Part 1

I worked for a while as a technical analyst at a company not open to the public. The work was strange, controversial, and at times, utterly disturbing. Our goal? To develop a neural simulation technology capable of condensing an entire lifetime into just a few minutes. It was a dream for some, a nightmare for others.

We called it “total immersion.” The idea was simple but ambitious: connect an individual to an augmented reality system so advanced they couldn’t distinguish what was real from what was programmed. In theory, they would live out decades in a matter of minutes, gaining all the experiences of an entire lifetime—love, loss, growth, purpose—and return to reality with all of it recorded in their mind.

We had a simple promise to sell. Acquire knowledge, maturity, and emotional balance through simulated decades. The experiment was built on the idea of accelerating human experience without the burden of time. It was a chance to live many lifetimes in a single lifetime. But, as with many things that seemed too good to be true, it came with a cost.

The process itself was straightforward. The company sought willing testers—mostly criminals, death row inmates, or volunteers desperate for money. These individuals were placed in capsules and connected to the system via special augmented reality goggles. The idea was that they’d be immersed in a life—live through childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, love, heartache, and more, without any of the limitations of the real world. The experiments rarely lasted more than thirty minutes, but in that short time, they would live an entire life. Some experienced marriages, others deaths, wars, or births. Sometimes they had children. Sometimes they lost them. There was always an ending, and then they woke up.

At first, it seemed like a breakthrough, a way to teach people in a deeply immersive way. But as with most innovations, things didn’t go according to plan.

The problem? Most of the test subjects didn’t react well. They went insane, out of their minds, screaming. Sometimes they couldn’t recognize their own voice when they spoke. They trembled uncontrollably, crying desperately, calling for lives they had lost inside the simulations. They blamed us for destroying everything they had lived through.

We were called monsters. More times than I can count.

The worst part? They lost everything they had gained in the experiment. All the wisdom, the knowledge, the life they had lived—they returned to a world that didn’t make sense. A world where they had never really lived, and yet, they had experienced something more than most could imagine. They came back, but they came back broken, unsure of what was real and what was just a simulation.

Many of the subjects were disturbed by the process. Some even tried to attack us—us, the scientists who were just doing our jobs. And unfortunately, we had several losses. But we couldn’t stop. The experiment had to continue.

One case stood out in my mind, one that I’ll never forget. It was a woman, who, after the simulation, cried for hours, calling out her son’s name. The problem? That son had never existed.

She had a real son outside the simulation. But she never once mentioned him. She didn’t cry for him. She only cried for the one who never existed.

I remember watching her, trying to make sense of what had happened to her mind. She had been given a life, and in that life, she had lived with a son, loved him, raised him. But the moment she was brought back, the world she had lived in was erased, and the only thing that remained was the empty shell of a life that never existed.

It wasn’t just one or two people who broke down like this. Many of the test subjects did. Some weren’t even aware that the life they’d lived wasn’t real. They believed in it completely. Some even preferred the simulation to reality. It was as if the artificial life was a dream they couldn’t wake up from.

As we analyzed more cases, we found a disturbing flaw in the system. Some test subjects didn’t live just one simulated life. They lived dozens—each one a fresh wound, a new existence, each memory carrying its own unbearable weight.

This explained why so many didn’t survive the end of the experiment. The shock was too much. They returned as if they had lived for centuries—and in a way, they had. The trauma, the disorientation, was unbearable. And the worst part? No one could remember exactly how to fix it.

We tried to cover it up. We called it an “unforeseen side effect,” a glitch in the system that could be fixed with an update. They promised the public that future tests would be monitored more carefully, that everything would be fine. But the truth was, we were nowhere near a solution.

The experiment was a failure, but we couldn’t stop. We needed to make it work. The pressure from the higher-ups was unrelenting.

I remember walking into the coordinator’s office one morning before I resigned. There was a new file on the desk—another test subject, another poor soul about to be immersed in this hell.

The file read: “Child test. First full life simulation.”

I froze. The test subject was an eleven-year-old boy.

They were going to do to him what they had done to the others. He would live, love, lose… and then wake up alone, with his mind screaming for a life that never existed.

This was the point when I realized I could no longer be a part of this. I wasn’t just an observer anymore; I was complicit. I walked out of that office and handed in my resignation letter the next day.

I left the company soon after, but the memories of the experiments and the faces of the test subjects haunted me. It wasn’t just the people who suffered inside the simulations. It was the people outside—the ones who had to clean up the mess when it all fell apart. The ones who had to watch those fragile minds break.

I tried to move on. I got a job at a different company, working with software development. But the world I had left behind—this technology, this company—kept lingering in the back of my mind.

Every now and then, I would hear news about the company’s “advancements,” their new models for testing, their promises of a better future through technology. But I knew the truth.

The truth was, they were creating entire lives—lives that meant nothing, lives that were erased as soon as the test ended.

But none of them were real.

Part 2

I didn’t return to the company after I resigned, but the weight of what I had done there lingered. Every day I would think about the experiments, the broken minds, the shattered lives. Even though I tried to move forward, the question still haunted me: How far would the company go? What were they willing to sacrifice for the sake of this technology?

Years passed. I moved to a new city. I settled into a job that kept my mind occupied. But every now and then, the memories would surface. The images of people—innocent, naive test subjects—who had been subjected to this “total immersion” process, only to wake up in a world that didn’t make sense to them. I couldn’t forget the woman who cried for her son—who had never existed. Or the man who couldn’t remember his own name after living dozens of different lives.

The company had a powerful grip on the tech world, promising to change humanity’s understanding of time and experience. But at what cost?

One afternoon, as I was working from my apartment, I got a call from an unfamiliar number. At first, I thought it might be spam, but something in my gut told me to pick up.

“Hello?” I answered cautiously.

“Alina?” a deep voice asked. It was a man’s voice, one I didn’t recognize.

“Yes?” I replied, gripping the phone tightly.

“My name is Daniel. I worked with you at the company. I need your help.”

I froze, my heart skipping a beat. I hadn’t heard from anyone connected to the company in years.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can help you. I left that life behind a long time ago,” I said, my voice shaky.

“Alina, please listen. It’s about the child,” he said, urgency in his tone. “The boy. The one they tested—the one you saw in the file. He didn’t just experience one life… he lived dozens.”

My heart hammered in my chest. I had never forgotten that boy’s face—the one who was about to live an entire lifetime, only to wake up in a world that didn’t exist. Now, hearing this, I realized the depth of the situation. The company hadn’t just been testing their technology on criminals or death row inmates. They had used children—innocent children.

“Daniel, what are you talking about?” I whispered, the horror rising inside me. “What happened to him?”

“Alina, he’s still alive. But he’s… he’s not okay. The system malfunctioned. It wasn’t just one life, it was dozens—hundreds. His mind is fractured beyond repair. The company tried to cover it up. But I couldn’t live with it anymore. I had to get out. I need your help to fix this.”

“Where is he?” I asked, my voice steady despite the growing panic inside me.

“I’ll send you the address. We can’t go to the authorities—they’re involved too. But if you want to make things right, we need to find him, Alina. Before it’s too late.”

The line went dead before I could say anything else.

I spent the next hour pacing around my apartment. The decision was clear. I couldn’t walk away from this. The boy, the child who had been used as an experiment, was out there somewhere, broken, and I had the chance to fix this—to stop it from happening to anyone else.

But there was a problem. The company wasn’t just a tech firm. They were powerful. Too powerful. Going after them would be dangerous. They’d stop at nothing to protect their secrets. And this child—they’d likely seen him as a casualty in the pursuit of their grand vision.

The only way I could help was if I dug deep into their systems. I needed to find every last shred of evidence of what they had done—and expose it all. But I couldn’t do it alone. I needed to go back into the heart of the company, back into their networks. I needed to find out what they had covered up.

That evening, I met with Jonathan at a café. He had been a constant in my life, especially after I left the company. He was the one person who knew everything about my past, the good and the bad. He had helped me build my life back after Gabriel and everything the company had put me through. He was my ally, and now, more than ever, I needed his help.

“Jonathan, it’s time,” I said, sitting across from him. “We need to go back into the company’s systems.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Alina, are you sure? You know this could get us in serious trouble.”

“I don’t care,” I said firmly. “There’s a boy. A child. The company experimented on him, Jonathan. And now… now he’s broken. His mind is shattered, and I can’t just let that go.”

Jonathan sighed but nodded. “I’m with you. We’ll do this together.”

I smiled at him, grateful for his unwavering support. “We need to get into their records. I need everything—the simulations, the failed tests, the reports, everything. This time, we bring the truth to light.”

The next few weeks were a blur of covert meetings, hacked emails, and hours spent poring over the company’s hidden records. We traced every transaction, every failed experiment, and found a disturbing pattern. The child, the one we had seen in the file—he wasn’t the only one. He was part of a larger group of children who had been subjected to this horrific treatment.

We gathered everything—evidence, statements, and records—until we had a full picture of what the company had done. But we still needed to find the child.

One cold night, as I sat at my desk, my phone buzzed. It was a message from Daniel:

“I found him. Meet me at the old warehouse at midnight. Bring everything you’ve got.”

My heart raced. This was it. We were close.

That night, I drove out to the warehouse with Jonathan. The place was abandoned, the windows boarded up and the air thick with dust. We stepped inside, our footsteps echoing in the silence.

Daniel was waiting for us in the far corner, a young man who looked as though he hadn’t slept in days. He had the kind of wild, haunted look that comes with knowing too much.

“He’s inside,” Daniel said, pointing to a small room at the back.

We followed him in, my breath catching in my throat. There, sitting alone on the floor, was the boy.

His eyes were vacant, distant—like he wasn’t really there. I could see the damage. He had lived too many lives, and now none of them felt real. He was just a shell.

“Is he…” Jonathan began, his voice trembling with concern.

“Broken,” Daniel finished. “And it’s only going to get worse if we don’t do something.”

End!