It could be that I am at the center of a large-scale experiment. I imagine a kind of laboratory in which I am connected to a great apparatus.
This system, I suspect, reflects everything that I think I perceive directly into my brain. In reality, none of it exists. My life, what I think is my life, is a kind of test, a movie or a super-realistic 3D animation to play along with.
Maybe it is now time to set me free.
The child that we were knew much of what we then had yet to live. In recent years, as simulation theory has become more widely known and developed into a popular concept in the A.I. scene, I’ve gradually realized how familiar these ideas are to me. A first thought, a first feeling was: this world is not the right one. In the beginning, the child, whose connection to this world had not yet been formed, whose bond to this world with the bonds of feelings and desire had not yet been forged, knew that it was not at home here. Being a stranger was a matter of course. And then the question inevitably arose about the reality behind the illusion, about the home behind the foreign. There was a longing in my heart, but what did my mind do with it?
The following miniature dates from 2005, it is unclear why it was written down. I extracted the text from an old file, created in a program that no longer exists. Between pages of incomprehensible code, rows of control characters and numbers, I found fragments of sentences that, when put together, form a distant, somehow alien-looking inner image of the child I once had been. But between the fear and the loneliness, I still read an undaunted longing for a way out, an unquestioning desire for completeness and freedom. It is the theme of life that is only fulfilled when it has been overcome.
I am a stranger
I have my own room. That’s good. I can’t even imagine what it would be like if I didn’t have my own room. The only place where there are just things that interest me is my room. Only in this room it doesn’t smell like it smells everywhere else, here.
I don’t understand what the parents want with the neighbors. They must all realize that they have nothing in common with each other. But maybe there’s something from the past that the parents are digging up and showing the neighbors so that they think they’re like that. But they’re not like that. I know it. They’re not normal. I’m convinced no one can find them normal. I don’t know what normal is and what the parents are actually like when I don’t see them.
It’s nice when they’re gone.
The bedcover is green and orange. The pyjamas are rough on the inside, I like that. If it wasn’t the middle of the week, today would be a good day for the set up. The set up makes a command center out of my bed. For some time now, I’ve been using the black digital alarm clock for the set-up. Futuristic. Of course, I know that only I see a command bridge when I look at the set-up. Only to me do two chairs, a few books, a brown corduroy bedspread cleverly folded and tucked over them and a stone-age Siemens radio look like a command bridge.
Mark Brandis is great. It’s like with the set up. I know that only I see a glimpse of the real future when I read Mark Brandis. The book covers are totally unrealistic. Spaceships will never look like that. The author probably doesn’t even know what the future looks like himself. But I do know. What interests me are the journeys, the take-offs, the landings and also, I have to admit, the space battles. The stupid thing is that fear comes more easily when you’ve read Mark Brandis.
As soon as I turn off the light, the black appears. At first it’s just dark. But then I open my eyes wide in the dark to see something of what was the room when it was still light. And then I have the darkness in front of me. It looks as if someone is pouring pure black into my field of vision from the edges. It gets darker and darker, the darkness moves, it creeps or flows towards me, and how do I know what that is. Above all, it has to stop getting darker at some point. It can’t keep getting darker and darker. At some point, all the light is simply used up and then it can’t get any darker. If I keep closing my eyes in between, of course I’ll never figure it out. After I close my eyes and then open them again, the darkness is a little less dark. But as soon as I can see something again, the black comes back from the edges of my field of vision and covers everything, burying me under it. The darkness has nothing against me. It’s just there, and where the darkness flows, there I can’t be. It will reach me, maybe not tonight, but one day it will reach me and I will get lost in it and be just as dark. It will no longer be me. I will stop then. The darkness will have eaten me up.
But then why does nothing ever happen? Whenever I get scared, the darkness descends on me, as slowly and impersonally as it can, so that nobody notices. I know that it is my fear that gives the darkness power over me. I am afraid of that. So far, the fear never seems to have gotten so big that I disappear. Maybe that won’t work at all? What does the darkness want from me then? What is my fear for it? If it can’t do anything to me anyway, why is it threatening me? Or is it just my fear that makes me feel that the darkness is threatening me? What am I afraid of then?
Overcoming fear means that I just perceive what I feel. All I can see is the darkness. From the things that I can feel, I know that they have not yet changed in the dark. It is possible that my bed is swaying through empty space – but the sheets, blanket, pyjamas and I myself are still unchanged, real, just as we were before the darkness fell. Whatever is outside, I am here and I know it. If I don’t move, if I disappear into the universe of darkness without losing myself, then nothing can happen. And that’s usually enough for me to fall asleep. I know that in the morning, because I must have slept to be able to wake up.
I reach the bus stop breathing heavily. I look at my wrist, where my watch is once again nowhere to be seen this morning. The watch seems to be the biggest problem. You could make some statistics: There are five school days a week and I forget my watch on at least three of them.
What else can I do wrong? Some time ago, I must have been standing at this bus stop in my slippers. I look down at myself without lowering my head and decide that what I’m seeing is also considered by the rest of the world to be appropriate footwear for a 12-year-old on his way to school. All clear. My breathing is calmer now too. But the bus isn’t coming.
I try to remember: the image of the horribly embarrassing old slippers in the fresh snow is vivid. So this story must have been a while ago. Because it’s summer. A rainy summer, but it hasn’t snowed for months. Maybe I was just dreaming about the slippers. But when? Was it winter then? That’s strange. And where’s that bus?
When I think about dreams, there are many things I don’t want to remember. Yesterday or the day before, however, I woke up with a completely unique feeling: I don’t know what images evoked this feeling. But it was infinitely sweet and wonderful, like the memory of being loved unconditionally, more than I have ever experienced in reality. After waking up, I knew I was a stranger, full of a stranger’s happiness. The feeling of security with which I had been gifted stayed with me for hours, and so it happened that I suddenly had to smile in the middle of a math lesson at the thought of this unknown home that I must have seen in my sleep. I hadn’t even heard the question, to which I wouldn’t have known the answer anyway.
Not only is there no bus coming. There is no one waiting at this stop except me. Usually it’s different. What’s actually going on here?
Basically, nothing surprises me anymore. Because I have a theory. I don’t like talking about it and I know that everyone will find it ridiculous. But maybe there is someone who shares the same theory with me. It can remain a secret who that is. I don’t need to know. In any case, only one of us could be right.
The starting point of this theory is: there is no proof that what I perceive is real reality. Nobody can get out of their skin, and so nobody knows whether they are not the only one who really exists – and whether everything they experience is a mirage, a dream or an illusion. It could be that I – or rather the part of me that perceives – am at the center of a large-scale experiment. I imagine a kind of laboratory, as I know it from my books. I, or what I actually am, am connected by a myriad of wires and cables to a great apparatus that we would call a computer here. This system, I suspect, reflects everything that I think I perceive directly into my brain. In reality, none of it exists. My life, what I think is my life, is a kind of test, a movie or a super-realistic 3D animation to play along with. What’s wrong with that? The illusion is perfect. Or sometimes it’s not! Sometimes the same blue car drives by in the same direction three times within a few minutes. (Yes, I’ve even memorized the license plate.) Sometimes things are actually not where I put them – and reappear in the same place two days later. Sometimes two strangers play the roles of my parents …
Are „they“ testing me? Are they waiting for me to notice? How and who should I tell that I know? “Help”, I think to myself as loudly as I can, “let me out of here …”. And I might mean it.
In the empty bus that eventually arrives, I settle into the last row. The swinging and shaking helps me to feel myself. The fact that I’m an hour early and my sports gear is keeping company with the clock at home can’t be helped. And the cruel day will be followed by a black night. But I will patiently persevere until the experiment is over. It is now time to set me free.
