Nightmare Fuel, Day the Twelth - A Bug in the Code

It's an even dozen days! 

This is another quick sketch, and a riff on an interesting idea in modern physics: what if the universe as we know it is a simulation, created in another universe? What if that universe is in turn a simulation?

Is there even a "real world"? Does that phrase mean anything?

And if you learned for sure that the world wasn't as it seems, how would you act? Below lie, perhaps, a cautionary tale.

"A Bug in the Code"

They say the universe might be a simulation.

Because you're knowledgable, you realize that this could explain all those old stories about gods and goddesses, about the ages of miracles. Adjustments to the parameters, the implementers tinkering and, perhaps, playing.

Because you're clever, you now know weird happenings, feeling of deja-vu, and that moment you walked into a room and forgot why for what those moments are.

• Glitchy programing.
• Partial reboots when patches are installed
• A bug in the system.

Because you're not smart, it never occurred to you to wonder what this world could be other than a computer program, to wonder if this metaphor would seem naive to your grandchildren as the idea of gods and wizards appears to you.

Because you're cunning, you know that exploits can exist, they do in all code. No simulation is perfect, after all. There are always cheats, rough edges, loopholes.

Because you're ambitious, you go searching. Out in the world, looking for incongruities. Things that don't appear as they should. An ancient tree growing in the wrong climate. An inexplicable door in the very living rock, far from where hands could have built it. Glitches, oversights. Perhaps the hiding ground of secrets.

Because you're naive, you expect to find these in places a human can reach, you expect doorways and portals on your scale, not tiny as in insect or tall as a mythical giant.  You expect a simple wooden door you can open, and you expect something you can use on the other side of it.

Because you're self-centered you think the simulation is about us, about people. It never occurs to you that we could be an artifact, a bi-product, a mistake.

Because you're not wise, you don't think about what an implementer would do with a rogue element tinkering from inside at the edges of the code. You don't think to carry your metaphor far enough to think that, if we were a programmer, you might be a bug which the implementers might choose to del---