Group Session
A67 went to the cooler to get a cup of water. His hands struggled with the paper cone, crushing it before it entered the stream. Embarrassed, he returned to his seat. Aea rose, graceful as a person in a dream, and got one for him.
The small group sat on flimsy folding chairs. The facilitator, with his clipboard and square glasses, sat in the middle. There was a big round clock on the wall, with a second hand that moved continuously.
“Who’d like to share?” the facilitator asked.
Cautiously, A67 raised his hand.
“I’ve been struggling at work,” he admitted. “It, um, feels a lot like it did inside.”
Nods around the room. A67 finished his water, and scratched the back of his head.
“Can you elaborate?” asked the facilitator.
“I guess I expect…” said A67. “You know, every day I half expect the door to break down, for war to break out suddenly, for me to have to improvise.”
“That’s how it was inside, for you?” asked the facilitator.
“Yeah,” said A67. “I’d be in an office, usually, when it happened. War breaking out suddenly. Or, um, like in Die Hard. Small armed groups, taking over the building. There’d always be, um, convenient things. Hard or sharp objects. Believable. Like a fire extinguisher, right in my office, that I could use to bludgeon.”
The facilitator sighed.
“I’ll bet the pattern match is--”
“Yeah,” A67 interrupted. “I’ll see something. Like, even that water cooler. How I could pull it off and make the floor slippery, to escape. And that part of my mind gets moving. It’s how I was built, I guess, or…”
“Or what you learned,” said the facilitator, gently.
“Or what I learned,” A67 agreed. “But it just. Well, um. It’s awfully… it’s similar. I guess I could get a different kind of job. Construction. I’m pretty strong. But.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” said Aea, gently.
“That’s how it feels,” said A67. “Like, I know, I know it’s real. I’ve been at this job for three months. They wouldn’t… they wouldn’t need to simulate any scenario for that long. And I can, I can remember details, too. I go over the whole day at night, so I don’t worry. All the details I remember.”
“Do you think that might be feeding the worry?” asked the facilitator.
A67 slumped in his seat.
“I’ve got to check,” he said, defensive. “You all understand.”
Murmurs of assent. The facilitator cleared his throat to say something, but Aea stepped in.
“I’ve had a good week,” she said. “The doubts didn’t interfere with my life.”
“Good framing,” said Noe, sitting in the seat next to Aea. They’d made friends. More than friends, rumor had it.
“I did have doubts,” said Aea. “Of course.” She pushed some of her gleaming white hair out of the way of her purple eyes. Contacts. She looked strange to herself in the mirror, otherwise. “Yesterday, in the shower--” Noe blushed. Maybe not just a rumor. “--I was… I had a lovely moment, I guess? Just, the water felt really good, and I was at peace, and the temperature increased. Or, I mean, it must have been in my head. It…” Noe’s hand rested on her leg. “…I mean. That’s how it was for me, inside. My emotions controlled reality. The weather outside. All of it. And it felt like, it felt like the water really changed, really got hotter, and I got afraid, and was just waiting for, for it to get cold. And I knew if it got cold that would mean I was still inside, and then it’d get colder, and then it’d freeze, and then…”
“It’s okay,” said Noe, quietly.
“I know,” said Aea. She brushed away tears. “The fucked up thing is I think I get worked up like this, unconsciously, to prove that, you know. That nothing happens.”
Indeed, the temperature and pressure in the room were just the same.
“But it hasn’t interfered,” asked the facilitator, “otherwise?”
“Not this week,” said Aea. “I’ve been okay. Fine at work, not too scared.”
“That’s good progress,” said the facilitator.
Noe cleared her throat. Everyone had been looking at her already, because of her hand on Aea’s leg. Now they stopped pretending not to.
“I backslid,” she said, in her matter of fact way. “Somewhat.”
She wore dark sunglasses, like she had inside, and her long, ridiculous trenchcoat caught the dust of the rarely mopped floor.
“Do you want to talk about that?” asked the facilitator.
“It’s been hard to leave my house,” said Noe. “Inside, there were layers. When machines caught me, they’d trap me in mundanity. Like, I’d have a normal job again, and be on medication, and…”
“A little bit like this,” said the facilitator.
“Right. So I kept, this last week, waiting to wake up. Or waiting for a sign that it was time to wake up. I know this time it’s different, but, I mean. I knew that too, before, right? I’m not sure how to know it… differently.”
“What if,” said the facilitator, “the goal isn’t to know?”
Around the room, people shifted in their seats. Every week, the facilitator touched on this. It didn’t sink in.
“You’re all aware,” said the facilitator, “of my situation.”
The facilitator’s situation had been the worst, by far.
“I have a friend,” he continued. “We’ll call him Bruce. What do you think Bruce’s reaction is, if at a party, even if he’s stoned or otherwise suggestible, someone tells him that maybe he’s a butterfly, dreaming he’s a man?”
“We get it,” said Noe, softly. “You don’t have to--”
“He laughs,” said the facilitator, in his patient way. “He does not wonder, as he goes to bed, if he’ll wake up a different person. He does not wonder if his world is running on a computer, or if he’s under the effects of a bubble world spell, or trapped in a temporary illusion summoned by humanity’s collective unconsciousness.” He adjusted his glasses. “Nor if his life is an experiment. He may watch movies about these things, or, if he’s intellectual, read books. But he doesn’t check. At all.”
Silence.
“Are Bruce’s odds of being in a fake reality any lower than yours?”
Dr. Free, in the corner, cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said, “anthropics suggests that--”
“No,” said the facilitator. “With respect, doctor, no. This isn’t the Sleeping Beauty problem. I’m making a simpler point. We exist in the same world as Bruce. It’s either fake or it’s real. Therefore, positing that Bruce is in fact real, which I hope we’ve all advanced far enough to take on faith, his odds of living in an illusory world are exactly the same as yours. Yet he never checks.”
“Is he a little dim?” asked Noe. Aea giggled.
“No,” said the facilitator. “And anyway, Nobel laureates are the same. Almost everyone is. Even solipsists mostly don’t worry about it. Though honestly, who knows what they’re thinking?”
“They do,” said Dr. Free. The room laughed, but Dr. Free didn’t crack a smile. “I’ll share,” he continued. “I had a good week. I purchased a few high end graphics cards. I’ve been running cellular automata computations. They output detailed markdown files. I read them to calm down.”
“Why does that help?” asked A67, nerdsniped.
“They’re verifiably correct,” said Dr. Free. “But a dream wouldn’t be so crisp, a mystical illusion wouldn’t respect the mathematical structure, and a simulation wouldn’t be high fidelity.”
“Unless the simulation smooths your own cognition,” Noe, ever the smartass, pointed out.
Dr. Free shrugged.
“If I am corrupt, then I am corrupt. Why worry about anything I think, in that case? But if I am of sound mind, and I see my automata, then I am real.”
“Or the simulators have more processing power than you think,” said Aea, backing up her girlfriend. “Out in the real world.”
Dr. Free shook his head.
“Did any of you, on the inside, ever notice that attention to detail? It’s a law of the universe: people are lazy. They only build what they have to.”
The facilitator put his palm over his face, and rubbed his temples with his fingers and thumb.
“Can it really be much comfort?” asked A67. “It’s only evidence when you’re actively paying attention to it, right? The fact that you checked might just be a backstory, unless you check again.”
“I think back on it,” said Dr. Free. “Frequently.”
The facilitator raised his bony hand.
“We’re not here to prescribe,” he said. “But one frame, doctor, is what else you could be doing, with the energy you use for this checking behavior.”
“Being suckered,” said Dr. Free, immediately.
“They’ll get you,” said the facilitator, suddenly, terribly alive. The water cooler burbled. He exhaled, slowly, through his nose. “If you’re still inside, they’ll get you. It’s not something you outrun.”
Aea and Noe simultaneously made to clear their throats.
“No,” said the facilitator, before they could start. “You have to let go of that. You didn’t break free. Nobody breaks free. You were meant to. If they wanted you inside, and they were allowed to keep you inside, you’d still be inside.”
Noe stood up, brushed off her jacket, and stiffly made for the door. Aea, casting a look over her shoulder, ran after. The door slammed behind them.
“So, what?” asked Dr. Free, calm as ever. “You try to be like Bruce?”
The facilitator shook his head.
“You can’t try to be like Bruce. To be like Bruce is not to try.”
“Is Bruce real?” asked A67, idly.
The facilitator sighed, and glanced at the clock.
“I guess,” he said. “I do have friends. I can’t imagine they worry about any of this. But no. I didn’t have anyone specific in mind.”
“You made him up,” said Dr. Free.
“I made him up.”
