The astronaut removed her helmet long before mission control said it was safe. Nothing happened. Nothing. No suffocation. No radiation burns. Only wind. Nothing else. Mission control erupted. "You've contaminated the experiment." "What experiment?" Silence. And then more silence followed. Then another voice answered. Not her controller. Not anyone she'd trained with. "Congratulations." The stars vanished. The spacecraft dissolved into white walls. Technicians watched through glass. One smiled apologetically. "You were never in orbit." She laughed until she cried. Every launch. Every emergency. Every lonely birthday. Manufactured. "You wanted to know whether humans could make independent decisions under impossible pressure," the technician explained. "And?" "You did." She demanded her real memories back. They told her there weren't any. The simulation had begun before birth. Her entire life had been a test. She expected rage. Instead she found herself studying the coffee stain on the technician's clipboard. It was imperfect. Real. For the first time. "What happens now?" she asked. "You get to live." In the end, the truth turned out to be much quieter than she expected.