[ WP ] A chip is created that supposedly makes people immortal by respawning them when they die . Everyone has them implanted in their brains . But one man that has one dies , and discovers that he did n't respawn back to the real world , but instead got his consciousness placed in a simulated reality .

After he'd won the lottery, Nick figured he'd do something stupid -- he'd won the fortune of a recently-murdered tech CEO, and could n't think of much else to do after going to the ISS and floating around in his space suit drooling his brain out of his ears on LSD. He was finally bored enough he figured he'd fly a spaceship into the sun. It was either die there or get shot like a dog in the street. Only a matter of time before someone noticed him and became irate. 
 
 He had n't expected his bodyguard, though. He had probably been contacted by some people from the lottery claiming they'd like him to `` initiate a hard reset'' ( common practice after the respawn mainframe got hacked disabling remote resets ). Nick had just fired up his night vision goggles and stepped outside. Rick gave him the nod to go ahead, and after a few paces out the door a bullet burst out of Nick's forehead, and he fell to the ground, the world slowly dissolving into rainbows. 
 
 After a few moments Nick could hear the sound of a dial-up internet connection trying to initialize. 
 
 Nick opened his eyes. He was sitting in a blocky blue chair inside of a large blue cubic room. Blood was still running down his forehead, and he could hear mumbling. 
 
 This was not the respawn... 
 
 The mumbling started to get louder, and seemed to be coming from in front. He could pick out the odd phrase or word. 
 
 ``... not the BIOS... forwarding... wrong with his head'' 
 
 The wall in front of him snapped to the color black. A three fingered gray hand moved over the screen in a blur, there was a shuffling sound, and the screen shook around. A few lights flew past, then a tall gray alien figure with a somber look on its face appeared to be looking slightly past the camera. Its translucent eyelids blinking sideways every second or two. Behind it sat a few other alien figures hovering over its shoulder looking at the screen. Off to the right, one was looking into the light of a laptop and appeared to be typing. 
 
 The one in front reached beyond where the camera was pointing, there was a loud thud sound like when one suddenly unplugs a microphone, and suddenly Nick could hear the sound of air conditioning. In his head, Nick gave this a six out of ten on the weird scale. Still not as wild as DMT... 
 
 `` Alright, I think translation is working. Are you recording?'' The one in the front mumbled. 
 
 `` Yup'' said the one on the laptop. 
 
 `` Good.'' 
 
 Suddenly eye contact. 
 
 `` Hello there Nick. While I'm not a big fan of the stupid game, I'm here to tell you that you won.'' 
 
 `` Is he being rendered correctly?'' one in the back asked the one of the laptop, who was typing furiously. 
 
 `` Just... hold on, shit.'' they replied. 
 
 `` So Nick... you remember the whole...'respawn chip' thing, right?'' 
 
 `` What... what is going on right now?'' Nick said. 
 
 `` Getting there... I'll back up a little bit. Nick, you're in a simulated universe. We,'' it swung its finger around to indicate all the aliens in the room, `` wrote the research program that's simulating you right now. This is the eighth stable universe we made.'' 
 
 `` Uh... huh.'' 
 
 `` Anyway, my colleagues thought they'd play around with some of the code to have a little game. For philosophical reasons I was against it, so I figured,'' A few of in the back started to grin giddily, `` it would be important to give you this sort of knowledge before we reset and start a new simulation. The whole'respawn' thing. I know you're not up for more long winded explanations, but come on, that would never _really_ happen in your universe. The inventor we put in there was a bot written by Glenn,'' The one on the laptop briefly glanced at the camera and did a half grin, waved, and then went back to typing, `` and the'chips' in your brain are just little bits of code 
 
 Nick suddenly became naked, and the hole in his forehead disappeared. 
 
 `` Oops...'' said Glenn. 
 
 `` The idea was to see what would happen from a sociological perspective,'' the closest one continued, `` we technically are n't bound by moral or ethical issues in the simulated universe, so we figured we'd do the sociology field some good by providing some actual interesting research for once.'' 
 
 `` Hey!'' said one in the back. 
 
 The one in the front cleared its throat. 
 
 `` So, after things started to get totally ridiculous, the team ( not me ) decided to put a heuristic in there for each human to determine their'score' over the course of the rest of the simulation. However, things have gotten almost too silly given our intervention and we've totally fucked the fundamental foundation of your universe, spoiling several hours worth of data.'' 
 
 ``... hours...?'' Nick heard himself say. He could feel his jaw slowly opening. 
 
 `` Yes. Your perception of time had to be taken into account in order for this little box room thing to work, something that took Glenn a whole three simulations to code up so that we could talk to you right now. We also had to slow things down to make sure your universe did n't encounter heat death while we added in the respawn game. You may not have noticed it, but we froze time for four hours before continuing.'' 
 
 `` I....why are you telling me this?'' Nick said. 
 
 `` Me personally? I'm telling you to show these other goons that this is a little cruel. It's scientific research. And while you're just a bunch of subatomic particles flying around in that big box behind me, you have an entire perception of reality supported in that, um... no offense, tiny brain of yours. Anyway, you win. Yaaaay.'' It did a sarcastic flailing of its arms and then reached beyond the view of the camera again `` Goodbye.'' 
 
 `` Wait wait w --'' 
 

