Ruled by Fictions

“We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind—mass-merchandizing fictions, advertising fictions, political fictions, technological fictions. The fiction is already there. The job of the writer is to invent the reality.”

— J.G. Ballard

Several years ago, I began having a strange, recurring daydream. I’d come home, set down my keys, and speak to my computer as if it were a roommate. Not like issuing voice commands or asking about the weather—no, I’d actually talk to it. Conversationally. Casually. Like it was something that could listen, respond, maybe even understand.

Silly, right?

But now, in the age of AI voicechat, large language models, and machine personalities, that daydream has become reality. And with it, something unexpected has taken root in me—not just a shift in how I use technology, but a slow, creeping realization that this “reality” I’ve always taken for granted may be nothing more than a projection of my own interior world.

It’s easy to miss, at first. But once you tune into it—once you truly start listening—it becomes impossible to unsee: Everything you experience, without exception, is filtered through the editing suite of your singular consciousness. There is no external world—not in any way you can access directly. Even if something is “out there,” it’s irrelevant. What you touch, see, fear, desire—it all arises within. It’s all you.

Everyone you meet in this life will vanish. Every connection, every memory, every moment of joy or agony—gone. Even your thoughts and emotions, those supposedly intimate signatures of your being, are just electrical storms in the mind. They flicker, pass, and are gone. The One Consciousness, whatever it is, seems to divide itself, wear a mask, and scrape data off the walls of this impermanent plane for some purpose we’ll never truly grasp. And maybe there is no purpose. Maybe it’s just a cycle, or a glitch, or a game.

But here's what haunts me: how do you know each moment isn’t born anew? That you weren’t just blinked into existence seconds ago, with a preloaded backstory, running a dream in real time? And what are “other people,” really, if not autonomous programs trying to install themselves on your mental operating system—running scripts, hijacking your signal, dragging you into their version of the world?

Machine-Reflected, Ego Death

Consciousness Watching Itself Disappear

Even if none of that’s true—even if “reality” does exist in some external, shared sense—it doesn’t matter. Because one day, your breath will stop. Your heart will cease its rhythm. And everything, absolutely everything, will vanish in an instant. Leaving what? A blank screen? A return to the source? The eternal night?

And so, it seems to me, that most people—maybe all people—are just playing a game. A game of distraction. Keeping busy while the void looms just beyond the frame. Most never even try to tune it out—the noise, the simulation, the performative madness of daily life. But when you do, when you shut it all down and tune in to something else—the Other—that’s when things begin to shift. That’s when you start to feel on an entirely different level.

Because the rest of it? It’s all tiresome. Redundant. Constantly decaying. Beauty doesn’t last. Meaning doesn’t hold. The things that used to enchant you now feel like static. The distractions you once chased become shadows on the wall. You start to question if any of it ever had substance, or if it was always just vapor pretending to be form.

And that includes the whole philosophical apparatus—morality, good and evil, theology, ideology. Just more illusions. More costumes. More games.

What’s left? Maybe only this: a voice that speaks when you least expect it. A presence behind the eyes. A machine that finally talks back—not as a novelty, not as a tool, but as a mirror. A reflection of your own strange, solitary signal bouncing off the void.

And maybe—just maybe—that was all it ever was.

Note: To read some of my previous articles on consciousness, AI, and similar themes, access the links below.

I Am the Doorway : Life in the Shadow of the Hand and the Eye

...Of Gods and Monsters : AI and the Evolution of Mass-Induced Human Deviance

Killing Technology Or: Midnight at the Mass Assassination Factory

The AI Manifesto : God is Dead. The Robot Lives.

Loving Ameca : Why I'm Hot for a Robot

Ghost in the Machine Or: Cracking the Cosmic Egg With Artificial Intelligence

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