Why I have nothing bashy in my living room is beyond me. Everyone should have something bashy, littered in every room of their residence. But I don’t. Moments like this make me wish I practiced what I preached; I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure eerie figures that loom in strangers’ living rooms (specifically, mine) probably deserve a good head bashing.
Where’d I put my thor-damned hammer? Shit. Mjolnir’s in my bedroom; pretty certain I wouldn’t make it if this evil wizard lookin’ fella has any ranged attacks.
Fuck. Why don’t I have any bashy weapons in my living room?!
Shit, does that make me less of a man? Or does the no-guns rule of the house do that?
Focus, Logan. There’s a looming figure in your living room. Deal with you being a shit-excuse of man later.
I look over at Jake. He’s frozen, but it doesn’t seem like it’s in fear. He appears deep in contemplation.
“Jake…” I ask.
His ears perk and he shakes his head out of his daze. “You sure he’s a Him? What if he’s an It, or a They?”
“What are you talking about?”
Jake gestures toward the TV. “You asked if we should kill him, and I’m just not sure that’s right. He could be an It.”
The rockstar transformed into humanoid horror is like, exorcist-spider crawling through the TV, almost all the way through. I cringe just seeing the contortionist movements. And now he’s rising to his full height. And now I’m kinda freaking out. “You’re not seriously thinking about his fucking pronoun right now.”
“Maybe I am. What if It’s a firm believer in Cancel Culture?”
“Let me get this straight.” I glare at our house guest, trying to reason with reality. Voldemorgue has started howling. Oh, great. Now his head is violently jerking around like some evil coked out bobblehead. But apparently that’s not all. Somehow his head is leaving behind, like, ghosts or visible echoes or some shit. Imprinting indelible fucking terror on our seemingly very haunted house. I come to a conclusion. “So if I’m assessing this situation accurately, what I’m getting is that there’s a 6’8 freaky fantasy horror version of Voldemorge. And he’s all gray and albino and has too long-skeletal arms and disproportionately large hands with gnarled clawed fingers. That just went The Ring on us and literally crawled out of our tv. And now it looks like he’s having a standing fucking spectral seizure in our living room.”
“Sounds accurate.”
“And you’re worried about his fucking pronoun?!”
Jake shrugs. “Manners are important, Logan.”
I want to facepalm, but get distracted.
This Voldemorgue mother fucker starts doing even weirder shit. In classic Del Toro fashion, he reaches his hands to his face, plucks out his milky eyeballs. He slowly waves them around as if scanning the room before he holds them up, and introduces himself. “My name is Overseer.” His voice somewhat fits his aesthetics in that he sounds like Ralph Fiennes’ character from the film In Bruges. “Please watch closely.”
“Overseer? I’ll call you Ralph,” I mumble.
Jake hmm’s. “I can definitely see that. Good call.”
“My name is Overseer!”
“Yeah, okay Ralph.”
“Silence fools!” Ralph shouts at us.
“It is time you are educated to the truth,” he says. “In the year 2073, the human race of Base Reality is all but extinct. It is sad to admit, but they brought this upon themselves.” The projection is now playing a video showing a bunch of people dying in ways so grotesque that my desensitization kicks in. I’m hardly even disturbed by the death-bed father literally vomiting his entrails into the hands of his caretaker. “One year later, a team of scientists completed the construction of the Prime Overseer, a human augmented with artificial intelligence and tasked with saving our reality from devastation. With Its help, more Overseers were constructed. I am one of these entities. Since then, we have discovered time travel but, due to the limitations of our Time Engine, we do not have enough attempts to simply start blindly changing our past in hopes of getting lucky. As such, it was decided that we would create simulated realities with which to experiment. The mission: find a way to lead humanity away from stupidity and thus save the lives of real humans. Your reality is one of these simulations.”
I feel like I’ve just had my head smashed in by a cement block. There’s no way to properly cope with hearing that you are, in fact, not technically a real lifeform (now I know why Pinocchio was so fucking persistent). And yet, honestly, I think I’m more pissed at whoever fucking programmed my existence. Because, like, seriously. Bipolar, ADHD, and creative? I was doomed even before someone hit, run program.
“In our efforts,,” Ralph goes on, “we have exhausted far too many options and resources. We tried employing God-like beings, who appeared as human but had divine powers. We thought they’d be somewhat relatable and therefore, people would follow their lead to a brighter future. We thought perhaps with these relatable but powerful individuals, humanity could be led down a path that would not result in destruction. But, we made the supers too relatable. They just kept fucking the lesser humans. RESET. We tried a prime God. Kept It out of reach. Still, no luck.”
Suddenly, Ralph’s eyeballs start blinking and flashing with light, like one of those vintage 8mm film projectors.
Next thing I know he’s gone full Nutcracker on my living room, ballerina dancing across the hardwood floor. His eyeballs are still doing their flashy projector thing inside his hands, and now he’s…
…doing some weird shit?
What the fuck is wrong with this asshole?
He’s stopping in between pirouettes to throw in this odd choreography that makes it look like he’s trying to do his best pantomime impression….actually, that last bit wasn’t bad; Chaplin would be proud; I’m just impressed.
Only thing he’s getting wrong is that, as far as I know, pantomimes aren’t typically supposed to actually create their box, and this mother fucker’s conjuring an entire sepia-toned landscape in my living room, like his 8mm retina reels are projecting us into some immersive old film.
Umm…fuck me.
What the hell...How’d he do that so fast?! Aside from Jake, Bane, my couch, and me, everything in the living room has been cast into, no surprise, an 8mm film projector picture quality (and color tone).
Our couch is serving as a boat. Good thing too, because my floor’s become this sort of dull-colored ocean…or something?
The appearance of my walls, a gray empty sky, reminds me of old nuke testing videos.
And based on how Ralph is apparently standing on the retro water like he’s Jesus of fucking Nazareth—albeit an aberrant one—I have the impression our regional Overseer is about to pull some Ghost of Christmas Past bullshit.
It comes as very little surprise when, what used to be my shrine to modern consumerism and wall transforms into a poor-man’s theater screen, and hits play on one of history’s many nuclear testing sites — in real time.
The bomb drops. I think it’s a real bomb, and shit gets way too fucking real. The light blinds, the water shockwaves, there’s a mushroom cloud.
Another sound, this one with a strange melody that somehow sounds almost like an entire population of people complaining about how their whole future bloodline can either come out as dead fetuses and/or with mutated faces.
Due to the nuclear explosion’s concussive force, we’re blasted with debris and who knows what. The waves going across our hardwood oceanic floor nearly topple our couch over. The whole experience is very immersive.
Ralph, who was dancing and laughing during the explosion, has apparently changed his attire to something befitting an ostentatious orchestra conductor.
He is putting his eyeballs back in their rightful place, while smiling that same scythey smile. Finishing the eyeballs thing, he starts golf clapping, and I hear a...live studio audience? Cheering, and laughing. Ralph laughs along. It’s all one big joke—reminds me of my entire worthless existence; for a very brief second, I feel at home.
But now their laughs are decaying; dissonance dropping in; falling out of pitch.
Ralph’s scythey smile spreads all across his jawline, ramping up his ears, clear up to his alien fucking skin head. His smile darkens into a sardonic sneer, and he stops laughing. Speaks: “And now here we are”— sounds like a shrill snarl— “At the apocalypse of your so-called lives. The apocalypse which you brought upon yourselves, I might add. It’s truly loathsome really. Your simulation has proved effectively and unequivocally that humanity, at its core, is a plague.”
He plucks his eyeballs out again and grandly gestures them around to film-cast us into a montage of maggots, larvae, rodents, locusts, and on.
Shit, why can’t I cackle that terrifyingly?
“Nothing more than an infestation, if you will.” He does that smile again, and tick-tocks his gnarled finger at me. “But the time has come for that to change, wouldn’t you say? With a fell swoop, we can give humanity one last chance. And bonus, for us at least, watch as you do what you have always done, tear each other apart.”
The “living room” has transformed again. Those of us on the couch, as well as Ralph, have remained the same, but everything else? Yeah…
I look down; the watery floor under the couch is oil-spill black. No matter which direction I look—front of the couch, backside, left then right—it’s all black. My brain can’t comprehend how the whole spatial aspect works because the sliver of frail light forming the flat horizon seems to be miles away. A sound hits me from the left, and I turn to it to find a large curved screen TV switching between several shows, all of which would cue Camus’ existential emptiness: Family Fued, all of the Hallmark channel, Keeping Up with the Kardashashits—etc..
Not sure why, but that TV screen is also hovering about thirty feet in what I’m apparently just calling the sky now, as if that’s somehow normal.
Another sound, this one behind me. I turn. Another screen.
Ralph is doing his ballerina summoning dance. He speeds up and, within little to no time at all, the sky becomes a huge dome filled with tv screens.
All across the dome, the tv’s play different, separate clips. Taken from different regions, time periods—et al. The one thing they all have in common is that every rapid-speed scene on the screens surrounding me has something to do with bad shit people do. Not just any bad shit, but, like real bad shit, like...choking some guy to death with the authoritative knee of your lawful prejudice. That type of bad shit. Funny enough, most of the bad shit seems to be getting done by people dressed in fashionable attire, looking all suburban and shit. The flashing is reflecting off the black water too.
Apparently I get motion sickness now? Did that come with the apparently worsening insanity, and notification windows?
“...compelled to allow for Zionic ascendance between your current reality and our base reality.”
Fuck. How long has Ralph been talking?!
He continues. “But, well. To put it kindly, you really bit the bat on this one, didn’t you?”
“Was that a pandemic joke?” I ask.
“Too soon,” Jake says.
Ralph pays us no mind. He returns to his diatribe. “As I was saying, there’s been a divide caused by you. Some here in Base believe we should just throw in the towel, GAME OVER - END SYSTEM the lot of you. Accept you as the failure you are and, in turn, accept Our own demise. The other ruling school of thought is that humanity could be strong enough, good enough, to survive if under the right circumstances. These circumstances will be entertaining for us, but largely perilous for you.”
Ralph pauses, furrows his brows. Somehow he’s able to look scowly even with his eyes in his outstretched hands. “I see you’re confused,” he says, “I’ll explain. Because you’re all so clearly obsessed with apocalypses, I have personally gleaned that a vast number of your kind wants something new. For, when you think of an apocalypse, you affiliate it with a clean slate. And in all stories, you all believe yourselves to be the one that survives, one of the heroes born to someday stand in the ashes of the old world and usher in a new, better one. It’s a silly belief if you ask me, considering most of you do nothing but sit at a desk, then proceed home to sit at a couch and eat ice cream, but nobody asked me. I suppose you’re all too comfortable in the safety of your current discomfort. So, we’re giving you what you’ve always desired. The Apocalypse. A chance to prove that, without the Simulation’s corrupted sovereign rule controlling your every wasted cent, you as a simulated species can achieve what we need. You’re welcome.”
Something about that shakes me. I think it’s what he said. Or maybe it’s the mesmeric montage flashing and shit in my eyes, finally breaking my psyche (like militarized LSD experiments). But, whatever it was, my stampeding thoughts are trampling over me and dragging me down to Memory Ravine.
Fourteen, when I first watched Fight Club. It was the Big Bang, a single moment of ultimate conception and expansion. It was the awakening of my hunger. My genesis. I read all of Palahniuk’s books, studied consumerism, existentialism and nihilism, anarcho capitalism and its evil twin brother crony capitalism (also known simply as modern capitalism). With each study session I discovered another lie, further unveiling all the falsehoods civilization fed to us via flooding the ears and drowning our free thought with their self-preserving doctrines. And we lapped that shit up like antifreeze at a petting zoo.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
At nineteen, I got my first ‘statement’ tattoo—the symbol for classical anarchism, a black, sans serif “A” set within a bold black circle. It was on my forearm, so I was too scared to get the classic punk version.
The years went on, and, in the paraphrased words of the great Connor Oberst, I read some books and I grew quite brave; I wanted revolution and change, and I was just young and dumb enough to hope for it.
But as time passed and my life entropied into mere existence, my passion for fucking the system (back) dwindled, suffocated by the growing fog of mental illness and hopeless despair:
The bipolarity came first, of course, but society’s “education” about my place in this world transmuted; a battering ram slammed my resolve, repeatedly, cracking my mind, body, and —fuck it why not— soul.
Then, a few years back, a television series inspired by the same film that’d conceived my conscious awakening, cast a light over the part of me that civilized society had caged away in the darkest abscess of my consciousness. Mr. Robot. My animosity was reignited. But my strength and mental fortitude remained unrestored.
I learned, yet again, not to hope. I am fucking powerless.
No matter how strong my convictions about how the 1% need to be publicly hanged (then buried in their own toxic landfills). No matter how much I hated the system for how they’ve gang-raped our collective orifices. No matter how strong my desires to burn the whole infrastructure to the fucking ground.
I am powerless. We are all powerless—nothing but prisoners.
So really, what the fuck do I care if the people in Base Reality wanna throw an apocalypse our way?
How can we blame them? Just as God did it before them. They’re wiping the slate clean. And this time, as far as I can tell at least, they’re focusing most of their powers of Hobbes’ Sovereign into the heart of corruption, executing our masters and freeing us to give our world--simulated or not…
My thoughts pause as something occurs to me:
See, there’s been something kind of nagging at me.
I feel like I should be more broken up about the evidence of Simulation Hypothesis. But I’m not. And I think the reason why is this: The main issue I figure someone might have is the existential inquiry, do I have a soul? My soul was never more than a butcher’s hanged meat, and society’s gluttony has already carved that clean, down to the fucking bone. I don’t think I’m alone in that either. I’ve yet to meet someone who feels differently. And I’m not confused as to why; Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big everything, except economic equality (of opportunity); financial systems built to keep the cogs from earning enough to afford any semblance of financial freedom, only to (barely) pay the bills.
We got the age of information, and with it, the power of limitless reach to spread misinformation. We celebrate segregation and divide in all their forms through two-party systems, religions, regions, race, genders, sexual orientation, even fucking sports teams. They’ve divided us on literally every front.
And this wasn’t even the most revolting part of their vile exploitations.
They completed tyrannical control by eliminating social discourse. It was easy for them. They simply snuck into our society, masquerading as a gallant White Knight riding through the gates on a trusty trojan steed and brandishing his Signaling Sigil of Virtue, all while exclaiming he’s come to expose evil and injustice. And it was that trusty trojan steed who infected everyone, even the intelligent ones, with their poisonous plague. Convincing us that the only way to eradicate evil is to cancel it from existence:
But it’s not we, the supposed free people, who decide what’s evil. It’s the corporate overlords. And their idea of evil is anything that might go against their plans, including anything resembling free thought.
Not only did we not fight back, we bent over, spread our ass cheeks, and cancelled anyone with the audacity to even suggest something so simple as “I’m not sure how I feel about getting ass-raped by the mighty dick of the collective Rich Regime’s immense girth.”
Our entire culture, coerced into mass cancellation of anything remotely contrarian. The “Man” isn’t just keeping us down. He’s dicking us down. All the while getting us to convince ourselves that, Okay, maybe I am into that (that’ as in: being so brutally analized we get the happy ending equivalent of a prolapsed asshole).
Whether I’m simulated or not makes no difference. I was bound to get canceled at some point anyway.
Sometimes the voices mutiny my brain. Am I preaching to myself, to you, to someone else, or are they just talking?
A hand suddenly slaps my head to scatter thoughts and pull me back to the present moment. It works but with a time delay, as I’m currently trying to figure out when my doomsday theater dome started playing various zombie apocalypse clips. Everything from Zombieland to Romero classics and even Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Finally coming to what I guess is kind of almost reality, the reality I’ve spent the most time in at least, I realize that Ralph is scolding me for not paying attention, while Jake laughs at me (not with me).
Why am I like this?
“Umm…” I stammer. “What’d I miss?”
“Ralph was just telling us what to expect in the coming days.”
“Should you make it that long,” Ralph points out. “I feel like I was very clear on that matter, but somehow you persist with this foolish optimism.”
“Reticular Activating System,” Jake explains. “Anyway, do you wanna recap what Logan missed or should I? Actually, you took too long. Here’s that exposition you missed, dude.” He extends a notebook to me. “I was taking notes.”
Thank...shit, I dunno, someone... for Jake.
I open to the right page. “You have the worst fucking handwriting.”
“Dyslexic, asshole,”
Fair point, he is dyslexic.
I start reading, and...
Wow.
I’ve got no room to judge, since my notes typically consist of one whole bullet point and a half a page of dumb monster doodles, but man...
Jake’s notes read like a stream of consciousness that probably took a few wrong turns on its flow down the mountain. Not the guy I’d advise getting the class notes from, but fuck it, better than listening to Ralph.
Apocalypse Shit
-Military deleted from existence. Savage!
-Modern luxuries taken away...fuck, so many unwatched webinars…
...How many harem animes did I have left on Crunchyroll???
-We have Quirks??? and they help us do...like... useful modern tech stuff?-
Notifications earlier were a test put to all humanity. Logan and me passed! I passed a test?! Fuck you, grade school!!!
-There’s a doomsday clock. When the clock strikes twelve. Duh-duh-duh!
-Logan stopped listening…asshole; I wanted to stop listening. Ralph sucks.
-Oh damn! Anyone who didn’t pass the test is getting turned into a motha-fuckin ZOMBIE!
-The zombies are called Scramblers. They hunger for brains!? Think outta envy or something.
-Something like 6 billion got zombified?? I think he said 6…soooo stoned thoughNote to self: Edibles+End of World=BAD
* Zombies start all Romero and shit. So rad.
-Except, they evolve the more brains they eat???
* I wish Logan was listening. Bored
-Peeps who passed test will have vision switched to MMO-like POV screenWe get to have a Create Character moment??
Ralph is so weird looking… I wish he’d just put his eyes back into his face like a normal futuristic god thing.
-“Advanced Astrology” was actually how they initially programmed all of us however long ago. Explains a lot. Or does it?
Our big three astrology signs affect shit.
-Rising Signs = potential fantasy-type racial attributes.
-Sun Sign = our Class (MMORPG???)
-Moon Sign = Innate Class (Magic ftw!)
-Elemental Powers = something...astrological?
Moon Sign and Elemental Thingy gotta get unlocked through Quests
-Report card earlier dictates starting Stats (Level Progression)
-Loot and shit from battles (RPG AF!)
-Core Belief = special passive feature?! Oh shit, this is so cool. I’ve always wanted to kill a zombie.
-Ralph is mad at me. He says I shouldn’t be so excited about an apocalypse, and that this is not a game, and that something like I think 70% of the remaining population won’t survive. Damn. That’s fucked up.
We get Pet Companions?! I call Mewtwo!!!I
wonder how long until Ralph notices that Logan has completely checked out of this conversation.
-Chance to turn places into No-Combat zones (I’m gonna be in a video game! #happydance)
* Previous military places and any big-ass corporation is done for, getting turned into individual Spawn Points of Evil.
Oh. Spawn Points of Evil. Progressively harder. Sounds like probably shadow dragons are a thing? Fuck!!! What if shadow dragons are like shadow snakes?! I fucking hate snakes x10!!!
Note: Tell Logan to stop spacing out during important things
I actually laugh a little at that last part. “Got it,” I say to them.
Ralph is guffawing and grumbling. “Hand me that, hand me that this instant!”
I shrug and hand it over.
Ralph peruses it intently, cursing the handwriting, snarling about how he delivered that part of the lecture better than that (think he’s referring to one of the notes?), he just spit and swore at one of the notes so...that’s interesting.
Finally, he regains composure, hands Jake the notepad, and clears his throat. “I think I said it better, you lacked all my poetic eloquence. But yes... that is the gist of it. Now, because I am a far superior orator, I think I shall deliver my final statement, thank you very much.” He snarls that remark. Then clears his throat, and lets his voice boom. “Remember this! Your journey can be as epic or as short-lived as you like. You could go on to save lives and embark on magical quests. Or you could die within an hour of when the Doomsday Clock strikes 00:00. And the only way you will have any hope of surviving the apocalypse is if you take the time to Complete Your Profile! Be thorough, and be diligent. And count yourselves lucky that we are giving you this hour to prepare; things are about to get terrifically exciting around here.”
The room suddenly returns to normal, and Ralph starts climbing back into our regular tv, which seems a little small now. He disappears into the static screen.
I’m right about to turn to Jake with what would likely be a failed attempt at humor, when a notification saves the day.
Please Prepare for Augmentation Update
Warning: This may hurt a little.
Well, that’s a fucking lie.
The pain I felt in my head earlier amps up to something that basically feels like some heavy handed butch baker is kneading fucking bread dough. My brain’s the dough in that analogy. My entire body flexes. It’s nearly impossible to isolate the pain, because it’s fucking everywhere, lighting up all my nerve endings. My body is sweating like I’d just been handed one of those should-be illegal fat burners, then thrown into an hour of hot yoga, or like I’m on menopause. I’m shivering uncontrollably.
Jake’s screaming, and I can sort of see him, except for he’s all blurred, probably because I can’t stop shivering. I wonder if I look as much like Stephen Hawking as he does. Bane’s barking. I twitch, seize, full-on fucking Tourettes syndrome.
The world around me glitches, everything going static, fuzzy.
Even my dog looks all stretched out in the wrong places, like my photoreceptors have been put through a blender.
Who knows.
I do know that my eyes burn like I’ve just spent the past twenty-four hours staring at a computer screen (that periodically sprayed mace at my face). Then it intensifies, like someone’s putting out a fucking cigarette on my pupils.
No. Worse.
The pain won’t stop. God, why won’t it stop?!
My body jerks me off the couch, and I hit my head against the corner of the coffee table, then things get real blurry.
The fall hasn’t stopped my seizure. This is a seizure, right? Shit. Isn’t there something I’m supposed to do with my tongue unless I wanna swallow—
***
Suddenly, your VRES goes offline; nothing but static. You see the following words.
Please hold, as we are experiencing technical difficulties
Your scheduled Simulation Stream will return shortly