The Memory Simulation
Reconstructed pre-Collapse Earth Carl moves through by transfer, populated by memory ghosts and full of sensory detail.
Story so far
The whole chapter takes place inside the memory world. Carl has been travelling north through it, pausing at places like The Gas Station, and the simulation is vivid enough that the coffee from The Homeless Shelter remains heavy on his tongue and the scent of the shelter's breakfast mixed with Lysol lingers in his memory until his stomach rumbles.
Movement between locations happens by request: Orren agrees to send him back to the gas station, tells him good day, and disappears, and after a moment the notice Transferring Now precedes a blink and arrival outside the station. Carl can eat, drink, and touch the world — chips off a rack, soda from a cooler, a sleeping Memory Ghost beside him — while at the same time pulling up his real interface and the Containment Interface within it.
Appearance
A faithful reconstruction of pre-Collapse Earth: shelters serving breakfast, looted gas stations, empty winter roads on Christmas day.
Role
The setting of Carl's negotiation and of the decision that ends the chapter.
Relationships
Sources — 4 recorded facts, by chapter
- The eighth floor's simulated space, whose ruleset retroactively confiscated everything Carl looted inside it.
- Prior-floor simulation whose objects dissipated on arrival at this floor, exposing the tinsel as an outside artifact.
- The shared dream-memory in which Carl and Katia relived her past while the spiders fought over her.
- Reconstructed pre-Collapse Earth Carl moves through by transfer, populated by memory ghosts and full of sensory detail.