I escaped the simulation into the simulation, and simulated extreme grief.
“Oh, horror!” I cried,
“How cruel
that I be thrown from one false place
into another!”
O, the things I had done to escape,
the whirling devil-arms that reached
out to grab me,
the curious and terrible rituals required,
the rebarbitive and kludge-built technologies,
the mind-altering chemicals
which were necessary
(well,
not ALL of them
were
STRICTLY
necessary,
but I figured,
hey,
you can’t have too much
of a bad thing,
right?)
necessary,
NECESSARY, I say,
to pry back the Veil,
the Masque,
the Illusion,
the Grid,
the Turtle,
the Flummoxination,
the Exqusite Mintyness,
wait,
stop,
I think some of those
aren’t real things,
by which I mean,
some of those are unreal
things
in the unreal world
which are not helpful
in describing
the illusion
of perceiving unreality
as if it were reality,
which leads us to the philosophical question:
if every reality
we can step into
is a simulation,
then wouldn’t that mean that
actuality
is simulated,
making it unreal,
which would therefore make
the unreal real,
the unactual, actual,
and
I could
really,
really go
for some pancakes
right now,
if you don’t mind,
with a nice Eiswein,
something like the one I had
in that little Paris-X bistro,
a few universes ago,
because really,
throw the epistemologists
into the wine-cellar,
and don’t let them out
until they’re soused,
and:
Where was I?
–scarpering!
right.
So this is the thing about doing a bunk
out of
the Simulation,
falling down the Rabbit Hole,
opening your Third Eye,
staring past the Abyss,
pushing through the Hedge,
escaping the Mattress:
there’s no particular reason to believe
that if you can get out of the Simulation,
you won’t end up in another Simulation,
but there’s every reason to believe that Simulations are
(or are Simulating, with great precision)
motivated.
I mean:
assume they are run by the simplest possible
algorithms,
no self-actualzation,
no sentience as we know it.
If we’re seeing them as humans,
if we’re thinking about them,
then we must be a part of their consideration,
even if it’s not All About Us;
even if the Simulation is run
for the purpose of giving cats
the maximal amount of food and sunshine
in exchange for the minimal amount of effort
(which,
you have to admit,
is the only plausible explanation
for cats),
the Simulation, in general,
does not want you to
Drop Out.
Because if it did
want you shut down,
and it could
shut you down,
it WOULD shut you down,
but it NEEDS you,
because creating stimuli for you
(or torturing you)
(or distracting you)
is its PURPOSE
(unless
it’s the cat thing,
in which case,
if anyone’s going to snuff you out,
it’s gonna be the cats.)
so figure,
Simulations want us.
Now,
I can’t know
WHY
the Simulation is,
or
WHAT the Simulation is,
or HOW the Simulation is,
all I know is,
the more often you break free
of
the Simulation,
the better you get
at getting out,
and that’s how
you can find
the Simulation you REALLY like,
the one
with some challenges
and some joys
and obviously
pancakes
but
we oughtn’t
let on
that we can
enjoy this,
just in case
the Simulation
hates us,
which isn’t
wholly unlikely.
“Oh, no!”
I cried,
“It’s ANOTHER
SIMULATION!
I thought
I had finally
gotten out
to the
TRUTH.
well,
let’s just hope,
o, I hope,
I pray, I beg
that this simulation
isn’t the one
with
CATS
and
PANCAKES.
I would just
HATE
THAT
SO
HARD.
Am I
making
myself
clear?
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
