"Just the ghost, shouldn't be, not if we don't resurrect him."

Red grabs his wand and starts twirling it around in the air while his eyes lose focus.

Nothing. Felix tenses a little.

"Might be a proximity thing... We can test our uncle under circumstances. Assuming it's safe, could you keep testing on targets further from the past... Or just try to get a ghost from the cemetery outside, in case being this far away is doing it."

He shakes his head slowly, brows still furrowed in concentration. "How long has he been dead for? Because I can... feel... people who aren't nearby, here. No one from the graveyard, I think that's already too far, but... people I used to know." He opens his eyes. "I think if one of you became a spellcaster you'd be able to find him."

"He died before we were born... I know he is not more important than anyone else..."

"So would that be... six, seven years ago? We've been around for a bit over five, now, at our current age, so that was longer so than anyone we've known but I could feel someone I know who died four and a half years ago so I don't think time of death is relevant."

"Yes, that sounds right."

"I am deferring to your expertise here, but I would like someone to test in regular intervals just so we are sure. Maybe every half a year? Or ten days instead of fourteen..." He pauses for a moment and frowns. "Life feels short. Not in the finite way, but in 'how I am able to do a job' way?"

"Oh right! NPCs age way faster. If my maths is right, someone who was a PC from the moment they were born would have a life expectancy of, like, eighty to a hundred years? I guess I don't know if someone who used to be an NPC and isn't anymore slows down like that, too, but even before we had the Potion of Rejuvenation we were aging much more slowly."

"That is..."

"...I am not sure what that is."

"I just assumed you magically looked like that. Maybe whatever force is doing this thing wants to preserve PCs?"

Shrug.

"They live their lives on fast-forward, two years is enough to find the love of their lives and get married and have two and a half kids and zero point eight dogs, it's bizarre."

"Especially with just half a kid and a near complete dog as part of the family."

"Do you have any theories on how all of this came to be?"

"My best guess is we're being simulated in a computer somewhere or something to that effect. I'm not sure if we're literally in a video game or something more complicated than that, but."

"I confess that I was considering some kind of zoo or alien preserve, except I don't really think the story quite matches."

"I guess video game almost makes sense, thought it sounds like a really weird idea for a video game."

Shrug. "Depends on a lot of assumptions and theories about how consciousness works. Maybe we're being run in some really fancy high-dimensional computer by beings who think in two temporal dimensions, maybe we're being run by regular humans who somehow got their hands on a ton of compute and not a corresponding amount of morals, maybe the way existence at large works is such that it's possible for self-aware subjects to pop up even when no one is actively making them do it. We've had a lot of time and most importantly a lot of evidence for the hypothesis that actually the world is much weirder than we thought it was so we don't wanna rule any particular explanation out."

"It sounds like an eternally looping rabbit hole of possibilities, and I think I want to give myself... a day or two before trying to face it."

Red snorts and shakes his head. "You can do that if you want but I personally feel like it's a rabbit hole without exit and without anything on the other side. I think it's pretty unlikely whoever's running this simulation is... unaware... of us. So."

"I wasn't talking about avoiding calling the... monitor? Watcher? Zookeeper? Avoiding the whatever's attention. Just focusing on more immediately useful things."

"Yeah no, what I meant was—the only way in which the exact type of simulation we're in is relevant is in whether or how we can contact the outside world. If the person or people running things haven't already sussed us out then the only other avenues we'd have would be doing something like figuring out where this world's physics bottoms out so that we can maybe hack our way out—and figuring physics out is already the plan. So in that sense, I don't find it very useful to inquire too deeply into what kinds of simulation we are until we have more resources.

"But if you think I'm wrong or have any other ideas related to that or discover something new that'd be pretty cool."

Felix frowns in mock-concentration. "Nope. Sorry, three seconds of deep thinking didn't result in anything. But I promise you will likely be among the first ten PCs to know."

Grin. "I thank you for your consideration. Maybe try ten seconds next time, that might work."

Chuckle. "Clever idea." He gently headbutts Red's forehead.