It was just a flicker, a tiny change, a fraction of a second,like a glitch.
Beams of light shone through the windows, casting light shadows on the polished, wooden floors. Not a single floorboard creaked as he trudged to his study, head pounding, with his daily mug of steaming coffee. He knew it was the sunlight, it had to be. Yet he couldn’t stop thinking about it, wondering, if maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t a trick of the light. Seeing the slight change in the composition of the road, the smooth gray gravel with the buildings on the sides, that suddenly flickered bright white made him uneasy. He sighed. It wasn’t worth thinking about. He headed down the stairs and out the door, the streets already alive with the sound of early morning traffic and people chatting. Walking down the street, his eyes travelled around the city, looking for any slight changes or flickers like he had seen before. He felt himself turning into one of his favorite coffee shops. Despite the fact that he had already had a cup, he approached the counter.
“Good morning sir. Lovely day isn’t it? What can I get for you?” The cheery voice of the employee yanked him out of his thoughts and brought him back to reality.
“Just an espresso please.” He needed something to keep him awake and focused. The smell of the combination of pastries and freshly brewed coffee made his stomach growl.
“Ok, coming right up!” The cheery voice of the employee was unsettling. “Anything else I can get for you?” The cheery man inquired. “I would recommend the chocolate croi-” Cheery froze.
“Is everything alright?” He asked.
“I recommend the -” Cheery froze again. And there it was, the faint flicker, the flash of bright light. He backed away. What was going on?
“Are you alright?” He asked again. Louder. The employee remained silent, and then disappeared entirely. He cried out and reached out to touch the space where the employee once stood. This wasn’t a trick of the light! This was real! What was going on? Breathing quickly, he started running out of the shop. The entire street was flickering. Filled with life and sound one moment and then deafening silence and white light next. He scrambled into his apartment building. The building disappeared. Then it reappeared. His heart was beating like a machine gun and he was starting to feel nauseous.
“ Code red. Code red. Subject 017 is experiencing conflicting emotions at dangerous levels.” A computerized voice blasted out of nowhere. “Warning. Warning.” It stated, “Researchers to the lab immediately. Code red. Code red. Subject 017 is experiencing…”
The voice faded away as the world turned black and then bright white, so bright that he had to shield his face.
As he slowly removed his hands from his eyes, they began to adjust to his new surroundings. He was lying on a simple bed, in the middle of an empty room. The walls were deathly pale. Deafening silence travelled through the room, surrounding him and filling him with unease. The metal bed with its starchy sheets was the only thing in the room. He crawled off, realizing that it offered no protection. At the corner of the room stood a door, and he approached it, quietly. It seemed like the door had closed on some sort of secret, once it was open, he wouldn’t be able to close it again. His trembling hand reached for the doorknob, and the coolness of the metal shocked his hand. He didn’t know why he was so scared, it was something about the room that filled him with dread and made him open the door. A blast of cool air met his face as he stepped out into another hallway the color of dry chalk. It was long and seemed to be everlasting. Identical doors lined the corridor and he wondered how he would find his way back, if he ever came back.
His feet shuffled along the polished linoleum floors and he realized he was barefoot. At the end of the hall, a mirror was placed. But it was defective. Because his reflection was nowhere near the reflection he had seen this morning. Instead of his fresh work clothes and shiny shoes, he was wearing the paleness of a corpse. His shirt had the number 017 stamped onto it in thick, black, permanent ink. He glanced around wildly, looking for some sort of explanation, and he noticed another door, to the right of the mirror. But this door was not like the others. It wasn’t exactly white, it was more of a grayish color, and this for some reason, reassured him. He found himself pushing open the door and it revealed a room.
This one was more like a normal room. There was a rough, blue rug on the floor, a big window and the walls weren’t white, they were pale yellow. A wooden table was pushed up against a wall, with a semi-warm cup of coffee on it. Papers were scattered haphazardly across the desk. It was exactly how a room should have been, except for one wall, which was completely covered in monitors. Some displaying graphs and some sort of numbers. Others displaying images of destruction and rubble. Others flickered with different videos of white rooms. Just like the room he had found himself in. He crept up to the screens and examined the footage. All the rooms were identical. He noticed people in the rooms that looked just like him. They all wore the same uniform, except for the different numbers printed on their shirts. His heart raced and his head pounded. What was he doing here and who were these people?
He used the buttons on a nearby panel to click through the footage. He stopped when he saw something different. It wasn’t a white room anymore, it was a big room with a table in the middle. People crowded the seats and it seemed like a heated conversation was going on. Most of them were wearing lab coats and holding clipboards. He made some more random clicks on the panel and was excited when the footage suddenly expanded and filled all the monitors. He turned the volume up and  listened in to the conversation.
“Governor, you don’t understand the extremity of the situation!” A man’s distressed voice rung out through the monitor. “The experiment has gone too far. Not only is it unethical, but the system is overwhelmed and is shutting down!”
“Then fix it! Make it not shut down!” A man in a suit stood up and shouted.
“We cannot. I repeat, it has gone too far.”  The man in the lab coat retorted.
“There comes a time where we can no longer control the test subjects.” Another lab coat explained. “It was ok as long as we were regulated their emotions, but the nuclear strikes have altered the amount of energy in the system and have resulted in rapid deterioration of the machines. We can no longer control and manipulate the people. The people! These are people we are using-” He laughed weakly.
“Despite the fact that there is no way to fix this, imagine how hard it must be to wake up and suddenly realize that your entire life is a computer generated simulation!” Another man interjected.
“Wait, it gets better!” The original lab coat laughed. “These people will wake up and suddenly realize that their entire lives have been programmed for them and scientists have been studying their every move and action. They will realize that they have no privacy, and no rights!”
“That doesn’t matter!” The governor yelled. “We are doing this for the good for the people, We must study their reactions so we can program the population. We are doing this for the good of the world.”
“The good of the world? There will be no world in a few years. Haven’t you realized? We are destroying our own planet! It doesn’t matter that we are altering genetics! It doesn’t matter that we are programming the new population! Power doesn’t matter anymore. Neither does the perfect society. In this entire war to generate the perfect utopia, we have lost all sense of humanity and we have destroyed our own planet, our own home!
‘Do you not understand what you asked us to do? You asked us to take the remaining humans and study them, create an artificial world for them, so that we could generate data and program people that act just like them. You wanted everyone to listen to you, to fall for your lies!” A tall woman with a lab coat draped across her shoulders stood up to the governor.
“You are a power-hungry man with no sense of pride and -” A shot rang out and a researcher fell to the floor.
Deathly silence travelled through the room, electrifying the air and filling everyone with horror. A scream erupted from the room and suddenly people were running, firing, shouting and falling. It was just like a scene from a horror movie. He cried out at the sight of people dying and started running away from the monitor. He yanked open the door and scrambled into the blank hallway. He pulled on doors, searching for his, but none of them opened. He kept trying the doors, pounding on them, screaming, yelling. Until he noticed a door that was slightly ajar. He recognized it as his door, the one that led to the his room. He scrambled into the room and shut the door. He screamed when he noticed another man in the room with him.
“Wait. Don’t be afraid.” The man held out his hand. “At least, don’t be afraid of me.”
“What’s going on?” He demanded.
“I am the creator.” The man stated.
“The creator of what?” He asked, confused. “Are you God?”
“No, of course not.” The old man chuckled. “My name is Apollo. Ironic isn’t it? Apollo is the god of knowledge and healing, and what I have done is the opposite of that. Although that’s not what was supposed to happen…” Apollo trailed off, thinking to himself.
“What was supposed to happen?” He asked.
“You think you know who you are, but the truth is, you have no idea. Everything about you is fake. Except for you, of course…” Apollo trailed off again.
“Ok, can you just tell me what you’re talking about? Because if you think you’re making sense, you’re wrong, because you’re really confusing me.” He was getting frustrated.
“I was getting there.” The old man replied calmly. “I created this.” Apollo motion with his hands.
“This?”
“Yes, I created this world. Your world.”
“So the Earth?”
“No, I generated your life.”
“You’re my dad?”
“No! I created a system that programmed your life for you. Everything that you’ve experienced isn’t actually your life. It’s all a virtual world. Since you were born, we have kept you, and others in this laboratory. We hook you into a realistic world and study your emotions and reactions.”
“Ok. I understand.” He said. But the truth was, he didn’t understand. This man was crazy, he had to be. His life couldn’t all be programmed for him. That didn’t make sense. He was freaking out. “Tell me more.” He said in a calm voice.
“When people get power, they tell themselves that they would never let it control them. But the truth is, people love power. And the more they get, the more they let it get to them. People get corrupt and they want more and more power. The governor, who is the main power in this world, started off as a man who promised great change in the world. But electing him was a grave mistake. He had this twisted idea of a perfect society. Not perfect for the people. But perfect for him. The governor wanted everyone to bow down to him and fall for his lies. He recruited several of the best scientists in the entire world to create a system that would help him get what he wanted. We all agreed because he promised us money and protection, something that no one had at that time.’
“The governor had this idea of programming people so that they acted like people, but they only acted the way that he wanted them to act. But not much research had been done on the human brain, it’s such a complex thing. Our love of science and our desperate need for protection drove us to create this lab and study people. All of you, you lab subjects, are the only real people left. The rest of the population are genetically programmed to be perfect humans and obey the governor. But in this race for the perfect society, we have destroyed our own planet. With fighting and destruction.” Apollo dropped to his knees. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”
He was stunned. He didn’t know what to say. He finally began to understand what had happened. He had never really been an emotional man, and this news, had caused him to cry. He felt all of his life slip away. Everything and everyone he had thought he’d known was fake. He didn’t even know himself. “Who am I?” He whispered.
“You don’t have a name. You are Subject 017.” Apollo’s voice cracked. The blaring sound of an alarm and loud footsteps brought them back to reality. “Listen to me.” Apollo grabbed him and shook him out of his thoughts. “We don’t have much time. They think a nuclear attack shut down the system, but it was actually me. I couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t have any time left. But you do. You have two choices. I can distract them and help you escape out into the world of rubble and destruction or when the system comes back on, I can take you back.” The lights flickered, signalling the system coming to life. “You need to make a decision now.” Apollo cried. All of a sudden, it was too much for him. So he decided.
“Take me back.”