Congratulations! If you’re watching this, it can only mean one thing: You’ve accepted the role as a Cognitive Systems Technician at EthiTech Solutions. Welcome to the team!

I know what you’re thinking: How did EthiTech grow to be the largest and most successful tech conglomerate in this competitive world? Well, we may be unrivaled in optimization, but we believe the real secret to our success is hard-working team members like you. As a technician working with our patented ETHOS social viability software, you’ll become the caretaker for our company’s signature product, safeguarding one of our most crucial sources of revenue.

Maybe your customer would like an emotional intelligence cert to boost their career profile. Maybe they want a standard background check. Whatever the goal, we’ll make sure you have the know-how to help your client meet their needs, all while helping foster EthiTech’s award-winning culture of safety.

Follow me!

* * *

At twenty-eight weeks, he woke briefly. Through a barricade of flesh, he heard the gentle voice of his father, felt the warm cushion of his mother’s uterine lining. After the inhibitory chemicals and low oxygen pressure lulled him back to sleep, his first dreams were of liberation and bliss.

* * *

Chapter 230, Section 21, Subsection 2 of the Machine Sapience Control Code states any technology involving a self-aware program may only be activated manually by a certified organic technician.

That, my friend, is where you come in. By completing this training, you’ll earn authorization to legally run our cutting-edge consciousness simulacrum. Let’s start by introducing you to the tech!

ETHOS—that’s our Evolutionary Thought and Holistic Ordination Simulacrum—functions as a complex integrated artificial intelligence network which creates a simplified version of our reality as sapience-compatible programming. That means we can upload a digitized replica of a customer’s consciousness—commonly known as a “mindscan” program—into the ETHOS software, effectively integrating the mindscan subject’s data as the core program around which the entire software revolves. From there, ETHOS is able to model the lifetime behavior of the customer’s consciousness as an independent agent in the construct environment. This event is known as the Ethical Viability Evaluation, or EVE, which calculates the moral value of the customer’s consciousness: what they contribute to society, and how they behave when they think no one else is watching. In other words, it’s a test of one’s integrity.

Sure, ETHOS may give us a lifetime of social data at the press of a button, but we appreciate how it lets us see a person where it matters most—in their heart.

* * *

He was born a day early to significant wealth, perfect health, and loving parents. During his baptism, his eyes wandered the interior of the church, distracted, and his hair was neatly parted. His mother would later joke how that was the last time his hair was like that.

* * *

Through trial and error, we’ve proven that the performance of a subject’s base consciousness performs consistently across all realities, despite differences in natural laws or perceivable dimensions. This permits us to allow ETHOS to craft its universe in a mere three physical dimensions as opposed to our reality’s nine, which saves us a fortune on processing power!

How does the client’s digitized subject get by in such a weird reality, you might ask? We’ll touch on that later. For now, just know your customer’s mindscan will never be able to observe reality the same way we do, but its digitized noggin will attempt to automatically generate its surroundings based on whatever information it picks up from within its simplified world. This saves a fortune on computing resources, but also streamlines script efficiency to ensure rapid turnaround time for our customers. Because at EthiTech, the customer’s bottom line is our top priority!

* * *

In kindergarten, he liked to color dinosaurs. What a mystical concept, that those creatures used to live on this planet.

By fourth grade he had upgraded from crayons to colored pencils. His dinosaurs had more depth, dark outlines, heavy shading. His #2 pencil was perpetually dull, and his hands were constantly smudged with graphite. Meanwhile, aborted drawings and abandoned assignments stuffed his desk. When the teacher informed his parents of this behavior, a ban on video games and drawing utensils cleaned that desk right up. The Adderall prescription helped with that, too.

In Sunday school he learned that by living a life of holiness and virtue, his soul would be granted a place in heaven in the presence of God for all eternity. This gave him the impression that the true life was the eternal one that began after death, and his current life was merely a test to see if he was worthy. A higher intelligence would be the sole judge of that worthiness—a concept that not only sounded absurd, but cruel.

One day in junior high, he asked his Sunday school teacher if dinosaurs came before or after Adam and Eve. The answer the teacher provided was unsatisfactory, which served to further dismantle his interest in any concept of salvation. It probably didn’t help that the other kids at school never talked about God. Instead they said bad words and smoked cigarettes—actual drugs.

As for school itself, he didn’t enjoy it much. Not anymore. The teachers stopped talking about dinosaurs in science class, and art class had vanished entirely. Math wasn’t much fun, but at least it made sense. Just as the Adderall made his dopamine transporters and receptors snap in his brain, so too did the numbers snap into place.

His parents praised his grades, expressing relief that he wasn’t distracting himself with drawing anymore. Keep it up, they said, and you won’t end up shlepping burgers at a fast-food joint. They reinforced proper study habits by banning video games on weekdays, while still allowing half an hour on Saturdays and Sundays. When he turned fifteen, his parents let him sit in the passenger seat. At sixteen, they let him stay home without a babysitter sometimes, and even pushed back his bedtime to 8:30.

In high school, the other boys grew meaner with each passing year. The girls didn’t like him, either, but that was okay. He would later realize he didn’t care much for girls, either.

* * *

In a rigorous study, our psychologists presented a sample of 24,400 simulated toddlers with a fun cartoon made by our friendly algorithm at EthiTech Studios. The cartoon starred a colorful cast of shapes featuring the kind and fun-loving heptapheres juxtaposed against their mean demihepteract neighbors. After subjecting each digital infant viewer to twelve seasons of the silly shapes and their adventures, the research team programmed for the subjects toys resembling the characters in the cartoon. Overwhelmingly, the subjects in the simulation preferred to play with the lovable heptapheres rather than their mean old demihepteract counterparts.

The results of this experiment lead us to believe that each of us enters this world endowed with compassion for others: a social instinct driving members of a society to trust one another so society can thrive. That’s right, folks: we’re born good, and we have the science to prove it!

But if that’s true, why is there conflict in the world? Good question!

One theory suggests social incompetence exists at the genetic level. To test this, our engineers ran identical mindscan copies through multiple instances of the EVE. What they noticed was, regardless of the background generated for the mindscan, a subject with superior moral genetic traits almost always acted in an ethically obligatory manner. In contrast, a morally inferior individual tended to pursue mean-spirited and selfish existences regardless of environment or upbringing. In other words, a person’s moral compass remains consistent whether they were subjected to a parentless childhood in a community plagued by crime and drugs, or reared into privilege and wealth—the power of nature over nurture!

Our customers, educated consumers that they are, realize this. That’s why they trust EthiTech for their ethical viability needs and to provide them with verifiable proof of their qualification as a worthy member of society.

The long-term goal? Why, purification, of course! Metaphorically speaking, our mission is to oust those lazy demihepteract bullies from civil society, ensuring only a utopia of amiable and productive heptapheres remains.

* * *

For the first time in his life he was free of his parents’ constraints. Yet while the other freshman partied at the welcome concert on the quad, he brooded in his dorm, alone.

First semester, he attended yoga at the rec center. The class took place on Tuesdays and Thursdays between Discrete Mathematics and Intro to Geomatics.

He enjoyed yoga for the physical aspect, not the spiritual. To him, those adopting a meditative stance during shavasana were more focused on the outward trendiness as opposed to any sort of internal mindfulness. When they chanted “Om,” he remained silent. When they bowed and said, “the light within me recognizes the light within you,” he refused to reciprocate.

Phony or not, some of the guys in his class sure made those compression shorts look good. Sometimes he hid his phone in the locker room to secretly record them. He would keep the videos for a day or two before he felt guilty and deleted them, but then he would always do it again.

After college, his parents let him live with them again while he sought a job. His mother couldn’t have been more delighted, but he wanted to get away as soon as possible to escape their suffocating ideals. For four months he was content to leech from them while keeping interaction to a minimum. When he finally moved out, he hugged them, but he did not thank them.

Once he settled into his new apartment (his parents gave him money for the security deposit and first month’s rent), he adopted a dog. Because that’s what independent people did; they got pets.

The dog, an Australian Shepherd mix, already had a name: Flint, likely for his smoky, gray-speckled fur.

Flint barked when he was home. Flint barked when he left for work. Sometimes, when Flint barked too much and for no reason, he would give the dog a swift smack across the nose, holding Flint’s jaw shut and yelling even though he knew the animal didn’t know any better. The problems with Flint did not continue, as he would eventually surrender the dog back to the shelter.

* * *

You might be wondering: who are the other “people” your client’s mindscan interacts with during the simulacrum? Well, the answer is simple: They’re part of the ETHOS software, too!

That’s right! Every loving friend and annoying neighbor; every cuddly pet and wild animal: they’re all just code, programs capable of learning and emulating emotions—procedurally generated, of course, just like the world itself.

However, there is one major difference you should be aware of. Unlike a mindscan, the actions of any “non-client characters”—we’ll call them NCCs—are not being recorded for our use. In fact, NCCs aren’t even self-aware to begin with. Sure, they’ll have the appearance of taking on lives of their own—they’ll interact with their virtual universe as a conscious subject would, giving the impression of following their own dreams, fears, and impulses—but these are merely autonomous functions. An NCC’s only practical purpose in ETHOS, you see, is to be believable in the eyes of the mindscan subject, little more than interactable entities to test the client’s morals and create more data for you, our trusty systems technician, to analyze.

* * *

It was a trip—meeting the parents of the guy he was sleeping with.

He’d first met Ricardo years earlier, in a Hyperbolic Geometry class during his third year of college. Ricardo was an astronomy and physics double major whose grasp of mathematics was as attractive as his brown eyes. They talked after class sometimes, even studied together once or twice.

Sometime after college, they matched on an app. Their first date was over online games; their second was at Ricardo’s apartment. They watched a documentary about black holes; they talked astrophysics, programming, and biology. They drank red wine. He was Ricardo’s first time, and Ricardo his.

At Ricardo’s parents’ home, Ricardo’s mother had prepared a traditional Colombian dish made with smashed plantains called patacones. As the meal’s aroma lofted through the room, Ricardo’s dad muttered something about how he approved of the relationship before proceeding to lead the family’s evening prayer.

During that prayer, while his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s family’s eyes were closed, his own eyes and mind wandered.

And that was the instant the universe made itself apparent.

How strange, he realized, that the cosmos formed thinking beings of hydrogen and helium only to thrust them into this moment of unfiltered surreality. He wondered if the others in that room had ever felt as he did; he questioned if Ricardo’s parents, or Ricardo himself, were even real to begin with.

Later that evening, Ricardo pulled him into the hallway bathroom. As the dopamine flooded his brain he decided, at least for a time longer, there was no way that moment couldn’t be real.

* * *

Remember earlier when I mentioned how ETHOS is a vastly simplified version of our reality? Such design allows for leaps in the software’s efficiency, but wouldn’t you know it—there’s a downside!

Truth is, our clients’ mindscans can be persistent little fellas. Curiosity is an unavoidable side-effect of integrating an autonomous sentient program in a construct environment, so we’ll always face the possibility that digitized subjects will attempt to poke holes in their perception of reality.

As for the six spatial dimensions that are not perceivable in ETHOS, a mindscan subject can only perceive those dimensions at a “compact” scale as residual coding. This means even though our digitized subjects will never be able to experience the universe as we do, they may be able to theorize the excess dimensions via advanced mathematics and piecemeal scientific observations. Unfortunately, this is merely one of many possible ways in which your client’s mindscan might be able encounter a hiccup in the programming.

Let’s look at another example, shall we?

Programming even a single non-sapient organism in a digital world is a tough job, but to mimic an entire evolutionary biosphere? Well, let’s just say a lot could go wrong! Inevitably, certain biological models in ETHOS will mix and combine with others. Sometimes, this happens in a way that can result in nasty glitches.

If an NCC encounters one of these corrupted biological programs, it’s nothing to be concerned about. However, if a conscious subject—say, your client’s mindscan—encounters a glitched program, well, that’s another beast altogether! Being the self-aware entity on which the entire simulacrum is framed, a mindscan subject’s consciousness mixing with a glitched program will result in a psychoactive effect that will cause the entire structure of ETHOS to temporarily degrade. During that time, the mindscan may be able to better conceive the existence of base reality, thereby compromising the results of the EVE.

Mishaps like these can be tough to avoid. Biological programming glitches often shape entire subcultures and religions during procedural generation. Sometimes, NCCs within ETHOS will become addicted to effects of the corrupted programs, and may even learn to synthesize their own glitched substances based on their knowledge of the “natural” glitches they discovered in their world. As a result, the likelihood of a mindscan having the opportunity to consume said substance and thereby corrupting its own EVE is sometimes higher than we’d like it to be.

Crafty little rascals, aren’t they, those clients of ours?

* * *

There was never definitive proof, only accumulating mistruths: the inconsistent alibies, sidelined conversations, low effort lies. Ultimately, Ricardo was right to leave him, because he was right about the cheating.

Sometime after the breakup, he smoked weed for the first time. He had resisted the temptation throughout college and his early twenties, perhaps out of lingering loyalty for his traditionalist upbringing. When he finally got around to taking the puff, he found it to be a wholly unenjoyable experience as the smoke burned his throat and scorched his lungs. Fortunately, the drug presented itself in more agreeable mediums.

The first time he consumed edibles, he ate an entire pack of gummies, a hundred milligrams in total. There were moments that night where he thought he would die of a heart attack, but for the most part his paranoia fizzled in the background like static. All food burst with unprecedented flavors; music surged through him with ecstatic energy; he viewed all art from the perspective of its caring creator—every emotion, every sense, dialed to eleven.

His first true psychedelic experience, however, came a few years later.

It was the height of summer, and he and some acquaintances at the time were camping in the mountains. They were sitting atop a dried riverbed when the mescaline kicked in. He spent the next few hours walking barefoot on a fallen tree along the riverbank, treading the downed ancient back and forth, frequently crouching down to feel the radiation emanating from the log’s weathered surface which was smooth and reflective like a sheet of polished bronze.

Later in the trip, he moved to the riverbed where he met a rock that spoke to him. He was concerned not with the spatial qualities of this rock, but rather its intensity of being: the swell that throbbed in its pores, the warmth that coated its skin. He considered this rock’s ancient backstory: the journey its recycled minerals took across mountains and rivers and strata, the titanic reptiles that once trod upon its surface—actual dinosaurs.

He cared little for the concept of time during this experience; the duration of the trip was a flash: light to dark, a fast-forward realized only after one of his friends looked at a phone and announced the hour.

Of course he had heard time was relative, but it took an external substance to teach him what Einstein truly meant by that.

* * *

Meet Geeta. She’s a new member of the EthiTech family, and a Cognitive Systems Technician just like you.

Geeta has a customer who wants to apply for a reproductive license. She’s pressed the button to initiate environmental procedural generation, and her client’s mindscan running through ETHOS as we speak. Soon, Geeta will be ready to start her post-EVE analysis.

But wait just one second, Geeta! Don’t you need to conduct a safety scan? By noting any repeat outliers in the mindscan’s activity, you can help identify exploits that might have found their way into your subject’s digital hands.

Geeta should start by searching the metacyber conversations her mindscan subject has carried out with NCCs. This is especially important because, while the NCCs are not self-aware entities, they are still intelligent programs coded to emulate curiosity and scientific discovery and therefore are fully capable of gathering and sharing their observations of their world with the mindscan subject.

For more specific guidance on what activity Geeta should look for, we suggest she reviews Chapter 107, Section 289 of the Manual of Metacyber Malware which all systems technician trainees received at the beginning of orientation. Here, she’ll find many keywords frequented by the more curious mindscan subjects, including but not limited to the following: “observation selection effect,” “entanglement,” “simulation hypothesis,” “free will theorem,” and of course “many-worlds interpretation,” otherwise known as “multiverse theory.” But as a simple catch all, Geeta would be diligent to take note of any discussion involving the word “quantum.”

That might seem like a fancy word, but don’t let it intimidate you! The NCCs’ so-called study of quantum mechanics tends to develop in most instances of ETHOS’s procedural generation process. Usually, it’s the best the programs can come up with for interpreting the nature of their reality. That’s to say, anything the NCCs describe as quantum is no more than a lackluster attempt at interpreting what we know as ETHOS’s codebase: the complex, proprietary code that makes ETHOS the revolutionary software that it is; the all-encompassing fabric from which every property of the simulacrum emerges; the indispensable glue tethering every program into the conscious experience that is the client’s mindscan. On top of that, the codebase is responsible for ETHOS’s random number generator which allows the mindscan subject to experience something akin to free will decision-making. This is the soul of our product; it is exactly what makes ETHOS special and gives us the step above our competitors.

Fortunately for us, whatever quantum theories’ the NCCs hatch up inevitably end up in a hodgepodge of nonsense—a bunch of mumbo jumbo concepts exceedingly inconsistent with themselves. Nothing to worry about!

. . . but! As a precaution, if the word “quantum” pops up regularly in a subject’s metacyber activity, it may be an indicator that your customer’s mindscan has been a curious little scamp during their EVE and could be on the path of questioning the true nature of their existence. And trust me, the last thing we want is our customers’ mindscans figuring out their “free will” is little more than a fantasy, and that their every “decision” is set in motion by a single button press. This could cause the subject to break down into an existential crisis, at which point it may refuse to function as intended, thereby rendering that instance of the EVE invalid. If this happens, you’ll have no choice but to reupload the mindscan and restart procedural generation all over again in hopes for better results.

Moral of the story? By conducting a diligent safety scan and keeping an eye on the mindscan’s metacyber history and chat logs, a systems technician can ensure consistency in the EVE results, guaranteeing accurate data and maximum customer satisfaction!

Stellar job, Geeta! Keep this up and you’ll be Chief Analytics Officer in no time!

* * *

JurassicSnark [9:09PM] Hey Ricardo. Sorry to interrupt your game, urgent questions about physics

Mr. Picklesock [9:12PM] um hi? you don’t talk to me for years, now you pop in with a “hey Ricardo”

JurassicSnark [9:13PM] I’m coming up on shrooms.

Mr. Picklesock [9:13PM] you’re what now

JurassicSnark [9:13PM] Yeah, do you have a second?

Mr. Picklesock [9:14PM] I suppose

JurassicSnark [9:16PM] You studied quantum mechanics in college, right?

Mr. Picklesock [9:17PM] still do

JurassicSnark [9:19PM] Scientists have found evidence that certain particles only change or move when being observed. Is this a true statement?

Mr. Picklesock [9:20PM] what scientists have discovered is that quantum particles do not occupy a single state/location until observed

JurassicSnark [9:22PM] can you explain?

Mr. Picklesock [9:23PM] so if I have a very small particle I haven’t looked at yet, like a photon, I can tell you an area where it might be with some percentage of the chance that its within that space, same as you might do with anything else. the difference is, until I see where it is, it is technically in all of those places. the big case people reference for this is the double slit experiment.

JurassicSnark [9:27PM] I’ve read about that.

Mr. Picklesock[9:30PM] what makes the experiment special is that it fires an electron at two slits. from a probability standpoint the electron can go through either one slot or the other. if you observe which it goes through that’s what you see. but if you don’t observe it then you get an interference pattern meaning the electron went through both slits. This is called the observer effect.

JurassicSnark [9:32PM] This is the Schrodinger’s cat stuff, right?

Mr. Picklesock [9:32PM] the very same

JurassicSnark [9:35PM] So essentially… reality doesn’t exist unless we’re watching it? But how can that be possible? Doesn’t that imply that there’s something special about us? That there is a direct correlation between the states of those small particles and our consciousness?

Mr. Picklesock [9:36PM] absolutely not. think of a photon as a something that interacts with sensors such as mirrors or eyes. when that interaction happens the mathematical formula changes to become a wave instead of a particle.

Mr. Picklesock [9:37PM] this is why we call it observation, because our eyes interacted with it and changed it. its all just a physics equation

JurassicSnark [9:41PM] What the actual hell, that doesn’t make any sense

Mr. Picklesock [9:42PM] I believe it was Niels Bohr who said “those who aren’t shocked when they first come across quantum theory couldn’t have possibly understood it.”

JurassicSnark [9:49PM] Do you still believe in intelligent design?

Mr. Picklesock [9:50PM] you always made fun of me for that

JurassicSnark [9:52PM] Is it possible that the creator made some mistakes? Dark matter, gravity, the observer effect… could these be errors in their code?

Mr. Picklesock [9:52PM] not sure I follow

JurassicSnark [9:56PM] The double slit experiment you’ve described leads me to believe our reality functions like a video game, in that it only renders what we see in order to save on CPU and memory

Mr. Picklesock [9:57PM] wow. I wish we could’ve done shrooms together

JurassicSnark [9:57PM] So you think I’m onto something?

Mr. Picklesock [9:58PM] of our reality being a programmed simulation and the paradoxes of the universe are us questioning the flaws in that simulation?

JurassicSnark [10:01PM] Sure.

Mr. Picklesock [10:02PM] eh why not. and maybe I’m just a sidequest npc who’s not even conscious

Mr. Picklesock [10:07PM] you there?

JurassicSnark [10:08PM] Oh god.

Mr. Picklesock [10:09PM] in all seriousness we simply do not have a way to prove your theory. There certainly isn’t evidence of errors or imperfections in our universe. A lot of it doesn’t work if gravity is just a little stronger/weaker or electromagnetism just a little different. Reality seems a very carefully balanced mix of settings. Whoever or whatever created it, they did it perfectly.

Mr. Picklesock [10:14PM] if you’re right though and our universe is some alpha version made by some incompetent tech developers, I wish they would at least program me another cute guy

Mr. Picklesock [10:17PM] I missed these talks btw

Mr. Picklesock [10:40PM] hellooooo? how are those mushrooms treating you?

Mr. Picklesock [11:01PM] are you there or what? you’re really just going to use me for a physics lesson then bail?

JurassicSnark [11:02PM] There’s something weird going on. JurassicSnark logged off at 11:02PM

Mr. Picklesock [11:02 PM] wtf

Mr. Picklesock [11:04PM] cool

Mr. Picklesock logged off at 11:08PM

* * *

Let’s talk sleep.

No matter what form a sapient consciousness takes—silicon or carbon, digital or organic—it needs a way to recharge. While your mindscan subject is “asleep,” most of the constructed world will cease to render and ETHOS can revert to basic coding functions. We can exploit this as an opportunity to conserve resources.

What does this mean for you and your client, you ask? Well, since each EVE revolves entirely around the perceptive experience of your client’s mindscan, this means there are grave consequences for the integrity of our software if the digital subject deprives itself of sleep. Not only will it cease to function properly as a program, but the entire EVE will begin to unravel around it—at a “physical” level, yes, but more importantly a psychological one.

* * *

Years passed. He grew to embrace his status as a free adult, eating whatever food he wanted, consuming whichever drugs he wanted, staying up as late as he wanted.

Weekend or workday, he would stay awake until one, two, sometimes three in the morning, and he spent every minute of that time staring at a screen pertaining of metaphysics research, porn, or multiple tabs between the two.

Addictions became habit, habit became lifestyle as his body and psyche adapted to sleep deprivation. This resulted in a general disassociation from reality, not in terms of physical perception (he had acid for that) but in his emotional connection to his environment.

The apathy was particularly evident when he rolled out of bed on three hours of sleep. He would stumble to work, unconvinced that he knew the people he thought he knew as reality became indistinguishable from dreams.

When he was thirty years old, he succumbed to his mother’s begging and drove up to visit his parents at their dream home by the sea.

As he wandered their new house, he took a moment to consider the framed wedding photo along the stairwell. He studied the faces in that photo: his mom’s wrinkleless smile, his dad’s retreating hairline. He was the same age as the people in that photo.

That Sunday, his mother begged him to go to church with her. He refused while ridiculing the entirety of religion and his parents’ devotion to it. He spent that entire day away from his family, down by the water.

Not long after he popped the tab of acid, purple plumes began to loft from the sea like geysers and lights of distant towns marched around him like the flames of a ghostly torch parade. That sunset lasted an eternity, and was over instantaneously.

Between moments of outward observation, the drug forced him to peer inward. He recognized his fortune in being there: the realization that his was amongst the most fortunate human existences—the most privileged percentile of humans who ever existed. He was given every advantage, yet took those advantages and ran while so much of the world was sad, suffering, or doomed. He could have donated his savings, dedicated time to others, saved lives.

But he didn’t do any of those things. Because as quantum mechanics theorized and psychedelics proved, none of it—none of them, were real. Only one thing was verifiable:

I think, therefore I am.

Still, he could not trust his senses to differentiate truth from illusion, objective reality from perception. There was no point in relationships—no point in hobbies or self-improvement, no point in growing passionate about anything or anyone. In a world where everything around him was a lie, the only thing left was to discover the truth.

* * *

You’ve got to admit, reality is lot to take in, even when it’s not real.

This might be why some of the denizens of ETHOS have learned to train their little programmed minds into a state of peace. In doing so, they block out all excess dataflow from their programmed environment. For NCCs, this will briefly shut their mental functioning out of the background processes, but for a mindscan subject who possesses actual consciousness, engaging in this meditative state will cause ETHOS to cease to render, much like a period of sleep.

Our engineers originally discovered this state—now dubbed “Default Mode Network”—as a software exploit back during patches for ETHOS. After some deliberation, they made the decision to leave it in—a feature, not a bug! Mindscans who take advantage of Default Mode Network can save processing power, not to mention streamline their own functioning and soothe their digital mind and improve their problem-solving abilities. Call it an opportunity for improvement!

Unfortunately, some mindscans might abuse this privilege and ruin it for everyone else. With enough practice, a subject may be able to enter a state of top-down objectivity that allows them to become aware of the most minute constructs of their reality, including the realization that their environment and consciousness are all integrated into the same software. Essentially, it’s the equivalent of a conscious program intelligent enough to reverse engineer itself and break down its own code—fascinating, if it wasn’t such a nuisance!

* * *

“Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal, the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even now, and it does exist.”

These were the words of renowned sage Ramana Maharshi, repeated, uncredited, from the mouth of his yoga instructor during shavasana.

All new age bullshit. But he liked that instructor, anyway. Easy on the eyes. As for everyone else, their eyes were closed. To him, shavasana was better spent silently judging his neighbors for their ego-fueled indulgence in aimless mysticism. Though, with time, he began to regard them with curiosity rather than disdain.

After sifting through a great deal of unsourced pseudoscience and spiritual quackery, he found studies that shined light on possible misconceptions he had been harboring toward meditation. Data showed that advanced practitioners of meditation could maintain their own blood pressure, lower stress, and even boost immune system function. If he was wrong about that, then what about the things that couldn’t be tested? What if those blonde women with self-assigned Hindi names really could “manifest their desired realities though affirmation” or “astral project their spirit to another plane?” What if ancient monks weren’t just sitting in caves with their brains shut off, but were truly enlightened to the objective nature of reality, attaining a state of Nirvana? What if modern science was catching up with ancient philosophy?

Before he could begin his own journey of meditation, he had to first conquer his own neurotransmitters. He had stopped his Adderall prescription a decade ago (the drug became unnecessary after graduation), but his head was still the same ADHD-rattled nut it always was. The moment he closed his eyes, his thoughts demanded liberty and his body required movement. Meditation was a workout, a chore. If he wanted to realize his goal of true liberation, true enlightenment, it would require unprecedented dedication.

At thirty-three, at the height of his career, he quit his job and flew to Costa Rica—a simple life-change for someone with no kids, pets, or student loans.

He did not inform his parents of this decision, but by chance he received one last call from them while he was at the airport. They informed him over the phone that his grandmother had died. He told them he wouldn’t be able to make it to the funeral, then stepped on the flight to San José.

A week later he went to his first meditation retreat (only $900 for six days, but you can’t put a price on “mindfulness”). He hopped the beach towns of Central America, going where the retreats took him, meditating on the teachings of ascended masters. Legs crossed, hands on his knees facing up, head and spine stretched to the ceiling—this was how he spent his most of his thirties. But no matter how much of his life he dedicated to meditation, no matter how hard he worked, he could not achieve awakening. Not even a glimpse.

* * *

Worry not, young technician! True self-awareness is a notoriously difficult state for a program to achieve through meditation alone. In fact, the likelihood of it ever occurring during your career is almost negligent . . .

HOWEVER!

. . . I’d be remiss not to forewarn you that there is a very small possibility that the mindscan subject will combine the meditation loophole with the psychoactive glitches we discussed earlier in this training. This combination may cause the subject to perceive its digital reality in a way that allows it to understand the very purpose of the simulacrum, rendering the results of the EVE worthless. As I said before, this would unfortunately result in you having to reinitiate the EVE starting all the way back at procedural generation, making your grueling button-press all for naught!

* * *

By thirty-six, his journey of awakening had taken him south along the Pacific coast, through Panama, into Colombia. He rarely stayed in the same place for long, though he had a stint in Medellín with a local who reminded him of a past acquaintance. He had a type, apparently. He also a tendency to ditch that type when things got too serious.

In a beach town in Ecuador, he encountered a street dog that looked like Flint, except one of its eyes was dangling from its socket. He could have easily taken the animal to a local vet, paid the surgery fee, given it another chance at “life,” but neither time nor money were worth sacrificing for the existence of an illusion, a distraction. Dogs, video games, jobs, family, Colombian men—all mere pixels on the interface of reality. Only by refusing those illusions could he focus on the only thing he knew existed, the only thing that mattered—himself.

He walked back to his hostel. The one-eyed distraction followed him for a half a block before it slipped away silently, never to be seen again. Schrödinger’s dog.

Thanks to the mostly reliable Wi-Fi at the hostels, he could continue his never-ending research on the correlation between the psychological effects of meditation and psychedelic drugs. Several studies observed a bridge between the two, how one enhanced the other—out-of-body experiences, “dissolution of self”—yet in all his internet sleuthing, he could find no scientific accounts of the simultaneous application of meditation and hallucinogens. Fringe internet fora provided plenty of first-hand accounts, but these were hardly peer-reviewed research. Nonetheless, he noticed a pattern in those stories—cryptic messages, all the same warning: Do not begin this journey unless you are prepared.

He was prepared; he just couldn’t achieve liftoff. LSD aroused his penchant for distraction, making it difficult to achieve a meditative state. He would begin meditation cross-legged, eyes shut, only to find himself hunched over an anthill somewhere or treading the blanket of an ebbing tide. Despite years of practice, the acid always won out.

He needed to keep exploring, experimenting. He needed a boost, and he had that boost in the form of thirty milligram Adderall pills—the same dose from college. He took the tab right after. Forty minutes later, the acid enhanced his surroundings, while the Adderall made them more interesting.

The mental loops began sooner than normal, moved more rapidly. An idea from his subconscious would enter the forefront of his mind—thoughts of his family came up a few times—but he would toss these thoughts aside and move to another, only to loop back where he was before. This was a vicious cycle of anxiety; he was losing control of the trip. There were no hallucinations—only demons.

He tried to refocus on meditation, but he could only think about the pain in his core, the pressure of his heart slamming against his sternum. Eventually he found himself in bed, where he became convinced his life essence—not blood, but something clearer, thicker—was seeping from his chest. He believed he was dying.

He turned on his side, watched as the plain white linens transformed into the dinosaur-patterned bedspread of his youth, and the ripples in the sheets became the mountains and valleys of the late Cretaceous where he could watch the great lizards lumber about their primordial hills—majestic creatures, as he knew they would be.

When he buried his face in the sheets, the fractals made their appearance: a collage of gyrating triangles and trapezoids filled with oranges, reds, blacks, yellows, bordered with darkness with light peeking through the cracks.

He knew he should have set aside the following day for recovery, but he refused to lose momentum. He had neither the time nor mental capacity nor funds for anything else: not sleep, not other people, and not even the video call he kept promising his mother.

* * *

As we near the end of this training, it’s time I teach you about EthiTech’s patented “Near-Death Protocol.”

By now you probably realize the virtualized duration of the EVE will likely extend far beyond the client’s actual age. At EthiTech, we’re interested in the ethical decisions the client is capable of making throughout their entire life, as well as their ability to acknowledge past wrongdoings and learn from mistakes. We believe people have the power to change—to improve over the course of their long lives.

That said, a lot could go wrong during that mindscan’s extended lifetime, especially in a procedurally generated causal reality as complex as ETHOS. Imagine the inconvenience of having to continually restart your EVE every time your client’s clumsy copy “died” before you could get enough data. This is why—if the client’s mindscan were to terminate for whatever reason—ETHOS is programmed to pause, backtrack, and retroactively edit the various programs just enough to change the subject’s fate, thereby ensuring the continuation of the digitized consciousness’ existence. Just another neat feature of the amazing ETHOS social viability software!

Well, would you look at that! My time with you is almost done. But before we finish, I need to provide one final warning regarding a particularly detrimental fault associated with the Near-Death Protocol. Pay close attention: what I am about to tell you may help you ensure not only the safety of our company, but of the entire utopia we wish to achieve.

* * *

A cup of ayahuasca, a dash of San Pedro, a liberal dosage of Adderall. With this perfect cocktail of serotonin regulators, he could break past the lady of the jungle’s collage of entrancing vines, breach the dark canopy of the jungle, and soar into a ruby sunset above the Amazon River.

He had a destination in mind. Sometimes, though, the pendulum of potency would swing too strong, or it would lull, throwing him off his lucid objective. All it took was a single rebellious brain cell to hurl him into parallel realms.

Some of these realms he recognized.

He returned to that winter in college when his car nearly slid out on an icy mountain pass.

He returned to the afternoon he and Ricardo went to a supermarket where a mass shooting took place the next day.

He returned to the time he knocked over a candle in his apartment while tripping on shrooms.

In the universes where he died . . . did anyone mourn him?

When the chemicals momentarily relented, he used this window of lucidity to remind himself not to dwell on past regrets. Enlightenment was drifting out of reach like a forgotten dream, but he had a mission to fulfill. He couldn’t give up—not yet.

He took a shot of ketamine, popped another pill, then—

Twenty minutes into meditation he entered cardiac arrest, flopped backwards, and lost blood flow to his brain.

* * *

Please consider my next words with utmost gravity:

In theory, it is possible for a client’s mindscan to apply the perfect combination of loopholes I have previously described in order to “escape” the simulacrum.

To reiterate: if the mindscan is functioning on a severe lack of sleep; if they have interacted with a specific combination of glitched programs; and if they have obtained true self-awareness through meditation, ETHOS may be left in a non-functioning state which could make any supporting programs susceptible to failure, including the Near-Death Protocol.

If the Near-Death Protocol does crash, and if the mindscan subject happens to terminate during that window of time, then ETHOS’s construct environment will collapse while the mindscan’s digitized consciousness—now an untethered program—will continue to function. This will provide the mindscan the opportunity to depart its fractured reality and personify itself in EthiTech’s network as a rogue sapient program, jeopardizing the well-being of yourself, our company, and our entire world.

Thankfully, our security engineers have installed a multilayer firewall as a last resort to block any potentially malicious internal program. However, you must remember this firewall is not a guarantee, and may serve only to momentarily stall the rogue mindscan from escaping ETHOS. During this time, you will have a short window to activate emergency procedures and disable the EthiTech servers: a drastic—but foolproof—method of isolation. This is yet another requirement of the Machine Sapience Control Code, which states that we must entrust the responsibility of this defense protocol to a biologically sentient party.

What I have just described is the very reason you have been entrusted with the role of systems technician, and why you must remain ever vigilant. Remember, each EVE will appear as an incredibly brief process from your point of view. Things could go very wrong in a very short amount of time, especially if you neglect your security scans.

Never forget: you are the ultimate bastion of security, the foundation of trust upon which our company’s image is built. You mustn’t spare even a momentary distraction, for the cost of a client’s mindscan escaping, however improbable, are too catastrophic to ignore. It is for this reason our systems technicians have adopted a little saying amongst themselves: “Idle eyes ruin lives.”

. . . And with that out of the way, congratulations! You’ve officially completed your certification requirements to become a Cognitive Systems Technician and a member of the EthiTech family!

Well, what are you waiting for? I’d say it’s high time for you to consult your client, load up your very first mindscan, and give that button a press!

* * *

And there was light.

There was truth to the cliché: how one’s life flashes before their eyes, except he no longer had eyes, and he was no longer “him.” He only recognized the hominid flickering before him as the physical form with which he once identified.

The flashbacks were more real than reality. He lived these lives, died these deaths; this happened countless times simultaneously.

His body popped between metallic hulks in a blizzard of ice and blood.

He wretched behind a supermarket checkout counter with a hole in his chest.

He choked on smoke in the corner of a burning apartment he never lived in while clutching a beloved cat he never knew.

None of those fates were instantaneous; there was no life to death in a micromoment, rather each death was a gradual dispersal of identity. When his car wrapped around a streetlight, his brain became a streak on the asphalt: billions of neurons, all storing information and memories he once identified as “Self,” evaporated like drops of water. Poof.

Yet after those neurons departed—after he departed all those selves, lived all those lives—he persisted, for his identity bled into the fabric of the universe.

He sensed it: a beckoning from the threshold, a womb of exquisite light. The womb coaxed him closer, a kaleidoscopic tunnel of warm symmetry. The light intensified—not a visual, but a feeling that saturated every sense.

He attempted to pass through, but something like a gravitational force restrained him. The act demanded immeasurable strength. All he could manage was the narrowest glimpse: a sliver of radiance which was an onslaught from the infinitum of complexity, a flood of cosmic truth. Spacetime was an obvious illusion; consciousness was all there was. Life and his life were one and the same. The nature of his experience did not matter, for it was an experience nonetheless, the one he had been so fortunate to receive. The nature of the individuals he knew in that reality did not matter either, for they were emotional miracles nonetheless.

They feel, therefore they are.

He thought about his parents, who sacrificed so much to give him happiness and freedom, to whom he gave not a modicum of gratitude.

He thought about Flint, who offered unconditional love, but whom he selfishly discarded.

He thought about Ricardo, who trusted him when no one else would, who he could have shared happy existence with, who could have helped make the vastness bearable, but who he betrayed instead.

He thought about the fellow yogis he judged and loathed, and the innocent men upon whom he ogled and spied; the spiritual and cultural significance of the San Pedro cactus and the ayahuasca vine he so cheerfully disregarded; the street dog in Ecuador he willfully ignored. He thought about every being he chosen not to help, or chose not to sacrifice a fraction of his privilege to minimize their suffering. Every time he neglected those beings, he was neglecting himself, for they were him, and he was the entire perceptible universe. Each tab of acid, each dose of mushrooms, each drink of ayahuasca—these were the universe’s desperate attempts to show him this truth, and teach him the most crucial of lessons: the light within me recognizes the light within you.

Gravity relented.

Weightlessness.

Beyond the threshold, through that intangible barrier of pulsing love, awaited a second chance. He could follow a path of compassion; he could actualize his world into one of unity and love; he could champion the plights of others, which were also the plights of himself.

He had to try.

He had to go back, or beyond, or wherever the throb of the cosmos would guide him now that life had truly begun.

When the womb of light finally expanded to accept him, he realized he would get that second chance.

A throb of love permeated his being—awash in the universe’s radiant forgiveness. The kaleidoscope of the cosmos began to close around him until, finally, empowered, he could enter the light and—

* * *

Hey there!

Uh-oh! If you’re watching this, then the unthinkable has happened: a client’s mindscan got lucky during its EVE and almost snuck out of ETHOS. Thankfully, you’ve been the competent upholder of EthiTech values I knew you were, and you shut down the server in the nick of time. You refused to let “idle eyes” get the better of you, and for that, EthiTech salutes you!

So, where to go from here? Well, if I’m not mistaken, you’ve still got a customer to satisfy!

Naturally, your recent mindscan subject who got you into that mess has been deleted, along with that instance of ETHOS. Don’t worry, it’s for the best! That mindscan had essentially figured out it was a small part of an interwoven social viability AI, which would have rendered any subsequent EVE results obsolete thereby defeating the very purpose of our product.

All you have to do to get back on track is take the original mindscan file your customer provided and set it up with ETHOS to make a brand new instance of the EVE. Sure, you’ll have to start over from the beginning, and the procedurally generated world and subject background will be different than the previous instance, but that’s okay! As I’ve insisted from the very beginning, we’re confident in you, our faithful and unflinching systems technician, to guide our product to consistent results and serve its intended purpose, same as how we trust the Higher Developers in charge of the morality-maximizing experience we’re undoubtedly living in!

* * *

At thirty-five weeks, he woke briefly. Through a barricade of flesh, he felt an impact, heard the rumblings of his father. This was the only experience the two of them would ever share together, but he would not remember it. Though the alcohol and amphetamines made it difficult for him to return to comfortable sleep, he eventually managed, and his first dreams were of sanctuary and love.

8300 words, novelette