@pintohooAll of those questions are very adeptly addressed in "I Am That" by Nisargadatta. Free PDF online. Don't be put off by the religious references - it's pure pragmatism. Give it a go.
Trying to summarize Nisa's stuff in relation to your post:
The main game is pure consciousness - "pure" as in consciousness-without-object, without the subject/object split.
In the main game there's only one of us, but it's not an object or experience. We don't exist as individuals, that's just the result of thinking we exist as individuals, nothing more.
Time and space are born (and disappear) with the individual entity.
Why? Good question. The world of duality will bring suffering to everyone eventually, even if it's only in old age and in facing death.
Individual sims can do some "stuff" that defies ordinary laws of nature, but only with an enormous amount of training. Not worth the effort, apparently, because it can be like a siren call (meaning that it can deepen the entrapment in the sim... for a while anyway, not permenent).
"our, 'escape' or end of sim - might be what we call death" - yes, but not death of the body, death of the self-image. Death of individual identity.
Important to keep in mind that I'm just parroting some of his work. A book report!
