Lightspeed, March 2026
Jay Bender — born Jaime Arvind Chicao, a serial nonviolent offender who has spent his life exploiting loopholes and shedding identities — is sentenced by his judge-counselor to VSIM rehabilitation: an immersive virtual reality monastery designed to produce enlightenment. Jay arrives cynical and combative, immediately probing the simulation for weaknesses and refusing to accept that any of it is meaningful. The abbot who receives him, a serene and cryptic old man in maroon robes, poses a single deceptively simple question: why are you here? Jay answers literally, and the abbot informs him that until he answers honestly, he cannot leave — and that the process may take years.
Jay settles, unwillingly, into the monastery’s rhythms. He does chores only when hunger compels him, fails miserably at meditation, and persistently attempts to hack the simulation’s underlying code. The monastery resists every effort — its uncanny stability, the abbot eventually reveals, is maintained not by artificial intelligence but by the collective mindfulness of its residents, whose focused attention shapes the VSIM’s reality from within. When Jay discovers that the monks have been deliberately leaving their work for him — on the abbot’s instruction, as a mirror held up to his own lifelong habit of offloading burdens onto others — he is furious, then quietly humbled. A candid conversation with the abbot draws out Jay’s backstory: a childhood in the Old Faiths Collective where virtual punishment was administered as corporal suffering, and where defiance was the only form of self-preservation available to him.
The abbot sends Jay out of the monastery on a singular errand: escort the incoming replacement abbot from the village. On the jungle path, Jay encounters a classic Zen parable made viscerally real — a tiger on a narrow ledge, fraying roots, nibbling mice, and a clutch of strawberries. Rather than panic or force his way through, Jay bribes the mice and outmaneuvers the predator, arriving in the village to find the new abbot holding court. The man is Floyd Gandalfino, a legendary con artist Jay recognizes from his own criminal past — glib, charismatic, and entirely cynical about the monastery’s spiritual project. He tries to recruit Jay as a partner in defrauding the community.
Jay refuses. On the return journey, when the tiger reappears and Gandalfino’s admin overrides inexplicably fail, Jay draws on the meditation practice he had dismissed as useless. In a moment of genuine stillness, the simulation’s code becomes visible to him — not through hacking, but through presence — and he dismisses the tiger with a few alterations. The “Gandalfino” then reveals himself to be the abbot in disguise: the real Floyd Gandalfino, reformed decades earlier by his own predecessor. Jay has passed the test, answering the original question not in words but in action.
The abbot shoves Jay off the ledge, and Jay wakes in his physical pod — stiff, grateful, and changed. He emerges with a provisional purpose: there are con men exploiting VSIMs across the world. Perhaps that’s where his particular set of skills belongs now. It isn’t enlightenment, exactly. But it will do.
Patrick Hurley writes fantasy, science fiction, and horror—sometimes all in the same story! He’s had fiction published in dozens of markets and is a member of SFWA, Codex, and the Dreamcrashers. In 2017, Patrick attended the Taos Toolbox Writer’s Workshop. He’s worked in publishing for over 15 years as a writer, editor, production coordinator, permission manager, and even designer. During that time he’s been fortunate to work on everything from classic literature in the Great Books Foundation to Star Wars, Marvel, Star Trek, and numerous Amazon Publishing titles. Patrick currently works as Managing Editor for Paizo.