Living a Lie

At exactly 6:30 A.M, Jennifer Jiang woke up. After waking, Jennifer made her bed and did her general routine. She reached for her calendar. It was March 15th 2138, Jennifer Jiang turned twenty three. She sighed at the monotony of her mornings. It was always: wake up, routine, eat, and work. She wished for an adventure on her birthday, but she had a job to go to.

“I’m getting older and I still haven’t done anything meaningful in my life,” Jennifer sighed as she ambulated her way down the spiral staircase. Not a sound was heard, only silence and stillness wandered her house. At a single glance, her house looked black and white and depressing.

“Twenty-three and still alone” Jennifer sighed. As she made her way to the kitchen, Jennifer collected ingredients to make a sweet and simple breakfast. Despite it being her birthday, she was lackadaisical, she was past the age of feeling enthusiasm on holidays. They were just another day. When she finished her breakfast, she decided to go out for a morning jog. The weather was fair, not too warm, not too cold, not too windy, not too still, it was breezy. Her neighbors stood their idly. As she jogged passed her neighbors, each greeted her one by one. As she turned around, her neighbors looked into the distance as if they all were daydreaming. She sighed as she thought it was suspicious that each time she went outside, someone would come out and greet her. Their words sounded empty, nothing behind them.

At approximately 7:45 A.M, Jennifer finished her jog and walked into her house. She walked back up into her spiral staircase, walked into her bathroom and washed her face and changed out of her running wear. As she walked into her room to gather her belongings for work, she noticed a black notebook that she had never seen.

The black notebook was tattered. She felt the notebook. It was made with soft leather. As she noticed little details of the notebook, out of curiosity, she opened it. There was a name, but it was not legible. She felt the pages, they were soft and delicate.

She flipped to the first page. It was titled “Success”. As she read further into it, her heart dropped. “July 26th 2089, our experiment was passed by the government and got permission to use citizens of Earth in this project. In order to do so, we offered a large sum of money in exchange for humans. So far, we’ve gotten about 100 humans participating in this. We have about 38 adults, 20 newborns, 29 elderly, and 13 teenagers. We hope to have about 1 billion in total participating in this. This project is the second model of Earth instead of naming it “Earth” we decided to spell it backwards in honor of Earth and name it “htraƎ”. This place is like a simulation. We set up a set of teleportation pads in case our first human figures out how to escape. Despite that, we hypnotized those over the age of 4 to believe that htraƎ was where they were born. In our hypothesis, we would predict that it would take about 34 years, which would be the year 2138. The escaper knew something all along.” Jennifer dropped her notebook in shock.

“Do I live in this world?” Jennifer questioned. She knew something was always off. Jennifer felt overwhelmed with the information she read. Her only response was to having tears stream down her face, her hands began to shake uncontrollably.

“I can’t be worked up over something like this...this must be a lie. I mean, I knew there was something off about this place, but this must be my imagination,” Jennifer cried. As Jennifer collected herself, she took a few deep breaths before picking up the notebook. “For what reason?” she asked. As she was emotionally destroyed, she was also curious on the day of her birth. She flipped to her birthday, March 15th 2115. “Real human experimentee #2098732, Jennifer Jiang participates in this experiment. Miss Jiang’s general information: age: 2, gender: female, weight: 16lb (underweight). Despite being 2 years of age, she exceeds our expectations. She is able to do third grade mathematics and read grade level 5 books. Her family was a couple million in debt, I offered about 30 million in exchange for Jennifer since she is a unique one and they complied. My prediction is that Miss Jennifer Jiang will be the one that escapes this world. She has a gift, it is unfortunate to see her end up this way.”

She noticed several certain pages were marked, about twenty pages were marked. As she read through them, thoroughly, she concluded that there was a way to escape this “world” that she lived in. Jennifer found that certain products sometimes are teleported through teleportation areas on the planet she was born in, Earth, sometimes intentionally and unintentionally. The crack impacted some ways of life, such as how the “simulated” people’s distortion in figure. Unlike Earth, htraƎ’s core was in a building which holds a set of teleportation pads. Earth’s Asia was the size of htraƎ, itself.

She set out for her adventure, packing needed necessities. Not knowing how long the journey would take, she packed extra. “Gas costs $10. To travel to the middle it would take multiple refills, assuming if we --. No, I’ll be out of here. Money is no longer a concern,” Jennifer said. She looked around her house that she purchased with her own money, everything she owned was with her efforts. Now? They were thrown out the window and were never real to begin with. Jennifer definitely had an attachment in the world she grew up in. “Alright, time to set out on this half week long road trip,” Jennifer sighed. She packed her belongings and threw them into her car. As she backed out of her driveway, Jennifer looked around her community knowing she would never forget this world that she lived in. She felt conflicted, debating on how to feel about this place. It was still the place she grew up in, but still a total lie.

Jennifer was 23 and found the truth about her life and its entirety. After four days worth of travel, she arrived at an isolated location. It looked like an unrealistic movie set up. She got out of her car and took her keys and belongings with her. She walked to the building. It was a small squared building. She had no clue of knowing where the entrance was. All around had white tiles, she scanned the exterior of the building. She rummaged her backpack for the notebook which had a blueprint of the building, as she found the page, the book faded into dust. After she took a deep breath, Jennifer tapped on each tile. All sounded the same, that method would not work. She wracked her brain for other possible clues. There were no windows, no hinges to a door, the place looked concealed. She gently touched each tile around the building within her reach. She analyzed the texture and shaping of each tile she touched. Some were solid and smooth, glazed with polish, other tiles that were not as glazed and polished as the others, was her entrance to the building. She gently tapped tiles that we unpolished and succeeded. Inside, there were white tiled walls and floors. Everything was white. As she got deeper into the building, she saw six different halls, there were no signs telling where each hall led to. Instead of deciding herself, she pulled out her phone and opened the “Roll A Die” app. She shook her phone and it stopped on “5”. She shoved her phone back in her pocket and ran into hall five. It seemed like a never ending hall, after ten minutes, Jennifer continued running on a straight path, yet nothing was shown. The hall began to split.

Needless to say, she eventually found a room with a black door. Inside the room, there were clear glass windows with white window panes, but nothing inside the room besides two circles in the room. She entered the room and walked into one of the circles. Soon after, a screen appeared, and scanned Jennifer. The screen spoke, “Test expirementee, Jennifer Jiang, you are the first to break out of this algorithm. Where would you like to go? Would you like to stay? If you choose to stay, you are unable to get access to this building.” A tablet appeared on a podium, there were two options, “Earth” or “Stay”. She selected the “Earth” option without hesitation.

Immediately, she fell into a large hole that opened below her. She clutched her belongings as the speed she was falling began to increase. She clamped her eyes shut. After a couple minutes, she arrived at her real home, the place she was born, and the real world. Soon after she arrived, a light shone brightly into her eyes. Suddenly, the door slammed open.

“Assistant! Fetch us some chairs, Jennifer and I have much to talk about!” the man commanded. The man walked to Jennifer and scanned her.

“Hello, I’m Jason Huang,” he said. Huang’s assistant came rushing in with two chairs. Both Jennifer and Jason seated themselves.

“Now that we are settled, let’s talk!” Huang exclaimed.

“Why would you run such an experiment? Do you know how many years I’ve wasted in this fake world that I thought might have been real?! Twenty three years of my life was an illusion!” Jennifer shouted angrily.

“Simple, we needed humans to run our experiment on human activity. After several decades, our first human escaped! Well, grandfather predicted right, you would be the first to escape! You are special, observant, and brilliant!” he exclaimed.

“Why us humans?” Jennifer asked.

“That is confidential. But, I can tell you that only about 1 billion participated in this experiment and 1 million were created as an illusion,” he said.

“One billion lives were wasted because of you!” Jennifer cried.

“We can compensate for your wasted time,” Huang said as he put his hands up with caution.

“How? Are you going to reverse time or some nonsense?” Jennifer asked.

“Even better!” Jason clapped his hands, pressed a button, and stacks of money fell to the floor, “you just earned $20,000 for breaking free of this simulated world! Although it might seem little, you can always expand on what you have! You are young and healthy,” he said.

“$20,000 can not compensate for what I’ve lost!” Jennifer screamed.

“You would much rather go back to that fake world knowing that it’s an illusion than staying here where your truth is?” Huang asked.

“Even so, what about my family?” Jennifer asked.

“They’ll be living there indefinitely until they find their way out! Just kidding! Your family in that world does not exist!” Huang exclaimed.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“They are simulated. It was stated in my grandfather’s notebook that your parents handed you over to us, because they were in need of money” Huang recalled.

“That’s really reassuring that $20,000 is all I get for being used,” Jennifer cried.

“It’s not my problem that your parents sold you,” Huang shrugged, “well, my time is limited, see yourself out.”

“But-” Jennifer spoke.

“Here’s my business card, call me if you need me, that’s the best I can offer. Need I say more?” Huang asked as he handed the card over. Jennifer reluctantly took the card, shoved it in her pocket and walked out of the building.

Years later, Jennifer was to meet Huang on her birthday and to celebrate escape. Although the scientist was someone she wanted to resent, she thought of the times he really did help her. Jennifer entered the facility, she heard a couple shout her name and ran to her to embrace her.

Jennifer was twenty five and reunited with her family.