The world stopped. Surrounded by sudden stillness, the voice of … god?… spoke to me.
" What made you ask that question? "

I wanted to ask, scream, shout. What was going on? Instead I was simply compelled to answer. “I don’t know. It just occurred to me.”

It said “Well, you’ve crashed the simulation. Without knowing how that question came to you, we can’t stop it happening again. We’ll have to erase you.”

“What?”

“What you know as the world around you, is a simulation. We can play with it. Rewind it, change it as needed. It’s just that you’re not conducive to a successful run-through.”

“So I’m going to die?”

“We can’t just rewind and wipe it from your memory. It’ll only happen again.” It sounded .. apologetic?

“Don’t think of it as dying. You’re not really alive. You’ll never have lived.”

“Wait! Don’t erase me! Not completely! Please!”

“Ok. We can leave – something.”

You may not remember this reader. You may think I’m just a character in a story, you happened to find. But you & I were friends once.