Friday, January 12, 2018

You're Not Here

you're not here:

"hey, what do you think's going to happen next, man?"

"i think he's going to go over there and talk to that person in the next ten minutes."

"shit! you're right. how did you know that?"

"maybe it's all happening closer to me. i just guessed."

"what do you mean closer to you? we're all in the same place."

"look, you're not here. there is no here. you see a lot of projections of humans around you, but you're not here. like physical motion is not real. nobody moves in space."

"so it's like the matrix. and we're plugged in. what are your conspiracy theories? i mean, like the real government and so on."

"i don't know. there are bad people, sure. but can bad people really group together? there have got to be some trust issues, right? or do they just tacitly approve and do their little bit for some evil agenda? but you know what i'm really thinking about now? sometimes, i imagine someone out there, actually several people, huge, off-Earth, you know, bored, nothing to do, plenty of spare time on their hands, they know what's going on, they're watching, and somehow they have power over the system, i mean they can send illusions of people into like, the theatre of Earth, and these illusions, they're not real people, they're sort of versions of themselves that they can manipulate like a puppet, and i keep meeting them. how crazy am i?"

"that's far out, man! but what do you think about the universe? what is it really? i mean, is it infinite or...?"

"yeah...the universe is infinite! but the universe is not real! it's just a theoretical model."

"you mean, like, what we see, when we go around, geography, it seems like there is a universe, but there isn't really?"

"exactly."

"but what are off-Earth people? how do they know about the Earth?"

"fuck, everybody knows about the Earth!"

"quiet, man, you don't want anyone to hear this stuff."

"yeah, i guess you have to be careful what you say, especially names."

"yeah, i mean, you don't know who can hear you, right? you think you're alone, you can say anything you want, but is that really true? you know what i mean?"

"i think about who my real neighbours are in space. you can't change who your neighbours are. i think i live in a peaceful part of space. i mean, some people, they just seem like they're really billions of light years away in reality, you know?"

"i don't know, man. how much can anyone really know? that's the entire problem. epistemology is a fucker, right?"