07-11-2013, 08:09 PM
Grace sat in her parked car, looking out of the grimy window at nothing in particular, gripping the steering wheel and her keys like she'd forgotten what movement was.
The drive home had been torturous, because it kept her from thinking much about what had happened. She would have ended up wrapped around a tree, and she wasn't yet ready to test that particular bodily function. Now, she had time to think.
It had been intensely truthful, in the way one can only ever experience through well-crafted lies. Grace had walked into a power station (a literal house of power, a metaphorical cathedral of electricity) and there, found power. A laugh bubbled up from inside.
The world isn't what it seems. But then, she had always felt that way. She'd heard many different interpretations of what the universe might actually be, but this was more than a feeling or an interesting thought experiment. It was a certainty. A tautology that couldn't even be stated in words. She also knew she'd have to try. That's what writers do, they use words to explain things which cannot be expressed in mere words.
To tell such a truth, Grace had followed the voice of a hacker, and reached out to the call just as her consciousness had the 'OR 1 = 1' injected into it. Her filters dropped for one instant, just enough to see... Everything. She'd seen the source (the source!) code that she and everything else was written in, condensed to a point, occupying the same 'space' (as if that term had any real meaning). Oneness. 1ness. 1 = 1. All is one (1), and that is data. Data representing the fictional, simulated reality, true as a metaphor.
Her mind continued to churn on this vein of thought until she realized she'd been sitting there for too long, holding her keys aloft, her eyes open, her face twitching...
She had to go Google this.
The drive home had been torturous, because it kept her from thinking much about what had happened. She would have ended up wrapped around a tree, and she wasn't yet ready to test that particular bodily function. Now, she had time to think.
It had been intensely truthful, in the way one can only ever experience through well-crafted lies. Grace had walked into a power station (a literal house of power, a metaphorical cathedral of electricity) and there, found power. A laugh bubbled up from inside.
The world isn't what it seems. But then, she had always felt that way. She'd heard many different interpretations of what the universe might actually be, but this was more than a feeling or an interesting thought experiment. It was a certainty. A tautology that couldn't even be stated in words. She also knew she'd have to try. That's what writers do, they use words to explain things which cannot be expressed in mere words.
To tell such a truth, Grace had followed the voice of a hacker, and reached out to the call just as her consciousness had the 'OR 1 = 1' injected into it. Her filters dropped for one instant, just enough to see... Everything. She'd seen the source (the source!) code that she and everything else was written in, condensed to a point, occupying the same 'space' (as if that term had any real meaning). Oneness. 1ness. 1 = 1. All is one (1), and that is data. Data representing the fictional, simulated reality, true as a metaphor.
Her mind continued to churn on this vein of thought until she realized she'd been sitting there for too long, holding her keys aloft, her eyes open, her face twitching...
She had to go Google this.