The Universe’s Cheat Code

From a self-assigned writing prompt on Facebook: everyone who commented got a story about them. This is for my friends Steve and Bobby.

As many scientists usually are (or eventually become), I’m an atheist. Or at least I was, until recently. Extremely recently.

I was an atheist until about 5 minutes and 35 seconds ago.

Like many in this modern age, organized religion never really took hold with me as a child, and I never had a born again moment as an adult. Sure, I had some feelings about it while experimenting with especially strong psychedelics in college, and there was this one Baptist chick I was really into for a hot minute, but as life wore on, it wore away.

Studying the underlying fabric of spacetime for a living was probably the final silver bullet for my disbelief in myths. Talk about an antidote — I’m a quantum mathematician, I study probabilities and quarks and have theorized for a long time that we have no free will because every atom already has a way it will react with every other atom, and we’re all just atoms, you know?, like thought isn’t really “thought”, like in the verb AND the noun sense, it’s just a delusion that trillions of atoms have tricked themselves into believing because-

Shit, sorry. I get ahead of myself sometimes. Long story short, I study the math of “why things exist like they do”.

And I very recently figured out exactly why things exist like they do. Like, 5 minutes and 35 seconds ago. Now everything is doomed. Sorry.

Fuck, I need a shot of whiskey.

As I said, I’ve been chasing down this idea that there can be no free will, or choice, because every single nanoscopic particle is already going to react to everything it’s going to encounter in one exact specific way. Think of a pool table filled with pool balls, all over the place, and you have a pool cue. From the moment that cue hits a ball, the angle and force you hit it with cannot change anymore. That ball is going to hit another ball in only one specific way, and the cascading effects that’ll come after that can only happen in one specific way, right?

Cool. That’s what I think the universe is. There was some original state of matter, some kind of energy was introduced to it, and literally everything since then has been another entry in a series of cascading events caused by other events. None of them can be changed. We may not know the future, but there’s only one way it can unfold.

SO ANYWAY I’ve been trying to dig up some kind of mathematical proof for this theory for a couple of decades now, and uh…

Well, I was working late tonight. I had just cracked open my second beer and had to take a few minutes away from the screen. I took out a notepad and just started scribbling notes out, just some scratch paper to keep my mind in the zone but to take the pressure off.

I like to just throw shit to the wind sometimes, chase down an obviously wrong lead just to get my brain working in a different direction. It was as I was doing this, just throwing different formulas against the wall to see what stuck, that I… shit, how can I describe this?

I kinda stumbled upon the universe’s cheat code.

I was sitting there, writing down whatever mathematical nonsense I could come up with, when suddenly there were two guys sitting across the table from me.

The one in the glasses spoke first. “Way to go bro! You did it!”

The one in with the mustache just sat there, smiling silently.

“Uh… who are you? How’d you get in here?”

“It’s all good man, we’re not here to hurt you, and besides, there’s nothing you could do to stop us.”

Mustache Guy pulled down his American flag baseball cap, crossed his arms, and leaned onto the table. He still said nothing.

“Mind if I…?” Glasses reached across the table and grabbed my beer. “IPA, nice.”

He took a swig of the drink and put it back down on the table.

“What the hell is-”

“You can stop calling me ‘Glasses’, I’m Steve. Mustache Guy over here is Bobby.”

“Sup.”

“Why are you… What is going on?”

“You figured it out, man! You finally got it!”

“Yeah, way to go, man.”

“…figured what out?”

“Your math. The key. The thing for … shit, everything, I guess.”

Steve pointed at my notes, and I looked back down at them. They were … they were nonsense. I was purposely writing nonsense, how could any of this be right?

I looked back up. “What are you talking about? This is nonsense. How’d you get in here?”

Bobby suddenly got extremely animated. “Yes! Yes, it IS nonsense! That’s the POINT!”

Steve waved him down, “Hold on, hold on, we’re not there yet.”

“It’s nonsense, he just said it!”

“Just hang on, let me ask him.”

I had never been more confused in my life. Was I talking to … God(s) or something?

“Actually, you totally have been more confused before,” Steve interjected, into my thoughts, somehow?, “when you were 6 you first realized that some people might not like the bodies they’re born into. You were definitely more confused about that than you are about this, on a purely objective level. Obviously, you were a child, but still, there was definitely a higher level of confusion then. You’ve actually almost got it, now.”

“I assure you, I have no idea how you got in here.”

“Yes you do! You just had it!” Bobby exclaimed.

What the hell were these two-

“Look up five grafs, you almost had it there.”

I looked up five grafs- wait, how am I looking back through my thoughts like this? Why am I writing in past tense?

“Are you… are you god?”

Bobby slammed his hands down on the table. “God DAMN it!”

Steve cackled. “AAAAHAHAHAHAHA… YES! No, we’re not god. You’re a SIM.”

…I’m a what?

“A SIM. You’re a character in a SIMS game we’re running with some extra firepower. We had a bet going.”

A bet? Over… me?

“Not just you, moreso over ‘people’. We wanted to see if we could get someone to think we were god.”

Have you been watching us this whole time?

“Yep. Well, about the last 500 years. We didn’t think anyone would start to ask the right questions until about the time Descartes came along, so we just fast forwarded everything before that.”

Fast forwarded?

“Yeah, your universe has existed for the past fifteen minutes.”

…what was the bet?

“Ten bucks.”

Ten bucks?! To see if you could get someone to believe in god?

“No, people DEFINITELY believe in god. We wanted to see if we could get someone to think WE were god.”

What’s with the math, then? This is legitimately nonsense.

“Oh, that’s just the assortment of symbols we decided on. Whoever wrote that down first would be visited by us. No one’s ever written that series of symbols before. You’re it.”

Oh… so did I pass?

“Not really a pass/fail-”

“NO! You fucked me!” Bobby interrupted.

“Heh… no, not really a pass/fail situation, for you. I won the bet.”

So what’s nex… wait I haven’t been talking for a while, have I?

“Nope.”

How are you able to- wait, where’s my beer? Where’s the table? Where am I?

“…well, as to ‘what’s next,’ we’re shutting down the simulation. Whiskey Friday’s almost over and we’re all heading to that Horse Bar that you always used to hear Bobby talk about but can’t remember for the purposes of this story.”

So I don’t exist?

“Well, you think, don’t you?”

I mean… do I? Or am I just now a collection of thoughts that include one thought that says I exist?

“Fuck… fuck, I don’t know man, maybe.”

Hi guys, Real Sean here. This shit has gotten too meta.

Wait, who are you?

I’m the author of this Medium post.

“Oh FUUUUUCK, are we just in a Medium post?”

Afraid so, yeah.

Wait, am I in a SIMS game or in a Medium post?

I think… yeah, I think you’d be in both by now.

“What about us?”

I think you’re in both, too.

“But we made the SIMS game.”

Yeah but then you went in it, didn’t you?

“Shit I guess you’re right.”

Also I’m as close as you’re going to get to God, so I can make you anything.

“Well… hey, just don’t make me late to dinner?”

What?

“It’s a joke. We didn’t program jokes into your SIMS game.”

Yeah, that’s kind of fucked up. You didn’t give them humor?

“Well technically, you didn’t give them humor.”

Fair point. Anyway, I’ve got to wrap this up.

What am I supposed to do now? Wasn’t this originally my story?

Yeah but you’re me.

“Dude.”

OK, I really need to go now.

Like this? Did it make you laugh and/or question your own existence?

“Wait, I can see the footer text. I’m supposed to be dead, aren’t I? Am I Bobby or Steve?”

God damn it, how’d you get in here?

I’d love it if you gave this a clap, a round of applause, or a standing ovation.

Oh god I’m so scared. What is nothing going to feel like?

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