Before I had seen the Galagon, when I lived in the far southern parts of Iunda, I hadn’t ever thought about the existence of Humanity.

In its least robust form, the Third Humanity was a fable told by school children among the walls of Imadin, one of the major megacities across the known world. It had been built over an old nuclear wasteland, a relic of the Old World, and here we would speak about how the Humans changed the world with their appearance. This fact was normalized to us over the years, as we lived under their buildings, thrived on their technology, and learned their knowledge.

The Old World was over a century ago, and it was told that it struggled on the firm grip of a strong empire, and a stronger empire before it. Now, I have myself wondering what empire we hail to now, if it is one at all.

In the coming and going of days in this world, change is an ever-encompassing normality. Now, a hundred years later, the Third Humanity is gone, vanished and a part of an age of yore. Where they had disappeared to was an eternal mystery that lasted decades, and even now the billboards sometimes pose conjecture to the idea. Nonetheless, our society continued without them, and with our grasp touching the stars, we begin to learn greater truths about our existence and our place in it.

I had just made my morning coffee when I had had a frantic knock on my door. It was only about nine in the morning, and my brain hadn’t completely woken up from my slumber only a half hour before. 

On my phone, I checked the intercom to discover it was my colleague, Idon. Idon and I had known each other for years, but Idon was far more susceptible to conjecture than I was. Posthaste, I let him in, and he barreled down the hallway of my apartment and into the kitchen, where I was standing with a sip of my coffee in hand.

“Yes, Idon?” I asked him nonchalantly, and he frantically revealed to me an article published online.

Ciphrus as a civilization has not ventured out far compared to the Third Humanity. Indeed, we have barely scratched the surface of deep space, but once we had, we had found something odd. The article stated that the latest exploratory ship which was sent to survey our closest system had… run “aground,” so to speak. Indeed, the ship had ventured so far so as to come to a complete stop of space and time itself. A white wall had encompassed the system, as though we were within an orb. The crew had experienced strange time dilations and -- in some circumstances -- seen dopplegangers. My interest was piqued immediately, but after a quick skim, I turned to more pressing matters.

“Why didn’t you just text me this? Did you really have to run all the way here?” I asked Idon, from which he replied after a short puff of breath:

“I thought we could also grab breakfast.”

I huffed back in held laughter. “Alright,” I said, “give me a few minutes to get ready and I’ll be on my way.”

Idon didn’t stop yapping about the article the entire walk to our shared diner, nor did he stop when we arrived either. I had listened without much of a word up until our orders were placed, when I hit him with a question he hesitated to answer.

“So, after that, then what?”

“What?” he replied, glancing off towards the street window, “What do you mean?”

“Let’s say our entire reality is a myth, a simulation. The simulation hypothesis is real… then what? We try to escape it? If we exist within it, then this is it. We can’t escape it -- not before the creators know when to shut it off.

So, then what?”

Idon took a minute to think this through, but I had taken liberty to share my own thoughts, since he had done so on the entire way there. With a shake of my head, I posed:

“No, I don’t think we’re a simulation. I think we’re missing something. It’s new to us, so of course we’re going to question it all day. It’s best we work on studying what it is, rather than asking what it may be.”

With that, our food arrived and I took a hefty first helping of the contents, and the rest of our meal was more or less silent.