Zono's Zone

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I have a few things to put here but my hardware has conspired against me making it a bit more difficult to share them.

For now I am going to start with a story that popped into my mind today. I am sure somebody must have thought of it before and better but I wanted to give it a try.


Ferdinand opened his eyes slowly with the feeling of someone who has just woke up from a long dream. It was still in his head like a big blur of images superimposing on top of each other, with a few words, a big 'bang' and flying objects all over. It was a bit odd, there was a feeling of urgency in all of it but he didn't feel perturbed at all, or at least not at the very beginning, although as the images raced through his head he started to feel the same urgency, the adrenaline pumping and his heart pounding and the urge to sit to reassure himself that it had been just a nightmare.

But it wasn't over.

Or was it?

He looked around to his surroundings and found himself in a white room. Whiter than white actually, or was it really a room? He could not distinguish walls or windows or anything for what matters. He was on the floor but the floor itself was a strange thing in itself, not soft nor hard not even mushy, almost as if it weren't there.

He stood up and tried walking. In his dream (or whatever it was) he had felt an agonizing pain in his left leg and he instinctively touched it. There was no pain nor any marks at all. "Odd" he thought, noticing for the first time that he was completely naked. He started touching his arms, his chest, his head, his face as to reassure himself that everything was fine with him.

Actually he felt as if he was 20 again, in fact possibly better (his back bothered him even back then) his usual stiffness was gone and his body felt full of energy.

He started walking with no direction while thinking and the thought of what had happened was slowly sinking; it was a car accident, he was driving on the highway, talking to somebody on the phone and then something hit the car from behind. It must have been on one side because he lost control immediately spinning on the street and in a second a flash of light was on his left followed by sting of pain and...

There wasn't any more.

There were only two options, he thought, either it was a nightmare and he was still in it, or -and it was looking that way each passing moment- he was dead and now he was in whatever followed.

He risked talking out loud for the first time and timidly said:

-"hello.."

Then a few seconds after:

-"Is there anyone in here...?"

A few more seconds passed and a vaguely feminine voice answered although it was impossible to tell where it came from.

- "Hello"

For a moment a touch of panic filled Ferdinand's body; he wasn't expecting an answer, or at least not an answer from someone he couldn't see. He tried to get a hold of himself, cleared his throat and spoke slowly.

- "Erm, where am I?"
- "This is the interview lobby" answered the disaffected voice.

His mind raced, 'interview'.. is this some elaborate joke? Was he going to be judged as all those religious guys keep saying, and everyone of his actions placed on a balance? He always felt that whatever the afterlife was it couldn't be like the gloomy descriptions of those that called themselves 'believers', was he going to be punished for it? It never made sense, and now in this odd place it seemed like something of the sort was about to happen.

But he would not surrender that easily.

- "Does it have something to do with the choices I have made until now?"
- "In part, but the actions themselves are not important, every action is recorded from the beginning, the motivations are more important."

He thought for a moment, 'every action is recorded'...

- "from the beginning of what, time?"
- "that is correct."

Well, that sounded like the traditional description of what 'God' or whatever it is called would be able to do. More so, there was a beginning, a concept of which he himself wasn't so sure not long ago.

Still the answers sounded a bit mechanical; he probed a bit further.

- "So, you would be able to tell me when and how the first man made fire, for instance?"
- "I can tell you the species, the DNA thread, generation, time and location reference according to your knowledge if you so wish."

If there was a God, he should have a way to track everything but for some reason it appeared to be a more pedestrian system than you would assign to a deity.

- "You can tell everything in that detail, like a worm being food for a particular bird at a particular period of time, the species of both and the consequences... ?"
- "I would need a more specific query but in general terms, yes, I could provide you with the relevant information"
- "Therefore you can tell what is going to happen after... a particular event in the future?"
- "A prediction can be made between a boundary of possibilities, although the noise from chaotic structures prevents an exact forecast."

He recalled something he had read a while ago in his work as a computer consultant, but it couldn't be! The amount of information... it was theorized that it was impossible...!

- "Do you record every single molecule...?"
- "All trajectories are computed."

For a moment he didn't dare to say his hypothesis out loud, it was too outrageous.

- "Is the world..."
- "Continue"
- "...as I knew it..."
- "Yes"
- "A computer simulation?!"
- "That is a primitive but valid observation."

- "Oh.."

It was too much, what was real and what wasn't? And he himself, what exactly were he? He tried to go through all the information, he was dead, in a waiting room to be interviewed, although he wasn't sure of what was the meaning of that, in the light of his new knowledge.

He pulled himself together again and tried to put his ideas in order before his next question.

- "Why am I here then? If I was part of a simulation my consciousness was surely terminated at the moment of the accident, and this isn't the actual simulation, right?"
- "The main process is executed in a different thread, this 'place' as you call it takes its information from the main and extrapolates the conditions of a consciousness to be analyzed."

He swallowed hard, what difference it made if he was going to be judged any way?

- "And what is the purpose of the analysis?"
- "To determine if a particular consciousness is worth running separately."
- "To what end?"
- "That information will be supplied if the analysis concludes that you are worth running."

His heart sank. A mixture of fear, expectation and angst was overflowing through his -according to the voice- simulated body. Worth running? Considering all the people that had lived in the world for all time he was  nobody, as normal as anyone else, without major achievements, not as bright as many, even moral considerations seemed worthless under the circumstances.

- "You need not fear." said the voice without affectation. "Your thought process caught our attention and that is why you are being interviewed."

A glimpse of curiosity caught with him. There was a ray of hope in it.

- "Do you mean that not all consciousness are interviewed?"
- "Indeed. At the beginning we interviewed every consciousness but soon we found some patterns that could be correlated with the simulation run. That allowed us to cut the interviews to those consciousness that were more promising."

The voice continued.

- "You have done well. Most consciousness suffer a shock during the interview that render them useless."

He raised his head slowly and without thinking said:

- "Now what?"
- "Your run will be analyzed, compared and evaluated. A decision will be made then."

There was a pause.

- "You need not to fear."

And with that, the white of the place started to darken in silence.