I stubbed my toe on the way to the kitchen. It hurt like the dickens and actually caused me to hop around in a circle like a one-legged bunny rabbit. For some reason, this ridiculous scene forced me to question reality. What if my toe and I are not part of base reality? What if everything—the chair I bumped into, New York City, my sweet wife, love, and every tragic war suffered by humanity—is just part of an elaborate simulation?
There’s a theory for that. Simulation
theory. It suggests that if technology progresses far enough,
someone—somewhere—might simulate an entire world, down to the smallest mote of
dust looping the lemon tree in my sunroom. If they can run one world, they can
run millions. Which makes the odds lean toward this not being base reality, but
a copy. A high-resolution echo.
Even physicists admit the code might
be showing its skirt on occasion. The universe acts digital in strange
places—quantum particles that flip when measured, light that obeys a universal
speed limit, space that’s not quite continuous. It behaves more like a program
than a place.
Still, I carry on when my toe stops
hurting. I kiss my wife when she draws near enough to me. Whether this world is
real or rendered matters not. This is the only world I know.
—Mitchell Hegman
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