She spoke to the hologram of him at the end of time. It looked like her living room. Like nothing had changed. Except now, nothing existed but her, and objects all around her, but nothing else.
She flicked the TV clicker buttons. He rezzed and derezzed and came back, pixilated, on every channel.
‘It's just me,’ he whispered. ‘You can stop clicking the button.’
‘Things feel different here. Harsher but truer. Like…like I can't get out. Like I'm tethered.’
‘You are,’ the image in the screen whispered. ‘It locked us in, after what we did to you. It built this as a Simulation Saver. It built it for you.’