Simulation Sickness

I don’t know how much longer I can take this endless waiting before my sanity caves in. The walls of my house breathe my name. Shapes glitch by my window in my peripheral vision. I can hear them laughing and scampering just beyond the corner of my front yard. Covering my ears is pointless because it’s not an external sound. Allow me to explain. In the hopes that somehow this message can be heard by anyone, I have a dire warning for your near future. Mankind has made a sobering development in recreational technology. Whatever year you may be listening to this in, I can only imagine that the idea of a brain chip is not entirely foreign to you. Either your authors have already conceived of it in science fiction or the first blueprints are being drafted. Please, if you value your natural human rights, destroy it before it launches. Once it is streamlined and mandated, it will be far too late to turn back.

The government has used me as a test subject for their cruel and inhumane experiments. I have nobody to turn to for help. No one else believes me because I’ve been labeled as a terrorist by the state. My family all but disowned me as soon as I was labeled a threat to national security. The friends I had in my old life took me for a monster when the allegations started brewing. I couldn’t believe it. I’m sure I can’t be the only one, but we were few and far between. We called out the corruption while they were trying to implement the system like we were cattle held back by an electric fence. We knew they were building the infrastructure for totalitarianism before they centralized power.

I fear for the lives of everyone else. The children who play with augmented reality in blissful ignorance, unaware that the device in their brains can ruin their lives if they criticize their overlords. It’s an unprecedented weapon of mass control. I’m documenting this so that you are all aware before they take away your freedom.

When I tried to run diagnostic scans of my brainchip, the search turned up no answers. I was only hit with a loud error message in the middle of the process, forcing me to reboot it. But here’s the thing. Even if you turn it off, they can still track you. Additionally, the glitches persist when it’s powered down. I can’t ignore the possibility that once the malware completely infects the brainchip, it somehow travels to other areas of the mind. Until I know more about the condition, I’ve decided to name it ‘Script Cancer.’

This all started when I noticed the movements of birds against the sky. For just a moment, one would lag midair while the others flapped right past it, or on one occasion, even bumped into it. After the brief spell, it would continue on its path like nothing happened. Definitely in the realm of ‘odd’ but it wasn’t hard to rationalize. I remember how gullible people are to misperceptions. If you’re driving and a plane is moving in the opposite direction, of course it’s going to look stationary. But that wasn’t the end of the things I began to observe.

While the odd pattern of the birds continued outside, another problem was brewing in my own system. None of my instant messages were going through to any of my contacts. I could see them appear in the chat logs but they would either vanish or say “not delivered.” By that point I was already too nervous to go to a repair shop in town because I was already being demonized by the powers that be.

I had expressed on social media right before the implementation event that we were on a dystopian path. I dared to criticize the government that “wanted to unify us all under a single network. No soul left behind.” Could nobody else see that they were eroding our souls in the first place? Did nobody else think that it wouldn’t become a means of mass surveillance?

So with no social recourse, I elected to just leave it alone for the time being. Perhaps if I reset it enough times the issue would naturally resolve itself. It put me at a severe disadvantage and essentially left me stranded in my home, but my other choices weren’t better. Suffer in silence or broadcast my situation so the feds swarm my house like moths to a flame. I thought once that I was closer to being a cornered rat and it was only further reinforced by what came after the initial anomalies.

I was reading an old book to try to distance myself from my growing problems when I heard a knock at my front door. Given my predicament, it was wholly unusual even in broad daylight. No one in their right mind even associated with me after I was silenced. My gut reaction told me it was law enforcement. No, perhaps it could’ve even been the CIA. I had to at least look through the peephole just to be certain. “Hello?” A voice called out. “Are you (REDACTED)?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Officer Tankien with the (REDACTED) Police Department. I have some questions I’d like to ask you.”

No. Something wasn’t totally right about that. Even through the door, I heard something else in his timbre. I was shocked I’d even picked up on it at all. “uhm, what is this in regard to?”

“I’m here to ask you about your anti-government sentiments, as we have concerns that you may be a danger to yourself or others.” There it was again. The tiniest audio compression buried in his tone. It was a miniscule glitch that would’ve gone otherwise unnoticed if I wasn’t already running off of adrenaline. “You can make this easy or I can make this difficult.” With a bead of sweat rolling down my forehead, I slowly moved closer to look through the tiny hole.

The man on my porch was rigid and unmoving, standing perfectly upright with an expression betraying nothing of his actual thoughts. Plainly put, he lingered there like a mannequin. Not fidgeting with something, not leaning on the near guard rail. Just… looming. Like an apex predator with primed posture and enlarged pupils. “You’re not real,” I breathed. “Stay the hell away from me.”

For lack of a better way to describe it, the stranger’s body vibrated in response. Something between a phone on silent and the rattling of a snake’s tail. “Your house will never be a home. I will inhabit your walls. Eliminate the threat. ELIMINATE THE THREAT!” his voice glitched louder. The man’s arm moved to the door so fast that it looked almost as if he dislocated it at the joint. I heard loud scratching against the old wood. Ferocious and deep like a bear was trying to tear its way in.

I backed away as the noise persisted. “Fuck,” I breathed. I scrambled for a knife from the kitchen and with a flash of panic, I sprinted down the hallway for a place to hide. My nerves were set ablaze in my mad dash for a corner or a crevasse. The sound of splintering wood reverberated across the front end of the house. I settled on the gloomy space beneath my bed. Just as I dove in headfirst, I heard the door fly off its hinges. Trying my best to keep a breath from escaping my lips, I cursed myself for not shutting the bedroom door. It was in my fucking house and it knew I ran somewhere deeper within.

But nevermind that, I couldn’t submit to the bubbling anxiety. I had to remain still and silent. I begged my own body not to desperately inhale for oxygen as my lungs were building with tension. For a moment I thought my own heartbeat would deafen me. Then the sound began. Wet footsteps on cold tile. A pitter patter that sought to mask itself. It might’ve broken the door down but it was still attempting to move in complete silence.

The knife was locked in a white knuckle grip, which was beginning to tremble as the sound of damp feet grew closer. My line of sight traveled directly down the corridor from my open bedroom door. When the sound reached the edge of the hallway, I began to pick up some kind of sniffing sound, like it already knew what I smelled like. I was bracing for a direct altercation with the entity, priming my body for any sudden movements. Staring through a waterfall of sweat running down my forehead, I watched in confusion as the sounds grew louder. No man approached me. The Sniffing, the pitter pattering, they had to be perhaps fifteen feet away from me, but nothing stood there. There was nowhere for it to go. No rooms off to the side, no corners to duck into. It was either there or it wasn’t, and I didn’t know how to feel about either answer.

With a few deep breaths, I pushed out from my hiding place with the knife still clenched in my uncertain palm. The sound persisted but it shouldn’t have been there. It was lurking at the precipice of my bedroom but the thing pretending to be a man wasn’t standing there. So I took a step forward. Then another. I stepped out from my room only to realize I’d walked right through the sound itself. That was impossible. I glanced at the floor to see if perhaps it left footprints. The hard wood was bone dry.

I didn’t know what the hell was going on so I continued back to the front of the house with a frantically pounding heart. Not only was the interior not damaged but somehow the door was just as I had left it. My mind was lagging in its attempt to explain what I was witnessing. There was nowhere else for the intruder to go. I swung the front door open, instinctively raising the blade to defend myself. My search revealed only an empty porch and a quiet lawn. Just when I thought it was all in my head, a quick glance flipped my world upside down. There were five perfectly spaced claw marks going down the middle. I ran my fingers across them to confirm and they were real. To some extent, the creature could alter my perception. Its ability to pretend to be a law enforcement officer deeply perturbed me. Even while typing this, I’m still trying to crack the case of how it was able to trigger auditory hallucinations. I’m not even sure if it was ever there in the flesh, but the claw marks had to mean that something was at least there.

I had very little time to regroup because I still didn’t know what it was capable of. In desperation I tried to think of anyone else that I knew would be able to help me. Before the world changed for good, I knew of several groups that stood against hyper integration. The largest was a collective known as Starcrop. The party of preservation. Their philosophy was to protect the nature of man from things that sought to control his essence. I attended several of their rallies when there were still free thinkers. Most of their speeches and meetings were held in city squares and vacant parking lots. Very underground, but funding was hard to come by. Most of the talking heads and their audiences were already sold on the idea of a brighter future. The general public merely accepted that promise as fact. When crackdowns started happening and people suddenly realized that it was being mandated, the organization was forced into hiding to avoid capture. There were rumors they still existed in some shape. A resistance brewing in the shadow of the new regime.

The brain chip has the ability to archive users’ memories. It also has the ability to systematically delete them. Using constant mapping, it can track the pathways of your thoughts. With that information, it can then derive what it thinks the user’s beliefs are. If you really wanted to, you could request the brain chip to wipe all of your worst moments from your recollection, leaving nothing but a life of cherrypicked bliss. I’ve been cursed in an inverse sense. Every glimpse of warmth has been stolen from me. I have no more golden days. I only know this to be true because somewhere in my house, there are flyers I don’t remember keeping. Informational packets from their gatherings that trigger the realization. It doesn’t matter how often it goes in and wipes the data from my gray matter. I will always know what we were robbed of.

On the back of an old packet, there was an address. As much of a gamble as it was, I was desperate for some modicum of sense. I needed to know if Starcrop was really alive. So I tore through my wardrobe looking for something that would make me look inconspicuous. I ended up with something obscenely casual. Sweatpants and a t-shirt with a jacket that almost matched. I knew a scan from a passing police cruiser would easily identify my marked chip. I knew that a hat wasn’t really going to do the trick but I put it on anyway, tucking the brim low so I felt a bit more secure in my own skin. I’d be fucked either way if I was caught in broad daylight but I felt like I’d have been surrendering myself as a sitting duck if I decided to stay in my room forever.

The drive over was bleak. Ashen gray clouds for as far as the horizon stretched. A dreary day dominated by cold architecture and silently moving crowds. People moved less like individuals in a herd and more like points on a graph moving to different destinations. Almost like they themselves had become part of the infrastructure. A few of them deviated ever so slightly, taking a glance at the car as I cruised by them. Were any of them conscious of a life they didn’t remember living? Were they only aware of a single day lived over and over again? I was left troubled thinking about the implications. Nevertheless, I kept my pamphlet on the dashboard so I wouldn’t suddenly forget my mission.

My journey took me past the modern construction and twisting power stations. Out to the old industrial areas on the edge of the city. Rusted factories with outdated machines left to rust over in the elements. Shattered windows and dilapidated homes. That place was either dead or dying. Perhaps something woefully sandwiched between the two.

The address was a surprisingly small building compared to the fossilized giants around it. The signs had faded beyond recognition. But my navigator hadn’t lied. I was definitely at the right place. I thought about turning around. I mean what could possibly await me? Expired snack? Deserted isles? I’d already come so far. At the very least I had to go in. The door was locked, so I picked up a nearby stone and hurled it at the glass, sending shards spilling forth. Surely enough, no alarms cried in protest. No one had been there in a long time.

The interior was what remained of some kind of mini-mart. Newspapers from a rack in the front were scattered all around the entrance, littering the floor so much that I couldn’t see the bottom. Further in there were shelves full of well past expired goods. Plastered all over were advertisements from a bygone era. Well, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Not exactly the lobby of a rebellion. I figured I’d at least look through the rest of the building to see if I could scavenge anything. No money in the cash register. Typical. They could leave behind all that food but the money was of utmost priority.

I checked the maintenance closet for any useful things. Perhaps another informational pamphlet that would’ve pointed me in another direction. I was hopeful for any semblance of a clue in the vain idea that it wasn’t all some fruitless venture. The tiny room was full of all manner of cleaning supplies. A mop and a broom laid haphazardly against the far corner while bottles of chemicals were stacked on aging shelves. I sighed and let out an angered grunt, grabbing the nearest hard object I could find and throwing it up against the back wall. Then my heart stopped. The object, a small bucket, had gone straight through the wall. Instead of it smacking against it, I heard faintly as it bounced and echoed through an unseen space.

I stared at the wall for a moment, not sure if I was believing my own eyes. Then with small steps, I approached it. With a clammy hand, I poked through the veil. It felt like.. nothing. Just more air on the other side. The longer I looked at it, the more it seemed like an out of place texture in a poorly rendered video game. The light didn’t hit it right.

I took a breath and steeled myself, preparing to step through. Pushing forward, I braced myself for whatever I might see. To my immediate shock, I caught myself at the top of a long flight of stairs which descended to a subterranean facility. If I’d have taken a third step, I might’ve tripped and fallen down the stairs to my death. Small fluorescent lights dotted the path downward. My instincts were screaming at me to turn back and forget about it all, but what exactly was I meant to return to?

The steps guided me further beneath what I thought was an ordinary store. On the walls were posters for the revolution. They looked more like historical calls to action than a current pushback against tyranny. The print was also worn and faded at the edges, making some of the slogans hard to read. It was unmistakable though. I had found what was left of Starcrop. Reaching the bottom felt daunting after five minutes of constantly going down. But when I finally made it to the landing, what I saw left me breathless. I took out my flashlight to confirm what I was seeing. A cold and empty expanse of concrete with nonsensical corners and scattered all around were random sets of furniture. Some chairs sat alone in the open while others were lined up facing the wall for no reason. Sweeping the flashlight above me, I was also perturbed to find that the glow would not reach the ceiling.

Large banners decorated more of the walls as I explored. Those ones seemed to be in better condition. Crowning the signs was a symbol of a tree with stars between its branches. One of them read: “Reclaim your life today! Fight for your inalienable rights!” In one area, there was a circle of chairs. A spiral that unfurled with perhaps close to a hundred of them. Elsewhere, I saw what looked to be a massive window covered with a white and blue curtain. It stretched almost to the ceiling out of my vision. I felt tempted to peer beyond it, knowing that it should not be possible for a window of that size to be there. But my better nature overtook my curiosity and I stepped away from it entirely.

Around a corner ahead, I could make out a soft light that was many times brighter than my flashlight. Then I heard it. Someone was speaking. I crept forward until I was close enough to peek around the wall. “… And don’t you think it is at all hypocritical for our institutions to fall into this fallacious trap? Our brightest minds are being funneled into a system of organized control! Our philosophers are not for the people. They contemplate what the state commands them to. Our poets don’t write from the heart. They are a mouthpiece for the new order. And our politicians? Puppets manhandled by their strings!”

Ahead was a large room dominated by chandeliers and an ornate stage with an empty podium. At least two hundred chairs faced it. Massive flags hung from the sides with a red carpet leading directly to the front. No one was there. And yet the rebellion spoke. “We will lose everything we stand for if we let them distract us with these meaningless headlines and fabricated events! The bombings, the supposed threats from other nations, these are nothing but ploys so that they can build the system without being pestered by our prying eyes. Oh, but we see you. We know what you’re hiding. We will not stand by. We will not disband!”

“Hello?”

In an instant, the speech halted. The final words of the speaker rang out across the vacant space. “Is anybody here? Can you help me?” The question felt like ice cold water on my skin. I felt exposed. Vulnerable. “If you can hear me, I’m a part of the cause! I’ve been ostracized by society, the government infected my brain chip with some kind of neural disease!” A deafening silence lingered as I awaited something- no, anything to happen.

“Rip it out.” The voice came back distorted and muffled with a technical sound buried in his voice. “Split the flesh. Carve it out of your head.”

“Are you fucking nuts? I’ll end up getting myself killed! Surely there’s a better way!”

“You don’t have much time. If you want to kill the weed, go for the root.”

In my stupor, I was going to reply but something else stopped me. It was scarcely louder than a flying insect, but it was there regardless. Wet footsteps. ‘Shit’ I thought. I shrank behind the corner as a chill ran down my spine. Either that thing followed me to the facility or there were more of them lying in wait. Maybe that was why it was abandoned. Then in that case, who was I speaking to? Where did the voice come from? I didn’t have any time to ponder it. Before long, I was trying my best to silently sprint through the halls of chaotically organized furniture.

In response, the footsteps grew louder. Adrenaline screamed through my veins. I had everywhere yet nowhere to hide. So many corners yet so many wide open gaps. I could’ve been seen anywhere. Hell, I could barely recall where the stairs were. It all felt so blurry to me. “Police! Show me your goddamn hands!” I froze in needle-like panic, whipping my head to the source of the voice only for nothing to stand there. It was deliberately tracking me, using fake sounds to gauge my exact location. In any moment it would be upon me. Unless there were several and they were triangulating my position. And from the murk, they emerged.

For a moment, I thought they might’ve been people. They appeared before me as naked humanoids with dark eyes and broken jaws. “Drive the knife into your scalp! Cut out the brain chip!” one of them said as the audio emanated from its wide open mouth. “Put your hands on your head and face the wall!”

The crooked things moved slowly and methodically, seeing as I didn’t have much of an escape. Their joints moved out of sync clicking with each miniscule body motion. Reasoning was impossible because they already had me cornered. I had no weapons to defend myself with. My only recourse from death was to find some way to outmaneuver them. Right as I was about to make a break for it, my body was covered in gooseflesh. A voice sounded right next to my ear as a faint whisper. “The wall behind you isn’t rendered in.” My breath caught. And as soon as the imposters’ ears picked up on what I had realized, they pounced. I had a split moment to determine whether or not I would trust the mysterious voice, but it was an opportunity I would take. Just as their rapid bodies were within arms reach, I leapt backwards in the wall I was pressed against. I fell through into a blinding array of light just before their rotting fingers could latch onto my flesh. Blue and white halos darted past my perception until I fell into one of their perfect portals.

In the next instant, I remember launching up from my bed, violently shaking with uncontainable horror. My bedroom spun wildly around me as I tried to regain my composure. No, I already knew it wasn’t a dream. They had to have scanned my brain chip. They know it’s me and they’re coming as I record this.

I keep getting flashing messages from the brain chip software telling me to remove it. I don’t at all know where to go from here. I can’t go to a hospital, they’ll immediately scan me for insurance purposes. They’re going to know I’m a fugitive too. I still have so many questions about who saved me in the Starcrop facility. Were they part of the technological infrastructure? Was the system itself rebelling? I know I’ll never have any answers for this. But I will have an answer for one thing. I’m doing this because it’s the only choice I have left. I have to remove the brain chip myself. In the event that I die performing the procedure, I need this to serve as a warning against nebulous government agendas. I don’t know if removing the device means peace at last or if the disease is so far spread that it doesn’t need the host to function.

The best I’ve got is a large kitchen knife and a pair of tweezers. This will most likely not end well, but I can’t sit around waiting for those things to break down my door. I can hear them outside, circling the perimeter while I type these words. I’m running out of time. If my story ends here, please prevent this curse from being unleashed onto our people. You are the only hope for the future of this species.

Credit: Angelo DiBartolo

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