Life Hack

By Kissa Colt

The world had ended; there had been no grand fight, no heroic last stand, not even an orchestra playing ‘until we meet again.’ Like the shunting of a light switch, humanity and every other complex organism on the planet was copied and digitized into a simulation and their remains left to rot on what had once been earth.

Among the digital minds some rose above- programmers and hackers who learned how to manipulate the conditions of the simulation to their advantage. For one particular Hacker, this has brought nothing but discontent and melancholy that no amount of code can rectify. Whether at the bottom of the Marianas Trench or the tip of Mount Everest, no answers exist to the questions they ask.

Until a chance meeting with another Hacker offers a chance for a new perspective, one that offers humanity and warmth among the cold binary. Brianna knows the true scope of the simulation and its purpose, but her offer carries with it the most difficult question of all: was the gift worth its price?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tammy Silverwolf
• Release date: Apr 2, 2020

Book preview

Life Hack

Simulation Erotica

by

Tammy Silverwolf

Writing as

Kissa Colt

Legal Mumbo Jumbo

Copyright © 2020 by Kissa Colt

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the author

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First Printing, 2020

Dedication

To those who question every day and never find the answer we seek.

Acknowledgements

It's a trite truism that no effort gets off the ground without proper tools, dedication and maybe a bit of luck, but nothing would have been possible without the constant (and sometimes very insistent) support of my patrons, fans and friends. It's no exaggeration to say that they are literally my life blood.

Thank you

Thank you so much

(In no particular order)

Alonsis

Apothecary29

Lex

Lisa

Orodreth

Taey

Life Hack

Supposedly there was a time and a place for everything; as if the entire universe would come together like an audience to bear witness to a single blip of time and the perfect assemblage of particles and circumstances that would hear a child’s first words or the detonation of a nuclear weapon.

This was one of the stories, the salves, humans applied to face the cold truth of an indifferent universe and the cruelties that could befall them. Everything had a time and a place. It was a whisper meant to ease a human mind.

Back when human beings were still relevant.

In this particular moment, at this particular place, a Traveler trudged up the Nepali side of Mount Everest in a dollar store poncho, jeans and low top shoes. They had only a template appearance: a universal ‘blank’ that looked more like a mannequin than a human being. They felt no cold, they heard no sounds and though they had no eyes they were too busy ignoring the corpses on the way to the summit for that to matter anyway.

Those people, assuming they had ever been people had found their time and place; the Traveler was still looking for theirs. At one point the mountain’s summit had represented the pinnacle of human achievement and majesty- it’d been a dream of the Traveler’s to be here, back before they understood The Lie.

Yet, still, the Traveler found a quiet awe in the spectacle of it all.

Mount Everest was monolithic; there was no way to visualize it in a way the mind could comprehend: you were either far enough away to see it all and it looked like a painting, or you were on top of it and it swallowed your perception entirely. Its majesty was in its magnitude, a magnitude that now tried to demand answers from the intruding Traveler.

The wind whipped and smashed against the Traveler, buffeting the cheap poncho back, shoving. Pushing. Demanding to know who or what would dare ignore the carefully crafted rules of the world? Instead of answering, the Traveler sat cross legged at the pinnacle and churned their fingers into the vague sensation of wind.

The wind died immediately. Snow and chunks of ice picked up by the wind slapped an invisible bubble around the Traveler, but nothing could reach them. So they sat there, chin on their thumbs and fingers intertwined, looking out over a sprawl of craggy mountain peaks fading off into a sky that blended smoothly from snow to clouds to the beautiful middle space