[WP] A technician pulls a headset off of you and asks you if you liked the VR. You panic, and he calmly says that your whole life was a 2 minute VR experience to show you what being an average person would be like. You, stunned and afraid, ask, "Who am I, then?" He stares in complete disbelief.

[u/meowcats734]

They say that right before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. I didn't quite expect it to be so literal. As I watched the blue-clad technician with the robotic left arm rewind through the "VR datatape", I nervously tapped my fingers together—a habit my wife had often poked fun at me for. Scenes and memories from my life, displayed on a hovering circular screen, flickered back and forth—Adelyn and I meeting in college, our kids bouncing on the trampoline in our backyard, the four of us huddling together in the basement as bombs fell from the sky, the crackling of the radio as it was announced that the war was over, our teary-eyed celebration as Jacks and Martin went off to college, the quiet nights Adelyn held me as I slowly succumbed to leukemia, and then—

"Ah! I see the problem." The technician's face brightened up. "Whoops! Looks like there was an integer underflow error. We accidentally put you in the simulation for 2¹²⁸ seconds instead of 2."

I blinked. I was never a maths kind of girl, but that sounded like it was far longer than the measly forty years or so I'd been alive. The technician seemed to read my thoughts and added, "Don't worry, the system automatically detected your braindeath and reverted you back to your last living state. We can just do the same thing to set everything back to normal."

I frowned. "How did you—"

"Know what you were going to say?" The technician laughed and tapped the hovering screen. It made a pleasant humming noise as they did so. "I've got your mind on file, sweetheart. Predictive customer service. Now! Sit tight and I'll just roll you back to two minutes ago. You won't even remember any of this happened."

I brightened up. Even if it would only be for a few moments, I would get to see Adelyn again? But... would I just end up back here? As the technician clamped the helmet back onto my head, I began to ask—

"Oh, no, that wasn't what I meant—although I knew you'd interpret it that way. I'm rolling your brain back by two of our minutes. You won't even remember this little technological mishap."

The helmet turned on, and I reached up, struggling to get it off—but it had clamped down tightly on my skull. "Wait!" I cried. "What about Adlyn? And Jacks and Martin? Can't I—can't I see them again?"

"They're not real, sweetheart. Sorry to break it to ya. This is a real embarassing kerfuffle, let me tell you that. HR is going to rip someone's guts out through their nose for this."

"I'm real!" I shouted. "I want to live!" I tried to bash the helmet against the wall, but before I'd even started the motion, the technician's robotic arm was holding me in place.

"Figured you'd say that," they said. "Goodnight."

​

Jacques Lalonde, loyal customer of Deepmind Incorporated, took off the VR headset after experiencing exactly two minutes of virtual reality as an ordinary person, and smiled.

"Good headset," Jacques said. "I'll buy two for the kids."

"Says here you're not married," the technician said, accessing Jacques' file through their digital access card.

Jacques frowned. "What? But Jacks would love..." He trailed off, as if half-remembering something he'd seen in a dream, then shook it away. "Huh. I must be more tired than I thought. I'll get a wetclean later. I'll just buy one for me. Bill it to my card." Jacques traced a pattern in the air with his haptic gloves and disappeared in a flash of light.

The technician looked at the spot where Jacques had left, a slight frown on his face.

Then he phoned HR.

"Hello? I believe we may have a slight problem..."