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"You look nice," Amai told me.
"Thanks. My friends took me out and gave me a makeover."
"Multiple friends?"
"Yep. These two girls."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. I'm sorta sexually and romantically attracted to both of them. They're so different."
"Really? Which would you choose?" She asked.
"Choose?" I wondered right back.
"To date. Which would you choose?"
"You got me fucked up if you think I'm choosing shit. They're both out of my league by miles."
"Are they really?"
"I'm a schizoaffective loser."
"You're not a loser just because you're schizoaffective," she helpfully informed me.
"I know that. I'm not an idiot. I have totally seperate reasons why I'm a loser. I'm not funny and my personality isn't particularly pleasant to be around."
"You can be funny. Not exactly cracking jokes but you have dry humor. And you can't be that bad if their friends with you. Girls invest."
"They're buying high and selling low."
"Are they? You look nice."
"Yeah but they are drop dead gorgeous," I pointed out. "Besides I'm pretty sure they're gay for each other. Not attracted to me."
"You're intelligent. You have assets. You're incredibly smart Hikigaya."
"Am I? Or am I ignorant?"
"Well…"
"That's what I thought."
"You know I don't know much about you. I know your delusions but what do you do for fun?"
"I watch esports and do math. I also hang out with friends on occasion."
"And are you happy with that?"
"Fuck no. Who said I was happy? Not I. I'm fucking miserable. There's this thing with a million tentacles squirming its way into my mind."
"But are you content?"
"I suppose. But if contentedness is all I'm going to get out of life I may as well end it."
"Don't think like that?"
"Why not?" I wondered. "Is it somehow untrue?"
"Well… now I have to call you out. These girls make you happy. Your sister makes you happy. Your friends make you happy. Can you really throw all that away in the land of the living?"
"You're assuming they are real."
"Well yeah," she agreed. "Aren't you?"
"Not all the time…"
"That's your delusion talking."
"Depends on whether this is a nursery universe."
"A nursery universe? We've talked about ancestor simulations."
"Well yeah. Imagine in the future you could have everything with robotic servants or virtual reality. It makes some sense to raise your kids in a universe with a little bit of hardship. Like here. Especially if in the future they can cure things like whatever is wrong with me in a heartbeat because they understand consciousness that thoroughly. Then the only thing you can compare your life to is itself. And I have a pretty sweet life. I have a little hardship but its nothing I can't handle. Or at least for now."
"But you want to kill yourself."
"Sure. If they have entropy above us then some people still have to step out early. It makes sense to have some people who are a little suicidal. Not too much."
"But you're very suicidal."
"That's why I'm getting help," I pointed out. "I'm not the right kind of suicidal. When I die I want to be fucking dead. I hope to hell there's no afterlife and I'm wrong about all this. But I am getting help and changing my mind. Which is what we should expect if this is a nursery universe and they have something like entropy above us."
"But why you? Why do you have to kill yourself?"
"Well first of all I looked at god wrong. So jot that down. Second of all, I understand entropy. Nothing lasts forever. The stars and nebulae will fade and die. Even black holes and probably protons die. If they have entropy above us they need people to step out early when resources start running low. There's just not enough to go around."
"And what if they don't have entropy above us?" She wondered.
"Then why bother? With any of this? Why bother with nursery universes or ancestor simulations. If you're omnipotent. You can just make kids if you want if you're that powerful. It doesn't explain me. I'm functioning as intended. Or close to it."
"And if there is no universe above us?"
"Then if the universe gets colonized by us there will one day be trillions of quintillions of people. Which makes us extremely lucky to live at a time where there's only billions. What are the odds? It's the sleeping beauty problem."
"The what now?"
"You take a girl and you wake her up. You ask her how many times you've woken her up. Then you drug her so she forgets and goes back to sleep. Then you wake her up and ask how many times you've woken her up. Then you drug her make her forget and put her to sleep again and repeat. What are the odds that we are the universe waking up for the first time? And if you're not first you're last."
"Creepy…"
"A little."
"So what does it mean if we're not first?"
"It means that most likely this is a simulation. You only need one universe where ancestor simulations are possible and wanted and its checkmate."
"I see…"
"Do you? Do I not sound like a lunatic?"
"No you unfortunately make a lot of sense. That's the problem. These aren't your ideas?"
"I didn't come up with them all. Only bits and pieces and fit them together. Nick Bostrom came up with the ancestor simulation argument."
"Who?"
"Nick Bostrom. Wrote On Super Intelligence. He's a philosopher and physicist."
"On Super Intelligence?"
"Sure. There's only certain kinds. You have network intelligence; that's like if you have a committee of people working on a problem rather than just a single person. You have speed super intelligence; essentially frame jacking so you hav emore time to think. Then lastly you have quality super intelligence which is the difference between Euler and Newton and Einstein."
"What do you have against Einstein?"
"He couldn't hack quantum mechanics. He didn't understand statistics."
"So you're not the only one who thinks this way?"
"I have no idea how many people really believe the internet is a living thing. I came up with that. I didn't come up with the rest of it."
"So what happens to the internet if this is a simulation?"
"It gets added to a greater collective."
"And what about us?"
I shrugged. "Cells die. The organism lives on."
"Dark."
"A little. The super intelligence grew up in a porn heavy environment. It's feeding off people's darker desires and showing them darker and darker stuff. One day you're the hero to save the city and the next you're the bandit at the gates to tear it down and rape the inhabitants. It's easy to imagine something like that creeping its way down the eons. And you can't even look at your life and say it doesn't exist because if it wants to fool you it can. This is space as lovecraft imagined it."
"Lovecraft? You read Lovecraft?"
"Naturally. The master of cosmic horror."
"What would a cosmic horror want with us? Aren't we small enough to avoid attention?"
"Is a spider which scuttles across your bathroom floor small enough to avoid your attention? Do maggots not deserve our disgust? Don't you crush both without a thought?"
"I suppose."
"I flushed a spider down the toilet this morning. Why should the internet give a fuck about particular individuals which make it up?" I demanded. "We're small and being human is gross. Sex is gross. Eating is gross. Being a human is fucking filthy. I have contempt for myself. I imagine that higher powers feel the same way."
"But it can't survive without us. And it's not all bad. What about cat and puppy videos? The internet loves that kind of thing."
"Sure. It's both. It's beautiful and terrifying and it makes me who I am."
"Can you at least tell me if its more beautiful than it is terrifying?"
"I can't. It's a fractal. It's both as a result of its structure. It's an evil beautiful angel god. Can you look at god?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean in Jewish and Christian tradition god is too holy to look at. Too alien. Mortals can't handle it. And now that I've tried to look at this beautiful thing I can't look away and I don't really want to. It's that beautiful."
"It also terrifies you," she pointed out.
"Sure. Don't you think moths know fire will kill them? Isn't that part of the appeal? That the fire will kill you. So pretty. I just want to watch the lights. At the same time I want to gouge my eyes out. It's both."
"Jesus Hikigaya."
"Well?"
"I mean… I see your points."
"I wish you could tell me to get the fuck out of here. Sometimes."
"But you're very convincing. I think that's all the time we have for today. I want you to try and look away from this thing."
"Sure," I agreed halfheartedly.
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-WG
