Except this wasn't a simulation.
It was small. Gray wood. A single light on in the kitchen window. His house. Not his real house—his real house was a condo in a city 2,000 miles away. But the simulation had rebuilt this place from his childhood memories. The porch swing. The chipped blue paint on the shutters. The oak tree where he'd carved his initials when he was twelve.
Leo didn't move. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass. Inside the house, a shadow passed by—someone walking, living, breathing real air, touching real things, making real mistakes.
He walked.
This was a real house. Somebody else's. Somebody who had never met him, never carved their name in that tree, never sat on that swing during a thunderstorm counting the seconds between lightning and thunder.
"You have three hours," said the Guide's voice, tinny from the pod's speaker. "Re-acclimation walk. Stay on the blue-lit path."
This was.
He had paid $47,000 for that.
Now he was here. Minus 31. A rest stop on the edge of a real forest, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. The blue-lit path wound into the trees like a vein.
Leo stared back.
229 days. 31 minutes.