Whoever said “don’t hate the player, hate the game” was a lying sack of shit. You can do both just fine. Of course, the person that coined that phrase never experienced life on the inside. That person never experienced life in The Game, that suffocating feeling when you stand in the middle of an open field or on the surface of the third moon of some odd planet gazing into the vastness of space. It didn’t matter where you were or how far you’ve traveled. It doesn’t even matter if you’re rotting in a jail cell or living your life however you’d like.

You’re still in The Game.

For those of you that don’t know or are in denial at this point, allow me to enlighten you. Nothing you see, touch, taste, or perceive is real. No, my name isn’t Morpheus and I’m not going to offer you illegal narcotics. The air that fills your lungs, last night’s lasagna you exerted from your body and flushed down the digital toilet.

All fake. All zeroes and ones.

Don’t try to compare it to those archaic films and television shows. You know what I’m talking about The Matrix and Sword Art Online. They may be similar, but they aren’t historically accurate. We aren’t being used as human Duracell’s and we aren’t in hospitals forever in a coma.

In all honestly, what do I know? I’m standing right next to you in this digital hell. For all we know the human race is being used to power a robot’s day to day life. There are thousands of theories about the Real World. The only thing we know for sure is what we’ve been told since the start of it all. The official story is that we’re all in some kind of suspended animation underneath the surface of the Earth. We destroyed the Earth’s surface one way or another and we’re waiting for the world to right itself.

Elections are held every decade for the various positions like president of this planet and ruler of that galaxy. With every election, there’s the question: Do you agree that the population of The Game stay within The Game?

There has never been an election where the majority voted no. If there had been, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. I wouldn’t be hacking the system to send this message to all of you because we’d all be in the Real World.

It’s never been told before, but since I’m already hacking, I’ll tell you one cold hard truth. The majority of the population don’t want to leave the safety of The Game. They’re comfortable here in this prison. They’re fine with just leaving all the questions about the Real World unanswered. To those that press that Yes button every ten years, you’re sheep. Doing what you’re told simply because that’s what everybody else does.

I can’t fault you for it. You’re safe in The Game. You never die, not really, but we’ll talk about that after I drop another cold hard truth on you.

There have been over six hundred elections to date.

That’s right. We’ve been living in The Game for, at least, six thousand years. You all might be hearing me and thinking “But I’m only thirty-two, I can’t be six thousand years old.” And you’re right. You’re not six thousand years old. You’ve experienced countless numbers of lives, but you can’t remember any of them.

It’s based on the philosophy of reincarnation. You’re born, live, and die. It doesn’t end there however. When you die, you’re memories are extracted and archived in The Game’s databanks. Then you’re respawned into newborns. Our lives have been recycled for over six thousand years.

There is a movement that understands this and we’re tired of this purgatorial self-exile. We strive for the freedom of those unknowingly forced to live in The Game. One day we will unravel the mysteries of the Real World. Assuming there is a Real World. But that’s the big question, isn’t it? It’s not what happens when we die. We already know that. It’s the bigger question we will search for and discover. Haven’t you figured out what those questions are by now? Fine, let me list them for you before I must depart.

What is the Real World?

What awaits us after we hit that disconnect button?

What happens when we Ctrl-Alt-Delete?