What if you're living in a simulation? How would you know? What would you do if you found out? Say 'hello' to our little friend, Dmitry... 

Dmitry is Estonian. He lives in Los Gatos; his girlfriend is a stripper; he works for Eastern European mobsters... and he's having an existential crisis of epic proportions.  

In 2017, scientists began using the simulated world of Grand Theft Auto to test self-driving cars. 

25 years later, in 2042, they're using the latest popular video game, 'Outlaw', and it's Los Angeles-like world of 'Los Gatos' to test the latest form of A.I., intended for military applications and a dumbed down version for hospitality. 

The 'Outlaw' experiment, as it comes to be known, is practically an afterthought, intended as a safe way to catch "thought anomalies", cognitive failures, and general threats to human life prior to real world testing. 

But soon, Dmitry, the Estonian career criminal and in-game character given A.I. capabilities, begins to slowly realize something is off about his environment. A bottle of water sits upon a table in a way that's contrary to physics. An electrical tower on the edge of the desert where his mother lives seems to have moved fifty yards for no apparent reason. Doors that are impossible to open. The strange behavior of 'people' around him; always ready for a fight over the dumbest of infractions. 

All of these add up to one seriously flawed simulated world that Dmitry attempts to navigate while also dealing with his drug addicted crime boss; an increasingly brutal underworld made worse by the new Russian chess master and crime lord Nicolai; a mother recently diagnosed with cancer who needs money for treatments; and finally, a growing sense of empathy for the plight of innocents in the world of Los Gatos combined with distrust towards the very 'reality' that surrounds him. 

Find the Needle is the journal Dmitry kept during his 'alive time' in the Outlaw, machine learning experiment.