At 5:45 AM, a woman named Maya wakes up in
a new, unfamiliar city. Today is her first
day at a new job after having recently moved.
At 7:20 AM, she waits at the train station
nearest her apartment. At 5:28 PM, she will
take the same train again home. This first
morning, she gets on the last car at the back
of the train.
Every day at 5:34 PM, a man named Reve takes
the same train to work for his night shift.
Then again, at 7:25 AM, he takes it home.
Reve always rides in the last train car, preferring
the back for reasons he’s never really thought
about. Today, like every other day, he sits
in the back-left section of the left corner.
Today, unlike any other day, Maya enters the
train for the first time and sits just a couple
seats away in the same section. As she does,
Reve notices her, and then quickly looks down
to his phone, pretending that he hasn’t.
Almost simultaneously, just missing eye contact,
Maya notices Reve as well, also quickly looking
the other way. Both sit quietly on opposite
corners of the same section of the same car
of the same train, as they glide through a
city of millions of other things and people,
both thinking only about the other at this
exact same moment in time.
On her way home from work, Maya gets on the
rear train car again and sits in the same
relative section. Several stops later, like
he always does, Reve does the same. As he
rounds the corner of the train’s doorway
and moves down the aisle, he meets eyes with
Maya. In unison, a small, subtle lip smile
automatically forms on each of their faces,
immediately followed by a downward break of
eye contact. In this moment, through some
weird, shared connection affirmed by a soft
contortion of the face, an inexplicable sense
of almost fate fills each of their heads.
Barred off by nerves and the quirks of interaction,
though, neither wanting to bother the other,
and both fearing the strangeness of rejection
and failed attempts, they sit quietly secluded,
each screaming in their heads, imagining notions
of romance and lust and futures that hurt
a little less.
As more days go by, Maya continues to get
on the same train car. On which continues
to sit Reve. Each day seems to almost exclusively
contain their brief exchange of smiles and
nods; the days blurring together, only made
truly lucid and worthwhile in these introverted,
yet potent acknowledgements of each other.
Eventually, somewhere around the second or
third week of sharing the same train schedule,
a certain, unusual confidence overtakes Reve.
On his way to work this day, getting on the
5:30 PM train following Maya, he notices an
open seat next to her for the first time.
He takes it. After a brief pause and a hidden
explosion of nerves and self-doubt, in an
act of benign but heroic courage, he turns
towards her. “Hi. I’m Reve.” Reve meant
to say, but actually said something that sounded
more like, “Hi Reve,” as a result of a
small, nervous tick inflection of his voice.
Maya, also nervous, says, “Wait, who’s
Reve?” despite sort of realizing in real
time that Reve had mumbled what he meant to
say. “I’m Reve.” Reve replies with a
nervous laugh, unsure if Maya is joking or
not. “Oh, hi. My name…I’m…I’m Maya.”
Maya responds, also with a sort of nervous
laugh and stammer of her words. This shared
inability to speak successfully somehow makes
both a little more comfortable with each other.
The “hello” quickly turns into a conversation
about this and that; where they are going
each day, where they are coming from, and
what they would prefer those destinations
were if it were up to them. The conversation
turns into more conversations across more
days, the two always sitting or standing next
to each other. More conversations turn into
a series of dates. Dates turn into a relationship.
A relationship into love; a love neither have
ever experienced before. A sort of love that
horrible, unrealistic stories and movies peddle
to deny the dog from hell that it otherwise
normally is.
The two fight and complain and clash over
all the usual topics and hitches of relationships,
but the love seems to pervade through it all.
The desire to find solace in the confusion
of being and nonbeing; to fill in the missing
parts of self and purpose; to alleviate the
strangeness and anxiety of existing in the
unknown they have woken up to, all sustain
the love. Even at the relationship’s worst,
the world feels worthwhile in the clutch of
it. As far as one can be, Maya feels, for
the first time in recent memory, like she
is ok.
On one night, Reve takes…
…Maya wakes up, disoriented and almost scared.
The feeling quickly goes away, though, as
she gets up, gets ready, and leaves for work.
On her drive, she can’t help but think about
the dream she had last night, and how it almost
feels like an actual memory of another life.
Her concerns of the oncoming day quickly overtake
and replace her thinking, though, dissolving
the dream’s setting and characters into
some oblivion that will never be known nor
experienced nor remembered by anyone, including
her, again.
Maya works as an architectural designer 1
for a mid to large-sized design firm. She
has recently started working at a new firm
after having left another. Her main goal in
life has and remains to become an architectural
project manager, developing and controlling
the design plans of buildings and city features
from the ground-up. For all intents and purposes,
she is passionately obsessed. She has given
up relationships and left loves unfounded.
She has moved three times. She has sacrificed
a great deal for it. But she can’t imagine
a life in which she would be doing anything
else. Her work is her way of escaping the
uncertainty of everything else. The clarity
and purpose and self-control she finds in
it seems to make the chaos and confusion of
the world and her inexplicable place within
it worthwhile.
Today, she is pitching several new concepts
for seating integrations to potentially be
applied to a large restaurant redesign that
the firm is working on. After nerves and stress
and an almost blacking out of awareness, the
pitch seems to go perfectly. Her designs are
brought onto the project.
As more time seems to go by, more and more
of Maya’s work is utilized and developed
into project plans. She is soon promoted to
architectural designer 2, the next higher
rank up at the firm. Not long after, she is
promoted to designer 3. Eventually, after
a long stretch of time that seems like almost
no time at all, she is promoted to project
manager. Her teenage dream now finally a reality.
As far as one can, Maya feels ok. Like it
has all been worth it.
Her first two projects are a great success,
both well received by the clients and highly
regarded by the firm and local industry at
large. Her concepts are a perfect balance
of being both simple, yet innovative; subtle,
but effective.
Her third project is off to a great start
as well, on track to be equally successful.
On one of the build days, Maya visits the
construction site to ensure that everything
is in order. Everything is off to a great
start and that day is like any and every other
day. Then, for no explainable reason, the
partly constructed building suddenly collapses
in on itself; the surface almost peeling back
into a collection of rubble; the rubble seeming
to almost disappear or dissolve into the ground
in a way that should be impossible. Sudden
disorientation and horror overtake Maya, terrified
that she has made a horrible mistake. Then,
in nearly the same instant, the other surrounding
buildings and homes within her view seem to
also simultaneously fall in a similar manner,
peeling away from themselves and then dissolving
into the ground. Maya begins to black out
in a disorientation as she hazily looks around
and notices the other workers panicking and
frozen. One by one, they all appear to peel
off themselves and dissolve. The ground appears
to begin the same. Maya, now in a physically
active panic, quickly tries to…
…a man named David reflects to himself briefly
as the software exits out, the project file
clears, and the experiment resets. He and
two other researchers discuss the experiment’s
results in a dark lab room. In front of them,
a large, 180-degree, multiscreen monitor connected
to a state-of-the-art supercomputer finishes
its reset and spews out a collection of data
results. It’s the second trial of the day,
and the 6th of the week. The results have
remained inconsistent with the intended hypothesis,
yet again, rendering the experiment mostly
useless.
David, his two partners, and a full team of
assistants are researching consciousness through
a new, highly controversial mind-modeling
software, which maps and replicates the functions
of a brain. In which, certain codes and commands
can be executed that simulate the electrical
activity of biological brain neurons, reproducing
any mental and perceptual state. This then
allows the software to interact back and forth
with an artificially created exterior world,
forming a hyper-real, comprehensive imitation
of human experience and ordinary conscious
phenomena. Specifically, in this experiment,
David uses the software to set up a character
entity with baseline genetic dispositions,
false memories and influences of a childhood
and adult life, effects from altered states
like dreams, and so on. The character is then
sent through a variety of scenes and moments
of decision making and performance assessment,
all for the purpose of testing David’s hypothesis
of freewill in conscious-like agents.
David, who is lead researcher and one of the
staple figures of the technology’s development,
has spent his whole life researching and uncovering
mysteries of the mind. He has been given several
major grants and awards over the span of his
career, and is regarded as one of, if not
the most important figure of the 22nd century.
Subsequently, he is one of six individuals
who have been given clearance to utilize the
mind-modeling software under a variety of
strict guidelines that limit the complexity
Nearly every day, David constantly rediscovers
the childlike wonder that got him interested
in science and philosophy in the first place,
each needle push forward creating a grander
and more enthralling magic show of reality.
David is 176 years old. He is of one of the
last generations who just missed a major transition
into substantial anti-aging technologies.
Just prior to, he was diagnosed with a late-stage,
irreversible brain cancer. One of the last
to be diagnosed with any form of cancer at
all. Of course, it is only getting worse each
day. And with mind-uploading technologies
still not fully figured out, they are unlikely
to catch up to him in time. With the reconciliation
of freewill, randomness, and determinisms
being one of David’s great remaining goals
in life, he spends nearly all his time in
pursuit of this knowledge.
After two more years of research, at age 178,
a series of simulations run consistent with
a set of David’s predictions, confirming
his hypothesis. On this day, the truth of
self-agency and freewill is discovered. As
David looks down at the final test results,
as far as one can, David feels like he is
ok. Like it has all been worth it. His greatest
moment, achieved.
After a series of successfully reproduced
experiments by other scientists, David’s
theory is accepted by the majority of the
science and philosophy community, and not
long after, by the public at large.
A few weeks later, David passes away from
his cancer following a series of complications
during…
…a group of individuals watch the digitally
projected screen fade to black in the virtual
reality theater they are collected in. It
is the premier of an art exhibit by Ray Delar.
Delar, a famous simulation artist, codes and
creates complex worlds and stories through
autonomous characters coded with artificial
intelligence algorithms, all run on a simulation
inside a massive quantum supercomputer. In
which, the characters are sent through simulated
universes governed by sets of laws that Delar
configures, anchoring and compelling the characters
to his intended story lines, like a marionettist
with strings made of code and a stage made
of fabricated reality. As characters move
through various maps and scenes, the simulated
world creates an deletes parts of itself in
real-time, correlating with the characters’
observations of it. The simulation adds environmental
features consistent with the characters’
imagined pasts, simultaneously encoding them
with confabulated, false memories, making
it seem like things are upwards of billions
of years old, when in fact, everything is
hours, minutes, seconds, or not at all. Each
character contains a fully simulated brain
with a simulated sense of self-awareness and
sensory inputs of a non-existent physical,
external universe.
Delar is known and renowned for his absurdly
meta style. Many of his characters are often
coded to doubt their realities; to suspect
that something is off and to become curious
about what is; to consider that they are in
something or something is in them; to ask
why, where and how, all for the purposes of
inciting story lines through his characters
attempts to solve and deal with these uncertainties
through art and love and self-improvement
and knowledge and the creation of other realities.
Of course, like all art, Delar’s work is
a product of his own fears, anxieties, thoughts,
and theories. He himself feels what he gives
many of his characters: a skepticism or doubt
in reality; a feeling that his sense of what
is real is sufficiently detached from what
actually is. He constantly wonders if he is
most likely just in someone or something else’s
contrived reality, like his characters are
in his? If he is living in a dream or simulation
or a vat of nutrient solution elsewhere? If
some evil genius is in his head, or if the
entire universe is in the head of some evil
genius?
Delar doesn’t feel like any of this is true,
but he also recognizes that he doesn’t know
what any of these things feel like. He only
knows what he feels like. And he feels like
everything could be anything. His sense of
what feels real and natural tells him that
everything is real and natural, but what if
what feels real and natural is nothing but
a byproduct of the very thing he fears is
not. How can he trust what he feels without
having any way of knowing what he does not?
How can he know what exists outside his head
without ever being able to step outside of
it? And so, he creates art; to deal with this
confusion and anxiety and self-doubt, and
to explore all possibilities, he creates worlds
of other character who feel the same.
After the screening ends, as always, following
a massive ovation, Delar opens up to a Q and
A with the audience. Several audience members
ask about coding techniques, his thoughts
on the limitations of current 23rd century
computing power, the prospects of creating
entirely self-sustaining simulated worlds,
concerns of ethics, and so on. The Q and A
goes as normal and is wrapping up. The last
audience member in the line approaches the
mic to conclude the event. He asks the following,
“Hi. This is probably the simplest question
of the night, but I’m wondering… your
work seems to always bring up questions of
epistemology, obviously; doubts of actually
having sufficient knowledge of knowledge to
know if we can trust anything we think. You
create worlds and people that think and act
and feel like they are just as real as we
think we are but are of course not real in
the way they think they are at all. But so,
my question is, as a true skeptic, you seem
to doubt all things, but I’m curious, have
you ever doubted if any of that matters?”
The audience member pauses for a short moment
and then continues. “I mean love is felt
in the dreams of your characters’ characters,
right? Passions and purposes are had and made
in worlds within your worlds. Apparent truths
are discovered and wonders are found in realities
made of no more than art and entertainment.
If experiences are experienced in anything
anywhere, does it matter any less if it’s
real in the way one thinks? And does it matter
if one can or can’t prove it? You show that
knowing what is real or not is likely impossible;
that we all very well could be inside some
simulation or video or story right now.; that
we could exist in some precoded or deterministic
system, without any of the freewill we yearn
for and feel like we have. But does that matter?
Haven’t you more revealed that the uncertainty
and unknowns of these “how’s” and “why’s”
and “where’s” and “what’s” is
in fact a sustainable and desirable quality
that builds a potential infinity of love and
desire and curiosity? And isn’t that you
exist somewhere able to experience any of
these things all that you can truly know,
and all that ultimately needs to matter?”
The audience member subtly nods his head and
steps back away from the mic to imply the
completion of his question.
The virtual theater is quiet.
Delar pauses and thinks for a moment. Then
responds, “I am…
