Saturday, June 11, 2016

Vestigial Surreality: origins

The thoughts over the years that inspired the Serial Vestigial Surreality
vestigial surreality: origins
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Sunday SciFi Fantasy Serial
by Douglas Christian Larsen

Even as a child, I stared at my hands, often, thinking about the vast spaces between the molecules, and how everything was moving, vibrating, and it was so scarily obvious, that what we think of as "reality" is only a pleasant fiction, a calming story we tell ourselves, something we assure ourselves, to maintain a show of calmness, because if we thought about it, to any great depth, this woven web of vibrating spheres that comprises us—we, people—all would be in panic, mayhem, uncertainty. We would not be able to do anything, except perhaps run about as animals, purposefully not thinking. Do not think about it. Do not panic.

My hands were not real, at least they did not appear to be what they seemed to be, to my eyes, senses.

And it disturbed me, perhaps as early as the fifth grade, that the graphics in the textbooks depicting the microscope world (molecules, atoms, neurons and electrons) looked suspiciously like the graphics depicting the planets going about the sun, the moons going about the planets. You go small, infinitesimally smaller than humans can peer without technology, and you go large, farther than humans can peer without technology, and reality was vastly different, and yet coincidentally the same.

Religion told me a story that was suspiciously close to my own increasing awareness I explored in my thoughts, as a boy, as a youth, as a young man—that reality is not what we see and feel and experience. Religion, without the aid of technology to make us see better. Paints the world with unseen angels, ever present, and demons, always lurking, an omnipresent God, that this is reality, this unseen world, and more, that the unseen reality is the actual reality, and this seen reality that we live in is actually false, a deception, a practice ground that readies for that other reality, the unseen reality. That heaven is real, and Earth is but a shadow of heaven.

Think about that, you've probably heard something like it, or been taught something close along those lines. But think about it. God creates man, in His image. That's what it actually says, those sacred texts, that God created humans in His image and placed them in a "garden." Images in a garden. A world that is not real, but a pattern of heaven, which is real.

In the movie about C.S. Lewis, Shadowlands, as Joy is dying, and Jack and his beloved attempt to comfort each other, we are told that this is not real life. No, real life has not begun yet. This is the world of shadows. The shadowlands. These images in this garden, an environment (Earth), constructed upon the premise of reality, Heaven.

What is another way of saying this? That God, in Heaven, created a simulation, an image, and placed images in this simulation. A world of images. Images created of whirling dervishes, electrons ever spinning, molecules woven into a matrix of cells, intermingled to form solid objects, solid beings. Angels and demons, agents of reality, moving unseen within this world of images, where the NPC beings are created in God's image, they appear as He does, but they are not real, mere shadows of reality.

In 1977, the out-there author Philip K. Dick (whom many believed to be crazy, and the man admittedly suffered various mental conditions, and admitted to experimenting with all manner of drugs and intoxicants) announced to the world that we were living in a computer-simulated world. He said this with a straight face, long before the movies The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor. In fact, Daniel F. Galouye wrote the novel Simulacron-3 in 1963, about 36 years prior to the book being made into the 1999 movie The Thirteenth Floor, about people running civilization simulations and realizing that they are themselves the digital people in a simulation. Philip K. Dick wrote about simulated worlds, and came to believe that possibly his books were actually tapping into "reality," the reality of a simulated "garden" containing the images of God.

The Apostle Paul claimed that one day we would all be changed, in the twinkling of an eye, transformed from a shadow image in a glass darkly, into reality, to be made real like that God, Who created us in His image. The shadows of Plato's cave, cast from prisoners who sit with their backs to the fire, and watch their own shadows flitting upon the cave wall. We are like those prisoners, attempting to pierce the darkness and understand the shadows, and we have created a copious amount of religions that seek to explain these shadows, these images, this simulation—they preach and teach, standing upon the shoulders of giants, and explain something they cannot comprehend.

Can an image in a computer simulation understand those things outside of the simulation?

I have struggled with these concepts, all my life. In 1977 when Philip K. Dick stated with a straight face that we were living in a computer simulation, the public could barely comprehend what he was talking about. We weren't running around with tiny computers in our hands, moving things about on screens with our fingertips. The first Apple II computer came out in 1977.

In June 2016 Elon Musk—the genius at the heart of SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity—mused in an interview that there is a possibility we are living in a simulated reality, someone's computer game, a digital world, and many citizens of the world reacted with shocked outrage, never imagining such a thing, even though Plato was struggling with similar mental conundrums more than three hundred years prior to the birth of Christ.

Based on string theory and quantum mechanics, scientists are running million-dollar experiments to ascertain whether or not they can discern evidence that our reality is a hologram. This isn't science fiction.

The series Vestigial Surreality is based on these mental struggles. What is déjà vu, this odd sensation that everyone has experienced at some point in their life, the uncanny feeling that this has happened before. In 1977 Philip K. Dick audaciously claimed that déjà vu is what we experience when our simulated world is changed, or when the beings outside the simulation make changes inside the simulation, and this was then explained in the same fashion in the 1999 movie The Matrix.

You can either write off déjà vu and say, well, it's just weird. Or you can struggle to understand the sensation, the reality that causes the uncanny sensation.

Perhaps it is bleed through, data from previously run simulations, popping up again, or at least vestigial memories remain, as we remember past lives, that this has all perhaps happened, many, many times before. And this sensation, this reality, gives rise to such fantastic speculations as reincarnation, past lives (while the reality is, it is the same life, played again).

Even in Christianity, in the more far-flung variety, there are those that believe Predestination is in reality a puppet show put on by the Creator. The Creator writes the scripts, does the voices, and pulls all the strings. Or others see it as a movie that God is creating, working as Director, Writer, and Casting.

Do we just throw it all out? Or do we think about it, and struggle? Question. Brainstorm. And try to understand?

Or can a digital being inside a simulation even grasp at the Reality beyond the reality of the ones and zeroes that comprise his or her whole universe?



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Sunday SciFi Fantasy Serial
by Douglas Christian Larsen



Vestigial Surreality by Douglas Christian Larsen, The Sunday SciFi Fantasy Serial, Free Online Fiction
Other Links:

Early Pioneering Imaginative Thinkers:
Daniel F. Galouye
IMDb Author Daniel F. Galouye
The Thirteenth Floor (movie) IMDb

Philip K. Dick

Online Articles:
Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?


Hologram Universe



Alternate World / Multiverse

Fringe (Television Series)

Vestigial Surreality by Douglas Christian Larsen


Individual Episodes or Purchase Omnibus 1 Episodes 1-28







Vestigial Surreality by Douglas Christian Larsen


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29 30 31 32 33 34 35
36 37 38 39 40 41 42
43 44 45 46 47 48 49
Visit the Vestigial Surreality WIKI
Sunday SciFi Fantasy Serial
by Douglas Christian Larsen

Illustrations by Harrison Christian Larsen, story by Douglas Christian Larsen
© Copyright 2016 Douglas Christian Larsen. Vestigial Surreality. All Rights Reserved by the Author, Douglas Christian Larsen. No part of this serial fiction may be reproduced (except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews) or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the publisher, Wolftales UNlimited, but please feel free to share the story with anyone, only not for sale or resale. This work is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental (wink, wink).


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related terms, ideas, works:
ancestor simulation, digital ark, salvation of humanity,
vestigial surreality, manda project, rocket to saturn,
the singularity, the butterfly effect, simulated reality, matrix,
virtual reality, otherland, the matrix, 1q84, haruki murakami,
hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world, dreaming,
the dream place, waking from a dream, ready player one,
hologram, holodeck, saturn, saturnalia, cycles of time,
simulacron-3, daniel f. galouye, counterfeit world,
tad williams, science fantasy, science fiction,
Victor Frankenstein, Nikola Tesla, genius
do we live in a computer simulation?
mystery, thriller, horror, techno thriller,
signs and wonders, vestigial surreality,
william gibson, neal stephenson, serial,
cyberpunk, dystopian future, apocalypse,
scifi, mmorpg, online video game world,
end times, apocalypse, armageddon,
digital universe, hologram universe,
sunday sci-fi fantasy serial fiction,
virtual reality, augmented reality
the unknown writer blog
are we living in a simulation?
puppets, puppetry, punch & judy
elon musk, Tesla, VR, mmorpg
simulated world, data is data
simulation hypothesis
simulation argument
nick bostrom
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