Reinventing things spoiler

You can't just rewrite history!

Can't?

No. The past is perhaps the only true constant.

It is?

Evidently. We are what we are, where we are, how we are based on what happened up until now.

That sounds perfectly rational.

It should.

It should?

Because it is. No amount of trickery on your part's going to change the inviolability of the present based on whatever happened yesterday, or sometime in the past.

But what if history is rewritten? It happens all the time.

And what? They can change the record but that doesn't alter the facts. Sooner or later a document, an artifact, a buried site comes to light which sets the historical record straight - or at least indicates that the present narrative is unreliable.

You know - I can't argue with any of this - of course you're right.

Of course.

And yet...

What now?

yet - things are not as fixed as they appear.

Look - you yourself admitted what I said is rational. Why on earth do you insist on launching into the irrational yet again? Will you never learn?

The rational is only definitive as long as there's nothing else our rationality fails to see, fails to take into consideration.

What on Earth could there be? Surely rationality is able to take into consideration every variable?

You'd think so, wouldn't you, rationally - but then again - that's kind of circular logic, isn't it?

Well? Spit it out - what's the great mystery you're dying to reveal?

Tis no mystery. Lovely day!

Lovely day?! You see - you have nothing to say - nothing substantive at least. You're flailing hopelessly in your attempt to appear more intelligent than you really are.

Yes - but do you remember what colour shoes you're wearing. No - don't look down. Just remember - it shouldn't be too hard.

Of course I remember. What a silly question.

Well?

Red.

Red shoes?

Correct.

How unusual. Er... what would you say if I told you your shoes are not now red - that regardless of what you put on this morning - you're now wearing blue shoes - corny though this may sound - blue suede shoes.

I'd say nothing - I'd just look and confirm that you're talking nonsense - not for the first time, and probably not for the last.

You'd have a good laugh at my expense.

I might do - or I might exercise restraint and treat you with more understanding. After all - your wild conjectures and hypotheses are not without charm. They get me thinking and bring to light certain assumptions I'm in the habit of making - some of which need re-evaluation.

Oh - that was generous spirited of you. Thank you. Er...

Yes?

Have a look at your shoes.

If I must. I...

Yes?

No.

What?

They're blue.

Blue?

Yes.

Blue trainers?

No. Blue suede. That's

impossible?

Yes. I've never had shoes like that. I'd never buy them. Can't stand them.

But are they real - that's the thing - or just a figment of your imagination.

They - seem to be real enough. Look - if it's not a problem - could you give me back my shoes. Don't get me wrong - I'm deeply impressed by your ability to do whatever it is you've done - but I'd hate to be left with this particular pair of shoes.

The irony being that less than one minute from now you’ll be convinced that this is the pair of shoes you put on this morning and no others will do.

Huh? Why do you presume to know the future? Why do you assume I’m going to contradict myself so egregiously? What kind of nonsense is this?

Oh, it’s nothing personal. It’s just that the rational mind has a line of code directing it to filter out all continuity events.

I’m not familiar with "continuity events". Perhaps you could elucidate?

Sure. Continuity events occur whenever there’s a quantum shift, and either time, place or inventory is rearranged.

How do you mean rearranged?

I mean like what just happened with your blue suede shoes.

Huh? Nothing happened. They’re the same blue suede shoes I’ve been wearing all day, ask anyone.

Precisely. You and anyone else I might ask will blithely swear that there’s been no continuity event, that nothing has unexpectedly shifted, in the same way we have often forget dreams shortly after waking up.

Yes, I’ve often wondered about that.

Indeed.

So how do you explain it?

Simply. If it wasn’t a dream – if it involved a quantum shift then it’s gonna fade in under a minute to ensure continuity, to ensure your reality is not unduly affected by other frames or sequences.

But

Why?

Well yes.

What would happen if you kept on remembering things that don’t add up in the strictly logical sense of cause and effect?

It would be insane – either cool or terrible depending on how relaxed I am about such things.

True. Some people would go insane, others would love it, but the ones who weren’t freaking out would pretty quickly get the bigger picture.

?

They’d figure out how all the frames and sequences are connected.

And?

And how to game the system.

You mean – we’d be able to...?

...

figure out how to engineer quantum shifts?

...

Really?

Yes. It would be a piece of cake once you have sufficient data points.

Oh my God. How cool is that... and how unfair that we've been in the dark for so long... But? 

...

Why are we deprived of this information, this incredible opportunity to...

Mess around with the laws of nature? Well, you see, “who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes...

when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?” Shakespeare, of course. 

Hamlet, correct. 

Ok... Not too sure what you were trying to say.

Apart from the sheer self-indulgence of being characteristically pretentious, I was asking why anyone would put up with the indignities and hardships of this reality...

when they could commit suicide instead? 

Well, yes, that’s what it says literally but we’re not talking about suicide are we?

I have no idea.

Look, if people knew that this version of reality is connected to others no less real, no less meaningful and viable, wouldn’t that have a huge effect on how they dealt with difficulties down here on Earth?

I’d say.

So, the game had to be rigged in one way, and one way only... it had to be utterly believable, with no alternative, no competition, otherwise we weren’t going to get the results we were looking for.

Er... What results?

Well obviously we weren’t doing all this altruistically, putting ourselves through hell just for the hell of it.

No? Unless we’re as twisted as some of us seem to be.

Trust me – this simulation is incredibly powerful and generates a near limitless source of...

What?

If I said “data” that would be close but not exactly it. If I said “energy” ditto. In short, it’s generating results which convince us on a daily basis to continue subjecting ourselves to often brutal, traumatic experiences.

A daily basis? What exactly...

You sleep every day.

Every night.

Precisely, which means you remerge with the quantum stream. There you meet your review panel and decide whether to continue or not.

Every day?

Absolutely.

Why so often?

Because a day is a lifetime, roughly speaking, and this is a huge commitment which requires absolute clarity and total resolve. Nothing is left to chance. Contrary to what seems to be, things are constantly being adjusted and shifted to ensure the optimal trajectory, the most meaningful experience, the best return on capital invested.

To be honest I find that pretty hard to believe. The people I know, their lives and my own seem to be mostly devoid of coherency, and constantly hanging on by the skin of their teeth.

Absolutely, and yet they are somehow mostly able to navigate a course through this perilous minefield of existence. 

And you think it would be too easy if we remembered these quantum blips and shifts?

Without a doubt. There’d be no need to struggle.

Great. Now I feel like a cross between a lab rat and a milk cow.

Which is not unsurprising seeing as that fairly accurately describes what you are.

Jesus. You’re not exactly trying to soften this assault on my dignity 'n self-esteem, are you?

Not really. What you are is painfully and pitifully obvious, but who you are is not.

Ah. One of those fine distinctions which tend to fly right over my head.

Really? Who you are is not a creature of 3d reality. It’s just a case of finally becoming aware of your true nature.

And that’s when I start noticing those elusive quantum shifts?

And being able to work your own magic, ineffably. Yes, that’s right.

Oh, something to look forward to, then?

No, paradoxically, looking forwards effectively ensures you never arrive.

It does?

Yes. Focussing on an imaginary point in the future prevents you from really engaging the present – whatever that might be.

Oh. So what do you recommend then?

Reinvention.

Reinvention?

Precisely.

Not sure I quite understand.

No – the understanding part of the brain is always going to be flummoxed by anything vaguely quantum.

That’s reassuring to hear. So what does one do with the understanding part of the brain – as you call it?

Accept or confront its limitations. It’s designed to keep you onside, out of harm’s way… was a vital component in helping you to develop a good, strong working relationship with 3d reality. Now, however, it’s preventing you from reconnecting quantum-ly.

So what am I supposed to do – bin it?

Absolutely not. First of all – allow yourself to become aware of the extent to which the faculty of understanding is not, in fact, neutral, but serves an agenda.

It does? I thought it was supposed to look at things objectively and see how they really function?

As it is – but in doing so it fails to reveal the extent to which it’s instrumental in making things matter – essentially adding weight to matter.

Weight to matter? Whatever do you mean?

I mean that things are not what they seem – until you start understanding them – logging them in your registry of relative mass - a vast database constantly tracking what-is-what, like a dog chasing its tail. By then the picture is complete. You’re fully invested and bound in a gravitational field of things.

I am?

Absolutely. It’s almost impossible to escape, until that is, you start playing the old “what if” game.

Er – not sure I’m familiar with that particular game.

What if things aren’t quite what they seem? What if, inexplicably, I'm missing something incredibly simple, incredibly obvious? What if physical reality is, strictly speaking, neither physical nor real? What if there’s a missing link, something I'm constantly overlooking as seemingly absurd, as if utterly inconsequential… what if? what if? what if? - for the minute you allow the possibility to be voiced, to be heard in the court of rational consciousness, the minute you start to entertain an alternative – no matter how vague or amorphous – the upward trajectory of things starts losing momentum – just a fraction, if that, yet still enough to shift, imperceptibly at first, the balance of matter – the gravitational field of weightiness, introducing the least shadow of doubt, the diffusest shade of heterodoxy, so slight, yet sufficient to send flutters, tiny ripplets through the quantum field and back, bouncing off the farthest edge of implied space and time, back into the metal box that 3d reality sits within.

Er… metal box? Rather improbable, if you don’t mind me saying.

Improbable? - like big bang erupting from nothing - or matter, like sand blowing in the desert or mud oozing in a toxic swamp, suddenly, relatively speaking, organising itself into biological proteins, and then leaping forward, genetically, into highly advanced, astonishingly varied lifeforms - all by chance and for no reason whatsoever - for what reason could there possibly be in a universe of unintelligent matter and unconscious chemicals? Improbable? Your evolutionary monkeys have been hammering out works of Shakespeare, Molière and Defoe like there's no tomorrow, for give 'em enough time - the laws of probability dictate that they can, could and did produce masterpieces of deceptive design - as if this utterly indifferent universe had an irascible desire to trick itself into accidentally synthesizing order from chaos, which just happens to look preposterously like what a working definition of beauty would be, if such a thing as "beauty" could possibly be in an unconscious, uncaring, valueless universe.

By all means, doubt any bald assertion, challenge any unorthodoxy, but do not fail to doubt the absurdity of knowing things matter-of-factually, when our data set extends to infinity - to zero time and zero space - a zero which cannot simply be swept under the rug of big numbers - be they billions of years, or untold stars and galaxies. This awkward zero needs must be our daily companion - our constant reference point in a sea of conflicting data - a not-this-neither-that-ness which no amount of reason or matter can compress or eviscerate. Allow, at least, the possibility that in a reality, in a universe that does not completely deny infinity – that in some shape or form – things cannot be more real than I make’em – that infinity – if it exists at all – has to be granted right of passage through any vector or any thing in this vast continuum of matterness. In other words – infinity is a kind of wild card which can and statistically must, from time to time, upset the best laid schemes of mice an’ men, the best stacked apple cart of randomness – not least because it is mathematically representative of a quantum stream which underpins every thing, or rather every frame, or should I say every moment? of is, keeping all afloat.

Do I not suddenly start looking rather absurd and foolish trumpeting my certainties as if they were fact? as if any thing can be more than conjecture, representation, or an attempt to define the indefinable which, however, is not an unworthy or ignoble pursuit – at least, not until I become aware of this misappraisal, and realise the fallacy of things ultimately being separate in any meaningful way from me, the observer, the conscious being who holds all in er or um-ness, isfully.

- So, you place yourself above things – do you – and look down on us ordinary, simple fools who treat things as if they matter?

On the contrary – I’m grateful to you for working so tirelessly to keep things going – a truly Titanic undertaking – given the flim-flam nature of things, their logically non-existent underpinnings. Tis a labour of love, no less! 

I’m not sure I fail to find you hugely condescending…

And yet, as your double negative implies – there’s ambiguity enough in what I’m saying, or your ambivalent response, to indicate that there may be matter to my madness, there may be something to infinity after all? though the mind balks at the prospect and refuses to hurdle the gate.

Well, it’s hardly the kind of thing I can deal with myself – not having a degree in quantum mechanics or advanced linguistics.

On the contrary – you and your fellow human beings have reached a kind of critical mass – a melting point of conscious-ness – whatever that might be – and let’s face it – conscious-ness is so deliciously vague that it could be any thing whatsoever.

And?

And so you find yourselves in a world where things are now presenting a non-linear alternative – which, though making no sense in rational terms – is inspiring you 'n motivating you to reinvent things – to copy-paste them into new contexts, new settings, to photoshop them beyond recognition and meme 'em through a thousand cycles of inventive and playful irreverence, practically overnight. Whatever you’re doing with things, no matter how abstract, is indicative of what you’re doing with your selves, no less your relationship with mother reality – the matrix or womb you’re a part of. So play beautifully, gaily if you will – and know that matter has long awaited this moment when it can cut loose the bindings, the tether of onerous mass and weightiness, when it can melt back into the quantum coffee pot of zeros and ones – the underlying data or energies common to all things, all matter, all that is – and move freely once again – via conscious-ness, the ultimate field, the ultimate internet, the clearing house, the exchange where thought and so-called dream contend with matter itself – as soon as I choose to hold the balance, as soon as I’m willing to acknowledge the missing link which I disingenuously conceals. Ah, well a day – truly the tide hath turned and things are tumbling over themselves to reveal…

Er… where did he go? You can’t just fade from existence mid-sentence – that’d be preposterous – unless, perhaps, he was a figment of my imagination – not anyone at all – which makes quite a lot of sense when you think about it. Now, I must do something about those ridiculous shoes – green leopard spots – I can’t imagine what I was thinking of when I bought them last week. Green! Come to think of it – it would be interesting if I were able to affect their colour or appearance some other way – at a quantum level... Supposing all things I perceive are entangled with me – supposing I were able to find within myself the data file pertaining to those preposterous shoes – just to feel it, mind – that would be sufficient, would it not? – to feel is to see, is to unbind the chains that lock things down – until I access the underlying data or energy – the proverbial isness of be – until I’m willing to redefine, to reinvent, to recode reality – ineffably.

Om. 0=1

Cuckoo la l

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