• “So when will I be able to leave?” Dian asked, this time a little more anxiously.

Michael pulled a chair close to her and sat down; his arms crossed over his chest. He sighed deeply.

• “Let me tell you the story again Dian. So, there was this researcher who worked on this theory that we could live in a simulated world. Remember?”
• “I’m not sure…”
• “We studied this together in college. It doesn’t ring a bell?”
• “Err….”

• “Ok so he had this theory that everything happens in the brain. Whatever the brain believes “makes” reality. So…he came up with this idea that if you were to go into a man’s room at night and carve his brain out of his skull without him realising it; if you were to keep his brain “alive” somehow and then feed it electrical impulses so that the brain still “believed” that it was inside a body where it could experience life, it would think that nothing had changed…”
• “That it was still the same person, in the same body, in the same bed, in the same room, in the same life….”
• “Yes, yes exactly…. God you say the same thing each time…anyway, so the brain would never know what had happened to it and it would just keep on going in the exact same way.”
• “Right… but it would only evolve in a closed system…inside the brain.”
• “Exactly, that’s what you told me at the time in college. What we thought was missing in the theory was the fact of keeping organs that could apprehend the world.”
• “Yes, like eyes, ears, a mouth…”
• “Exactly.”
• “So?”
• “So…ask me your question again Dian.”
• “Err…ah yes, when can I leave the lab?”

Michael got up and grabbed a small mirror that lay on the table behind him. He put it in front of Dian’s face who stared into it in horror. She could see her whole head and neck but, where her shoulders and chest were supposed to start, there was nothing else than a small white plate. Her head stood straight up and numerous wires connected it to a large computer behind her.

• “Don’t tell we did the experiment?” Dian asked, this time her voice no louder than a whisper.
• “What do you think?” Michael answered sarcastically.
• “But you can’t leave me this way, I …. No…. How did I ever agree to this?????”
• “You didn’t…that’s why you keep forgetting about the current situation you’re in” Michael said, as though to himself. He sighed annoyingly. “We’ll try this again tomorrow.”
• “Don’t leave me!” Dian screamed tearfully.

Already Michael was turning off the light and opening the door to leave the laboratory.

• “We’ll try again tomorrow, Dian. Maybe I’ll finally find a way around this consciousness of yours that is blocking the experiment and making you forget. Then we will be able to move forward.”

As he closed the door behind him, he added out loud, ignoring Dian’s screams coming from inside:

• “What was the saying again? Where there’s a will there’s a way? Well, there must be a way even when there is no will…there must be. “