“No, that’s nonsense. Think positively about it. It’s not death, it’s transition.”
“It doesn’t seem right.”
“Don’t worry, I have a lot of relatives in simulation. I talk to them everyday. They say it’s much better than reality. In simulation, there’s no pain.”
“No pain.” Dale was thoughtful.
While he was distracted, the attendant took the opportunity to use the injector gun against Dale’s neck, right into the jugular vein. Dale gasped, then lied there gritting his teeth. It hurt like hell.
Consciousness dropped away like a stone falling down a dark, deep well.
#
There was a large living room, much larger than his old one.
There was a big, comfortable reclining chair, and a TV screen that took up a whole wall. There was no kitchen, though, and no bath room, and no bedroom. This was because Dale no longer needed any of them.
“The absolute necessity of conserving energy and resources forced society into some harsh decisions,” his orientation counselor, Marilyn, had told him. “It was either outright genocide, or relocation of a large percentage of the population into simulation. As you know, it takes about 1/10,000th the energy and resources to support a person in simulation than it does in the outside ‘reality.’ No offense meant, but it was quite obvious to the Census Bureau that your lifestyle could easily be simulated – and so, here you are. Your personality and memories recorded and kept alive in a computer simulated world.” Which was fine with Dale, since all the latest TV shows were piped in directly, just like in real life.
Dale also found out he had been monitored by the Census Bureau ever since his accident, and that had been used by the Census to setup and catch Vlad and Professor Aki. Virginia Mergle, the woman who had sent Dale to Vlad, had done so at the request of the Bureau. “What ever happened to Vlad and the Professor, anyway?” Dale had asked. Marilyn had told him that they were doing time, right there in the same computer, in a simulated jail.
There is justice in this world, Dale thought, changing the channel on his simulated TV.