Pausing, I look up, trying to assess the level of sarcasm in play here. Let's face it, there aren't a lot of people here or anywhere else who casually toss out phrases like Eldritch horror.

"It's a simulation," I say with an arch of my eyebrows. "We wouldn't all still be living if that had actually happened."

I've had my suspicions for a long time -- Since that first day, as a matter of fact, with the wind and the siren. There have just been too many inexplicable changes to the weather, not to mention the impossible perfection of this canyon and everything in it. But the clean and quiet shift in the Earth's rotation had confirmed the theory.