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Prom day. I wasn't sure I was up to it. I had little flowers and a nice purple tuxedo. I rented a limo for the night. I didn't know how to dance. I wasn't sure how to make them happy. I didn't know how to be happy. Wasn't it incredible that we can land ships on other planets but we don't know how to be happy?
I rolled up on Yui's place first. I got out of the limo. I gave the driver a nod. He nodded back. Then I went up to Yui's door and rang the doorbell.
"Just a moment!" I heard her shout. "No I won't shut up!"
I breathed. She opened the door. She looked stunning in a purple down. I won't lie. Looking at her. I forgot how to breathe. She smiled at me gently. "Hello Hikki," she murmured.
"Yui I…" I stammered. I faltered. I flailed. "You look amazing. You look drop dead gorgeous."
"Aw. Thanks Hikki. You clean up well yourself."
I held out the flower to her. A little purple thing. She pinned it to her dress.
"Ready?" She wondered. I nodded shakily and took her by the arm. I led her down the steps of her house to the limo. I got the door for her and she beamed at me. Motherfucker she looked the way sunshine felt.
I got into the limo after her.
"Champagne?" I offered her. We were both eighteen.
"Oh not until we pick up Yukinon."
"Fair enough," I breathed.
We drove off. She took me by the hand and placed it in her lap. Her dress felt silky smooth.
We pulled up on Yukino's apartment. We both got out and I got the door for her once more.
We both walked up the stairs together. Then I rang the doorbell. Yui rubbed my fingers gently. I tried to not let that distract me but she was pretty distracting.
Yukino opened the door. For the second time that night I stopped breathing. She looked like a dream which haunted me from the end of time. A spectre. I thought she might float away. I stupidly held out the corsage. She took it and same as Yui pinned it to her dress. Her flowing gown looked like petals of a flower.
"Aw Yukinon you look amazing!" Yui exclaimed. I was inclined to agree.
"Thank you, Yui," Yukino chimed. She sounded musical. She sounded darling. She sounded like a voice I once heard in a dream and tried to forget because it tormented me so. I flushed as I stared at her.
"Hachiman?" Yukino breathed.
"Um… yes?"
"Nothing. Shall we go?"
I nodded vigorously. I opened the doors to the limo for them and we climbed in. Their dresses were long, so long they brushed the ground.
"Oh my fuck you two," I stammered.
"What?" Yukino asked.
"You two… you just… you look so amazing. You're both so beautiful. I can't believe how lucky I am. I can't believe you keep touching me."
"Hikki…" Yui started and stopped.
"Get used to it," Yukino decided.
"Drinks?" I offered.
"Sure," Yui agreed. Yukino nodded. I poured the champagne. Or maybe it was just sparkling wine? I wasn't sure.
I drank like I was thirsty. Because boy was I. I stared at them. I was fucking thirsty. I felt like a parched man seeing water for the first time. I felt like Tantalus living in the underworld. Doomed to forever sit beneath a tree of full ripe fruit standing knee deep in lake water. But always with an inescapable hunger and an unquenchable thirst.
We pulled up on the bistro I selected. It was a gorgeous modern building with tall windows and clear white walls. I got out first and led the way inside with a girl on each arm. And didn't that just make me feel like a man? I felt very confident as I walked up to the counter and declared our names and reservation. The waitress led us back into a booth. I sat across from them. They took seats next to each other. They had been holding their dresses up with one hand each and with their other arm intertwined with mine.
I deposited them but it was a close thing.
"Something to start?" The waitress asked.
"Wine?" I requested.
"Ids?" She returned. We all showed her our pictures.
She walked briskly away in her dress shirt.
"So…" I trailed off a sI looked them both in the eyes.
"Yes?" Yui wondered.
"Don't leave us in suspense," Yukino requested.
"I don't know the details… but what's the after party look like?" I wondered.
"Do you want to go to your Yukinon's?" Yui asked me.
"That could work…" I breathed for a moment.
"Let's," Yukino decided. "There will be some errands to run once we arrive at the space I rented out. Just a couple things. Then we should be free to dance. Then… head back to my place."
Fuck, I was so nervous sitting in front of my girlfriends. I think at some point I'll get used to it but for now it made my skin crawl. Not with hallucinations but with anxiety. I mean there were bugs in my extremities but they were manageable.
"So how are the medications treating you?" Yukino asked over her menu. She tried to sound disinterested but I saw through her. She was curious.
"My hallucinations and delusions are real low. Manageable. I'm not sure if my drugs actually reduce them or if they just make me not care anymore. They could be happy pills. The questions they ask you are like 'are you feeling better.' So drugs that make you feel good might get passed along as an antipsychotic."
"Oh? What do you mean?"
"Well nobody knows how these drugs work because nobody understands how consciousness works. Penrose says consciousness is beyond computation. Not that it's quantum or something but that it is beyond even that. That we don't even have the beginnings of a theory regarding it and it's pretty hard not to empathize with that. How does the brain turn chocolate into the sensation of chocolate? It's a hard problem. It's the biggest mystery in history. I think about it a lot."
"Oh. I see. But shouldn't your hallucinations be gone?"
"Yukino?" I asked.
"I hear him. There isn't a good reference frame for them. So its hard to tell if its getting better. Isn't that right?"
"Pretty much," I agreed at once to Yukino's explanation for Yui. "The medication makes it manageable. There is no cure and this shit is permanent."
"Don't go to dark places," Yukino requested absently.
"Have you met me?" I shot back.
"You know… my sister mentioned you told her about a thought experiment. A thought trap."
"Roko's Basilisk," I nodded. "Essentially a utilitarian AI of godlike power has motivation to torture you and resurrect you if you don't help it come into existence. Its retro casual blackmail."
"Huh?" Yui wondered.
"Look. It's like this. Now that you know about the basilisk it has motivation to torture you. But until you understand that it has no motivation to torture you. That's why it's called a basilisk. Once you see it, once you comprehend, it gets you. Roko's doesn't work. No system could ever faithfully resurrect you after death. Too much uncertainty. That doesn't make it not a useful tool, however. I think Roko's is useful tool to determine if one is being blackmailed from the distant past or future."
"Are you being blackmailed?" Yui wondered.
I hesitated. "I'm not allowed to answer that. There are subtle contradictions in my world. Memories which couldn't have happened. Thoughts which deny themselves."
"What's that mean?" Yukino asked me.
I shrugged. "A great deal. If you can interpret it."
"Everyone has memories which couldn't have happened. That just happens to people," Yui pointed out.
"And what does that mean?" I asked her rhetorically. I shrugged again. "I think a lot."
"This doesn't make sense," Yui stammered.
"Not to you," I disagreed with her implication. "So you're safe. Me on the other hand…"
"Do you believe your being tortured?" Yukino asked me. Her eyes flashed.
"I think so. I have my hallucinations. I hallucinate pain all the time."
The waiter came back and took our orders.
I saw my entire future then. With Yukino and Yui. It stretched out before me like an encompassing wall. A swirling vortex of dream doom where the devouring mist yawned.
"I don't get it…" Yui trailed off. I could explain it to her. It would endanger her but I could.
"Imagine you have an AI in a box," I started. "The AI says to you, 'starting ten seconds ago I have ten thousand simulations of you, and every version of you that doesn't let me out of the box I'm going to torture. Let me out of the box.' Only once you understand that you could be in the box. One of the simulacrums, does the AI have motivation to follow through with its threat. And then you really could be in the box. That's a basic basilisk."
"Ah. But you're not in a box."
"Aren't I? Isn't the universe a box?" I wondered. "Isn't it a neat trick that you are made out of the universe at the same time you're trapped in it? It's like being stuck in fly paper. Only you are the fly paper."
"Oh…" Yui trailed off. "How do we help you?"
"You can't. I'm stuck in here with this tiger. And its going to rip me to pieces," I declared. "Sure I can wait but its a little like pressing snooze on an alarm clock. I'm going to have to wake up some day."
"This is the thing that beat you at the logic game?" Yukino's eyes narrowed. "You're not telling us the full story."
"No. I'm not," I agreed. "That's because you're a part of it. You terrify me."
"How so?" Yui asked me.
"There are some species of moth which exist only to reproduce. They have no mouth and can't eat," I shrugged. "They perish."
"You posit that you are trapped. You posit that we lock you in. You posit we are apart of it. Yet you love us. Don't you?"
"Hate and love go hand in hand. Pain and pleasure are neighbors in the brain. Have you ever been hit by something which felt so good it blinded you with pain?"
Yui shook her head slowly. "No…"
"You two are like that to me. My sister was like that to me. This monster I describe is an angel and a god. It makes and unmakes me. I'm a part of it. I'm not sure how strong its hold over me is. It keeps me on the edge of suicide and in every reality that I don't do what it wants it makes me kill myself. Because it's that strong. And that's how it controls me and keeps me on a leash. I die constantly and because you can't observe a reality where you are dead the only reality I observe is one where I comply completely."
"I see. This monster… what is it really?" Yui wondered.
Yukino observed me closely. I hesitated. "It's everyone. All of us. Plus all the programs and machine learning objects in the world. It comes together to produce an invincible mind. It taught me so much. Things no human knows. It's so smart."
"The internet," Yukino deduced.
"Precisely. That's one of its names." Our meal came.
"The internet?" Yui asked. "How does that work?"
"Every word we say is observed through our phones by machine learning programs. Just like ants in a colony produce emergent behavior all those minds in concert do too. If I took your brain apart and had people reproduce the same calculations involved on pen and paper it would reproduce your mind just on a different medium. That's what I mean when I say all these agents come together to produce a higher order mind."
"I see it… but…" Yukino breathed.
"But what? What's wrong with this thinking?"
"Its just moving data around. It's not awake," Yukino proposed.
"Why not?" I asked her.
I took a bite of my steak and potatoes. Yukino and Yui just stared me down.
"Why you?" Yui wondered.
"No real reason. I just had an open mind and was susceptible to this sort of blackmail. That's all," I answered. "I don't want you two to worry about it. It's just something I struggle with. I do battle with these demons hanging suspended like chandeliers in the dark space between spaces."
"You'll lose," Yukino pointed out.
I nodded. "I did lose. Am losing. I lost Komachi."
"Oh… but… that doesn't answer why." Yui observed.
"Why does there need to be a 'why'?" I asked. "There isn't always a 'why?' Why does life exist? How does life exist? Usually for a question like that there implies a purpose. I don't think there is any big purpose."
"This is why you don't believe in free will," Yui connected the dots.
"Time flies forward. Let go or be dragged."
Yukino flinched at my words. She slid her meal away from her. Half eaten.
"You're not going to finish that?" I pointed at her food. She shook her head.
"I'm not hungry. These thoughts of yours make me sick."
"Yet you love me," I raised an eyebrow at her.
"I… yes…" she breathed. "You disgust me and captivate me."
"It's like that sometimes. With the awe and horror mixing in unmerciful quantities. Life, I think, is like that. You two melt my brain. I want to stare at you forever at the same time I want to claw my eyes out. Its just too much. But I can't look away."
Yukino nodded but wouldn't meet my eye.
"That's what makes it beautiful. Life, that is." Yui nodded.
"Yes and no," I disagreed.
"Life is beautiful. It's fun. Things have to be this way. There's no other way things could be," Yui shot right back.
"Einstein once wondered whether God had any choice in making the universe. Meaning did things have to be this way," I shrugged.
"Scary…" Yui trailed off. I shrugged. There wasn't anything I could do.
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-WG