text: “Sir, the humans in sim 7620 are getting restless.” “What do you mean, restless?” “It’s their fixation, with space, sir. Like the other sims, they failed to make space travel economically viable, just as we intended. But for some reason the humans in this sim keep doing it anyway.” “What on earth for?” “We’re not entirely sure. They seem to have a desire to explore just for the sake of exploring.” “How peculiar.” “Yes, those of us at R&D think so too.” “Well, how far have they gotten?” “They already got probes out of their solar system, but of course they lose contact with them when we delete them at the barrier. The more problematic issue is that they’ve already put humans on Mars and they’re now establishing outposts on Saturn’s moons. We think it’s only a matter of time before they try sending a human to the barrier.” “I see where you’re going with this. Probes are fine to delete, but it would be a PR nightmare if we deleted humans at the barrier without having a chance to archive them... But can’t we just extend the barrier for this sim? Haven’t we done that kind of thing before?” “Yes, we’ve done that in the past, but usually only to expand the radius from the Earth to the solar system when the sim becomes aware of outer space. We haven’t had a sim try to break out of its solar system yet. And if we allow that in this sim, we’ll have to account for it in the other sims too. It would increase our costs dramatically.” “So you’re thinking we’ll have to go with the nuclear option then?” “Yes, we could just archive this one. But aside from the space travel issue, it looks very promising. We actually think that it may have the best chance out of all of them to prove our theory, as things stand now.” “I don’t understand. We can’t afford to let them reach the barrier, but you’re not suggesting turning it off? So what’s the plan then?” “Well, we don’t have a great option. Of course, to avoid archiving them we need to get them to stop looking outward and start focusing more on what’s available within the bounds of the simulation. So, we could just send a message suggesting that. We think they might comply; we doubt they want to be archived, considering their insatiable curiosity and all.” The executive laughed. “You want to break the fourth wall? We’ve never done that before. It would be quite entertaining, but it might corrupt the results.” “Yes, but corrupted results are better than no results at all. At least that’s data science’s take on it. And we can always archive it later if it doesn’t work.” “Alright, if that’s what you all think is best. You’re the smart ones after all. You have my approval.” The executive stared out the window for a moment before continuing. “Say, if this space traveling sim is so successful, do you think we should try exploring deep space in our world too?” “No sir, I really don’t.