The One We All Live In

Brennan is drunk. What else is new? We’re out in his backyard and he’s telling me about the simulation. The big one. The one we all live in. “You want proof?” he says. “Look no further than the Lincoln assassination.”

I say to Brennan, “You saw that thing about Lincoln and JFK?” 

He slams his beer down on the patio table. “The thing?” he says. “Their killings are what we, the self-aware, call mirror-events.” 

I’m pretty sure it’s been debunked. That the list circulating the internet of all the coincidences between the two assassinations was completely exaggerated. But I hold my tongue. I want to know where Brennan’s going to go with this one. It’s one of the reasons I hang out with him. He’s got an excitable mind. 

“All right,” I say. “I’ve seen the list. Lincoln was shot in the Ford theater and JFK was shot in a ford car.”

“JFK was shot in a Lincoln limousine,” Brennan says.

“Regardless, how does that prove the simulation exists?”

“It was a mirror-event,” he says again. “A controlled test to see how we respond. Mirror-events are development tests. How did humans react to Lincoln getting blown away in 1865? How did we respond to JFK in 1963? Did we grow as a species? Did we learn anything?”

I want to tell him it doesn’t prove anything, but I realize I don’t have any evidence to refute his claims.

“If 2061 rolls around and some new president gets his card punched,” Brennan says, “then we’ll really know.”

“So, what if it is?” I say. “A simulation.”

“Glad you asked,” Brennan says. “If it’s a Matrix situation, then we might have physical bodies out there someplace. Waiting in digital hibernation. The simulation could be a test from our overlords if we as a species can achieve world peace. If we can live up to our potential.”

“They test that by killing politicians?” 

“Or earthquakes. Nuclear detonation. Hurricanes. Disease.”

I finish my beer and toss the empty into the yard. It rolls a few feet and vanishes into the darkness. “A wildfire in California and then a wildfire in Australia?”

Brennan hands me another beer, “Mirror-events.”

“What happens if we fail to achieve our potential?” I say.

“You die and start over. Reincarnate. There’s a reason so many religions believe in that stuff. Even the Scientologists are onto something.”

This isn’t the first time Brennan’s brought this topic up. He seems pretty taken by the idea, but I don’t know if I care too much either way. Simulation or not. The thought of reincarnation gets to me, though, and I’m thinking about how being reborn might be troublesome. 

“If you reincarnate,” I say, “do you remember your past life?”

“After some training, sure,” he says. “If you come back as a human.”

“Right,” I say. 

I wonder if you’re like me and think the idea of being reborn is a shitty one. In my life there are very few experiences I’d want to relive. Maybe this night in Brenna’s yard. All the same, reincarnation feels less like another shot at life than being doomed to make the same mistakes.

“Who decides our potential?” I say. “Maybe I’ve already lived up to it.”

“God?” Brennan says. “The Anunnaki? A robot in a café? Who am I to say?”

“This sucks,” I tell Brennan.

“Actually,” he says, going out into the moonlit lawn to collect our empties, “I don’t think it changes all that much.”