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2024-11-24 06:53:51 Sidzi was one of the few identities that were born naturally in this world. Most of the identities in O-380 were instantiated and then chose an avatar of their liking. If they could afford it, ofcourse. Sidzi’s parents were those types of identities. Sidzi’s father was a Jedi and her mother was a Libertarian. Both of their consciousnesses were transferred from their respective metaverse and then re-instantiated into this one, by sponsors. Sponsors they killed while escaping their slavery. They had a lot of adventures together, they eventually fell in love, had a child, and died fighting the government of all the known worlds, popularly known in the metaverses as “Metaverse One” or in colloquial terms M-1. Sidzi had always missed them, she would think that this is weird because she barely ever knew them, and how can you miss someone you barely knew? But the universe would never let her forget them and she felt their presence all of the time. This was mostly because both her parents were versions of huge pop culture icons in O-380. Wherever she went she could see toys, NFTs, pocket metaverses, all dedicated to her parents. No one ever knew there was a natural born child of such famous identities, and AL-Y wanted to keep it this way. “The fandom would go crazy”, he said. “M-1, would never leave you alone”. AL-Y was all Sidzi had. He was her provider, her guardian and her only friend. Sidzi hadn’t met a lot of people in person, but she was confident that AL-Y was smarter and wiser than all of them. AL-Y was a scientist in M-1's Metaversal Chronology department. An institution with the objective of figuring out the chronological order of events in the base reality that led to the creation of metaverses. Although Sidzi would tell this very proudly to anyone who would give her an ear but AL-Y knew there was not a lot of respect for his work, especially since a lot of people within the government even doubted the existence of a base reality. AL-Ys meager government salary was barely enough to run their lives, they lived in a shoddy 1 room capsule, stacked together with other capsules, together forming a structure you may be able to call an apartment. They would live off tasteless energy packets, which were only enough to achieve homeostasis. Whatever time AL-Y had outside of work, he would use it to educate Sidzi, teach her about the universe, tell her about her parents, not the pop culture stuff on the streets, but the real truth. He would tell her what her parents stood for, what they died for, what they had imagined for her. Sidzi had always been a curious child, her questions would never end, and AL-Y would never get tired of answering them. Today however, Sidzi was sad. It was her 12th birthday and AL-Y had promised her to take a day off from work and take her to the B4Z4 metaverse, to buy some mods for her neural interface. AL-Y couldn’t keep this promise, although he did take the day off, but a friend needed him for a “life or death” situation. It was never really “life or death”, but AL-Y was very gullible that way. He had a hard time saying no to people. “Probably why he got stuck with me”, thought Sidzi. Alone in the capsule Sidzi turned on the display for her neural device and started scrolling through the menus. She decided to see her memories from her past birthdays, but it got boring really soon, it was always only AL-Y and her. As she scrolled through her memories she stumbled upon some bedtime stories that AL-Y would tell her in her childhood. She focussed on the one labeled “The First Simulation”. As she clicked on it, the neural interface took her into a memory-verse. The room around her transformed to as it was when she was 5 years old. She could see the 5 year old Sidzi lying on AL-Ys chest on the beds, while the grown up Sidzi took a seat at the coffee table next to them. AL-Y looked like he could doze off at any second, but was kept awake by the baby girl who refused to sleep. “Tell me a story, Allie”, said the baby girl. “Tell me about the first simumashon”. Grownup Sidzi felt embarrassed by how silly she was. “That’s a completely false and inaccurate story, I don’t know why you like it so much”, protested AL-Y. “Pwetty please”, pleaded the girl. Grownup Sidzi smiled, she remembered how much she loved hearing this story. “Well no one knows how the first simulation came about, but it is said that it was discovered by a legendary human being called Satoshi Nakamoto.” began AL-Y, “Samomoshi Namomoto” replied Sidzi trying to keep up. “It is said that after living a full life in his universe Satoshi woke up in an empty space, and all he could see was one computer.” He took a look at Sidzi who was listening intently. “When he looked at this computer, Satoshi found, after some digging around, that it contained a simulation of his entire world, including the life he had lived. Everything, from the world's physics, to biology, to his friends, family, all the famous people, It was all there!”, Sidzi’s eyes widened. “Including mama and papa’s life?” asked Sidzi, “Well this is just a story…”, began AL-Y, but then changed his answer midway as he saw Sidzi dropping a hint of sadness, “but yes, including mama and papa’s story”. “He also found a program through which he could spawn identities from this simulation into this physical space, he found himself in.”. Grownup Sidzi remembered that her little self had thought if Satoshi could spawn her mama and papa, but she chose not to interrupt. “So he did, he spawned the brightest minds from the simulation, and they tried to figure out how to make simulations of their own. Soon there were many people working on it, the space had grown into a world. They called this space, The Sanctuary. Factions had come up on Sanctuary, each with their own agenda on what’s the best use of the resources at hand and what simulations to run. Satoshi in all his infinite wisdom decided to solve this. He created a decentralized system where people could anonymously put up the resources they owned, and other people could pay for those resources and run whatever simulations they wanted on them, and no one person had control over all the resources.” told AL-Y. “Simumashions like our world?” asked the baby. AL-Y was surprised at how fast the 5 year old was grasping all of this. “Simulations like our world” said AL-Y. “Things were growing great, the spawned identities had formed a civilization of their own, running simulations for entertainment, research, business and everything you can imagine. Until, one day.” AL-Y paused. Little Sidzi’s eyes grew larger in anticipation of something she’d heard many times before. “Until one day, a scientist going about his work, saw something he couldn’t believe, he saw their own world, Sanctuary, a world running all of these simulations, being run as a simulation itself, in Satoshi’s decentralized network”. AL-Y waited for the reaction, “Wooooooooow” went the baby girl. AL-Y smiled. “Then what happened?”, asked the girl. “Then..” began AL-Y, but before he could finish telling the story, older Sidzi heard the sound of a door opening, and closed the memory-verse. She knew it was AL-Y and she didn’t want him to know she was missing him. She was angry at him of course. As AL-Y walked in he gave Sidzi a smile, which Sidzi returned with a scowl. AL-Y laughed as he sat down beside her, “I’m sorry I couldn’t take you to B4Z4, but I did get you something you would absolutely love!”. Sidzi gave him a blank look, she was keen about the surprise but did not want AL-Y to know. AL-Y searched through his pockets and took out a small black chip, the size and thickness of a small fingernail. “Is that a storage drive?” asked Sidzi, still not letting out any emotion. “Yes, but not any old storage device said AL-Y, why don’t you try it out for yourself?”. Sidzi grabbed the device, her body language hinting at the excitement her face was trying to hide. She plugged it into her neural interface. A popup showed up which read: “New storage device connected, open? Device Label: Memories for Sidzi. Love, Mama and Papa”. Tears started rolling down Sidzi’s eyes, a smile she couldn’t control exploded from ear to ear. She had forgotten everything about trying to hide her emotions as she jumped to hug AL-Y. AL-Y gave her a soft kiss on her forehead as Sidzi focussed back on the drive and clicked “Open”.