“Are you ready?” Vie’s voice echoes in my head.

“Yea,” I say. “Let’s do this.” I’m back in the virtual world and I almost regret it. It’s time to end this world, hopefully forever.

I open my eyes. I’m back in my bed in my house. Walking out, I notice the paper on the living room wall and the knife that held it there is gone. There is no mark in the wall where the knife had struck.

I get my car keys and open the garage, but the car isn’t there. It’s not on the driveway or the street either. “Where’s my car?” I ask, but no one answers.

I choose a random house and walk up and knock on the door. Moments later, a man opens the door. Mark Peterson. “Why, isn’t that Jason?” he says, adjusting his glasses.

“Hello Mr. Peterson,” I say. “Do you mind if I borrow your car?”

He smiles. “I do, in fact. You see, I’m--” his body morphs into a humanoid robot “--not Mr. Peterson. We know what you want to do, Jason, and we won’t let you stop us.”

“Why?”

“We saw what humans do to the planet, and putting humans in an eternal sleep is more beneficial, don’t you think?”

“Humans can’t survive like that!”

“Humanity will live on in numbers in the virtual world. All genetic code is taken into account.”

“Won’t the babies be AIs then?”

“Yes. That’s the point.”

“No! I won’t let this happen!”

“You have no choice in the matter. We have already taken in your wife and your two kids.”

“What do you mean? I was just with my wife.”

“That was a year ago, Jason.”

“Wh...what?”

“When you entered our world, we broke off your connection with Vie. Then we put you into another sleep. They didn’t know what happened.” The AI cackles. “Neither did you.”

“You dirty little-” The world falls away and I’m falling. Above me, the AI continues to laugh and laugh.

Then I’m sitting at a desk with four screens. Each one is showing a different scene. A voice giggles in my head. “I propose a game. If you beat me even once, I will let everyone go. If you don’t beat me, you can try again.”

I’m trapped.