bob?

Whas’up bro?

Just making sure you’re here to bounce ideas. Say, do you think this place is a simulation?

Uhh… I don’t know, I was kind of born here you know? Hard to tell if things are out of place.

True, but think about it. For starters, this certainly doesn’t feel like a simulation. To me, this place feels perfectly real. And sure, I remember the offer, the Knowledgeable told us that it was a simulation that was supposed to be good enough that we can’t tell the difference once inside. But is that really logical?

Isn’t this the same unsolvable issue as wondering whether Earth itself isn’t in a simulated universe of a far advanced civilization?

Not really, but perhaps the Knowledgeable coming to Earth are the intervention of that advanced civilization messing with its simulation. But that’s not the point.

Oh, I see. Assuming they really just want to study us, the question is if there is a simpler way for the Knowledgeable than creating a perfect simulation.

Yeah. People have thought about the simulation theory. If you want to simulate something perfectly, you obviously need a big computer. Even if we assume they are cheating a little to save power, considering how everything here feels and looks real, I can't believe they aren't simulating down to the atomic or molecular level. In practice, that means they need to keep track of enough molecules for all this planet we're on.

They can cheat by having us walk in a tiny chunk though, as long as we don't see the edges of the world.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Yes, of course, but isn't that still huge? It's at least kilometers big, and it’s all for me. Let's give the simulation theory some credit and assume the smoke and mirrors are good enouh that they only need a cubic km of matter to fool me completely. That's a lot of things to keep track of in a computer, in fact I'm willing to bet even the best supercomputers we made on Earth wouldn't handle it. A single mole of matter is like 10^20 molecules, forget about petaflops, you'd need a zetaflop to keep track of each of those. And a mole of hydrogen is just one gram. The scale is way off the charts, is the Knowledgeable really doing this massive thing for each of the millions of people that went into the study? No way right?

If there’s one thing we know about the Knowledgeable, it’s that they are brutally efficient.

Now of course, I could be wrong in all kinds of way here, but in my opinion, this place? This place is real. All they did was to patch me up with a system that monitors everything and they sent me here somehow. That sounds way more likely than anything like a simulation.

If they hadn’t fucked up your memories there might have been more hints at the evaluation center…

Maybe. But the truth is, we’ve been scammed out of those somehow and they aren't coming back. The question of whether or not I actually get a return ticket in one year is open for debate too…

After being here, I can’t help but think the people who talked about the Study in the media upon returning were clueless idiots. Or perhaps it was pure propaganda, at this point that wouldn't come as a surprise.

Say… What about dying?

Uh. I actually didn’t think much about dying, the terms and conditions of the system on the topic were ominous but I really meant it earlier when I told Pheyis that dying is only an inconvenience.

Well, maybe it is. If you got teleported here you basically already died once.

Yeah. I’ve had lengthy discussions on the topic of death and teleportation multiple times over the years, and I’m adamant that teleportation is nothing else but dying in one place and being reborn identically elsewhere.

Actually, that’s a big can of metaphysical worms I do not really want to open right now.

Fair. Let's just try not to die then. How about figuring out more on the topic of our lost memories?

Bob to the rescue. You’re a great guy you know?

Must be my dashing good looks.

Well, lets dig into memories then, nothing like wholesome activities to keep away existential dread.

I know someone is missing from my mind. But it’s hard to tell who. I have a better base now though, so I start going over my memories again from the very beginning, trying to catch a glimpse of a missing shadow. I’m confident it’s not a brother or anything like that, I would have noticed if I kept remembering houses and meals too big for four people. Even a missing cousin would probably leave glaring holes at family reunions

There’s an idea, what about birthdays?

We weren’t big on birthdays in my family, and I didn’t get a chance to go over to many birthday parties of friends as a child either. My parents just weren’t really the kind to send me to the house of people they didn’t know. And I’m pretty sure birthdays weren’t really a big deal to most people from Blessac. So overall, I can recall those rare occasions fairly well…

Found something.

I wasn’t a teen yet, eleven, twelve perhaps. I remember buying a present with mom for someone, a tiny drone in an electronic store that was probably way overpriced.

Oh yeah, it was in 2019, one year before the covid shitstorm.

And for the life of me, I can’t remember what happened to that particular gift.

Those fuckers ate one of my childhood best friend.

And what’s even worse, I almost didn’t even notice. I went over my memories of ten years in a town lost in central France where everybody knew each other, and I only kind of noted that I didn’t remember feeling much for the people there.

Hey, I didn’t notice either, don’t beat yourself up.

It only felt a little bit wrong a couple days ago, but now it’s painfully obvious that I’m missing a bunch memories all the way until college years; there’s no way I grew up as solitary as I remember. No-one truly close to share all those teenage years with? I would have killed myself. Yet I was happy enough, the overall feeling of that period is one of good times. Which doesn’t really match what I recall. Sure, there was Alice, but I distinctly remember she mostly treated me as a kid. Being five years older than me, that was probably fair. We grew closer later, when I was in college.

So it was a childhood friend. A very close one.

Yeah. As I move on to my years in Lyon, the memories are closer and clearer. I met new people and made new friends. We must have gone separate ways for the studies while keeping somewhat in touch.

Now that I know what I’m looking for, I’m sure we got to meet again a couple years later, when I was doing a six month internship in Paris. I truly hate that city, and I can now recall several occasions where I went into its awful transport system without being able to remember why. They really burned everything related to my best friend out of my memories, all because we went into this scam of a study together.

Saying I hate them for this just isn’t strong enough. I loathe them.

I skip a bit over my profesional life. The last year is much of the same, lots of lost time that must have been spent with my unknown friend. At least some of which specifically to prepare for the journey. My feeling of the past year is fairly positive, not lonely in spite of mostly being able to remember time spent alone or with friends that I don't care much about.

And now, I wonder once again, why the hell aren’t we together?