The ship vibrates beneath him in a pulsing inertial cascade of the FTL drive engaging. The lights hum on and then off again, and Rush -

Rush breathes. Deep, cleansing. The expansion and contraction of lungs. Of physical lungs. Lungs that exist in a very empirical sense. He can verify this. It is fine. He can verify it. He can. He will. He can verify it. He knows the criteria of a simulated reality, he merely needs to deconstruct the linear flow of time and -

And there is no linear flow of time. There is no linear flow of time, because he cannot remember where he was before this. Nor before that.

The conclusion is measurable. Fuck. It's measurable.

Rush slides his arm away from the console, picks up the discarded piece of plating and considers it with mechanical detachment. He studies the thin, sharpened edge. This will serve its intended purpose.

Careful, deliberate, Rush draws the edge of the plate across his palm and slices it open. His breath curls out in a broken, pressurized hiss as he flicks sprays of startling crimson from his fingertips. It feels. It feels real. But time is not linear. Heuristic variables are contradictory. The conclusion is not measurable, his method of measurement is not absolute, there is no conclusion that can be reached and he understands with a creeping, clinging iciness that this must mean none of his previous, poor attempts for reality litmus tests have been successful, merely propagated by the existence he happened to inhabit, and there is no definitive method for distinction.

But he can verify it.

But it feels real.

But he can verify it.