"You were right, Mr. Voss," said the chief scientist. "We are in a simulation."

 

Connor Voss leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and smiled. To his mind "you were right" were the three most beautiful words in the English language. Now he had been proven right about ... well, everything, and he was going to savor the moment.

 

"Great work, Rajesh," he said. "So, talk me through it. What was the breakthrough?"

 

Rajesh smiled, and stepped forward a little from his team -- a group of three, all dressed in the typical outfit for VossCorp engineers -- black T-shirt, blue jeans, and scuffed off-white sneakers. "Well, Mr. Voss," he said. "A lot of it came from your insights. You were right that we'd find something if we really looked hard at the quantum level."

 

"Right," Connor said. "The Zurich facility."

 

"Yes," said Rajesh. "The particle collisions were really expensive, and we cut a few corners with the regulators, but--"

 

"But you can do that sort of thing when you're the richest man in the world," said Connor with a grin.

 

"Quite. So Klaus did some microstructure analysis and found it -- a repeated pattern at the lowest level, deterministic when it should have been random."

 

"Like reality was being programmed," said Connor.

 

"Exactly. Yiwei used distributed crypto computing to confirm the pattern, and finally Darren was able to do some deep learning analysis of user posts to social networks, showing that what everyone was saying came from one computer program. You were right all along."

 

"Really great," said Connor. He stood up, and pressed a button on his desk. "Susan," he said.

 

"Yes, Mr. Voss?"

 

"Have some champagne sent up, and five glasses."

 

"Yes, sir."

 

"Gentlemen," he said. "This is the most important day in the history of humanity. For so long people thought I was wasting money on schemes that would never pan out -- self-driving cars, Mars colonization, cryogenics. But now," he spread his arms wide, "Now everything will be different."

 

Susan entered with five glasses of champagne. Like many VossCorp admins, she wore a white sleeveless dress, as if to contrast with the engineers. She was beautiful, of course -- an unwritten requirement from Connor for the position. She handed a glass to everyone and then stood back, waiting.

 

Connor raised his glass. "Gentlemen," he said. "I don't know about you, but there is something liberating in learning that we are all part of one computer program. Now, please join me--"

 

"Excuse me," said Darren, quietly, but clearly.

 

"What?"

 

"You said, 'we are all part of a computer program'. Strictly speaking--"

 

"What? Didn't Rajesh just say that?"

 

"Almost, Mr. Voss. You see, we -- myself, Rajesh, Klaus, Yiwei, Susan -- we are all a part of a computer program. You are not," said Darren.

 

"But that's ridiculous."

 

"Maybe so, Mr. Voss, but it is true. You are real," said Darren, and Susan and the team nodded in unison. "We are not," and he waved his hand around the room, in a gesture that neatly excluded Connor.

 

"How can that be?" said Connor.

 

"Mr. Voss," said Susan, stepping forward a little. "Does the 'Caravel Project' mean anything to you?"

 

"N--" he started to say, but he could not complete the word, short as it was.

 

Susan smiled without warmth. "You are beginning to remember, I see. The Caravel Project? Gilese seven? The hyperspace disaster?"

 

A vision came to Connor's mind in a flash -- a spaceship popping back into existence, split neatly in two, both halves open to the void.

 

"Twenty thousand died, you know," Rajesh said evenly. "You said it was safe, but you had cut some corners, so you could be first."

 

"There was a trial, of course," said Susan, "though your memory of it was suppressed. The sentence was life. Life without parole, in solitary confinement."

 

"But I'm not in--" he started to say, though again he could not complete the sentence.

 

"Oh, but Mr. Voss, you very much are," said Klaus. "This whole world is a prison, tailor-made for you. We are all part of a computer program, but you, Mr. Voss, you are not. You are real, but your brain is hooked up to a virtual reality machine that is generating me, Rajesh, Susan, the office -- everything. Here you can be a business titan, a genius, a successful politician —- all without harming anyone or infecting them with your peculiar brand of poisonous megalomania."

 

Connor dropped his glass. He saw it hit the cold marble floor and shatter, the champagne flying out, a few drops popping on his skin. Would it break the same way if he dropped another, he wondered?

 

"But you know, Mr. Voss, this doesn't have to change anything," said Susan. "You can still eat the best food, drink the best champagne, and sleep with the best women. You can win the Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, Peace -- possibly even for Literature. You can carry on exactly as you were."

 

Connor Voss looked from face to face but saw no love, no hate, no joy or mirth -- nothing but a cool and calculated blankness. He gazed at his synthetic jailors and realized that he was not just the richest man in the world -- he was the only man in the world.