Most people aren't murdered, in fact by the year 2206 it was thirty-seven times more likely that you would kill yourself than someone would go to all the effort of killing you, so it was really somewhat surprising to me that I would find myself being murdered late one Sunday night.

I had been working on the project for years, decades by then, and in the weeks leading up to my fated day of departure I had been making good progress, amazing progress. In fact, I'd accomplished more in those weeks than anyone in my field had even dreamed of doing in generations. I was working on a computer simulation of biblical proportions, something like no one had ever seen.

I had grown up knowing a harsh, cold world, a world where compassion and friendship were just distant memories printed in books and pictures left behind by dead generations. I saw the greed of the money men, the barons and baronesses of unimaginable wealth and prestige living above us in mountainside mansions, while we scrabbled and squabbled in the flooded, desolate wastelands below. I had nothing but the bare necessities; food for energy, fire for warmth, and whatever hollow shell of a house, hotel or convenience store I could find above the water level for shelter. At first I worked the same job as everyone else: trawling through the filthy waters we lived in in search of anything valuable enough to sell. Every man, woman and child born into that hellish world wanted to get up and out, and money was the only way you could do that.

I changed career paths very abruptly. There was a landslide practically on my doorstep when I was around 24 years old, which sent millions of tonnes of mountain rock and premium housing crashing down into the valley I scurried around in every day. We found computers, televisions, ornaments of unspeakable intricacy, and even generators. At the age of 24 I witnessed electricity for the first time, and from the moment I saw that I had seen electricity before, but only in the form of lightning strikes and what little glimmering specks of lamplight we could see shining through the smog above us from the houses in the mountains. The moment I first used a computer changed me forever, and ultimately lead me to my demise.

Computers were not all the same in the 23rd century has they had been in the 21st century. By the time I was alive computers interfaced directly with your mind, utilising the full potential of every brain they interacted with. They were almost like drugs, enthralling and addictive yet impossibly expensive, but I was lucky enough to get my hands on one. Apparently I had a gift; my mind was almost perfectly suited to interfacing with machines, so it was not long before I began decades of deep research.

I was angry at the world I lived in, I knew the world could be so different to how it was if people weren't so greedy. My plan was to create a universe, a tiny yet unfathomably gigantic universe all of my own inside a machine. The technology required for such an endeavour didn't exist when I started, so I spent hours of every day sat conversing with the computer in order to invent it. After almost two decades the plans were ready, and over the following months I tracked down every last component I needed. After assembly, I powered on my machine, loaded the software I had written and booted the system.

And that was it really. It worked, and time started flying by inside this little universe of mine. I had set the speed of the simulation to be much, much greater than normal so I could witness the birth of humanity much sooner. After a few days I connected to the machine and saw the first animals squirming out of the seas and lakes and across small patches of land, reminding me of my own life and my family struggling to get our feet dry. We had suffered and lived in agony for generations, and not one of us had ever been happy for a single day.

I disconnected from the machine and sat wondering if I'd done the right thing by creating a whole new universe as a pet project. It was as I was getting up to go out scavenging that things went wrong.

A blinding blue flash shone from the machine I was just moments ago plugged into. A blast of incredibly hot air bellowed past me as I watched, open mouthed, as a hole opened up in space and I stepped out of it. I can describe him as nothing else but "me". Every single thing about him was the same, even the clothes he was wearing were the same. I couldn't understand it, my head hurt just looking at him.

"W-what?" I squeaked, coughing up dust and debris. "Who are- How did- Wh-What? How?"

"Yeah, I'm you, big surprise." The man said, his brow furrowed and his eyes dark with anger.

"Big surprise?" I squawked "Big surprise‽ In what way is this not a surprise‽"

"Well, you know how you just right now started a simulation of the universe? Well funnily enough it turned out exactly like the one you live in, warts and all."

"But how did y-" I was interrupted before I could finish

"Why would you do it? Why would you create an exact copy of the hell that you live in? You know exactly what sort of misery and bloodshed we've witnessed, but it's your fault I had to see it too. We live in constant fear of death, but I've found a way to extend life indefinitely for all of us."

"No!" I shouted, furious with the arrogant and self centered product of nothing but computer code that I saw before me. "You will live as I live in the simulation. They stay identical, they have to! What have you done to my work‽ You've spoiled it! This is all your fault!" I could feel the rage surging through me as my life's work hung in the balance before me.

"I was the same as you." The man said, showing a sadness in his eyes as he looked into the identical pair opposite him. "I was the same as you, I tried to build my own universe, I wanted what you have now. But do you know what I got when I tried to start my machine? Can you guess what it was?"

I realised as he finished speaking what it was. I had programmed my universe to be unable to house another simulated universe, so as to avoid overloading the machine it was running on. I laughed sharply through my nose and opened my mouth to speak, but was cut off once again.

"Don't you dare make a mockery of me, I will not be trivialised." the man barked, drawing a gun and striking me across the cheek with it as he did. I fell to the ground and started laughing uncontrollably.

"Go on then," I jeered, "what's your great plan for extending life indefinitely? You can't stop my machine, not even I could do that now." "No," the man said "but I can do this."

And with that, he shot me in the head.

I never thought I'd end up killing myself, and I'm still conflicted as to whether or not my death counts as a suicide, but the death of the other 'me' definitely was. Shortly after my death he set the simulation speed of my universe to one trillionth of a trillionth of a percent of normal speed and blew his own brains out. The big universe, the real universe would be long dead before another second passed in my simulation, so he was essentially the last person from that reality to ever die. As time passed in this void I find myself in now I grew to understand his actions, it wasn't hard seeing as he was exactly the same as me up until a point. I should have known better than to play God.