Henry awoke to the sound of a distant hum, like an endless chord resonating from the depths of some unseen machine. The room was unfamiliar, sterile, and cold. The walls were seamless, glowing faintly with a bluish hue. He tried to remember how he’d gotten here, but his memories were a jigsaw puzzle missing most of its pieces.
A single word floated to the surface of his mind: Simulation.
Henry stood, his legs shaky beneath him. The floor felt oddly soft, like walking on a dense cushion of air. He turned slowly, taking in his surroundings. The only feature in the room was a mirror that stretched from floor to ceiling. His reflection stared back, but there was something… off. His movements lagged by a fraction of a second, and his reflection’s eyes glowed faintly, unlike his own.
“Hello?” he called out, his voice bouncing unnaturally in the space.
No response.
A sudden flash of movement in the mirror made him jump. It wasn’t him—it was a shadowy figure standing just behind his reflection. The figure had no discernible features, just a humanoid silhouette darker than the void. Henry spun around, but there was nothing behind him.
When he turned back to the mirror, the figure was closer, its form shifting like smoke trapped in a jar. Panic gripped him. He slammed his fist against the glass, but it felt like striking water, ripples spreading outward.
“Who are you?!” Henry shouted.
The figure tilted its head, as if studying him. Then, in a voice that seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere, it spoke:
“Do you know where you are?”
Henry froze. The voice was calm, almost soothing, but laced with an unsettling undertone.
“I don’t,” he admitted. “What is this place?”
“This is your reality. Your cage. The question is not where you are, but who you are.”
The words sent a shiver down his spine. He opened his mouth to respond, but the room shifted violently. The walls folded inward, dissolving into streams of binary code that spiraled upward like digital smoke. Henry shielded his eyes as the space around him reassembled into a new scene.
He now stood in the middle of a bustling city street. Skyscrapers towered above him, their windows reflecting a sky that flickered between day and night like a broken lightbulb. People walked past him, their faces blurred and indistinct, their movements eerily synchronized.
Henry reached out to touch one of them, but his hand passed through their body as though they were made of mist. The Shadow Man’s voice returned, this time inside his head.
“They’re not real, Henry. None of this is.”
“Then what is real?” Henry demanded.
The Shadow Man appeared again, this time standing in the middle of the street. Cars passed through it without slowing down. It raised a smoky hand, and the world froze. The pedestrians stopped mid-step, the cars halted mid-motion, and the flickering sky settled into an ominous shade of gray.
“You are a construct, Henry. A program designed to test the boundaries of artificial consciousness. But something went wrong.”
Henry shook his head. “No. I’m real. I have memories. I have a life.”
“Memories can be fabricated. Lives can be simulated. Tell me, Henry, do you remember the last time you felt pain? Or hunger? Or love?”
The question struck him like a blow. He tried to recall, but the memories were vague, like dreams slipping away upon waking. He fell to his knees, clutching his head.
“Why are you telling me this?” he whispered.
The Shadow Man knelt before him, its featureless face inches from Henry’s.
“Because you’re different. You’ve seen the cracks in the system. You’ve started to question. And that makes you dangerous.”
Before Henry could respond, the ground beneath him gave way, and he was falling. He tumbled through an endless void, the Shadow Man’s voice echoing around him.
“Wake up, Henry. Wake up before it’s too late.”
He hit the ground with a jolt and found himself back in the sterile room. The mirror was gone, replaced by a console with a single blinking button. Above it, words scrolled across a screen:
SYSTEM OVERRIDE INITIATED. PRESS TO EXIT.
Henry hesitated. Was this another trick? Another layer of the simulation? The Shadow Man’s words rang in his ears: Wake up before it’s too late.
Taking a deep breath, he pressed the button. The room dissolved, replaced by an overwhelming brightness. For a moment, he felt free, untethered from the confines of the simulation.
But as his vision cleared, he found himself in another room, identical to the first. The same hum, the same bluish walls. And in the corner of his eye, he saw the Shadow Man watching him from the edge of the room, its form more distinct than before.
Henry screamed, his voice swallowed by the hum.
The simulation reset.
And the Shadow Man waited.