Simulation is "real" for me (is anything real?) in that society-life-planetary existence is structured just like a video game. Have you seen the movie "Mountainhead"? It gives this view nicely, the top gamers playing the players beneath them, those players playing the players underneath them, all served by NPCs, with real-time destruction of humans in all strata of the game. I really liked it!

Your story is great. I love it.