Our Simulated Selves

A mind-bending trans quantum thriller about a dating sim, brainscanners, manic pixie dream girls, a digital apocalypse, life-changing epiphanies, and tabletop gaming at a cozy queer café.

I'm not your dream girl...

A full length novel, just north of 90,000 words, equivalent of 365 pages in print. Published June 30, 2025. Sold as an .epub file, DRM and hassle free.  No AI.

Contemporary sci-fi, first person POV.

Not if you were the last man on Earth...

...That's what Jeanne said to her coworker when he wouldn't take a hint. Unfortunately, he had the technology to test her claim.

Using a stolen brainscanner and a quantum supercomputer, dejected programmer Ren "Zero" copies his consciousness into a custom simulation to see if his coworker would fall for him if nobody else existed.

As the simulation calibrates, the simulated Ren follows the precise footsteps Zero has taken in his own reality, including:

• Conspiring with punkish technologist Jeanne to smuggle a brainscanner
• Joining Jeanne at a queer café to play tabletop RPGs with all of her trans friends
• Having the best time of his life playing a female character surrounded by queer company, for ~unknown and mysterious reasons~
• Asking Jeanne out in a storm of confused signals and emotions, culminating in the exact statement that shook Zero so fundamentally.

This confirms the simulation to be accurate, so Zero proceeds with the deletion and begins the experiment in earnest...

 

A fine hypothesis for a perfect machine...

As the simulated Ren and Jeanne get their bearings in the newly depopulated world, they must work together to survive and make the most of an inexplicable situation. But hanging out with his punkish transfemme friend in a desolate city might just be the thing Ren needs to finally snap out of a lifelong oblivious haze. 

But when the experiment appears to be falling off the rails, Zero begins to intervene and manipulate their very reality. The conflict between Sims and Controller snowballs into a reality-bending confrontation and the revelation of truths that even the all-powerful Controller could not compute...

Physical Copies

If eBook isn't your thing, you've got options too!

Hardcover: Amazon

Paperback: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org

The Author

Nikki Null is a trans writer based in Southern California, a film technologist and cult cinema fanatic, a prog rock and emo geek, a wife, and a mom of two kiddos and one claw creature.