[Restricted access, document contains classified information]

Please by advised that any information contain in this document concerning the agent Brenton Alexander is strictly classified Top Secret. It is not to be discussed in whole or in reference outside of the Continuum. In relation to this, there is to be no discussion about the nature of the Continuum itself or its purpose with anyone who works outside of the Continuum. Any violations will be dealt with by the Men In Black. We thank you for your cooperation in regards to this matter. - Ivory Tower Management

“Look, Jaxson, you were in there for three full days,” the doctor explained as we walked along yet another hallway that looked like all the other ones. “We do not expect you to be in perfect mental health. In fact, we fully expect some instability.”

Yeah, no kidding! I thought. She wasn’t kidding about how far it was either. The hallway was long and narrow, everything was bright white. My head felt weird, I got the impression we were high up. “The disorientation you’re experiencing is perfectly normal. Any test subject that we have had that was down for more than twenty-four hours has the similar experiences. The longer they were down the longer the side effects lasted.”

“And how long is that?” I inquired. At least I would like to know when I will start to feel normal again.

“Typically about twenty-four hours. In you case maybe a bit longer,” she said. Then she suggested. “I can give you some sedatives for tonight, if that helps?”

“No, I’m good,” I told her. The last thing my system needed right now was more drugs. I would prefer to clean them out entirely. “I feel tired already. I’m sure I will sleep fine tonight. By the way, what floor are we on?”

“Fortieth floor, we need to go up to forty-one,” she explained.

The hall was winding, and we took several turns on our way to the elevator at the end.

“Where are all the windows?” I wondered. Shouldn’t tall buildings have lot of windows?

“There’s one by the elevator,” she replied. “Sorry, the lab is pretty deep in the interior of the building.”

She was right. There was a large bay window right next to the elevator, as tall as I was. Could I trust what I was seeing out there? What if it was projection? Like a real high-end TV with an extraordinary resolution? Would I be able to tell the difference between that and the real world? Where was the real world, was I even in it? Man, these questions had my thought spinning.

From up here it looked like we were on an island surrounded by a beautiful sparkling ocean. It appeared to be mid afternoon outside. Across from the tower we were in was another tower maybe half a mile away. It looked like any other residential tower you might find in post millennial Europe, accept it was tall, very tall. I wasn’t sure but it looked to be over a hundred stories.

“Is that home?” I asked out of instinct.

“Indeed,” she replied. “I guess you never get to see it from over here. The Ivory Tower is restricted access only. You’re only here because you participated in the experiment. Sorry, but you don’t have the clearance to go to a higher floor then this.”

“Oh,” I said. The things she was saying, made some sense in that I was starting to remember some of it, but it all still had a strange fake quality to it.

I looked down and saw a large squat building, maybe only half a dozen stories tall, that sat between the two towers. It looked old, like it was built in the nineteen twenties, whereas the two towers seemed more modern. It looked out of place. The island had no roads or cars anywhere only walking paths that connected the buildings together. Everything else was grass and some scattered trees.

The elevator pinged and opened up. It was empty, so we got on and road it up to the next floor.

When we got off, it was as if we had gone nowhere, everything looked exactly the same even the window next to the elevator looked the same.

I followed the doctor down the hallway until we came to a set of double doors that opened up into an office, or at least a waiting room for an office. There were the usual chairs and a small table with self-help books on it and a door that must have led to the psychologist examination room.

“This is where I must leave you,” the doctor told me. “After your appointment, security will come to escort you to the exit. Once you are out of the building you are free to go home.”

The doctor left. I never even caught her name. Oh well, maybe I would see her again if I got another chance to participate in this VR experiment again.

There was no clock, and I had no watch, cellphone or anything else on me that might give the time, but I’m pretty sure I did not wait long. Maybe five minutes at most.

The office door opened, and a woman came out to greet me. “Hi, I’m doctor Katherine Wedgewood, come on in and we can talk about your experience.”

I was stunned and left speechless. It was Sherry! I guess what I mean to say is that she looked identical to Sherry. Her face, her hair, her smile everything was exactly the same. Even the business dress she was wearing, not something I had actually seen Sherry wearing… the VR Sherry that is, but same style. The voice was a little off. The VR Sherry had a lower pitch than this doctor had.

“Ah, Mr. Greenwood, is everything alright?” Sherry, I mean Dr. Wedgewood said to me.

That snapped me out of it. “Sorry, for a moment I was back in the simulation,” I said to her. I stood up to show I was not completely out of it. It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it wasn’t really a lie either, it did take me back there mentally for a moment.

“Ah,” she said. “I just got the email and was reading it over before you got here. You set a record. I believe it was sixty hours in the simulation?”

“That’s what I was told, but for me it felt like it was three or four months,” I told her.

“Wow, that is incredible,” she replied. “I’m well read on the drug Opaldrine even thought it’s still in the experimental stage. Time dilation is normal for that drug, but four months? Wow. Did it feel like you were really living all those days?”

“To tell you the true, it felt more real than this does right now,” I confessed. It was true, I would almost prefer the fake world to this one. If this was in fact the real world.

“Come on into my office where we can be more comfortable. I just finished making a pot of coffee. You want a cup?” She asked me.

“Sure,” I said, and we went inside. It was quiet. Curtains were drawn part way across the windows that lined the wall on the far side of the room, limiting the light inside. The rest of the walls were lined with bookshelves full of books. There was a pair of comfortable chairs and a coffee table between them. She had a big oak desk with a leather chair. There was strange advanced looking laptop open on the desk.

As she poured the coffee, I suddenly became aware that there was a painting hanging on the wall behind her desk and it looked very familiar. Then it struck me… That’s the Jackson Pollack painting! The one from the restaurant in the simulation!

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked her, pointing at it.

She came over with the coffee. I took a mug. “What, the painting?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Is that a Jackson Pollack?”

“Well, it’s a copy of one, yes. I think the real one is in New York,” she said.

“Chicago,” I corrected her. Or maybe she was right. Maybe the real one was in New York. Maybe I would look it up when I got home. “Do you know what it’s called?”

“I think it called convergence,” She said. Then Sherry… I mean, Dr. Wedgewood merely shrugged as if it didn’t matter at all. And maybe to her it didn’t, but I was transfixed.

The simulation AI must have been taking things from the real world and putting them into the virtual reality world. Everything suddenly seemed unreal and unnatural, I was seeing flashes of pixelations. Where was I? What was going on? I was now actively disbelieving this world.

We both sat down, and she asked me a series of rapid fire questions with no preamble. Or discussion about it. I was just supposed to think fast and figure it out.

She started them out simple. “What’s your full name?” She asked me.

“Jaxson Dean Greenwood.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

“Your wife’s name?”

“Maggie.”

Dr. Wedgewood shook her head. And looked a little ticked off. “It’s Sakura.”

“This is bullshit!” I laughed at her. “It must be a trick question because I don’t have a wife,” I explained. It was true, I still didn’t remember having a wife.

“You have two children, both boys,” the doctor said in a very serious tone. She didn’t sound friendly anymore, only clinical. “Your children’s name?”

“Ah… Thomas and Jiro,” That was fucked up! How did that just pop into my mind?

She continued the line of questioning without missing a beat. “What year were you born?”

“2010.”

“Where are you right now?”

“The Continuum. Or do you mean the Ivory Tower?”

“Both are acceptable,” She commented. Then asked. “What’s your job at the agency?”

“Records and data entry.”

“Have you ever met agent Alexander outside of the simulation?” The seriousness with which she said it was unnerving.

That one caught me completely off guard. “Wait… What was that?”

“I asked you if you enjoy your time in the simulation?” Again, never missing a beat.

Did I actually hear her wrong the first time. She looked up from her clipboard expecting me to answer.

“Yes, I did,” I replied. True enough I guess.

“What color is the hallway outside the office?” She questioned.

What the fuck kind of a question was that. I answered. “Bone white.”

“Pure white is also acceptable.” She added. Then she asked. “What year is it right now?”

I did the math in my head because I was not entirely sure what the fuck was going on. If I was born in 2010 and I’m twenty-seven, then it had to be… “2037.”

She smirked at my answer. “If you think about it, there was no wrong answer to that one. Now, you understand that some of those questions were designed to try and confuse and mislead you, right?”

“Yes,” I was acutely aware of it actually and still it worked on me.

“Not to worry Jaxson, you passed,” she said with a smile. “You’re not crazy.”

I was not convinced. I doubted everything around me. Everything I saw, heard and felt. None of it was real, was it? It felt like it was all a hoax, like i was on one of those shows where you get pranked.

The doctor laughed and said. “That last one was a trick question anyway. We both know that the Continuum exists outside of the normal space-time continuity, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

Okay. Look, I’m sorry. I admit it, I haven’t been completely honest with you.

You have read this far and I have been as honest with you as I can be, but there are certain things I have been leaving out. Wait, not leaving out, I just could remember them for whatever reason.

Now that my memory is starting to come back to me, I need to explain what the Continuum really is. This is going to come off sounding completely insane. But most of this sounds crazy already, right? Trust me it’s not. It’s how the world really is, maybe. Let me ask you something, what do you know about string theory or the latest theories on quantum mechanics? Probably not much, am I right? Don’t worry, I’m not that much smarter than you, but since I live and work here in the Continuum, my knowledge base is a bit greater than the average person.

Okay, to keep it as simple as possible, think about it this way. For string theory to work there has to a lot more dimensions, like 26 of them or something like that. So it reaches the point where there are dimensions within dimensions. That’s what the Continuum is. It is a dimension that exists inside another dimension. Crazy, right? It is what people here call a pocket dimension. The island and the water that surrounds it are all that exist here and nothing else. Three building sitting on an island that is the sum total of the Continuum, nothing more.

But want to know something even crazier than that? The Continuum exists outside of time as well, but there are limits to that. You can travel along Earth’s timeline, anywhere from 80,000 years ago right up until 2332. How? I don’t really know. Seriously! The Men In Black agents are able to travel between the Continuum and Earth using some sort of handheld device. I don’t understand how it works exactly, but someone at the agency told me it was alien technology.

So you’re probably wondering, why 2332? If you are living outside of the Continuum than you better hold on to you hat, because you are in for one hell of a shock. 2332 is when the alien invasion happens. Yep, you read that right. We get invaded by an alien race so far advanced from us that we do not stand a chance. The whole point of the Continuum is to figure out how to stop them by running various simulations, scenarios and real world attempts.

Nothing has worked so far. Not even the most advance AI we can create has come up with a solution that saves the planet.

This information is classified top secret by the way, not that I care. People on Earth aren’t supposed to know what is going on, but that seems a bit foolhardy to me. Sure the Continuum has the best and the brightest in the world working on this problem, but the solutions don’t always come from them. Sometimes the solutions come from ordinary people.

Of course I get it. Letting the world know what’s going on who cause wide spread mass hysteria. I’ve read the Three Body Problem, I understand that and that book series is probable right about how everyone would react. But is the Continuum’s solution any better? I doubt it and from what I understand from secret whispers around the agency, I’m not the only one who doubts the Continuum either.

“Alright Jaxson,” Dr. Wedgewood said to me. “I think it is safe to allow you to return home to your family.”

She went into her desk drawer and went she returned she handed me my cellphone and AR glasses. “You can have these back. We kept them safe while you were in the simulation. I’m going to call down to security so that can escort you out of the building.”

“Prefect!” My phone slipped into my pocket after being turned back on and I put on the glasses. Flipped through me emails, but it was mostly people I worked with that were wishing me luck with the experiment or wondering when I would be back in the office. Nothing weird or out of place which I kind of expected and left me a bit disappointed. Where’s all the craziness that happened in the simulation?

I checked all the important news feed back on Earth to check for subtle changes to the timeline that the Continuum agents were making. Nothing jumped out at me, but since I worked in data entry, I might see something in a report that I might not have noticed otherwise. All the data that we enter gets feed to an advanced AI that processes it before sending it over to the people who run this place… who ever they are. All I know is that they wear golden robes, like they are the pope or something. But I’ve never seen them. They live high up in the Ivory Tower and rarely go anywhere. All of there instructions are hand down by the Men In White. Men In White give their orders to the Men In Grey who then hand out those orders to the Men In Black, who are the real world agents in the field.

Let me guess, you think this is all bullshit and none of it is real, right? I do not blame you one bit. I’m still not convinced myself that this was the real world, but I had nothing else to go on. What do I do if this isn’t real? How would I know? What would you do if you were me? How would you test it? Was I just a brain in a vat, like the one Dominic showed me? What if the simulation was just a reflection of myself?

A few minutes later security showed up. They two looked like typical security guards that you would find anywhere in America. Hell, they could have been androids for all the personality they had. They escorted me out of the build. No chit chat, no small talk, nothing. Just have a nice day sir and locked the door behind me.

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