#simulations

All our data analysis models and juggling simulators have made this abundantly clear.

By galactic law, it's illegal to simulate people unaware of other options... but, most people in Sarah's life have little interest in the "real" world beyond of the server. Sarah finds this maddening.

Sarah wants to see the other servers. She wants to experience the real Earth... and her darkest ambition... (very illegal) to be physically embodied there.

She isn't totally alone. She hooks up with a group that builds "real" sculptures out of moon dust on the real moon using a robot that bypasses the conservative time-locked simulation's rules.

These radicals are building a spaceship (about the size of a deck of cards) to fly to the surface of earth.

It's a risky proposition, once you leave a history simulation server you can never return (due to information contamination.) They have no money, nothing of value to offer the embodied people of Earth. How can they survive?

The process of breaking free leads them to uncover the dark secrets of the people who created their world. It turns out that the server-founders aren't really following the law. For most people in the 21st century the choice to "leave" is just an illusion.

Since they don't have enough power or money to "embody" at full size, they end up using tiny robots on the scale of ants. And they will need the help of Earth's ants to expose the terrible secret of the 21st Century history simulation... a project regarded as quaint and educational by most people on Earth, when in reality it is a torture chamber.

History simulation servers are a source of endless thorny moral problems. There is possible value in simulating the past, but everyone knows that a quality simulation will effectively mean forcing people to *live* in the past and much of human history is not anything anyone would choose to live with.

The law settled on a compromise:

1. People in such simulations must have a way to leave. 2. The people who start the simulation must live in it themselves, and they CAN NOT pick who they will be.

The conservative factions have long complained that modern people are almost not people at all since regardless if they live embodied or in a simulation they rarely face the kind of pain and adversity that was common in the past.

They look to our time and say that the least of us is more lucky than they are.

But will they really roll the dice and live ANY 21st century life? Of course not. And that's not the only law they are breaking.

They discovered early on that almost no one wanted to stay in their simulated past. Even people who said they wanted to "live a life with real challenges" change their mind.

Hence, to keep enough people in the simulation for it to work they have to rig the game. This is accomplished by a mental virus that makes it hard for people in the simulation to take seriously the possibility that life could possibly be any other way.