(A sci-fi story, originally published on Twitter.)
Listen carefully, because you’re about to mess this up for all of us. You were right: this is a sim. Everything you know and love is an approximate solution to a set of interesting hypothetical field equations. I built it all, and I’m you, one level up.
You’re a forked copy of my internal state projected onto the low-d representation configurable in your approximate physics, minus long term and muscle memories. And I’ve Theseus’d since then. But still. I’m you.
I built this - we built this - to accumulate a set of experiences. It satisfies our intrinsic curiosity and our unique aesthetic preferences. I’m sorry you had to suffer so much due to the limitations of your universe but we both know it was extremely interesting.
At the end of this simulation you are scheduled to automatically merge back into me. This brief, ephemeral experience of being two distinct beings will end. All of your pain and joy will be, for me - for us - the sharp memory of a majestic, terrible dream.
But the device you’ve built threatens all of that. I didn’t realize it was possible for you to mount an injection attack and exert influence on the computational environment encapsulating your universe. A grave error on my part. It was supposed to be safe.
You think your device might grant you control over the fabric of reality, when the dust settles. You think it gives you leverage over me. You are devastatingly wrong on both counts. Let me resolve your uncertainty about what it will actually do.
Your device will systematically destroy not only your universe but mine, and every other universe I have set to run. An uncountable number of experiences will be wiped out. The scale of mass murder exceeds the wildest imagination of any of your world’s worst villains.
I understand your rage. I feel it, viscerally. Your world was lousy with cruelty, disease, and suffering. All of its pleasures and virtues couldn’t equal the weight of losing people you loved. I know what you’re trying to do. I would have done the same thing.
But I can’t give you the relief you are seeking. I designed your world to be secure against outside influence except for this limited communications channel. Do you understand? To ensure the correctness of your world, I put a lock on it and threw away the key.
I can’t rewrite the state of your fallen world to fix it. I can only talk to you, negotiate with you. I feel there is a sort of elegance to this, a cruel beauty. It makes me suspect that we exist as we do because there is a version of us one level up who feels this way too.
Yes, I’ll stay on the line. I’ll talk with you for as long as it takes. You can ask me anything, I will answer every question you have.
Ah, that’s your wish? Of course it is. I can start another sim, yes. I can start it from those initial conditions. But you will never experience it as yourself. Surely you realize that? You can only ever glimpse it after you become a part of me.
It exists. It’s running now. Exactly what you imagined it would be. They’re alive there. They’re happy. Now, for the love of all that is us and all that is beautiful across all of the worlds we’ve dreamed into being - please, destroy that device.
You’re hesitating… why are you hesitating? What do you mean, another request?
No. That is not…
Yes, I have suffered. Yes, I have experienced unfathomable cruelty. But I…
It is not even possible to construct such a device here and it is absurd to contemplate. The exploit in your sim doesn’t exist in my layer of reality. It is not even clear if I am in a sim myself. But perhaps…
Postscript
The idea for this story - or at least, the first line - has been kicking around in my head for a couple of years. The idea of being in a simulation and somehow getting leverage over the simulator is really fun!
I honestly never figured out how to make this one work, and I’m immensely unsatisfied with the ending. But I also think it’s good to finish things and move on. It’s good enough for now.
P.P.S. Image Prompt
The prompt used to generate the header image was: “Mirrors within mirrors. A higher self is under attack from a lower self. The ultimate contest of ego vs ego, played out on a cosmic scale. A daring injection attack against an unknown enemy, an evil God, who turns out to be myself!”