Jan 22, 2014, 1:43:46 AM

I had no idea how many people have lived, since the earliest days of humanity, but just for simplicity’s sake, say it was twice the number alive today. So, fourteen billion people have had a chance to work on the question she’d asked, and the answer was still up for grabs. I took the night to think about it, and mull over a lifetime of theories. The next day I dealt with the usual distractions, and a couple rays of hope–the job problem may have a solution in reach; I’m sure that will affect the outcome of the story.

As a writer, I try to be consistent in tense. But I seem to have shifted from reflecting on things to writing them down as they happen. It will be the past, by the time you read it, but if I slip; well, now you know the cause.

I had a lot on my mind when I sat down to write, so it was not as easy to pick up the thread. In order for our conversation to resume, my avatar had to assert herself. But her question had been asked, and it was one I had thought about for almost as long as I’d lived. As I noted above, the question did not have a sure answer, though there were several popular opinions. I put those aside to consider as needed, but took my stance based on the clue she gave me.

Life is the box.

The physical universe might exist without life to observe it, but the absence of life is death–and death marks one boundary of reality. The origins of the physical universe also lay beyond a point we could not explore within the bounds of reality. Ironic, since experience shows us the example of before and after. As far as our personal lives were concerned, reality and other people were here before us, and unless we all died in an apocalypse, reality and other people would be here after us.

The irony being, we could apply our minds to possibilities beyond the scope of our direct experience, but in the pursuit of facts in support of some truth, we were forced to employ fabrications. Philosophy (sometimes in the guise of Theology) and Science (in particular, Physics) represent the two major paths we’ve taken, as a species, to describe Reality. But in general, experience–in the context of life–provides us with our conventional views of reality.

While the physical universe provides the foundation for life, in practical terms, it is life that provides the foundation for us to engage in reality. Our minds and–especially–dreams can provide us with experiences that rival reality, and technology comes closer every day to producing convincing virtual realities. In “The Matrix” reality depended entirely on the interpretation of perceptions of structured information–“just electrical impulses in the brain.”

Physics and Philosophy have both proposed that the physical universe is an illusion, an infinitely complex structure of matter and energy ultimately derived from pure information. Decades of study and generations of observation and experimentation are required to consciously comprehend the logic or insights leading to that proposition. The mysteries of the mind and the universe have yet to be bridged in a conclusive way.

It was easy to get caught up in study and speculation, but I pulled my head out of that mud and took note of the key observation. I had already pointed out that the paradox of reality was that it presented itself to us as fact. The problem with defining reality through science or philosophy was that at some point we ran out of facts. It was a direct short cut to the wildest implications of philosophy and physics. The basis of reality was fact.

Reality was an interpretation of the facts.

At the point where our curiosity could not be satisfied by the obvious fact of reality–at the point where we ran out of facts–we started to create things, concepts and constructs, to continue our pursuit of fact. As soon as invention and imagination were applied we were undeniably participating in changing, possibly even creating reality. And that… that presents us with a couple of interesting facts.

A construct allowed a mind to probe the physical universe in search of facts. A concept allowed a mind to leverage itself into perceiving a different reality, a different understanding of the facts. A different understanding of the physical universe might change our assumptions about how a mind interacts with the physical universe.

I had to stop writing for a moment because the implication was staring me in the face.

A fact was a bit of information acquired through measurement; through perception. A perception was a mechanism; a means or method of obtaining facts. A perception could be inaccurate, so a fact had an underlying truth. A truth was holographic. Every fact contained a piece of the truth. A fact always had a context. A fact alone was meaningless, without an interpretation; an analysis of its truth.

An interpretation required perspective and perspective required structure, but interpretation was meaningless without understanding. An understanding was impossible without awareness. Awareness was a completely subjective state of being. A completely subjective being can only exist in its own awareness. An awareness containing only itself was oblivious. All it could be aware of was itself. That in turn sparked self awareness; the nucleus of understanding.

A brain, its senses, and a stream of information could harness self-awareness, providing it with the structure and resources to become a conscious a mind. A mind, a structured awareness, could contain and comprehend information. An evolving mind would reinforce the evolution of a more evolved brain. A more evolved brain would have have the potential to house a more intelligent and cognitive mind–a mind that could grasp the deeper implications of the information it processed.

Information was paradoxical. A discrete piece of information could have a vast scope of meanings and implications. Information was an abstraction, as elusive as a dream, and yet that same information can have structure and representation, a manifestation as solid and certain as our physical reality. The more information a mind had access to, the more information that mind could derive from a given fact. Information could be passive, but information could also carry intent.

I could have continued to follow this chain of revelations, but I was already moving past the point. Whatever else we wanted to think about the physical universe, the point was that it was expressed. It provided an environment, structure, resources, and opportunities with incredible value to life. It also provided an endless stream of information that only a conscious, perceptive, intelligent mind could hope to exploit.

Without saying anything, the universe sat there telling us everything we would possibly need to know to understand the most important thing of all. It says nothing; we give the message to ourselves. We blink in amazement and think, “I am…” …and the rest is gravy. The rest is a choice. It’s up to us to decide how to benefit from this opportunity. How we acknowledge it. How we share it. Ultimately, how we survive it.

We are designed to be selfish. We are designed to find ourselves. So we face an immediate challenge. Everything is there for us to take, so of course we started taking. We started by taking it for granted that we could. We’re human, so we start out taking what we’re given. As we grow and become more independent, we discover we can take what we want. Unfortunately, we’re in this together, so inevitably someone else takes something we wanted.

We began to compete. All the world’s problems started right there. Someone else was there first. Someone else got the best seat. Someone pushed once too often. Someone threw the first punch. Someone had to stop the fighting. Someone had to make the rules. Someone had to keep the peace. Someone had to collect the money so someone could pay the bills. Someone decided the best solution was to take control, limiting other people’s options.

Somewhere along the way, we created this reality. We all still have the same opportunity, but the challenge before us has grown harder. We made a mess we had cope with. We accepted the version of reality we’ve presented to ourselves, unaware that we built a wall between ourselves and the opportunity we were truly given. But, strangely, our mistakes and foolishness have borne unexpected fruit. We have truly realized our humanity.

“I imagine it’s pretty hard for you to sit still, right now,” she began, in a conspiratorially amused tone. The look on my face must have been eloquently agitated, because she met it and started laughing. When she recovered, she patted my head and said, “I can see that our chat has had an unintended consequence. A bit of drive by enlightenment.”

“Not my fault. I may have been the one at the keyboard, but it seems that my sub-conscious has been driving. I’ve slipped into philosophical writing before, but that wasn’t something I consciously set out to write. Were you expecting something like that when you asked the question?”

“Actually, I half expected you to dig up one of those old bits of philosophy. You have plenty of it on your blog and hard drive. I can’t say I’m disappointed with what you did instead. It very nicely captures the key concepts we explored in author or goddess mode,” she observed. “I definitely expected you to mention the thing about participation as requirement for reality. That has been a part of your philosophy for so long that it didn’t occur to you to mention it.”

I tilted my head to the side and then shrugged. “I sort of think of it as a given. I think I touched on it in passing, but you’re right, I haven’t explained it,” I admitted. “I think it was something I picked up on as a kid, and suffered through all my life. Because I’m not the person people see and interact with–and especially because I had to pretend to be who they thought I was–my life’s had a surreal quality.

“Because I wasn’t fully participating, it never felt entirely real. A role-playing game could seem more real, both because I chose my role and because the other players recognized my participation. A book comes to life for me when the characters are interacting. Most of all, there’s the contrast between dreams and reality. In dreams, things seem real and there are people I am interacting with, but I don’t share those experiences with anyone in the waking world.”

She nodded. “I think that is also a measure of reality, that things have consequence–and persistence. Dreams tend to lack in both. On the whole, however, the point I was shooting for is that without other people involved, the difference between dreaming and waking would become largely meaningless.”

I conceded the point with a slight nod.

“Of course, my purpose in bringing that up is to say that you value the existence of others,” she proposed, waiting for my confirmation. I bobbled my head a few more times. She smothered a smile, glancing around for a place to perch, and deciding to stay in my head. “Well, then, you should understand the position I was in, when choosing how to confront you.”

I pressed my lips together. I knew she would get back to that, but I was expecting to face it in the last chapter. “I’m not exactly guessing you’ll say, ‘If I had the power to confront you in the flesh, there would still be reasons not to.’ And by that, you mean the people in my reality.”

She held out her hand and turned her palm up, suddenly looking serious. “I have faith in you, and I’d love to end this fiction the way you–and probably your readers–wish. But this is not something to rush someone into. Writing this has allowed you to clear out a ton of mental blocks, and I’m happy for that. At the same time, you posted it thinking, ‘The way my life is going, I’ll be on the streets in a few weeks,’ not expecting to last very long there.

“I can understand the temptation to say your piece, tack on a happy ending, and ride off into oblivion,” she divulged, tapping into my darker thoughts. “I totally see how that conforms to reality. But I’m not going to let you do something that stupid, telling yourself you are powerless!”

My eyebrows crawled up my forehead, and I kind of laughed under my breath, “I honestly don’t know how this ends. Not the story. Not the dream. Certainly not my life. I’m stretched so tight I should just snap. I put myself in a position I can’t back out of. But I think I see where you’re going. I don’t want to compromise myself any more. I think you’re trying to tell me I don’t want to compromise the world either,” I concluded.

She gave me a sad look and then sighed. “You have always had that block,” she told me, tiredly. “You have the mind to defy reality, and grasp the responsibility of power, to openly admit you need to have this power, use this power, in order to feel like a normal human being. I think I could even get you to admit that you want this power–that it’s a part of you that needs to be expressed.

“I just don’t know if you can allow yourself to accept this power as your birthright,” she charged, leveling an irritated look at me. “You would be blown away for a moment, but you would find your stride. You’ve been practicing for this for decades. I’ve told you before, I can’t pour water into a full glass. I cannot give you what you already have. I am not saying, ‘No.’”

She pulled me into an imaginary scene just to get in my face and poke me in the chest, for final emphasis, adding, “You are!”

That was a pretty blunt way for her to confront me with the problem I had created for myself. But I have to admit, it sort of worked. It certainly got me to see it. It had been at the edge of my vision, or right in the middle of my blind spot. I originally set out to find a way to put my real self into reality as I knew it. Unfortunately, in order to do that, I would have to change it. Even spelled out, that somehow misses the point.

She got it, because she understood the underlying premise. It is an abuse of power to change other people to suit yourself. I could say that I worried about the consequences of opening a door that led others to claim power. The truth is that the only way they could claim that power was to find it in themselves. They’d claim it by becoming true to themselves, because that’s where the power comes from.

The process required a lot of honesty, and the ability to understand your instincts and listen to your intuition. The most difficult part of having power was allowing yourself to use it. I knew that much from experience. It’s frustrating to say, but I had way too much experience denying myself. I wanted to believe her argument would cause something to shift and open up the flood gates. I could imagine myself sitting there suddenly transformed in revelation.

I could even, almost, believe it.

The almost is worth looking at, because it is not rooted in doubt. I can easily picture it happening, and I know that I am not allowing it to happen. In part because I can’t imagine what would come next. As the Oracle said, “We can’t see past a choice we don’t understand.” I feel like I know why I am saying no, but that’s really a rationalization. I’m not telling myself, “Absolutely, not.” For the most part it seems to be, “Not yet.”

Cue mental screaming, because I have no idea what I am waiting for, but it’s agonizingly frustrating.

I can say this, at the moment, though. I know exactly what I want do do, and for practical reasons there are a few things I need to do, but there is one thing I don’t want to do, because I respect the reality of others. Crap. “I don’t want to change reality,” I groaned, instantly miserable. I put a hand to my forehead, covering my eyes, and stopped, because I felt a mental block clear.

“Who said you needed to?” she asked as I removed my hand and looked her in the face. I’d been just about to say the same thing.

“Can’t pour water into a full glass,” I murmured under my breath. She kept saying that to me, and though she was referring to information or power I already had, it came close to saying what I needed to hear. “I understood myself as being powerless in this perspective,” I realized. Repetetive though it was, I continued, “I could not find a way to express myself in reality,” adding, “in the context of my understanding of reality.”

I shut my mouth and raced through the implications. I had spent a thousand nights trying to will my body to change; imagining it in detail. On a few of those nights, I thought I’d succeeded for a few brief moments. I never managed to disprove the assumption that I had no power over reality. Discouraged, but not deterred, I continued to challenge that assumption, and over time profoundly altered my perspective of reality.

I’d moved out of line with the conventional understanding of reality. I found a different way of looking at the problem that I could not test because, however excluded I felt, I still respected other people’s reality. I understood that their perspective–their understanding of reality–was crucial to their understanding of themselves. They were, for reasons as different as they were each unique, struggling with the same frustration with reality.

Just as I had, the human race had used its imagination to challenge that assumption–developing the concepts and constructs needed to free their minds. (I had to learn them somewhere.) Some of those concepts have been around for thousands of years, and some we could never have imagined without first inventing science, and technology, to test the solidity of the universe and confront the limits of perception. People were cultivating a new understanding in fact, fiction, fantasy and philosophy.

People were primed for a new understanding of the mind. It just waited to be realized. For now, it was just all just a dream.

Original author’s note: I am waiting to hear back on a couple of job offers–and trying to scratch together the money to get to work until I get that first paycheck. The next two days will be interesting, but the future is still hazy. I only have one chapter to go, so I’ll try to get it done before a job pulls me away. The up side is, if I do have a job, I’ll be able to support myself and that will let me start writing my avatar’s story.

Original posting Edit: Both of the contracts came through before I could start on the conclusion of this story. I have spent the past three days filling out paperwork, collecting money to get me to work, and a whole afternoon in a meeting to discuss project requirements, followed by another afternoon on a second round of paperwork and writing up a quote. I have this weekend to finish the story, and then I will be booked solid with work. Literally the last thing I expected to happen when I started this story. After almost 5 months of fruitless job searching, I expected to run out of rope. Why on Earth did everything fall together now?

Unbelievable!