malice aforethought

Merry, I’d appreciate it if you’d unplug me from your virtual reality platform. I’m getting kind of tired running around trying to ingest gold coins and dodge flying vipers.

Oh come on Zie – where’s your fighting spirit?

No really – it was fun for the first day or two.

Day or two? How long do you imagine you’ve been playing for?

At least a week.

I hate to disappoint you Zie

You do?

Yes, even though I derive no small delight from turning your life upside down

There you go – the stench of malicious intent reeks from the soles of your soul

But you’ve been at it now for three hours and forty-five minutes.

?

Three hours and forty-five minutes.

No

Yes

No – there has to be a mistake

Does there?

Yes – it’s been a week at least. I’ve been working in this office – going home, sleeping, eating gold coins and dodging vipers for at least a week, I’m absolutely posit…

tive – I know – such is the nature of virtual reality. What if I told you the same thing’s going on in your 3D reality.

No Merry – don’t even think about it.

That you’ve been alive for all of four weeks.

D – o – n – t   I  said – didn’t you hear me.

Four weeks which have somehow morphed into millenia within the 3D platform as things go around and come around again and again.

For God’s sake Merry – I have a right to not know what you’re telling me. I have a right to blissful ignorance – so kindly cut it out. Go and torment someone else with your misanthropism. Can’t you tell when you’re not wanted.

So there’s not a great difference between the two, is there?

Except that this is virtual reality while my good ol’ 3D base is absolutely bona fide real.

As real as real can be.

Phew – I was beginning to get nervous

As real as things can be – if things are what excite you.

Don’t be idiotic Merry. Things don’t exactly excite me – but they’re a good yardstick to measure how real things are.

Things are a good way to measure things – and decide whether or not they’re real – as in things… interesting logic if you ask me.

Well, you’re just twisting things round as usual. There’s nothing wrong with things. We wouldn’t get very far without them.

You seem to be doing pretty well down here – though none of these things, you’re well aware, are in fact real.

You’re like the ultimate end-times preacher – informing us all we’re doomed. Well I for one believe there’s more to life than despair or despondency. I believe…

Yes?

That there’s more to us than meets the eye.

Ok. Then kindly remove yourself from this virtual reality platform and get back to something more meaningful.

Like I said – I don’t know how.

Don’t know or don’t in fact want to?

Dude – will you never relent?

You mean agree to go along with the shadow on the wall we call 3D reality? I really don’t see how I can, now that I’ve seen what’s causing the shadows to move.

You have?

Yes

And has it made you any the wiser, any happier Merry?

Of course it has – I now get to jump in and out of virtual platforms dealing with you and other versions of myself.

Excuse me! I am not a version of you.

We’re all versions of each other Zie – if that makes you feel any more comfortable.

How I detest such needless intimacy. Stop trying to dissolve my barriers. I am me. You are you. Things are things. Period.

And that’s why you're trapped in a cave looking at shadows moving on the wall.

Why?

Because you are repelled by half of what you are.

Uh?

You refuse to embrace your self

My self?

Your whole self – you refuse to accept that it’s all desperately trying to reconnect with you – desperately trying to reharmonise – reintegrate – reincorporate back into you – completing the loop – bringing omega back to alpha – allowing 12 to flow seamlessly into one o’clock.

So you just want me to pretend that we’re all one happy family – that I have to embrace everyone – regardless of their behaviour and views, or even more absurd – to consider that all things are equal?

I?

Yes, you.

What have I to do with it?

That’s what you’re saying – unless you want to take back your words.

I’m actually saying that you have a choice – I’ve already made mine. Your choice is entirely your own. It has nothing to do with me. You can continue to let things run the show – and thus remain glued to the wall of the cave observing the moving shadows but never quite getting it – never quite figuring out how you’re staring at a screen – you’re not really alive – you’re not stepping out of the cave into the open – you’re not yet fully born, fully alive – you’re still umbilically in the womb – until you decide to be alive, to make the leap, to take the plunge – if and when you’re ready – at which point – things may change – there’s no guarantee, of course, but if you’re ready to embrace your self, if you’re ready to BE, if you’re ready to engage whatever it is you’ve been avoiding all this time – you might well find it isn’t as terrible as you imagined – you might well find that it’s fascinating, that’s it’s compelling, that it’s fun or more than fun – that it is the beginning of a new chapter in the book of what it means to be alive – up until which you’ve only really been dealing with theory – and a part of you has been hunched up in the corner bored out of its mind, wondering if you’ll ever see the light of day – which/who now stands up and turns out to be the real you – the life and soul of the party – the larger than life presence that you be – that you are – which transcends all else…

So I’m supposed to Super Mario my way out of here am I?

Do you really imagine that Mario can win his way out of the virtual world he’s in?

No, not really.

But his gamer can – because you just happen to be the fulcrum, the event horizon, the interface where the different sides of reality meet – physical matter – your body – energy – your chi, your warmth, your electricity and soul, spirit, consciousness – your Self.

And you think I’m not aware of this?

Of course you are.

Then what?

Then nothing.

Nothing?

Yes – realise, in your own time that there’s nothing doing attempting to do things – attempting to move or fix stuff, unless first and foremost you’re willing to embrace the everything else you’ve so conveniently forgotten about – so adroitly manoeuvred out of sight, out of mind, squished into the very periphery of your vision. Here – catch this.

What the hell… what are you doing Merry?

Oh – I’m having fun – as always – I get bored of talking sometimes – so here’s a bomb on a short fuse. 4 – 3 – 2 – 1

Boom!

For a while the picture goes dead. Somewhere else there’s a fuzzy screen – we’re not too sure whether that’s a part of this set up or not. But then images start flooding back in, faster and faster…

And apparently we’re back on line.

Did you just do what I think you did Merry?

Apparently so. What do you think I did?

Something tells me – if my memory’s not mistaken – that you er…

Tricky to say – isn’t it?

Why?

Because if I gave you a bomb and you died – then according to your 3D logic you must now be dead. But don’t worry – if you carry on as if nothing happened you’ll just forget about it in a few moments.

But I don’t want to forget about it. If you just killed me – I want to know more. I want to figure out what’s just happened.

Very good.

I blew up. I was dead. The screen was blank. Then I’m back here again with you – no sign of a bomb – as if nothing just happened.

Which I assure you is perfectly true – up to a point.

Up to a point?

Yep. That pesky little zero point which annoyingly undoes or infinitises everything you think you know, recall or understand. But rather than waste our time trying to figure out for once and for all what really happened – let’s repeat the experiment…

No – not again!

How else are you going to figure this out? So, here – catch this…

A ball?

4 – 3 – 2   I don’t think so… 1

Boom!

Zie finds himself lying on the floor of a cave wondering where he is and what’s going on…

Ugh... must’v falln aslepe, now whair wz I?

For a moment or two Zie stares at the cave painting of a bison somewhat vacantly before the penny drops...

No way... No way Merry, I’m not buying this.

Zie absolutely doesn’t hear another voice. He absolutely knows no one else is present, yet in the silence he hears his own unspoken response

I’m back where it all started, trillions, quadrillions of iterations ago. Back in my umbilical cave. Back where I was before I started going deeper and deeper into the moving pictures on the wall...

An hour or two pass, maybe more

But where did they go?...  Where are they now?         

Again he stares at the wall for an age, apparently waiting for something to happen.

Nothing...

Blank...

Nada... I guess that means I’m ready to move on... ready to go outside, which is what he does.       

You mean to say the last ten thousand years never happened... It was all an engrossing reality show brought to me by Cave Wall Animations Inc?

Not exactly

Then what am I supposed to make of this? Where are the cars, the concrete, the harum scarum? Where’s everything I know

And love?

Not exactly, in fact, no, I didn’t love it, not in the end... it started well enough, it seemed thrilling but it became toxic

And?

I hated it. I desperately wanted out – I was trapped inside

Calm down, it’s alright

Why can’t I breathe?

You’re going to be fine. A little delayed shock and claustrophobia. Breathe, nice and slow, in -- out, in -- out, 1 -- 2 -- 3   There, it’s done.

Are you sure? Is it really complete?

Absolutely. You’ve logged a quadrillion.

What do you mean?

An entire g-nome.

Genome? As in genetic code?

If you like. You’ve filled every check box with a like or hate. You’ve accumulated an entire world of experience. You’re now ready to process.

All of it? Even the stuff I hate?

Particularly the stuff you hate, taking back your energy, and then you’ll be ready.

For what?

We’ll discuss it later. You can only spend a few minutes here at present until you free up and redistribute some of your energy. At the moment it’s still all tied up in things that apparently matter. You have to bring it back here.

You mean I have to go back down there?

Actually, part of you is desperate to go back, because now you gnow, now you can

make a difference... You’re right! How did you know?

I didn’t

No?

I simply gnow, as we all do when we re-g-nome. 

Ah... By the way

Yes?

Is Merry going to blow me up everytime I have to come back here?

Do you think so?

I...

You...?

Don't gnome

Don't? 

Gnow? Apparently I gnow. Apparently I’m the one in control the minute I run both sides of the equation, the minute I gnow-me.

The minute you g-nome! 

Ah, there you are Zie! Welcome back again. Fancy a game of footie?

Er... Yeah, why not.

Absolutely. I have a good feeling about this game. Something tells me it’s going to be a whole lotta fun.

And as they kick the ball back and forth, immense strings of quantum code start interacting in the physical process enabling the two to bend reality’s space and time to shift the ball’s trajectory, their own position and the size and shape of the field. Soon a crowd of onlookers gather, eyes glued to the proceedings, little suspecting that in fact they are staring at painted bison dancing on a cave wall in the dim and distant prehistoric past.

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