Exercise has done nothing. I couldn’t increase my jogging distance, the amount of sit-ups I could do, the amount of push-ups, you name it. Then again, I wasn’t sore at all the following days. But my body fitness hasn’t deteriorated at all. My guess is that my body’s current condition is the condition of my body in the real world when I first entered this one.

Anyways, Day 90. The times when I’m doing something and a memory resurfaces, triggering my fainting and the start of a new day, are becoming more often. It’s starting to get annoying. I even skipped a few diary entries here and there. But at least when I go back, I won’t be an amnesiac, right? (Will I even get to go back?)

But I have to say, this long vacation is nice. No one is here to tell me what to do or what not to do; no one is here to annoy me; no one is here to interrupt my experiments; no one is here to…

My memories have been coming back not only more often but also in larger...files. More information. I learned more so far of my family, my background, my mother (I was right), my wife’s family, some of my best friends…

So far nothing of how I came here, when I’m going back, or why this world keeps changing has come up. I do know there are others like me. We were all put together in a room full of what looked like preserving capsules. My body is automatically fed and all excretory waste is somehow taken care of (who wants to even know about that?).

I have made a list of things to try every ten or so days to see if they have changed at all. For instance, tasting food, feeling textures, listening, trying to breathe underwater, and testing my healing ability.

Going back to the real world is going to be hard. Actually, going back will not be fun at all.

If this feeling is what others will experience, will all social interactions truly become virtual? Will everyone stay in one large building run by a machine and live in a capsule like that one book...was it the fifth book of the series? Or maybe it was the fourth? Or was it the sixth? I can’t remember. I don’t even know the author’s name--but I do remember that the main character’s name was something like Bob (was it Bobbie? Bobby? Or maybe it wasn’t that at all)

Then will machines run the world? Will they think humans are bad for the planet and then try to eliminate humans?

Has that already happened?

I wish at least a news channel would work. If virtual reality is going to become a thing, engineers need to hook it up to the internet...or something like the internet. Where everyone could go to see each other, I mean. Even without human interaction, virtual reality is amazing. I would bet half the people of today’s world would rather live here, where they can do anything, be anything, and have anything.

Except maybe a perfect spouse.

I can just imagine meeting a “significant other” in virtual reality. Everyone will change their looks to enter the space, and then some will fall in love, some naive children who think nothing will try to hurt them, who are so innocent that they believe everyone to have a good heart, a good mind, a good soul. And then they would say, “Let’s meet in the real world,” and then...something bad would happen. It happens every time. Even with today’s (or was it last year’s or the year before that or the year before that?) world, with the current virtual world such a thing happens.

As I stare at the ceiling, mulling over these thoughts, I smell something. And for the first time, I realize that I have not been able to smell.

I smell pasta. Good pasta. Like five star four dollar italian pasta. I get up off the couch I’ve been lounging in and walk over to the kitchen. There is a man in my kitchen, cooking pasta.

There is a man in my kitchen.

There is a man. A person. Thank the freaking heavens. Thank God. A person.

But wait, how am I to communicate? I should have learned sign language. Or wait, I should use a pen and paper.

The man notices me and smiles. He seems to try to say something, but then he stops and gestures for me to sit at the table. My stomach growls loudly and I comply.

He finishes cooking and puts the pasta on two plates (how does he even know where the plates are?), sets one down in front of me and sits across from me with the other one in his hand. He begins to eat, but then his face darkens and he says something. I can’t read his lips. Glancing over a few times, his expression neutralizes as he seems to listen to something. Then he nods and starts eating.

I pick up the fork on my plate and also begin eating, watching him warily. He seems to know what’s going on--which I’ve been dying to know.

He takes out some paper and a pen and scrawls something before handing them to me. His writing is so illegible that I struggle to make out the words before giving up and writing back, “I can’t understand this.” He facepalms and writes again, slower this time.

“Do you know who I am?” I read. I shake my head no. He writes something again. “How far back do you remember?” I shrug. “What is the latest thing you remember?”

I pick up the pen. “When I entered the capsule.”

He exhales. “You don’t remember anything in between that and when you first awoke here?”

“No.” I begin to worry. What if one of my tons of hypotheses about the world outside is true? What if I’m actually dead? What if… “Did something happen?”