5 Years

Prologue

Everyone in the room held their breaths. They were all sitting in a large and open control room, similar to a scene from a rocket launch movie. It was filled with state-of-the-art electronic devices, each operated by highly intelligent and specifically skilled workers. After five long years of planning, generating, and close monitoring of this world, they were anxious to find out the result behind their arduous work. They were all waiting in anticipation for The Report.

The Report was, put simply, a report on the world that everyone had been working on for the past five years. It carried just one important information: whether or not enough humans in the simulated world were able to interact with each other in a profound way.

Joel, one of the workers at Creators Inc. was pondering the reality behind his job. He said to Sana his coworker, "Imagine if we were in the humans' place. These tiny bits of information in our computer simulation actually think that they're real, that they exist in a certain time and place."

"On some level, they do."

"I know information itself in a computer has to exist in some place and some time. But what good can it do?"

"That's not what I meant."

"What then?"

"The humans, they think they're a reality. For all they care, their feelings make them behave in a certain way and therefore their feelings are real for them. Likewise, we feel and behave a certain way and our feelings are real for us. What's to say that we aren't right now running in a simulation?"

"Sana, you and I both know why we run these simulations. There's a solid reason. However suppose there is an upper being. What can they benefit from running a simulation that includes us?"

"You never know. Either way, to finish my point, you and I think we exist, and therefore we do. The humans think they exist, and therefore they do. We all exist on some level."

Joel paused for a second to process what Sana had just told him. His silence was enough to tell her that he agreed - on some level.

Soon enough the negotiators in head office ended their conference and drafted their report. The leader of Creators Inc. was always the one to share the news with his fellow workers. However he only needed to walk into the room with a disappointed look on his face before everyone knew the result. The experiment was again a failure.

The room was designed to promote worker morale, however right now the air was thick and smug and you could feel the tension among the workers. The leader, Dr. Samuel, carefully spoke to everyone in the room. He informed them that even though there was still no trace of profound interaction among a large enough people group in the simulation, there was still hope that that could be found in future simulations. Their hard work was not in vain.

With that he exited the room. Shortly after he came back holding a red key. He inserted it into the control panel and twisted it, opening a cover in the panel. From there a platform rose and revealed one red button, underneath which was written "RESET" in bold, capital letters. Everyone held their breath as the leader backed up from the panel and allowed another worker to press the button.