BRAIN IN A VAT
Have you ever heard of the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis?
Imagine removing a person’s brain, keeping it alive in a specialized nutrient tank. Wires connect to its neurons, feeding simulated signals to construct an entire world within its mind.
Every sensation feels real—joy and sorrow, pain and tickles—indistinguishable from reality.
And you… how can you be certain you’re not in such a state? How do you prove your world is real?
This is harder to wake from than the deepest dream.
“Hah…!” Autumn Ease’s eyes snapped wide open. The world around him shattered like glass. He felt himself trapped inside a freezing metal coffin.
He’d finally jolted awake from that endless dream.
Drenched in sweat, he gasped like a drowned man hauled from the sea.
Memories stolen by reality flooded back into his mind.
*Clunk—*
The ‘coffin lid’ slid slowly left. Wisps of white vapor curled from the chamber.
He sat up, breathing hard.
Only one lamp glowed in the vast hall, casting dim shadows.
A cold, genderless mechanical voice echoed in his ears:
“Current time: Post-Apocalypse Era, Year 1000. You set this awakening date.”
The voice softened instantly, shifting into a raspy, ethereal loli tone—as if it, too, had traveled a thousand years.
Autumn Ease sat frozen. Memories returned, yet confusion clung to him like fog.
Slowly, the chaos in his mind settled.
He climbed out of the ‘coffin’ and walked up the steps.
Hallways led to empty rooms. Spotless. Dust-free. Neat as hotel suites.
But no trace of human life remained.
The sterile order felt icy, cruel.
He stood before an elevator. The display screen was dark—still dormant.
Three minutes passed before it whirred to life.
He stepped inside. The doors closed with a sigh.
Only two buttons glowed in the dim yellow light: -100 and 1.
A ghostly female voice chimed: “Ascending.”
Time blurred.
Five minutes? Ten?
*Ding.*
The elevator shuddered to a stop.
Heavy metal doors slid open—gleaming as if forged yesterday, not a millennium ago.
He stood on an artificial island. Beneath his feet: cold metal, not earth.
A blood-red sun neared the horizon, sinking slowly.
The sea churned as if boiling under its heat.
A breeze brushed Autumn Ease’s face—faint, lacking the thick stench of blood he’d expected.
He stared at the azure water. No fish swam in the endless blue.
Only ocean stretched to every horizon. No land in sight.
Closer inspection revealed a glass dome sealing the island, machines pumping oxygen inside.
He knew: beyond this dome, the air was too thin to breathe. Even this ‘breeze’ was artificial.
He looked up.
A shattered hemisphere hung in the sky—like a cleaved watermelon. Its jagged surface was visible to the naked eye.
Around the planet drifted colossal wreckage: fractured starships, planetary debris—all orbiting like broken moons.
This wasn’t Earth. A preserved Earth-like colony world. Once teeming with humans.
Now, only history remained.
Three thousand years ago, humanity clashed with a silicon-based species. Two civilizations whose ideologies could never coexist. War raged for two millennia.
They wielded planet-killer nukes, then antimatter missiles, then two-dimensional foils…
Star-jumps drained suns dry until they collapsed.
Countless galaxies died in the crossfire.
Butterfly effects shattered cosmic balance.
Then—the Cataclysm came.
The universe’s wrath humbled both races. Even united, they couldn’t survive its fury. Civilizations erased. All life swept away like dust.
This planet alone remained intact—a lone sanctuary in the void.
But its native life had already perished.
Autumn Ease arrived later. Built this facility with his starship. Hoped others might find refuge here.
He’d constructed a seabed fortress.
No one ever came.
Centuries passed. He was the last human alive.
So he entered cryosleep. Let the AI weave a virtual world. There, he lived among crowds. Felt safe.
Time blurred. He forgot reality. Repeated the same stories, erasing memories each cycle—trapped in self-made dreams.
Only the millennium alarm forced him awake.
“But… what’s the point of waking?” Autumn Ease sighed, walking to the island’s edge.
A lone grave stood there. Metal headstone. Metal mound.
Behind it, stairs led upward.
He climbed, pressed a button. The grave’s metal lid slid open. Beneath glass lay a coffin—and inside, a girl who seemed merely asleep.
A cryo-chamber.
Leaf Grace.
Dead of cancer—a curable disease in this age. But it struck too fast. No med-kit nearby. He’d watched her fade.
No technology could reverse death.
A thousand years later, grief still burned raw. Autumn Ease pinched his stinging eyes, stepping before the headstone.
He pressed another button. A small metal drawer clicked out.
Inside lay a letter.
Humans hadn’t needed paper letters for centuries. Yet he kept this one. A relic of longing.
His love letter. Her reply.
Preserved perfectly. Fresh as the day she wrote it.
Her neat, elegant characters—rare in that era—spoke of tender memories. Shy confessions. Warmth bleeding through every stroke.
He wiped his eyes fiercely. Tears mustn’t blur the ink.
But they fell anyway. Blurring the words. Blurring her face.
A thousand years apart… yet her voice still echoed in his ears. Her smile flickered before his eyes.
Reality crashed back. Cold. Empty.
He was alone.
*Ding.*
“Descending.”
Back in the hall, Autumn Ease walked past rows of empty cryo-pods.
This frozen hall was his tomb.
Other tombs held the dead.
This one buried a living man—trapped in dreams.
He lay down. The pod’s lid sealed with a whisper.
The virtual world was illusion. But it didn’t hurt like this.
“Set cryo-duration.”
His eyes closed. A breath, soft as starlight:
“Ten thousand years.”
