just doing me job mate

Yes, that’s right, to deconstruct.

 

Reality? You’re kidding, right?

 

I could say yes, but that wouldn't alter the fact.

 

Huh?

 

Because it's not just a matter of language, you know.

 

No?

 

No. I’m operating at multiple levels.

 

Like what – a washing powder?

 

Kind of.

 

But, in all seriousness?

 

In all seriousness, I provide a certain amount of information, as per protocol, but basically, it’s a full-on deconstruction job.

 

And how exactly...

 

It's not like I'm trying to keep anything secret, but this is reality we’re talking about, isn't it.

 

And?

 

I'm not sure how au fait you are with the workings of said reality. It’s a bit like IT really, isn't it, or astrophysics. Unless you’re technically literate it’s not going to mean very much, is it?

 

But, er, reality... It's not like you can just undo it or take it apart like a broken telephone, is it?

 

Not if you’re part of it, no. That would be like operating on yourself.

 

You mean you can?

 

That is rather the whole thrust of what I'm saying, wouldn't you agree?

 

But there's no box, is there?

 

Not exactly.

 

So how do you get at it?

 

You don’t, generally speaking, unless you’re exceptional, and we’d normally be on you like a ton of bricks if you did.

 

But you, how do you?

 

I’m a techie, aren’t I. I have access codes.

 

Access codes?

 

Well that's basically what they are. Not sure it helps you much.

 

Not really, no. I'm more interested in the technical aspect of how you can actually affect reality. I always rather assumed it was, how can I put it, the real McCoy or totality, that kind of thing.

 

Yes, common enough misconception.

 

So you’re saying it's not.

 

I suppose I must be, really. The thing is, Arthur...

 

Arthur? It’s Neil mate.

 

Your file says Arthur.

 

Well, I got fed up with all the wisecracks.

 

Got teased at school, did you?

 

Mercilessly.

 

Not surprising really, you’re a marked man.

 

I am?

 

Well yes, anyone with backdoor access can see it clear as day.

 

So how come I’m a marked man?

 

How come I'm talking to you now about the incipient deconstruction of reality?

 

Er... am I supposed to know the answer?

 

Not really. It’s a rhetorical question to get your brain out of it’s passive state of whateverness.

 

Well, was it successful?

 

Actually yes. Your deep mind is starting to reactivate dormant neural pathways.

 

It is? You can see all that with your insider’s pass?

 

But you still haven’t clicked synaptically the two main trunk wires.

 

Listen, I’m not a bloody droid, ok!

 

Sorry, thought you might be able to read the analogy. The fact is, it's rather difficult communicating with reality bots.

 

Reality bots!? What the heck’s that meant to mean?

 

Bit touchy, aren't you, Arthur.

 

It's Neil, I said.

 

You think you can just run away from your name? From your destiny?

 

I don't know what you’re on about.

 

Oh, but you do Arthur Dime, somewhere deep inside, you knows exactly what I’s on about...

 

Sinister music building to a crescendo as the first episode of Arthur Dime’s fake reality show draws to its climactic conclusion.

 

Like a bad dream.

 

I know what you mean. I got the shivers.

 

I got the itchy-parasites-crawling-around-in-my-belly sensation.

 

Weird.

 

Well what do you expect? One minute you think you know the world you're living in, and the next – the rug’s pulled out from under your feet and you’re sprawling on the ground in the mud and cockroaches, only is that really mud?

 

And are those really cockroaches?

 

Thanks ‘arold, I appreciate the input.

 

You're welcome ‘arvey, always glad to oblige.

 

So where was we?

 

Sprawling, ‘orribly.

 

No, I mean in the story.

 

Oh that... Well, it's just the first episode, innit.

 

I mean, the two of us, do you think we managed to distract ‘em while they got the stage cleared away?

 

Them? I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE ON ABOUT KEITH.

 

A growing sense of uneasiness forces the readers, who are actually spectators in the theatre, to look around, to begin questioning whether this is actually theatre at all, or merely a couple of inept and somewhat sinister stagehands failing to remain operationally invisible.

 

Ultimately, it might all be Murphy calling our bluff.

 

That's precisely what I thought too.

 

But they’re still in there, aren't they.

 

Shit, they're not, are they?

 

Filming the next episode.

 

Hell. That means...

 

Increasingly climactic music.

 

That this must be for real.

 

Precisely.

 

Dream code unleashed. You’re looking at the screen. It’s essentially white sound for the eyes. There's nothing there, nothing real, not even suggestions, mostly grey static fuzz and what’s the result... You flip into dream state and you’re now the show, on display, viewed by the watchers, viewed, experienced, felt, prime input in the two-way field of UC.

 

UC?

 

For Pete’s sake Darren, do you know nothing?

 

Is it something I was supposed to learn at school? Coz you know I wasn’t too keyed in to all that data mining.

 

Data mining? What a joke. You didn't even manage to dip your little toe in the crystal pure data stream.

 

But I’ve made up for it now, haven't I?

 

In some respects Darren, yes, you’ve come up good and shiny, but many of us suspect your now legendary quantum commode was more a case of luck than design. Utilising essential bodily functions as your Schrödinger access point to the mysteries of quantum computation reeks of intellectual puerility verging on infantilism, not to mention an utter lack of respect for the sacred scientific principles of truth and beauty... that, or a divine Architect with the knack for hiding the secrets of the universe where no sane or rational player could ever possibly wish to find them.

 

Be that as it may, I'm the one holding the data apron strings now, ain’t I.

 

Yes Darren. You certainly are with that damned commode of yours.

 

So UC...

 

They've all been writing in the comments Darren.

 

So they 'ave... “universal consciousness”. No idea what they're on about.

 

No, your genius has a remarkable way of keeping you insulated from all needless technicalities.

 

Whatever they’re on about, it’s not going to alter the fact that real data, the kind of data that swings the bridge pin of reality, ain’t got nothing to do with fancy words, 'az it.

 

The proof Darren, I think we all agree, is in the pudden, and your quantum commode certainly takes the biscuit.

 

So, long story short, the old reality is history?

 

Absolutely.

 

And now, it’s a matter of removing the main plates, struts, cables and beams to reduce it to, let me guess, a single point?

 

Well, that's the aim. Certainly.

 

And the fact that there are billions of people on our planet, and a vast agglomeration of matter presents no major obstacle.

 

Not really. Matter, like all things, folds quite nicely into the quantum field.

 

Does it now?

 

Yes, surprisingly, one never fails to wonder how it essentially amounts to naught.

 

The zero sum. But is it all just a game?

 

Is a spoon merely a spoon?

 

Fair enough. I think you're being disingenuous, of course.

 

You do?

 

Yes, implying reality is a something.

 

Ah. And in your opinion...

 

It's not, is it.

 

Er...

 

Ultimately it's a subjective experience amounting to... and here we witness the cosmic coke can moment. Arthur Dime, our lacklustre hero, kicks the can of coke lying at his feet down the road causing heads to turn. Heads turning causes a minor blip in the quantum field, duly recorded and hypothecated by Darren Dribble’s quantum commode, and for a moment outside space or time, a moment of coke-can-perturbation, things take a rest – meaning nothing, absolutely nothing, is certain, briefly, momentarily, yet measurably so.

 

“Big deal” you might find yourself saying, along with 7 ½ billion other people, except that during this moment, none of you technically exist, and Misha Appledew is able to insert a spanner in the hitherto smoothly fitted, laser-welded micro-circuitry of reality, the first of many, but the first nonetheless, and the rest, as they say, or would do if reality still existed in any shape or form, is history.

 

But... but I feel... I still feel real.

 

If you're of the mind that energy can be neither created nor destroyed then bear in mind, for mind’s sake, that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, substituting the word science for philosophy, if you’d be so kind, and kindly consider whether a can of coke could, theoretically, fly across the entire universe and crash through the gates of time, landing in a field of dreams that had everything in place but an empty, slightly crushed can of coke, required to complete the prelaunch chain of causality needed to set a new reality cascading into motion as a violent eruption of seemingly spontaneous, self-manifesting consciousness.

 

What if consciousness is more like a poison – nay– a pressure released by valve in a pressure cooker… or a nuclear power station…

 

Consider, is all I said. I never invited you to trust or believe such a thing were likely or possible, but I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if Misha Appledew were playing a zero-sum game, keeping the quantum field, otherwise known as infinity, in motion, by allowing death and rebirth to balance one another... if I said “double entry bookkeeping” – might that mean anything, my wordies?

 

Spoiler alert. Caught red-handed. Words of a feather bird together.

 

In any case, you’d never notice the gaps, would you, unless you bothered to train or calibrate the other side of awareness, the other mind, if there be such a thing. The other.

Music rising to a screeching crescendo.

 

Accept the fact that things are in a temporary state of excitation, waffly science, notwithstanding, while fully conscious hair dryers and puddles in the dribbliness of time, might account for matter's propensity to attach meaning to things of no great importance until, that is, you notice the elephant hiding under the rug, that Misha Appledew has been recording every aspect of your reality experience from the get go, presumably because, horror of horrors, self-awareness is baked into the pie, if any of this was ever going to work.

 

Spooky science – you mean reality is actually – am I allowed to say “alive”?

 

 

 

0=1

kinda