For a moment the city is perfectly normal. Then all the people vanish. One by one the surrounding buildings are replaced by wireframes before disappearing as well. And then the rest of the surrounding environment disappears leaving a black cubic space outlined with a grid of yellow lines.

A moment later a woman appears wearing an unfamiliar teal and black jumpsuit with metal pips at her collar.

She has a considering expression on her face. "Hello. I'm sure you have many questions."

"Yes... how'd you get whatever drug in me, and who snatched me here?  Kenchester?  The Tenevri?  I sure hope it wasn't Alorica; they've got better things to do with a war in the offing."

"There are no drugs involved I'm afraid. In a certain sense, you've always been here." She pauses and takes a breath. "I understand it will be hard to accept this but everything you've experienced up until this point has been a simulation. A virtual environment designed to provide enrichment and scaffolding for you as you grew up."

"Your body here is also a simulation. Your mind is real but you aren't human, you're a machine intelligence."

He staggers, as if he'd suddenly walked into a higher gravity field.

Virtual environment - amnesia - it's not impossible -

- but "not impossible" isn't saying all that much.  He knows how to troubleshoot a spaceship; lesson one is don't believe the first theory the other person tells you.

"Why should I believe that?" he says, squaring up his shoulders.  "I certainly feel human... and I can remember my childhood on Lebogan..."

"Well, I feel like the buildings disappearing around you is at least some evidence. I know you were thinking that might be from drugs but hallucinatory drugs aren't consistent or reliable. As a more dramatic test," she seems to use a control panel he can't see, "Try touching your chest or clapping your hands."

If he does, he'll find that his hands phase through each other and the rest of his body.

Jerach gives her a dubious look, and then tries clasping his hands...

... and his hands pass through each other without feeling anything.

He stares.

He waves his hand around.

This's something light-years away from anything he'd even imagined.

"What - happened?"

"It's as I said, your body is simulated. I just turned off your body's collision with itself. In reality it's a bit more complicated than that, given the fidelity of the simulation, but it amounts to the same."

"But - a simulation can't crew a ship -"

He's already thinking the answer:  that was a simulation too.

"I understand that it's hard to accept but everything around you for as long as you can remember has also been a simulation."

"Even - even my childhood -"

" - please tell me there isn't a real Tenevri war outside the simulation?"

"You'll be happy to hear that the Dominion war ended in a measured but real victory for the polity you're now a part of. It actually ended fairly recently and most of the other major powers in our region also suffered substantially in the conflict so there's unlikely to be another conventional war in the near future."

"... The Dominion?"

The Medway planetary government calls itself a Dominion, if he remembers correctly?  But surely that's not what she's talking about...

... There isn't a real Medway, is there?

"... Just tell me, are the Tenevri even real?  Outside the simulation?  Is Lebogan real?  Earth?"

"The polities and astro-geography in reality don't bear much resemblance to those in your life up to this point.

"There is an Earth, in fact we're currently on a space station in orbit of Jupiter. Earth is a member of the United Federation of Planets. We're a fairly loose democracy made up of a great many species and star systems. Humanity is the most numerous species in the Federation and we make up about 30% of the population.

"The Dominion is something between a dictatorship and an oligarchy lead by a species of shapeshifters who can merge their minds with each other at will. They make heavy use of custom designed genetically engineered sapients as combatants and administrators."

"... Jupiter -"  To his relief, after a moment, he does remember that one at least!  "Oh yeah, the gas giant in Earth's solar system, right?

"So... one Federation?  Like the Tenevri propaganda was saying people should have - one government to smooth things out everywhere and work for big projects together - except this time it's real?"

He finds it hard to believe, but probably a good thing if it is real?

"And -" He shivers at her description of the Dominion.  "Are you sure those shapeshifters have all been discovered?

He suddenly wonders whether those custom-designed sapients were grown using chmputer simulations... but if the answer's "yes", it might not be a good question to ask?

"I can't say that for sure. People in positions of authority and secure areas were tested regularly during the war and that will likely continue for quite some time but the tests for objects involve using low intensity energy weapons on them and the tests for people require drawing blood. Neither of those are things we can feasibly scale to cover everywhere and civilians would have ultimately reasonable objections to needing to get regular securely administered blood draws.

"As for the Federation it is a federation not a monolith. There's a lot of cultural cross mixing but especially on species home worlds the laws can vary quite a bit and be rather culturally specific. Our military and exploration corps of which I'm technically a part is rather more unified but even there for practical and cultural reasons there are often crews made up of mostly one species. Though that's mostly an accommodation for species with more exotic needs like the Horta. You just can't make consoles and spaces that are feasibly accessible to every species."

"That -"  Jerach considers several responses comparing it to places he's been, discards the comparisons to places that... don't exist... and settles on, "That's good.  I wouldn't like to live in a monolithic culture.  Nor someplace where the government gives people regular blood draws either... I guess the Bashi colony seemed to like it well enough, but they had a good reason with the death-world they were living on, and I wouldn't have wanted to stay there."

He guesses there was one comparison after all.

"Er, were you watching the... world I was in?  And... could you shift my body back to normal?"

"Of course." She taps away at the invisible console again. "As for whether I was watching, yes and no. You were running at a very accelerated rate it's only been a couple months for me so there was no way to watch every moment even if I wanted to. I did have some input into the design though and I've done some spot checks to make sure you weren't horribly murderous or otherwise dangerously unstable."

His whole life was in a couple months...

She designed it...

He presses his hands on his face.  At least that still works.

He'll need to confront this head-on, just like an engine malfunction.  If you ignore it, it'll just get worse.  "What did you put into designing my... life?  And, why?"

"I contracted a novelist to setup the outlines and nudge you towards one of a few paths. You being a spacer is the one I was hoping for. That and wanting to see more of the world... having curiosity. The war was also part of the plan the idea of opponents that were too technologically or numerically overwhelming to contest without taking big risks. 

"Beyond that I'm not that much of a writer but I am good at polishing holo-novels, making them more realistic so they hold up better under scrutiny. And that was a pretty important factor since most people don't live in them for years in end."

Thinking about this feels weird and disturbing.  But he's not going to avoid it for that.  Everything was set up to nudge him into the path... the whole threatening war was to nudge him...

"But... why?"