Living in Sim

First of all, Sim. As in Simulation. Not “sin”. Get your mind out of the gutter. And read carefully.

Day before yesterday, I was out and I had my crush on my head. Sometimes he pops in at weird moments. As crushes do. And I was thinking about something he said the other day when a truck passed me and I swear to the heavens – the truck had my name and his in bold Big Truck font, next to each other on the windshield, like a really bad, unimaginative decor. As trucks do.

It got me thinking about repeating patterns in life. Which is really weird if you start thinking about it. And it’s best not to. Honestly, I’d advise you not to. It makes you think things. Like a delulu testimony.

Some people call it manifesting. Some people call it witchcraft. Some people call it divine signs and answered prayers. A lot of us sci-fi geeks just wonder if it is us peeking behind the curtain, seeing into the Matrix, noticing the blueprint.

My sister plays Sims, the video game, and she has always been invested in it and the world she creates there. She talks about the Sims people and how she gives them nice jobs and nice social lives and usually very gothic wardrobe. It’s her aesthetic. Now imagine if somehow those characters were suddenly self-aware and she was their Creator God? 

Sci-fi has explored this theme many times. And always it’s deeply exploratory of human emotions and relations; always very thought-provoking. But also quietly unsettling. Off the top of my head, I can think of the movie Café which even had a god-like character in it albeit in the form of a little girl which to me was a very wise choice because you don’t normally think of a creator god or any god really that comes in the form of a little girl; usually paranormal little girls are scary and appear in horror movies. Café is an excellent movie; I recommend.

Then there’s Free Guy where a video game character – a NPC at that! – gains self-awareness! Very intriguing. Less comedy and more horrifying, Black Mirror has often explored this theme. There’s the obvious one with the USS Callister story; stories, I suppose; I think there’s two of them where an incel mad genius decided to create a VR world with DNA of real people but trapped inside the video game. Very sinister plotline. This also reminds me of Dwight Schrute in The Office where he plays Sims but he’s the exact same Dwight except he can fly, I think. He said he already was satisfied with his own life and it was overflowing so he decided to live two exact same lives – one real, one virtual. Less sinister than the USS Callister story but no less off for it.

These stories are similar to, but not the same as sci-fi worlds where there are worlds within worlds. In Love, Death + Robots, there is a very compelling little story called Ice Age of an entire world that happens inside a refrigerator and the same as or similar to our own timelines, but also at a mini scale and fast forwarded. Very intriguing. This theme is explored in Men In Black as well with an entire world inside a Locker and again an even tinier one inside Orion’s Belt, Orion being a cat and the entire mini-universe hanging off of his little cat belt. Again, our own world was a mini-universe from the POV of giant cosmic creatures; I think we were in their golf ball or something. Like the universe of The Who in Horton Hears A Who, which is not sci-fi but Dr Seuss is borderline sci-fi anyway. It might even be, IDK.

My point being that if you think too hard about this and allow it to consume you, you start going a little bit off. Because you start wondering if anything is real. You start getting a hit of Existentialism. Because human brains are designed to notice patterns. And if you gear your thoughts in this direction, the patterns keep repeating. No wonder so much of the 12 Zodiac Signs – even the Chinese annual ones – can hold true; there's not too many differences between us. We are just patterns that keep repeating. Souls that keep recycling, maybe. 

When I decided to get a dog, I got a beagle because I wanted something predictable. Just in case. Much the same is with humans. We are all very blueprint-based. Think of someone. Observe them long enough and you can start to spot patterns. You start to see people who’d behave the exact same way as they do until you get spooked because honestly, people who’ll never know each other, perhaps never even share a world because of temporal differences, are the same people, once you strip them of their drapes and only consider the core person within. How they would react to a circumstance, how they would interpret words and actions, how they just are. Blueprint-based. Only different because of the occasion of their births.

I suppose spiritually-, or even religiously-speaking, this is all about the Oneness of everything. How differences and all that is just Maya. How we are all supposed to be at Perfect Union with the creator god. It’s not even religion-specific. Most religions tend to teach this anyway.

In sci-fi, it’s just wrapped in prettier, fancier dressing and the pattern-spotting is just made weirder and that much more fun.