[ WP ] You check your smartphone every night around 1 due to your oddly specific insomnia . A message ... [ Text too long , see post ! ]

[ Decided to treat the message as a text message ] 
 
 I drearily blinked at the screen of my phone in confusion. Mumbling to myself about the overuse of caps-lock, I re-read the message I had received in the dead of night: 
 
 `` CRITICAL ERROR. TERMINATING ALL NON-ESSENTIAL ASSETS.'' 
 
 The message's sender was marked as unknown, with the number oddly blacked out. Unable to make sense of the message, I wrote it off as some form of cryptic spam and went back to sleep. My dreams were chaotic and tense, but all I really recall is a feeling of immense loss. 
 
 Hours later, my alarm clock blared - a high-pitched peal tearing through the silence. I stumbled out of my bed and desperately fumbled for the snooze button to no avail. I gasped and pleaded under my breath for the siren to cease and leave me in peace, when suddenly my complaints froze on my tongue. The clock screamed, the pitch seeming to fade as my blood rushed to my head. The sunlight poured in through my window, illuminating the room, and what I perceived of my alarm and the surrounding room roused me as though I had been immersed in ice water. 
 
 My alarm clock no longer had any buttons at all, it was but a simple brown cube with a bright red `` 9'' flickering on the front. The nightstand on which I kept it fared worse - it had been reduced to a rectangular white box. The wallpaper for my room had once been quite elegant, with vines and roses twining about one another in a beautiful net that was reminiscent of a spider's web, but was now a simple pale green covering of a perfectly squared room. My bookshelves appeared to be crude stacks of variably sized blocks piled atop one another with abbreviated titles emblazoning the side facing me, such as `` Harry P: H-BP'' and `` TLoTR: TRoTK''. 
 
 The alarm continued to wail, but I could barely hear it now over the beating of my own heart and the blood throbbing in my eardrums. Suddenly remembering the strange test message I had gotten in the middle of the night, I looked to where I had left it charging. The outlet seemed to have lost all complexity, reduced to a single hole in the wall which was occupied by a single cylindrical cord jabbed into it. The other end of the cord attached to what remained of my smartphone. 
 
 I lifted my `` phone'' from the ground - the charging cable still appeared to be detachable and I was able to remove it. The phone was but a thin white slab, with a hole for the charger, and writing seemingly embedded into it: 
 
 `` LOGGING: ALL NON-ESSENTIAL ASSETS SUCCESSFULLY TERMINATED. CONTINUING SIMULATION'' 
 
 In terror and confusion, I could do nothing but stare at the text that was written on my slab as my mind frantically tried to make sense of these foreign and alien changes. Everything looked like a child's `` My First'' toy, or some primitive perversion of itself. I snapped to my senses when the clock's blaring suddenly cut off - the timer on the alarm had ended. Freed from my initial shock, I was seized by a subtle horror and made for the washroom. I tried to open my bedroom door, only to find the handle missing and no visible means of exit. Glancing to the window, I saw that it was no longer anything but a simple hole carved in the wall of my room, which opened into a world filled with objects no more complex than my nightstand. 
 
 Too horrified by what I saw beyond my window, I could not bear approaching it to escape my room. I turned my fevered gaze back towards the door. Perhaps my roommate on the other side of the apartment would be able to help me if I drew their attention, provided they were not trapped in similar circumstances. I slammed on the door and screamed for help, and to my shock the door tipped forward and slammed to the ground. The hinges which had bound it upright were gone. 
 
 Stepping over the block which used to be a door, I made my way towards the living room. No one had answered my call for help, and I heard no one stir. I crept towards the room in which my good friend slept; a cold sweat dripping down my back. What would I see? An image of a pale pink cube with the text `` Jerry'' written on the top flickered across my vision, and I shook my head rapidly to drive it from my mind. I pushed down the door and peeked inside. In Jerry's bed was simply a flat blue plane and a blue cube where his pillow used to be. The bed itself was as my own, a white rectangular box that roughly retained its old dimensions. Jerry was nowhere to be seen, nor was anything that might represent him. 
 
 Unsure of whether to be further horrified or relieved that I had not found a box in place of my friend, I took up my original task of entering the washroom. Knowing that I needed to push down the door kept the task simple, and the restroom window provided the illumination necessary to make out the room's sparse details. The mirror, my objective, appeared to be mostly intact. Until I moved in front of the mirror it had been difficult to tell if it was reflective; opposite of a flat pale wall, as it was. Thankfully, it had retained it's reflective properties which allowed me to accomplish what I had entered the room for; viewing myself. 
 
 I was the same as I was the night prior, although a bit more red-faced and wide-eyed than usual. My heart was pounding so hard I swear I could see my chest jump in my reflection. Every eyelash in place, each hair on my arm carefully defined, and stubble had grown out on my face overnight. Why was everything so wrong, and I appeared to be just right? The tablet-phone in my hand rumbled, breaking me from my scattered reverie. I lifted it to view, and noticed the engraved text had changed: 
 
 `` LOGGING: ESSENTIAL SIMULATION HAS RUN SMOOTHLY FOR 8 HOURS. REBOOTING SECONDARY SIMULATIONS'' 
 
 [ If people find this interesting, I'll probably follow up with some more ]
