Of course they do. You're a genius.

Upload Week.

Everyone knew when they were to be uploaded. Some people shared it around; others told only a few close friends. Families were, as much as possible, kept together in a single upload.

You'd told Tina, of course--she'd chosen a midweek time--and your family, who'd been drawn to go about a day after Tina. Your parents were going as themselves, just younger, while your younger twin brothers, freshly graduated from university, their senior year completed under the shadow of impending obliteration, had decided to do a full gender swap, both of them choosing identical, gorgeous, busty female forms for themselves. Gorgeous and busty by the standards of physical humanity, of course; in the simulation they'd be pretty average, at least among those who'd customized their new bodies.

None of you let your parents know but you were all definitely looking forward to a threesome once the uploads were finished.

The very first to go directly into the full simulation, of course, were the head administrators of the project and a few high-profile politicians. Some people grumbled that they were just being selfish and wouldn't actually save anyone else, but others pointed out that there were so few going that it would be impossible to sustain a society with just them. The stream of those few being uploaded out of their old bodies and manifesting within the simulation, sending a message back to the rest of humanity that it was working normally, that they had their new bodies--the politicians had, as with most, chosen younger versions of themselves, but one of the administrators had to have their new body substantially censored--and that mass uploads would begin on schedule, was must-watch content for the entire world.

There were a relative handful--which still amounted to millions of people out of the entire mass of humanity--who refused to believe that the asteroid was real, who thought the entire project was a sham, and had chosen not to be uploaded. Farewells--tearful and angry alike--had been said, and those who'd chosen to remain were told that they'd have a twelve-hour grace period after the final mass upload until the technicians who'd volunteered to remain behind just in case anyone changed their mind would have to be uploaded themselves. After that, anyone who stayed had, as far as most people were concerned, chosen their fate. There'd been an effort to, at the least, provide them with huge stores of food and habitats deep within cave systems, and ways of communicating with those within the simulation, should they wish to. Realistically nobody who was going expected to hear from them again.

An hour after the broadcast, you blacked out.

Coming to within a replica of your apartment--though clearly, your new computerized senses told you, rendered in an anime style--you quickly confirmed first that your new body was as you'd specified. Gigantic tits, check. Massive cock, check. Titanic ass, check. Tentacles, well, those would take some getting used to. The programs couldn't just immediately give perfect muscle memory.

On to more important matters, then, you decided. You had about an hour until the next upload time, so you logged into your new "computer"--really just a terminal for access to your allocated part of the massive supercomputers on which the simulation was running--and looked for the tiny little text file you'd set your virus to place in your personal data storage if it had been successful.

A broad smile broke out across your beautiful face as you got confirmation that your virus had worked.

Walking out of your bedroom and into your bathroom--in theory nobody would actually need to shower or use a toilet, but the amenities had been kept for familiarity's sake if nothing else--you took in your body in the mirror.

In theory, nobody should be able to change their genitalia once their upload was finished. There were a few cosmetic tweaks that could be made here and there, but you'd chosen to have a dick and a pussy and that was supposed to be that.

Except that it wasn't, for you, anyway.

A simple thought from you was all you needed to bypass the simulation's safeguards and make your penis vanish, your physical form being rendered with no evidence one had ever been on it. Another thought and it was back, your cunt disappearing instead. Another thought and you had your original body again.

You'd done it, part of it, anyway. You'd hacked the simulation and could, at the least, change yourself.

Going back to your computer, you saw no warning signals. Nobody had picked up on what you'd done, which meant it was time for the next step of your plan.

You'd reasoned that there were three things necessary to write a virus such as yours. One, someone would have to have the programming expertise to do it. Two, someone would have to have intimate knowledge of the simulation to know its exploitable flaws. And three, someone would have to have the idea to hack it in the first place.

There were, you figured, millions of people who fell into any one of those categories, but far fewer who were in all of them. With your own virus creating the interface, you were able to mentally sift through the simulation's codebase, looking for anything out of place.

As you suspected, there'd been others with the idea. But not many, and most of them had opted or otherwise arranged for a late upload time. You'd considered that, but you'd chosen an early time just in order to be able to do this sort of check. You were more worried about someone else preempting you, as you were about to do them, than about being caught. After all, the worst that could happen was that you'd simply cease to exist, if the authorities were willing to take things that far. Opting to end one's own existence within the simulation was a guaranteed right, once you'd gone through the counselling process.

But your fears had been unfounded. The only other programmer who'd thought as you had and been uploaded in this first wave was not as skilled as you were, and while their worm had given them elevated access, it hadn't been designed cleverly enough to create a whole new level as yours had. It was a pretty straightforward matter to find the other pieces of malware and defang them. You didn't mind other people using exploits in the simulation--you just wanted to be sure that you were unchallenged at the top. Life wouldn't be nearly as fun if you were the only person who could tinker with this new toy, but you also wouldn't find it especially fun if someone else could come along and ruin yours. The fact that you'd be able to do that to anyone else, as far as you were concerned, was just a fitting testament to your skill.

You had had the chance to go earlier, when the call went out for volunteers for the smaller testing and demo simulations that were finished before the full space station was ready, to be merged with the full-scale environment at the start of Upload Week. But given the smaller nature of those environments, you figured there was a higher risk of your hack being detected and shut down--in the full simulation, everyone would be too busy making sure everything really was working right to pay attention to a few stray bits of code here and there. You'd made an illicit copy of the sandbox and tested it in there. Not as good, but close enough, and it came with a far lower chance of detection.

Besides, all the volunteers for those demos underwent a rigorous psychiatric evaluation to make sure that they really could be trusted to report accurate data--the survival of humanity was riding on it. So you figured that nobody who wanted to do what you'd done would get through that screening anyway, which both kept you from volunteering and made you largely unconcerned about someone preempting your hack with one of their own.

Another test, then: you focused on having the simulation render your form lying down on your bed. You made no move to do so, instead sending commands directly to the processors. Instantly you had, in effect, teleported.

Hopping up, you smiled. There were still more tests to do, of course, but those could, and would have to, wait. Those wouldn't be truly effective until more people had been uploaded. There wouldn't be much activity until then, though, so you ordered the simulation to put you into sleep mode for a few days, set to wake up shortly before Tina's scheduled upload time.