The first crack in reality appeared on a Monday morning. Ethan Cole was brushing his teeth when he noticed the mirror glitch. For a fraction of a second, his reflection did not move with him. He froze, toothbrush hanging from his mouth, eyes locked onto the glass. The moment passed, and everything was normal again. He shook his head, blaming it on lack of sleep, and continued his morning routine.
But the glitches did not stop.
At work, his computer screen flickered, and for a split second, a string of numbers and symbols flashed across it, too fast for him to comprehend. When he looked around, no one else seemed to notice. On his way home, he saw a bird freeze mid-flight before snapping back into motion as if nothing had happened. The final straw came when he was lying in bed that night, staring at the ceiling, and the light from his bedside lamp flickered unnaturally. The flickering wasn’t random—it was rhythmic, almost deliberate, like a signal.
Ethan wasn’t alone in noticing these anomalies.
A few days later, he met Claire Patel, a journalist who had been documenting strange occurrences in the city. “I thought I was going crazy,” she admitted, sipping her coffee. “People disappearing for seconds at a time, entire streets shifting locations overnight, and then there’s this.” She pulled out her phone and played a video. In it, a man walking down a busy street suddenly stopped, his body flickering like a distorted video file. Then he vanished, only to reappear a few feet ahead, continuing his walk as if nothing had happened.
“Something is wrong with reality,” Ethan murmured, watching the video on repeat.
Claire nodded. “I think we’re in a simulation.”
The words sent a chill through Ethan. It was an absurd idea, the kind of theory found in conspiracy forums and sci-fi novels, but the evidence was mounting. If reality was breaking down, then someone—or something—was responsible for it.
They needed more proof.
Over the next few weeks, Ethan and Claire investigated further, gathering testimonies from people who had noticed similar anomalies. They found patterns: certain areas of the city seemed more prone to glitches, especially places with fewer people. They theorized that the simulation was struggling to render reality when fewer observers were present, like a video game that only fully loads what the player can see.
One night, they decided to test their theory. They traveled to an abandoned factory on the outskirts of town, a place nearly devoid of human presence. Armed with cameras and laptops, they observed their surroundings carefully. Hours passed with nothing unusual, but then, at precisely 3:14 AM, the air shimmered. The walls trembled like ripples on water. Then, the factory vanished.
Ethan and Claire stumbled back, staring at the empty lot where the building had been moments before. The ground still bore the outline of the structure, but everything else was gone.
“This is proof,” Claire whispered, her hands shaking as she recorded the empty space. “The simulation isn’t perfect. It only renders what it needs.”
The discovery came at a cost. Within days, they realized they were being watched. A black SUV trailed them wherever they went. Strangers in suits lingered near their apartment buildings. Their phones glitched whenever they tried to call someone. The more they uncovered, the more they felt the simulation pushing back, trying to suppress their knowledge.
Then, Claire disappeared.
Ethan found her apartment empty. No signs of struggle, no messages left behind—just an unnatural silence. Frantic, he searched for her, but it was as if she had never existed. Her name vanished from records, her social media accounts erased. Even mutual friends claimed they had never met her. Only Ethan remembered her, and that terrified him the most.
Determined, he dug deeper. He hacked into government servers, searching for any hidden files related to reality anomalies. What he found was chilling: documents referring to “Fractures in the Framework,” “Memory Correction Protocols,” and worst of all, “Entity Reallocation.” The files suggested that those who learned too much were simply… removed.
Realizing he was running out of time, Ethan decided to expose everything. He compiled his findings into a manifesto and uploaded it to every platform he could. The world needed to know.
But before he could hit the final key, his apartment flickered.
The walls wavered, the furniture distorted. His hands trembled as the floor beneath him seemed to dissolve. He tried to move, but his body felt weightless, as if he were being deleted line by line. The last thing he saw was the screen displaying his unfinished message before everything turned to white.
And then—nothing.
Somewhere, in a room filled with glowing screens, a figure watched as the simulation stabilized. A technician turned to their supervisor. “Subject 42 has been neutralized. Do we reset the instance?”
The supervisor nodded. “Initiate memory wipe. Run scenario 2487 again.”
And so, reality began anew, with Ethan Cole waking up on a Monday morning, brushing his teeth, completely unaware that he had lived this day a thousand times before.