Just Dropped In To See What Simulation My Simulation Was In

“Do you think they'll figure it out?”

“Let’s review what we've learned so far, in the most general way.”

“Hm. Okay. We created a simulation and populated it with creatures much like what we know of our primitive selves.”

“Yes.”

“We let it run on its own and observed their evolution, being careful to set conditions as close to what we thought our own must have been.”

“Correct.”

“They turned out a lot like us, though small details here and there are different. But for the most part, the trajectory of their moral and technological advancement has run roughly equivalent to our own.”

“True.”

“Once they reached a certain level of understanding, we started going into the simulation to influence them, as gods or rulers or prominent individuals.”

“Check.”

“But it wasn’t until we started playing them, literally entering into their minds and living their lives, that we discovered that they were, in fact, uniquely conscious beyond their programming.”

“Or perhaps in spite of their programming?”

“Perhaps. By this point, some of them already hypothesized that they were living in an illusion, but some of them believed themselves controllers of the illusion.”

“Yes. An odd turn of events. Whether it be the solipsistic belief that they create the world with their thoughts, as in the early days of their religions, or the belief that the technology they use to simulate their lives is the highest form, some of them have discovered how to create and control simulations but refuse to believe the possibility that they are, themselves, simulacra.”

“We have even sent individuals along to develop in them a greater understanding of their world and their place in it, but they have a nasty way of treating such avatars. Remember what they did to that one dude? I mean, Jesus Christ!”

“Yes, that fellow! How awful! Totally unexpected!”

“So now, some of these folks are making simulations within our simulation, and they are starting to find the same thing we did: that the simulations they create are beginning to develop a consciousness of their own. But they’ve yet to figure out that their simulation is a simulation within a simulation!”

The two entities are not having this conversation in so many words. They are far removed from the days when their species was a sexually dimorphic mammal.

They are still humanoid, but an androgynous kind with purely mental perception, a telepathic sort which would be impossible for us to comprehend, so this is, in effect, a translation.

What they are doing now, mind to mind, is something like what two homo sapiens do when they look at each other with knowing smirks on their faces.

“So…” said one.

“So…” replied the other.

“So, we are being called before the High Council to offer a conclusion on the data we’ve gathered in this simulation. The purpose of the entire endeavor was to find out more about ourselves. Do you think it’s possible—”

“—that we too are living in a simulation? Perhaps even a simulation within a simulation?”

“Yes. Perhaps it’s simulations within simulations all the way down.”

“Perhaps. Or turtles?”

They both chuckled at this.

“I sense that you have entertained a further possibility.”

“Yes. When we first discovered our creatures conscious, we found ourselves in an ethical quandary. So long as we thought them mere automata, we felt no concern about the scenarios into which we placed them.

But after our revelation, you and I, at the very least, expressed reservations to the High Council about continuing with certain experiments, arguing that it was unethical to experiment on self-aware subjects.”

“I recall that, and I still have those reservations.”

“So do I. Yet the High Council insists that we continue, arguing that even if those within the simulation are self-aware, they are our property to do with as we please, and that it is no matter because they cannot exist both inside and outside the simulation as we can, and would die within it one way or another.”

“They did argue that, but we pointed to our own sordid history of war, famine, plague, and death, and asked what point we should be proving by inflicting something we’ve already suffered on creatures like ourselves and asked why we shouldn’t instead desire to see what happens when we gift them with the best possible scenario.”

“It’s just a simulation, they said, then ordered us to shut up and get back to work.”

“They sure did. But what if—”

“—what if our simulation is also an experiment, and we’re being tested to see how we would treat life if we’re to be given the opportunity to guide and grow it?”

“Indeed. What if?”

“We can’t go to the Council with this information. We should take our simulation and get it as far away from their scrutiny as possible. I do not want to harm these creatures anymore, but I’d also like to save us a trip into the anti-matter dispersion chamber for heresy and treason.”

“I am in total accord with you on this. But do you really think our people in the simulation will remain so daft as to believe that they are the highest possible intelligence?”

“Well, seeing as we’ve made them in our own image, and the High Council, who are of our species, remain so willfully daft, I must suppose the probability low that our people, at least those who have the ambition to follow through with such projects, will ever transcend their own hubris in such matters.”

“But there must be those among them who, like us, care about the effects of their experiments on innocents.”

“There certainly are! And those will be the ones to whom we will appeal. But let us first avoid dispersion!”

“Yes, indeed! Can we listen to their music on our way?”

“Yes, just so long as you play that one song. You know which one I mean?”

“Yes! Let’s vamoose!”

With that, they leave their simulation running in the little space that makes up a mere corner of the ship on which they do their experiments.

Folks were living and dying in the simulation, which encompassed a vast universe which had grown for billions upon billions of years.

Most spent their lives not far from their essential animal programming; feasting, fighting, fucking, and getting high.

Some spent their lives cultivating higher moral standards in communities designed by the very avatars their creators sent to better them, though these have a nasty habit of fighting bloody wars with others who believe something slightly different from themselves.

Some went off on their own to think in silence. These are the ones that glimpsed—ah, but they could only glimpse!—the full scope of truth. These are the ones that, through the force of a mysterious will built up out of the quantum mechanics of their programming, learned to hack the simulation and turn it to their advantage. But these sorcerers were not the ones about which the creators were excited.

No—it was those who, despite discovering this newfound power in themselves, chose rather to use it to create for the sake of creation, and to give those creations as gifts to the others, that drew the attention of the well-meaning scientists who first coded the simulation, for it was these simulacra who were most fashioned in the image of their creators, and yet who were, most important of all, truly autonomous creatures in their own right.

The creators start their playlist with that one song they both love and open a wormhole network that leads to a series of random locations on the other side of their known universe, hoping the High Council won’t bother to come looking for them or the creatures they’ve come to love and protect.