James

James Aulner is a character in the horror game Simulacra. He was a previous victim of the Simulacra, another person that was used to lure in other "weak" people using a dating app called Spark, failing with Cassie, succeeding with Anna. It is revealed that James was forced to jump off a building by the Simulacra in its attempt to rid the world of people like him. He tries to help The Player save Anna, the missing woman who The Player is trying to find via her found phone. It is impossible to save James.

In-Game
Shortly after failing to stop the remote reset scene (which is difficult, since you cannot solve all the problems without switching apps, but you could theoretically solve all the problems by simply memorizing, but regardless of what you do, it glitches out and takes you to the setup screen) and going through the setup with IRIS, you will receive some basic emails and texts from the IRIS company, but when you view them all and return to the home screen, a red-static tile appears, and when clicked on will produce more tiles. You then receive garbled and sometimes corrupted texts from James, saying that you need to find Anna, otherwise "she will share my fate". He also states that "find me and you will find her," hinting the Spark app. He also says "you need to tune it out" and "resist its (the Simulacra's) words". James will sporadically send the image of a rooftop, which is a foreshadow to his physical death. The phone then reverts back to normal, with a different picture of Anna as the home screen, as well as new messages from Greg, being the only differences.

During your Spark adventures with Taylor, during a conversation, the phone will glitch back to the factory-reset version, and this time he says that "time is running out" and "Anna will be gone soon." He hints that you should find him to find Anna again, as well as sending another rooftop photo. The phone glitches back to normal, with another picture of Anna as the home screen as well as new messages from Murv.

Near the end, the phone cuts to a first-person view video of him shaking his head on top of (what do you know) the very same rooftop from his text conversations. He then steps back and jumps off. A crunch can be heard, signaling his death. The screen glows to red and then back to Spark, claiming that you somehow matched with Anna.

Trivia

 * When you match the tags of your new Spark profile with James, 99+ matches of him are made for you. This is actually the Simulacra, and every swipe leads to his profile picture changing into a message.
 * James is already dead when he is texting you, but his spirit is alive inside of IRIS, warning the player of what is going to happen.
 * Also, the clock is spinning really fast during this scene (although the hour never goes past 12 am, or before 11 pm). The date will also jump from August 12 to 13, then back to 12, and so forth.