After checking on the army of bots to ensure that they had, in fact, been deactivated, the two boys sat on the floor of the control room, leaning back against two supercomputers, staring at one another across the way.

"What do we do now?" Lopez asked after a few minutes.

Eli sighed.  Now that was a loaded question.

"I guess we decide whether or not to wake everyone up," he answered.

"I thought that was a given."

Eli frowned, hating how Genesis had infected his brain despite Eli's best efforts to discredit his reasoning. "I'm not so sure it is. I mean, is that really the right thing to do? To force people to live in a world that isn't livable?"

Lopez studied his face, then shrugged.   "Are you sure there's no way to survive out there? Like...there's got to be at least one place on earth that's habitable, right?"

"Genesis did mention that there were survivors, but he said they were criminals. Savages.  He didn't paint a very sweet picture of the outside."

Lopez smirked. "Unless that robot managed to render all 10 billion of us comatose, I highly doubt every survivor is rabid, E. Plus, even if that were the case, there's enough oxygen and food and water here to last us the rest of our lives, right? He was equipped to keep us healthy in those simulations. That means there's an indoor garden here, or at the very least, a big stock of nutrient mush."

"Yeah...but is a liquid diet really worth abandoning paradise? I mean, who would choose this?"

"You did," Lopez pointed out. "And besides. You can't give them a choice if they don't know what choices they have to begin with. If they hate it so much here, they can always go back."

The argument was similar to what Eli had posed just hours earlier, but it felt different now that he was sitting here with the life-altering decision at his fingertips. He felt the need to weigh the consequences a little more closely.

"It's not that easy. Once you wake up...going back isn't so simple," Eli said.  "I wake them up, and they'll have to deal with this grim reality, Ted. Grieve their loved ones who didn't make it into the experiment.  Isn't that kind of cruel?"

Lopez looked at him sadly, a deep understanding there in his eyes, and Eli was so glad to have him here, to have someone share this burden with.  He knew it was selfish, but he wasn't sure he could do this without his best friend. 

"At least their grief will be real. I had it pretty good, but now that I know it was all just fantasy, I'm glad you woke me up. I don't even know if my family is alive, but knowing that the family there was fake?  Fake love and affection? False memories? I would never want to go back." He swallowed thickly. "Not everyone will feel that way.  But humanity can't just...fizzle out like this. If we go out, we have to go out fighting. Or what's the point?"

Eli closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the supercomputer—the gentle vibration strangely soothing. He didn't want to make this decision for everyone.  But he couldn't just leave them there to die in a simulation, could he?

How did he even know he'd truly escaped the simulated reality?  What if he wasn't even out?

"What if this isn't real either? What if we're just inside another simulation?" he wondered aloud, opening his eyes to gauge his friend's reaction.

"Then we'll escape this one too," Lopez said confidently. He cracked a lopsided smile. "But let's take it one step at a time, yeah?"

Eli snorted, extremely grateful for Teddy's sense of humor at a time when laughter shouldn't be possible. Then again, Teddy had always been there to make him laugh, to make him smile. Reality or not, his friend was there to be his mental backboard, his cheerleader, his shoulder to cry on.

"You'll stand with me, right? Through whatever shit happens next?" he asked, even though he already knew the answer.

Lopez smiled and wiggled his ring finger. "For better or for worse, cariño."

Eli breathed a soft laugh, and he looked up at his friend through tousled bangs. "It's real right?" He gestured between them. "This?"

Teddy's smile turned vulnerable, and he nodded. "There are plenty of things I'm uncertain of right now, E. Loving you isn't one of them."

Eli closed his eyes. He'd waited so long to hear those words. To feel this feeling. And for the first time, he didn't doubt his friend's confession of love.

He embraced it.

"And...?" Lopez prompted, and Eli's eyes snapped open to see the impatient expression on his face. He waved his hand encouragingly. "And you...?"

Eli snickered. "And...we weren't married in my simulation," he admitted sadly. "But I wished for it every single day."

A slow, loving smile met his own, and Eli knew he'd be okay no matter what he chose to do. No matter how he chose to do it.

He glanced back at the computer monitor, the directory of patients, of lives waiting to be awoken. Men and women chained to the wall of a cave, barred from the light.

He felt like the catalyst of every origin story, holding life in his hands that could either save the world or destroy it. Like Pandora, had she been given a second chance to seal the box forever. 

But this experiment had been his mother's doing, and as her son, it was his duty to undo it—just as it was the new generation's duty to repair the damage its ancestors had inflicted upon the earth. They couldn't just...live here in darkness, waiting for death, allowing the outside world to tear itself apart.  They couldn't simply abandon ship.  They had a responsibility to act as human beings, as creatures with knowledge and extraordinary capabilities. 

And Eli refused to let humanity's story end in passive surrender.

"Okay," he said, taking a deep, steadying breath. "We wake them up one by one based on their profile. Doctors, scientists, experts first. Come up with a game plan. And then we wake everyone else."

Lopez hummed. "Okay, smarty pants. But can I at least get a kiss before we reboot the human race?"

Eli's chest swelled at Teddy's request, and for once, he felt like he truly deserved the explosion of happiness in his heart. He clambered to his feet and shuffled over to the muscle-atrophied man with the shit-eating grin. "As long as you don't make a joke about our kiss leaving you weak-kneed."

"I was gonna go with, 'You auto-complete me.'  But yours is better."

"You know, I think simulation-you was funnier," Eli said, bending down over Teddy's face with a playful scowl.

"Yeah well, simulation-you wasn't such a dick. But we can't all get what we want, can we?"

Eli shut him up with a kiss—a real kiss this time.  Long and sweet and timeless.

And maybe it was the beginning of the end. Maybe their relationship was short-lived. Maybe waking humanity would prove to be a terrible, terrible mistake.

But Genesis, for all his faults, had been right about one thing.

Some risks demand to be taken.

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Completed 5/4, Words: ~25,485

That's it, people!  Thanks for all the support throughout this contest.  I never expected this story to get this much attention, and I was shooketh to see it earn a spot on WP's Hidden Gems list.  (It has me questioning this reality a bit, ngl.)

Pumping out a full story in three months (during a pandemic) was certainly a challenge, especially because I've never written science fiction before, but I'm so glad I stuck with it, and I'm so grateful for all of your kind words and encouragement!  

I'll likely come back and do some clean-up and proper editing at some point, but for now I need a break from this story.  If you enjoy fantasy / adventure, be sure to check out "The Ephemeral" series on my profile.  It's seen many years of blood and sweat and sacrifice to the writing gods, and I'm currently writing book 2.

Take care out there in this crazy world.  And remember to step back and question your dogmas every now and again.

A little doubt is good for the soul.

- E.