Jim always hated philosophy. If he could create a world where one million inhabitants didn't even know they were fake, what did that make him? He had always wondered why the world was so screwed up, and this might be the answer. Was he just some figment in someone else's imagination? Maybe there use to be a real god, but he accidentally made himself into a vegetable while the simulation kept going on. Was he a god? He created something from nothing, Man if he was a god, someone must have really screwed up. He tried to stop wallowing in self pity and started looking at what he created more rationally.

He created over a million unique minds in only a couple hours. And he could do it again too. He could create an additional copy if he wanted to. Man that would only be weirder. He only had two eyes, how was he going to look at three different worlds at the same time when the next dog comes along and chews his boot off? Then his mind went in the gutter. It didn't have to be a copy of the one he had already created, it could be anything he put his mind to. Jim was drooling a little bit as he imagined creating "Waifu World."

Every single anime and game character in existence could be all rolled into one world. And then little Jim piped in helpfully, "Well, only the female ones."

But no matter what they looked like, once the world was initiated they would be people. Real people. People with emotions. It was wrong. It was more than wrong, it was evil. If this tech hit the open market, how many fantasy worlds would be created? How many worlds of suffering and death? How many worlds filled with telemarketers. Yep, there would totally be telemarketer worlds.

He could already see the argument that large corporations would put to the courts. "Your honor these people are not real. They are just a bunch of ones and zeros being converted into signals that your brain can interpret. It's no different from shooting people in a video game. They are not people."

Unfortunately the data he collected says otherwise, and only around fifty people around the world would be qualified to answer that question. But when money is involved things can go sideways.

His game world was sloppy but still the uses were endless. Right now his world was a closed system, but with a helmet and the right software people inside the game world could connect to people on the outside world. That legitimately meant that if a telemarketing firm wanted to create a world with an army of digital people all they would need is what Jim had in his hotel. Just one person to wear the helmet after the world was uploaded, and then added to an internet connection. They wouldn't even need the host to do anything useful, just not die.

And that is not even the true horror of it. Companies will want to figure out how to tweak the digital people to make them biddable. They would create loyal zombies that won't be able to object to anything asked of them. It would be slavery all over again.

Then there was the military potential. Each soldier could have his own world that he could train in, except he would never be the one to die. Worlds would be created that were designed to push soldiers to a new limit. They would be able to experience what a real firefight was like over and over. Entire battles could be played while one soldier focuses on their single task. The dead would be uncountable.

It truly scared Jim. He thought of these scenarios in only a couple of hours, where would it end up in the years and decades ahead?

It was then Jim knew he could not let this technology out. If he did it would have to be a bastardized version, one that was incapable of creating digital people. But still, there were over a million new people in the world now, and they would all die when Jim died, If his in game avatar died he would probably remember none of this though, but it would also kill those digital people as well.

Jim took a deep breath and relaxed. In spite of this new perspective not much would change in his goals. He wanted to be on the leading edge of this technology, and he would be, the only thing that would change would be the scope and direction. He was still on the path of being the grandfather of the next big thing in virtual reality. Sighing he realized he was going to need a boat load of money. The first major obstacle to his path was 3D Tech. If he could come up with a good offer, it would be accepted. They were really hurting for money right now. He needed to somehow buy the project from the company. Jim sighed. That was tens of millions of dollars. Absently he shifted his right eye over to the game world and started throwing a gold piece up and down that was worth 10,000 gil. It was kind of hilarious, he could literally be swimming in a pile of gold, but that wasn't going to help him pay the bills.

Absently he started looking at his inventory with his right eye and right hand while his left eye was watching him twirl a pen in the real world. Sighing he leaned back in his chair and started throwing the pen up and catching it. He continued like this for a few minutes when he screwed up his toss and it ended up somewhere over his right shoulder. Annoyed Jim started trying to look for the pen. It didn't make a clattering sound so he figured he must have thrown it to his bed. Five minutes of searching later he still couldn't find his pen. Dammit. He liked that pen. Grabbing a crappier one Jim sat down and finally accepted that he somehow lost his pen in a tiny room. He even checked behind the desk and headboard of the bed and still found nothing. Oh well, he would have to buy another one. Twirling cheapie ten cen pens just didn't have the same feel. Jim sat down in his chair again and started fiddling with his inventory while tossing around the new pen. Where in the world was he going to find a few million dollars just laying around?

As Jim was absently scrolling through his item list, he was confused when he found an item that he only had one of. He should have had 99 of everything. Scanning to the left to find out what it was, his heart stopped. Looking him right in the face in the item list was "Jim's Pen x 1."

Hesitantly Jim dragged and dropped the item with his right hand from the list into the game world. Jim was now holding a pen in his right hand, which with his right eye showed him that it was in the game world. A chill went up his spine. The theory for a vegetable god in his world just grew a ton in probability. After thinking about what he did he carefully dropped the cheap pen in his left hand to where his inventory screen was showing up. His right eye saw that nothing was in his hand, but his left eye could see the pen drop, and then disappear when it would have hit the inventory tab. Next Jim used his left hand to point about where the pen was listed in the inventory screen. He then dragged the item to the left and once he moved his hand back, a cheap pen dropped from where his hand just was.

Using the same procedure he materialized a gold coin into the real world. Could he even call it the real world any more? A ball of lead hit the bottom of his stomach. This gold coin represented definitive proof that the world was not what it seemed to be. It wasn’t even a new concept. People had been speculating that life could just be a simulation for awhile now. Taking a deep breath Jim refocused himself. Whether he was a simulation or not did not matter in the least. He was the author of his own tale. He would bend not one, but two worlds to his will.

And then his stomach growled. Well, the whole bending to his will could wait till after dinner. Jim picked up the phone to place a call to the local pizza joint. If he met god one day and found out he made pizza into existence, he would have to give him a high five.