Life's a fuckin' rat box, man.

  It was this bumper-sticker philosophy, this piece of colloquial knowledge and language, wrapped in texts and subtexts, that flashed before my sleep-deprived eyes. The phrase was like crash landing on the surface of the sun, with its ever-present, all-destroying heat engulfing you. Much like staring at the sun with naked eyes, contemplating its complexities and idiosyncrasies seared a blistering, blinding image into the mind's eye. An eternal mental branding that one couldn’t blink away.

  You just can't fuckin' blink it away, I thought. No matter what I do.

  It was this bumper-sticker philosophy that was tickling gray matter, and it was all I could think about, as I stripped down, removing my gray tennis first. I removed other hindrances as well: my dirty socks—once bleached white, with immaculately bright red stitching under the toes, now brown, gray, and white. The bright red stitching wasn't as immaculate as it used to be, undoing itself from the once-white socks. There were holes strategically located at the tips of my left big toe and my right foot's pinky toe.

  My jeans were removed next. They hadn’t been properly washed in six months. I'd told close friends, who appeared concerned about such matters, this was because I didn't want to ruin the cheap fabric, hoping to make them last longer, without the wear and tear that came with a washer and drier cycle. I might've even lied to them, saying I did such things for the good of the environment. My friends'd just smile and nod when appropriate, as if on autopilot.

  The truth was a bit more complicated when it came to my jeans. They just fit better. They didn't hug my ass and groin in ways that washed jeans did. They were looser, something I preferred. They also just felt different when they'd gone unwashed.

  The belt that'd held up my loose-fitting jeans around my waist was old. Probably from when I was still an undergraduate at Yano State. The belt loop had fallen off in stages; it was probably real leather or possibly a cheap pleather, poorly stitched on my belt by someone making less than I would ever dream of, even in this shitty economy. The buckle sported splotches of patina and heavy wear marks—cheap metal, I told myself, before I tossed the belt atop the pile of clothing.

  My t-shirt, removed last, was a classic from my early years in college, something that still managed to fit my post-graduate girth. It was tan-colored, and the fabric was threadbare. The t-shirt had a muscular caveman with his large club stenciled on the front, stretching from below where my chin would be to just below my belly button. A phrase was stenciled below the drawing: Let's Go Clubbin'.

  As I finished my undressing, the bumper-sticker philosophy continued sounding off inside my skull kingdom, rattling around like some BBs shot into an aluminum can. I couldn't quite place its origins at the moment. It didn't really matter who said it, who uttered its vulgar yet complex phraseology, or in what context it was ushered into the world, the universe—

  Life's a fuckin' rat box, man.

  —whether it was my stepbrother, who served in the army for six years, wondering where the hell Uncle Sam was gonna send him next, or the state cop who'd pulled me over all those years ago in the dead of winter, saying I needed to get my 'rat nest' of a glove box organized, or my father who used to work the nine-to-five grind as a corporate bureaucrat, soul dead and mind numbed, or even some student of mine, attempting to be philosophical in an English composition narrative. It was important—and that was all I could assume—even now.

  I stretched out in my hairy birthday suit, and I looked at the rising sun. The sunrises were the thing I figured I'd miss the most about the simulation: Oily pastels of red, yellow, pink, and purple, smeared across a great canvas that was the sky. A faint blue, bleached by millennia of harsh sunlight and sapped of its brilliance due to a real lack of humidity in the air, sprawled out in every direction, without interruption from geology or architecture.

  I knew I wouldn’t miss much else, or anyone else, for that matter, I thought. I scratched my right ass cheek and began walking toward the sunrise.

  The caliche soil—hard, abrasive, and bone dry—stuck to my toes, my feet, and my legs. Before long, my feet and my legs were a ghostly gray-white: It was as if I'd landed on the damned moon, only to still be on planet Earth, stuck in the simulation. I didn't let this hindrance dissuade me from my mission.

  I was hoping, on that morning of all mornings, to find a way out of the simulation. I decided long ago the simulation wasn't worth it anymore. It just wasn’t friends. I guessed the best way to get out of the simulation was to play into its hand, to call its bluff: Killing myself through heat exhaustion or a rattlesnake bite. I figured the two were the inevitable outcomes of venturing off toward the horizon, amid a vast and unforgiving desert.

  You see, the universe has a mission. Like any good soldier, it is damned good at its mission. The universe believes its side will win, too. Just give it enough time. Time is the heavy artillery laced with white phosphorous rounds that brings us all down to our knees, capitulating to our attacker. It has a good body count, too: billions, trillions, possibly more. The universe's mission is nothing more than to snuff us out, to extinguish the flame, and to allow no one, and I mean no one, to succeed in thwarting the will of the thing that created it.

  The problem is that the universe's master, whatever or whoever it may be, made a mistake, and it has been trying to correct that mistake for some time. Think of the dinosaurs, may they rest in peace. Killed off. Snuffed out. Wiped off the face of the planet, extinguished from the universe completely even—minus a few lucky bastards we still have around with us today. The universe and its creator had a tendency of creating shit they didn’t understand, and they didn’t have the balls to kill off entirely.

  I have decided to call the universe, and its unknown creator, on their fuckin' bluff. I figured it was high time someone did. I figured I had nothin’ else to lose at that point.

  That was why I was in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere, armed with nothing more than a pack of cigarettes and a cheap lighter. I figured the ratlesnakes'd get me first. This was primo rattlesnake country, with plenty of sunning spots and far too many ambush locations. If all else failed, I had the heat. A few hours or days in the heat might be a bit painful, but it’d do the trick.

  I lit up my first cigarette from a crushed yellow box with paperwhite interior. I inhaled deeply, letting the nicotine-laced smoke across my tongue and into my lungs. I then exhaled a cloud of smoke that obscured the reddish-yellow sun. I repeated those actions, feeding my nicotine monster, until I needed to light up a second cigarette. I smeared the spent cigarette against a nearby rock, careful not to start any wildfires in the process. My beef was with the universe and its creator, not the desert and its wildlife. They'd enough troubles as is. I didn't need to be adding any.

  I scratched my ass again, and soldiered onward, moving past tufts of desert prairie grasses, large growths of Russian thistle, and the occasional flowering yucca. The desert that year had seen its divine plumbing shut down, despite the water following the plow nonsense the locals spouted on (and on) about. In town, about thirty miles to the south, trucks and cars alike have adopted their own bumper-sticker philosophy: PRAY FOR RAIN.

  Some people are just content with their prison cells. They were content with the simulation's bars and its stale airs. They just sat there, taking it, as the shit was shoveled down their throats, with nothing sweet to drink to choke it all down. They didn't question it, because that would've been blasphemous, and they’d’ve just shrugged it away and repeating, "It's GAWD's will. 'Is will be done."

  As for me, I was on a one-way trip to talk with management. I figured I had as good a chance as any of crashing the whole fuckin' thing and gettin' sent to the person or thing or whatever in charge of this shitshow. Whatever happened after that, I was sure it wouldn't matter all that much. It was my big "FUCK YOU!" moment. I figured it was best to go out on your feet than on your knees as a supplicant, begging, praying, hoping, for tender mercies from whoever or whatever was in charge. I wasn't out in the desert to ask for mercy. That was for those folks who didn't know any better. I knew the universe was gonna come down with a hammer. Sometimes you pick the hammer, because there ain't nothin’ else.

  You might be concerned about my mental state, friends.

  I'm sure I would be, if I even cared anymore. My give-a-shitter had been broken for a while. But I promise this was the most lucid I'd felt in years. Sometimes clear thinkin' looks like insanity to those only familiar with what the simulation force feeds them. Sometimes the madman isn't mad. Sometimes, just sometimes, he scares the hell out of the truly insane with his talk.

  The thing was that I'd just had enough.

  I'd enough of the false intimacy of social media. I'd enough of living in a dying body, working for too little to pay off too much. I'd enough of the cognitive dissonance that gripped my life every day. This place was proof that hell was on Earth and that heaven was just another pipedream. I just wanted some answers—the kinds of answers no philosophers, no politicians, or no priests could answer in a satisfactory manner. All I was asking for was to have a few questions answered—that's all. Really. Was that too much to ask for, folks? I didn't think so, but I'd have to see what management'd to say about it.

  Life's a fuckin' rat box, man.

  I was just tryin' to figure out who built the box, and why. I was trying to understand what my mammalian brain had trouble a-comprehendin'. If GAWD existed, or something was in charge, runnin’ the great cosmic simulation, I wanted answers to those questions that kept me up at night. I wanted answers to the big questions, and even the little nagging ones. I just wanted someone to give me straight answers to my line of questioning. I was tired of being bullshitted, just for the sake of keeping up appearances, for saving face, or for keeping the simulation runnin' smoothly.

  By my third cigarette, I was good and awake, still walking toward the rising sun. The heat was beginning to claw at my naked hide. I could tell that it was gonna be a scorcher. The weather woman appeared to be spot on with her predictions. Record-breaking heat, with triple-digit temperatures, and no relief from clouds or cooler winds. I figured the inevitability of dying of heat exhaustion would play out for me.

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  I stopped at a nearby boulder split in three by a now-dead tree. The dead tree’s branches were the stuff of pure nightmare fuel: Warped arms with jabbed fingers, clawing at anything it might be able to grab onto. I gave the dead tree another looking over or two before I leaned up against one of the three boulder pieces. I lit another cigarette, stamping out the spent one on the rock behind me, before dropping the crushed butt to the ground.

  I let my cigarette hang precariously on the edge of my lip, as I stared out at the desert. I leaned into the boulder a bit more, letting my back and ass flatten against the rock’s smooth surface. I then tilted my head upward, looking up at the blue sky. Chemtrails crisscrossed the blue canvas above. A few wisps of clouds dotted the blue as well. I sat there for what felt like an hour, smoking one cigarette after another, thinking about what was beyond the simulation.

  I’ve imagined a million different scenarios, each stranger than the next.

  Maybe there was nothing? At least nothing would answer a few questions, but it’d bring up millions more. Maybe the universe was just the experiment of some child, who was trying to create the very best science project she could? Or, maybe, just maybe, it was the Singularitarians looking to explain how they got where they were? Fuck if I knew. I would be able to answer those questions soon enough, though.

  Heat or fuckin’ rattlesnake. Enjoy your steak, friends, because that was what you’re stuck with.

  I smiled to myself, and I popped another cigarette into my mouth, only to realize that I had run out of cigarettes. I shrugged it off, lit the last cigarette, and looked down at the ground. I felt myself jerk backward toward the boulder. It was a dead rattlesnake!

  The snake was bloated, barely noticeable, as it was covered in caliche dust and bits of dead vegetation. Its innards were blown out its side. A tiny rodent’s foot could be seen among the carnage.

  After my balls dropped out of my throat, I walked over to the snake’s corpse. I took a deep drag from my cigarette and exhaled. The snake was dead, but I almost felt sorry for the damned thing. I knelt next to it and gave the snake a thorough looking over. Something did a number to the rattlesnake, and I almost wanted to congratulate the thing that did the killing. The snake’s eyes were milky white, and the skin was shredded, peeling away from bones in areas along the length of its reptilian body. The damn thing stunk, too.

  I stood up, dusting off my knees. I finished my last cigarette and flicked it into a patch of dirt and rock. Wisps of smoke emanated from its smoldering end. I stretched again, scratched my ass, and turned around to face the broken boulder.

  I spotted a large burn mark on the boulder piece I used as a resting place a few moments before. I shook it off at first, but something in the back of my mind kept nagging at me to inspect it closer. I decided I had nothing better to do, and I gave in to my curiosity. The universe and its creator could wait. I figured I could still satisfy some earthly urges before I continued my suicide mission against the simulation.

  As I moved closer to the burn mark, I felt a small breeze kick up from nowhere. Once in front of the burn spot, I found that it was quite large, larger than anything that should’ve been possible with a quick cigarette dabbing. I went to touch the burn mark with my finger, and my fuckin’ finger went through, as if there was a hole in solid rock.

  I rubbed my finger along the burn mark’s edges and lifted my finger up toward my nose. It smelled like burnt paper. Even my finger was black and gray from touching the sooty edges. I rubbed my thumb and forefinger together to wipe away the ash, and I looked back at the burn mark.

  Life’s a fuckin’ rat box, man, I thought to myself.

  Sometimes the box isn’t made of what you’d expect. Sometimes the prison cell bars are made of tinfoil, and the security cameras aren’t plugged in.

  I placed both hands on either side of the large hole. I grabbed a hold of what was on the other side, and I began tearing at it. It took a few minutes of real effort, and I found myself sweating from all of the exertions. I wished I had another cigarette, but I forced myself to concentrate on the task at hand. When the boulder’s paper-like substance finally gave in, I was sweating gobs of sweat down my neck, back, and ass crack. The heat didn’t concern me anymore. I didn’t care if a rattlesnake got me now. I just wanted to see if this all led out of the simulation.

  It must, I thought. It must go somewhere, anywhere else.

  I stepped back from the large hole. It was a gaping maw, toothless, dark, and ominous. A gentle breeze of sterilized air wafted across my sweaty face and chest. The breeze was coming from the large hole I’d torn in the boulder. I found this intriguing, albeit not for the reasons you would be thinkin’. (It checked off certain boxes, and it may have answered a few questions concerning the nature of the simulation.) I moved closer to the hole, and I kept tearing at the edges of the hole. I kept ripping away pieces of the mysterious paper-like substance. I threw these pieces of paper over my head and shoulders, and I wiped away the sweat from my eyes after each tossing.

  The breeze was stronger now, more pronounced than it was before. I kept tearing, feeling the strength being sapped from my fingers, arms, and back. I ignored the pain that inevitably came from such exertion. I’d torn away more paper without looking at what I’d been tearing apart.

  When the hole was large enough for me to walk through it, the sun was overhead. The heat was gnawing at my naked body, and I could feel the heat emanating from my hide—an early sunburn had already set in. The cold breeze from the human-sized hole in the boulder caused the hairs on my arms and neck to stand up. I felt gooseflesh bubbling up on my arms and on the back of my neck. My nipples were pert, and my dick was hard.

  I rolled my neck from side to side. I also cracked my knuckles. I backed up a few paces and decided this was my “FUCK IT!” moment. This was the moment when I got out of the Matrix and figured out what the hell was going on. I ran toward the gaping hole; the breeze had turned into a hefty gale. I shielded my eyes from dust and debris kicked up by the wind. I counted the number of paces before I was on the other side. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

  The darkness came. It was ever-present, oppressive. The sterility of the air on the other side burned my lungs, and I could feel myself losing consciousness. I figured this was it. This was what happened when you tried to escape the simulation. You became nothing. You were nothing. Merely information in a machine, nothing more than that, if that.

  On the other side, I felt as if I was floating, bobbin’ up and down on an invisible ocean. It was a cold ocean. It was a vast ocean. I felt only the warmth of my own body, and nothing else.

  After a few minutes, I began to hear voices—all mine. Each voice came from a different time, a different place. Each voice was crammed inside my skull kingdom, fighting for the right to be heard and known. I felt myself cringing at the sound of the voices. I screamed, but nothing came out. I yelled at the cacophonous chatter to stop, but this only made the voices, my voices, louder, more pronounced than before. They scratched at the inside of my skull, trying to claw their way out of my head. I felt a scream, but no sound escaped my mouth.

  Consciousness slipped away, bleeding into the nether of the other side: el otro lado. As this happened, I felt like I was being pulled in all directions, and yet I felt inert. I felt weighed down by gravity and forces that I couldn’t understand, now or later.

  This was not what I wanted. This was not the good night I’d hoped for, even during my darkest hours. I wanted a sit down with management. I wanted something else—goddamnit!

  #

  I awoke in a white-walled room: Sterile, cold, and immaculate. I laid on the floor, looking up at the bright overhead lights. They buzzed like electric cicadas, with too much juice flowing through their circuitry, droning for reasons only known to them. The sound of computers working ceaselessly also filled the air. The room’s AC made me shiver.

  “You’re in a restricted area,” a voice said.

  I ignored the voice, and I focused on the lights. This is what getting out of the simulation entailed? I thought to myself.

  The voice became more distinct as a figure, round head, square chin, and large eyes and nose, appeared at the edge of my vision.

  “You’re in a restricted area,” he repeated. “You’re not supposed to be here. No one but me is supposed to be here. Where the fuck did you come from?”

  I looked over at the round-headed man, but I stayed put. I simply shrugged and kept still, or as still as I could manage, my sweaty back and ass were smashed flat against cold concrete tiles.

  “Can you talk?” the round-headed man asked. He wore blue overalls and from the sounds of it, he also sported work boots. His face was clean shaven, and his head was thick with salt-and-pepper hair, cut short.

  I pushed myself up, and I looked around the room. It looked like a run-of-the-mill server room, something I’d seen in numerous television shows and on late night news streams. It was a manicured forest of lights, glass, metal, and wire.

  “Hey, pal,” round-head yelled. “Do you fuckin’ speak?”

  I nodded and said, “Sure do.”

  This surprised round-head, who stepped back when I said this. He inched closer after a few moments, holding a broom handle. He poked me with the broom’s handle twice. Once in the chest, and another time in my arm.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” he said. “Where did you come from? I need to know.”

  I shrugged and said, “I escaped the fuckin’ Matrix, man.”

  “The wha—?”

  “—the fuckin’ simulation, dude,” I answered, pushing myself onto my feet. “I’m here to talk with management.”

  “Ummm,” round-head said. “I don’t think so, pal.”

  “What d’you mean?” I asked. “I thought management had an open-door policy?”

  Round-head laughed and said, “I don’t know what you’re fuckin’ talking about, but management doesn’t like it when you all try escape the simulation, as you all like to call it.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because they don’t,” round-head answered. “Man, this is gonna be a shit ton of paperwork. You’ve really fucked up my day, pal.”

  I shrugged and said, “Sorry, dude.”

  “This just isn’t good,” round-head muttered to himself, and then continued, “We’ve got to take corrective action, Gerry.”

  “Gerry?”

  “Fuck off!” Gerry yelled. “There’s only one way to handle this, Gerry. We send ‘im back. They won’t ask questions if they don’t know this happened in the first place.”

  “What?” I asked, moving closer to Gerry.

  Gerry twirled his broom around to where the business end was pointed in my direction. He said, “Stay the fuck back. I don’t know what kind of contaminants you’ve brought with you.”

  “Gerry,” I said, looking him in the eyes. “I just want to talk with management—that’s all. Honest, Gerry.”

  Gerry nodded and said, “Sure. Everyone does.”

  “What does that even mean?” I asked, trying to inch closer.

  “They always want to see management,” Gerry muttered again. “Seems like a problem with the programming. I’ll have to update the kernel. Maybe that will work? Maybe see if they got another security update, or a patch of some kind to keep them from escaping?”

  “Gerry—”

  Gerry flipped the broom around and smashed the handle into my right temple. I heard bells and saw stars. I lost my balance and fell to the floor. Gerry muttered something I didn’t understand, and he dragged my body somewhere, away from the servers. My naked body felt numb, and my tongue felt like I drank a gallon of dry sand.

  “Where are you taking me, Gerry?” I asked, barely able to see or talk.

  “Where you fuckin’ belong,” Gerry responded, before dropping my body back into the darkness.

  #

  You see, life’s a fuckin’ rat box, man.

  You try to escape the goddamned Matrix, and you piss off the only person you find on the other side: a technician, who is afraid to lose his job, afraid of paperwork.

  When I came to, I found myself on the other side of the three-split boulder. Next to me is a sun-bleached skeleton, about my height, with a pack of cigarettes and a cheap cigarette lighter in hand. I grabbed the remaining cigarette, which was dusty and crunchy between my lips. I shook the lighter first and then lit the cigarette. I looked up at the sky, and I found that the sun was about halfway toward the horizon, inching closer to the end of the day. I figured I still had time to escape the simulation again. Maybe next time, I would be able to see management.

  Life’s a fuckin’ rat box, man.