[Discord]

I rose at the sound of the woman speaking. Piercey hopped off the table and moved beside me, grabbing my hand. I wasn't sure if it was for my sake or his.

After several seconds, the lights came back on. The other side of the room looked completely different. It was pale blue, like our hallway, and it was outfitted like a living room, complete with an ugly floral loveseat.

A woman sat there, watching me with sharp eyes. "My name is Dr. Henderson."

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“You have so many questions, Max.” Her long black hair laid across one shoulder. “I’m afraid I don’t have all the answers you want.”

“Don’t have them or won’t give them?”

“Won’t give them.” Dr. Henderson smiled. “I’ve had my eye on you. You’re not easily distracted.” Her voice softened and she spoke to me the way I imagined my mother would have if I'd ever known her. “That's why I'm meeting with you and Piercey. You two have been struggling, haven't you?"

Piercey shook his head. "No, ma'am. We're fine."

I was only sixteen, but I was so tired. Tired like I’d lived decades and never got a break. "We're not fine. We're being held hostage at this school."

She simpered. "You'll be released when you can control your power well enough that you won't hurt people anymore."

Shame seared my heart. The Eclipse. Not the one that haunted my future, but from my childhood. It was as if the two eclipses were entangled, tethered in time, and my entire life existed as a tug-of-war between the two, even now. Dr. Henderson was talking about the people I hurt back then.

I couldn't let her distract me with my guilt. "I'm tired of hearing that excuse. Kelvin stabbed me today."

Dr. Henderson scooted forward. "I'm sorry that happened to you, Max. We give autonomy to the people in your world, including the Sacred School. That's very important. There isn't anything we can do."

"Why? Why do you have to silently watch?"

"There are many things I can't tell you."

Rage made my mouth taste bitter. “Yeah. Because you’d compromise your experiment by making your subjects aware.”

She sat back, thrown, but only for a moment. Then she smoothed out a wrinkle in her pants. I imagined she had few wrinkles in her life. “My, my. Perhaps the library at the school is a little too robust for your needs.”

“It would be much easier to control me if you denied me an education. You know, like you do with ninety-nine percent of the world.”

“You’re angry.”

“I’m more than angry.”

“It’s fair. I would be too.”

"This mountain has technology that the rest of our world won't hope to have for thousands of years. The people think you're gods because you come from a more advanced civilization. You let them pray to you while you watch them suffer in silence. I deserve to know why. Why are you running tests on me? What are you trying to learn?"

"Stop Max." Piercey's voice shook. "The gods won't tolerate dissent."

Dr. Henderson waited until we'd both fallen quiet. "There's worlds like yours all over the cosmos, Max. Young worlds with growing civilizations. We want to learn how to help them develop without having to suffer through all the war and chaos that comes with social evolution."

I blinked. "You're watching us all kill each other to learn how to keep others from doing it? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

Piercey grabbed my shirt and tugged me back to his side. "The whole world is the experiment, not just the school. There'll be more like us, Max. More experiments. More worlds."

A hint of pride shone in Dr. Henderson's eyes. "I can't lie to bright young people like you. It's true. One percent of your population has the neural implant that allows you to manipulate matter at the quantum level. Other worlds have greater numbers with power. I know it's hard. But you wouldn't be better off without us, and this data will save more lives than you can comprehend.

"This is just great." I raised my hands. "The most evolved species in the cosmos are total idiots. Why do you think it's okay to experiment on people?"

"It isn't okay. We can't pretend it's ethical. Still, math doesn't lie. The number of people who will suffer in these experiments is the tiniest fraction of how many people it will save from suffering."

The white walls snapped black and specks of light pierced every inch of the room. Stars glowed in the darkness, growing until raging suns dominated the room. Above us a planet teeming with light green water appeared, and another to our right, one chilled with mountains of ice. More. Zooming past us too fast to see. People popped up on the walls. Children laughing. Children screaming. Rapid flashes of life and death far too overwhelming in number to take in.

"They're all suffering." Dr. Henderson folded her hands on her lap.

I squeezed my eyes shut against the blur of faces, nauseous.

"You can help us end it. My society has long since evolved beyond death. Now it's time for others to do the same."

I struggled to find my voice. "Go help people. Stop experimenting."

"It's not as simple as that." Darkness overtook the room once more and gradually light dawned on the floor, rising up the wall behind Dr. Henderson. A breeze that I could actually feel kissed my cheek and carried in the smell of berries. We stood in a dimly lit forest.

Beside me, Piercey turned in a small circle, marveling at the transformation.

"Sometimes our best attempts to help actually hurt." Her voice was as mild as the breeze now. "We need to prove which interventions are effective at helping young worlds evolve with less suffering. Interventions that preserve a world's right to self-determination."

I clapped my hands so loudly that it made my ears ring. "So moving. You are truly worthy of worship, aren't you Dr. Henderson?"

Her mouth straightened. White crashed onto the walls, leaving us bereft of all the life from moments before. "I have tolerated your disrespect and foolishness long enough."

"The truth will come out. What do you think everyone will do when they find out? It'll be chaos. Good luck having reliable data then."

Dr. Henderson sighed. "You just don't understand, Max. You can't tell anyone about this. No one can. It would mean the end of your world."

My muscles froze. I couldn't even try to speak.

"The entire purpose of your world is this experiment. If you compromise it, the council will shut it down precisely because it is unethical. Once an unethical experiment is unproductive, it cannot be allowed to exist."

"You'll… You'll destroy an entire world? You can't do that. You can't kill us all." I backed up for the door before I remembered there was no door. No escape. I was at her mercy. Beside me, Piercey looked like he had vanished from his body.

"The less you know, the better," she said. "I didn't want to share any of this with you. But I've been watching you. You were going to fight until you got answers. Now that you have them, let your world live in peace."

I gasped for breath. It felt like my throat was closing. "This can't be real. You can't just destroy entire worlds. You aren't gods!"

"We are the gods of this world, child. We created it. We can end it."

Piercey's eyes still looked vacant, but his lips twitched in silent words I couldn't hear. I stared at him, trying to figure out what he said.

"Tell her, Piercey," Dr. Henderson said. "You know the truth. You already suspected it."

A single tear slid down his face.

"Tell her and make her understand why she must stay silent. If you care for her, you'll do this."

He turned to me. His eyes looked like those of the dead. Dr. Henderson had killed the life in him. "They have total control. Our world isn't real." His voice was dry. Monotone. "This is a simulation, Max. "

I bowed forward, unable to fully comprehend the words.

"Don't be scared." Dr. Henderson spoke calmly. "You're real, Max. All of you are real people who died as babies in your natural world. We uploaded you here to give you what you lost far too young. It isn't so different from how my people live. We all uploaded to a digital universe long ago. It's okay."

A hoarse gasp ripped apart my throat.

"It'll stay okay as long as you're quiet." Her voice drifted past like the breeze, the threat buried in softness. "Be a good girl, Max."

My life here mattered. Piercey mattered. I mattered.

None of this was real. But it was all I'd ever known.

And it could slip away at any time.