Prompt from 'Write to Survive Contest' by @SecretTreasures, Round 4, January 2022: 'You received an anonymous message: "You have been invited to Planet Earth Sample 2202 for a 24-hour tour, click accept if you want to join!". The only option is "accept" or close the message. Too curious, you decide to take this strange tour. What will happen?'

Story word count = 990

*** Contest Round 4 Winner ***

"Weird," I mumbled to myself. "Why would I want to sample Earth?"

Slurping noodles in this small cafe, Amie wrinkled her freckled nose. "What?"

She was my on-again, off-again girlfriend. Presently off. The new motion tattoo that spanned her left arm displayed a sultry mermaid swimming across the waves. Amie sported enough body jewelry that I didn't want to stand next to her during a lightning storm. I still take her out to eat sometimes, just to marvel at her wonderful weirdness, and she never refused free food.

"It's this strange message I keep getting. I close it, but it keeps coming back." I double tapped my right temple, thus instructing my com-implant to share the message. She scanned it through the connection to her ocular nerves. The message said: "You have been invited to Planet Earth Sample 2202 for a 24-hour tour, click accept if you want to join!"

A smile came to her face. "I did that. Totally awesome!"

"Really? It seems like a scam."

"It's just a new VR thing Destiny Experience is promoting. You get to visit Earth before the Skyfall and see what it was like. The immersion was amazing!"

Hundreds of years ago, an asteroid impact wiped out almost all life on the cradle of humanity, and from what I have heard, now Earth was little more than a desolate wasteland. I shook my head. "I don't know..."

"Live a little, Tann," Amie replied, rolling her eyes up. "This is your chance to get off this boring planet for a day, if only virtually. And it's only VR, so nothing could go wrong."

Why not. I replied, accepting the invitation. Almost immediately, they sent a location to my internal GPS and a list of dates that I could select.

*****

An ominous anxiousness tingled my gut when I arrived at the VR center, an unexpectedly plain rounded building on the outskirts of the city. But the uniformed technician, who looked like someone's favorite grandmother, set me at ease. "Now, don't worry about a thing," she said with a warm smile. "We will monitor your vital signs during the entire experience. Although, no one has ever had a problem."

The Experience Room, as she called it, had a wonderfully relaxing ambience to it. Muted murals of classic Earth scenes covered the walls under the soft lighting, and background music swirled around me like a gentle breeze. Twenty rounded pods laid in two orderly rows. She led me to the only one unoccupied and helped me lie down. Apparently, this was quite popular.

The technician injected nanobots into my arm with a pneumatic syringe. "To enhance the sensory input," she explained. "All quite routine for Immersive VR."

After sliding a curved transparent panel over my head, she made adjustments on a small control panel until a row of green lights appeared. "There we are. Now just relax and enjoy yourself." 

After a brief transition where it seemed like flying down a lighted tunnel, I stood on Earth, pre-Skyfall. The virtual rendition was phenomenal, far better than I imagined it could be. At the edge of a primeval forest, I marveled at the massive conifers. A cool breeze riffled through the trees, carrying a collection of rich musty scents to my nose. A small trickling creek ran cool and clear near my feet.

The tour continued. I canoed the wild Amazon, sipped champagne by the River Seine, walked among the Pyramids of Egypt, hiked the Great Wall of China, soared above the Grand Canyon, and so much more in vivid detail. I didn't want it to end, but smiled with satisfaction as a technician helped me rise from the pod.

*****

My eyelids fluttered open to a beam of bright sunlight streaming through a small open window, illuminating floating dust motes within its path. A pounding headache pulsed with each heartbeat, worse than any hangover, as I turned from the offending light. 

My mind swirled in confusion. Where am I?

A scan of my surroundings brought no answer. I laid on a dirt floor, separated from it by some sort of animal skin, within a small adobe-type hut with a thatch roof. At one end, a pot hung above a cold fireplace. Rough woven garments prickled my skin.

I tapped my forehead to activate the com-implant, but nothing happened.

Struggling to my feet, I staggered through a weathered wooden door, ducking my head under the low threshold and squinting against the bright sun. The hut I emerged from was but one of many scattered along a wide desert river valley between rocky bluffs. Not far away, people worked garden plots with basic hand tools in the sandy soil, while a cluster of women ground grain within dished rocks or tended flatbread baking within a communal oven.

Am I still within the VR?

"Tann, they took you too?" a female voice said from behind.

Spinning around, I took in a woman wearing a dress of the same rough brown fabric I wore and carrying a wicker basket. My breath hitched as I recognized her, although a younger and gaunt version, and without the tattoos or body jewelry. Her hair was uncharacteristically long and tangled. "Amie? Is that you? Where are we?"

"Earth," she replied while dipping her head. "I've been here for half a year."

A panic driven lump formed in my throat. "How? We were just home. I took you out to eat."

"You did the Earth VR, didn't you?" Amie took my hand, and we sat on a nearby boulder, her eyes moist with sorrow. "We are clones, Tann. The other version of ourselves is still home, oblivious to all this. While you did the tour, they mapped your brain and downloaded it into your clone."

"But... Why?"

"A forced Earth resettlement program, maybe," she shrugged, "Or a sick social experiment."

Putting head in hands, I asked. "So, what are we supposed to do here?"

"Survive."