This Is Not Really Happening

Unlike most professors, I had always managed to be punctual, at least ever since I started teaching at the Center, but today was just one of those days. First, there was this bizarre recurring dream I used to have when I was young that decided to replay itself. I couldn’t tell you what it was about except that it took place in my childhood home, and I slept through my alarm because of it. And then there was a pile up on I-45. I was in such a rush to get to the seminar, I didn’t even know what had happened until I arrived on campus. I parked illegally and burst into the Brockman Hall annex building.

“Pardon me,” I grumbled as I pushed through a clump of students in the atrium, all of whom were glued to their phones and watches. Kids and their devices. They didn’t even bother talking to each other anymore. Despite being congested, the atrium was silent save for the shuffling of feet. I was halfway up the stairs when I saw the news alert projected onto the screen wall. On the livestream was a photo of Dr. Boutros Malik brimming with pride as he held the Nobel Prize. The volume was off but the closed caption of the anchor speaking told me why everyone was so immersed into their devices.

…But Doctor Malik is best known for his discovery of the Grand Unified Algorithm, which reconciled general relativity with quantum mechanics.

However, the general public would not become familiar with his paradigm shifting findings until the Glitch occurred a year after his discovery. It is an incalculable loss to the world of science to have his life cut short by an assassin’s gun.

I stopped on the landing and I pulled the phone out of my purse. There were dozens of news alerts along with text messages from colleagues; however, I ignored all the chimes while racing to campus. Somewhere below on the lobby level I heard sobbing, one student embraced another as they both broke down beneath the image of the late Dr. Malik.

It didn’t matter that I made it to the seminar on time. None of the students would have even registered my absence. They were too stunned by the news. I suppose a middle-aged bitty like myself couldn’t appreciate what Dr. Malik meant to these kids until this moment, a generation who came of age during the chaotic post-Glitch years. Many looked up to him as a prophet, and Malik didn’t shy away from his fame either. Back in high school my daughter had the iconic Warhol-esque poly-chromatic poster of Dr. Malik with his sinewy muscular frame sitting in a yoga pose. I gave it serious side eye, but I suppose I’d rather Madeline be obsessed with a brilliant mathematician than Pop icons like the entertainer whose name is the squirting eggplant emoji. The students, sitting at desks arranged in a semicircle, were attempting to make sense of the murder.

“What I don’t understand is how the Ecstatics blame Doctor Malik for the Glitch,” Twan said. Meredith, who was sitting across from him, snorted.

“Because they’re morons, Twan. Thinking is their kryptonite. The Ecstatics are just a bunch of fundamentalists who lash out at anything or anyone associated with science.”

Abdul shook his head. “I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. The Ecstatics actually accept most scientific findings and they don’t deny Malik’s discovery. Their issue is that by discovering the Grand Unified Algorithm, he somehow broke the simulation, and that’s what caused the Glitch.”

“But that’s not how it works,” Twan said, exasperated. “Discovering the algorithm wasn’t the cause. That’s like blaming meteorologists for the existence of hurricanes!”

“So, what do you believe caused it?” Astrid inquired. She always probed the other students with endless layers of “why”––typical philosophy major.

Twan shrugged. “I dunno. It was most likely the result of dark energy.”

“Yeah, and what’s causing that?”

The students in this seminar came from various disciplines. Twan was a Computer Science Major. Meredith was in Physics, Thomas Biology, Abdul Psychology, Astrid Philosophy and so forth. They represented a good portion of Rice University’s Center For Applied Ontology. Coming from a cross section of academics ranging from both the hard sciences and social sciences to the Humanities, the students offered different perspectives to the same questions, each approaching them from a different angle. I appreciated the animated debate between the students trying to sort through, not only what it was to be a sentient being living in a simulation, but what a mess humanity had become when we learned of it.

When there was a lull in the discussion, I offered a thought. “Let me ask you all a question. How old were you when the Glitch occurred?”

None of the students wanted to be the one to speak for the class. I hated it when they curled up on me. “It was five years ago, so it’s safe to say you were all still in high school when it happened. What was your reaction when you learned that you were living in a simulation?” Astrid raised her hand.

“Honestly, Dr. Wessinger, I was kind of high when the Glitch hit, so I thought it was just me.”

The other students chuckled. At least she used my proper title. One student referred to me by my first name once. It did not go well. I didn’t lose my 20/20 vision defending my dissertation to be called Rhiannon.

“I didn’t ask what you experienced during the Glitch. We all experienced the same thing.”

Throughout the world, whether it was afternoon in London, 2AM in Beijing, or lunch in Chicago, we all heard the Godawful shriek like the feedback from an amplifier, which was accompanied by a stuttering pixelation. The sky above, the walls around, the ground below us, all of it pixelated with things blinking in and out of existence and back again. I was picking up Madeline from school when the cars and buildings around us pixelated while waiting in the carline.

“I asked what your reaction was after learning we lived in a simulation?” Astrid bit her lip as she was prone to do when she considered a question.

“Actually, I learned about Malik’s breakthrough with the G.U.A before the Glitch. A friend of mine told me how this guy Dr. Malik proved that we were living in a simulation and showed me a thing about it on TikTok.”

Ahh. Small point Astrid brought up but important. “Okay, who here learned about the Grand Unified Algorithm before the Glitch?”

Just about all of them raised their hands. That made sense. These were curious, smart kids. “Well, unlike you nerds, the general public didn’t pay much attention to scientific discoveries; they only learned about our condition after the Glitch.”

Condition…I was describing our existing inside a simulation like it was a gluten allergy.

Aloud I continued, “But even before Malik’s discovery, you all had been prepped for this. Your generation grew up with countless references in entertainment about living inside a computer simulation or within a metaverse. But that wasn’t really part of the popular imagination when I was a kid and neither was it for those growing up sequestered from such forms of entertainment like most Ecstatics. The revelation was catastrophic to them on so many levels. So, when we discuss Ecstatics we need to understand the paradigm from where they come.”

I didn’t get much work done the rest of the day as I was glued to the news about the murder suspect. Experts commented on Ecstatics. I had been called onto PBS Newshour and CNN several times myself the last couple of years to weigh in on the splintering of evangelical ministries, some of whom merged with the once floundering New Age groups to form Ecstatic churches. The various faiths that existed before the Glitch responded to the revelation about our simulated existence in their own ways.

Most of the evangelical megachurches denied the Grand Unified Algorithm altogether and explained the Glitch as God reminding the world who was boss. Most other religions dithered on the revelation, opting for platitudes as such as it was all part of God’s grand plan.

But at the end of the day, most established religions were on the losing end of The Glitch. Even before the world pixelated around us, regular attendance had been steadily declining. And when the mother of all I.T. fails struck five years ago, ancient texts that spoke of locusts, angels, and demons lost all relevance. There was only so much reinterpretation one could do to make archaic scripture fit our post-post modern reality or “simeality” if you will.

As established religions sputtered, all sorts of religious groups sprang up to provide answers: Ecstatics of course, along with the various stripe of Cartesians, “dour” nihilists, and their more sociable siblings the “happy nihilists,” the Church of Last Thursday and their Shi’a rivals the Last Tuesday Congregation, the Fuckin’ Steves, Programmer Society, and a host of others.

Hell had indeed frozen over because in all the post-Glitch upheaval, religious and philosophy scholars suddenly found themselves becoming something that we would have never have dreamed possible; we became marketable. I, myself, was once just a mild-mannered Religious Studies professor languishing in a dying field. But then Rice University founded the Center For Applied Ontology and scooped me up. Nobody could provide a scientific answer as to what lay beyond the simiverse, but folks like us could speak intelligently about the emerging religious movements––or ERMs––who claimed to have those answers.

Whatever the opinions were about these ERMs–– or “cults” in the vernacular, no one could deny their impact on everyday life. There wasn’t anyone who didn’t have a friend, colleague, or family member who hadn’t fallen into one of their spells, myself included.