Interlude - Information, Existence

August 2067. Dr. Villam Sanderbach has been invited as a guest to the popular TV show Traveller, to talk about Reality Oscillation Phenomena.

We see a TV screen again. It’s the same we noticed last time, while we were waiting together in that closed up (now ex) flower shop. Yes, the exact same television set, now out of electricity for weeks (months, maybe? Or even years?).

But, then, it switches on by itself, one more time, digital noise piling up on the illuminated display, brightening the decaying, darkened space a little. Not a lot, just enough to discern the absolute state of abandon this place is in. A soft humming creeps through the air, crackling, breaking the silence. And a voice comes. Semi-distorted, due to the poor quality of the speakers – or because it shouldn’t be possible to hear that at all. We look behind the display, in search of a cable, a battery case, whatever could explain this sudden resurrection. Yet, we find none. We are but watchers and have to accept this is happening, despite no observer being around.

Or is that so?

All flowers have withered and died, as expected. No plant survives without nutrients, water and light for so long on its own. Even those that are unexpectedly resilient, clinging to their last thread of life, must, eventually, give up. The pet noctiphage that used to hang around the halls is also nowhere to be seen. If he was, that would have begged the question: Could a blind animal, purely guided by instinct, be considered an observer?

So, nobody around, no living being at least. Still, the impression of being watched is strong and can’t be shaken away so easily… but we will ignore it, for the moment. What’s important, is that the TV set is on and that it’s showing something. A bright studio, two chairs, a man sitting on the left, with an elegant suit. He looks like he’s in his fifties, relatively pale, with brown hair tattered by gray strands, but overall well kept. His expression betrays a sort of childlike excitement. He must be the show host, as his energetic yet authoritative voice has front and center. The other man is different. He wears a stereotypical long lab coat, wears glasses. His hair is short, of a weird he between brown and black. His skin is darker too, we can surmise he has Middle-Eastern origins. He could as well come from India, but we don’t know enough about him to draw conclusions: We can just wait and see. We could expect his posture to be a mess, due to him looking like a stereotypical scientist, but, in reality, he seems to be quite comfortable. The coat might be a calculated move, for recognizability and because people seem to trust doctors more, but who knows?

The lights focus on the host, shine on his radiant smile, a smile he no doubt perfected through hours of rehearsal.

“Welcome back to Traveller, beyond the boundaries of science! I’m Res Vertighel and, tonight, I’m going to guide you through the limits of our knowledge, tackling the ultimate question…”

He looks at the camera, and – by extension – at us.

“Do we live in a simulation? And, if so, could we ever become aware of it?”

Silence in the studio, as the man keeps gesticulating, his hands roaming free and drawing circles in the air. The scientist, though, is quiet. He knows it’s not his moment yet.

“To answer this riddle and go beyond, we have invited an expert on this groundbreaking field…

Dr. Villam Hassan Sanderbach!”

Round of applause, the scientist nods.

“Thanks for having me, Mr. Vertighel.”

He seems mildly uncomfortable, and we, as spectators, might understand why. Traveller has a reputation of spreading and amplifying crackpot theories, instead of real science, all in the name of sensationalism and audience share. That documentary about the phages was no exception –

before O’Rilley’s sudden rise to fame, no reputable science show was interested in covering anything that dealt with the Dead Zone. Yet, Traveller did, because Res Vertighel and his authors thought that scary monsters are good for ad revenue. They didn’t know how right they were, for all the wrong reasons.

A broken clock marks the right time twice a day, after all.

“So, Dr. Sanderbach, you have been on the news lately for some, let’s say, controversial theories.

Your credentials speak for yourself – top graduate at one of the best Dutch universities, with a Ph.D. obtained in record time, followed by almost fifteen years of successful papers. So, why focusing on simulation theory, all of a sudden?”

Vertighel doesn’t pull any punches, and, as usual, cannot stop using the words “controversial” and “mysterious” one too many times. His audience likes it, or so they say. Yet, the man called Sanderbach doesn’t seem too inconvenienced by it. If anything, his expression betrays a mix of mild annoyance and slight amusement.

“I assume you are familiar with ROPES – that is, reality oscillation phenomena – Mr. Vertighel?”

“Who isn’t? They are on everyone’s mouth, since that giant plant bloomed in Shard last month. Besides, we at Traveller started talking about them already years ago, after the infamous, controversial, mysterious Walking Night appearance.”

Controversial again. We should take a shot every time Res says that. Or maybe not, if we want to survive the evening sober. Static on the TV screen, a little digital noise polluting the picture. We can’t expect too much from this display, though. It’s working pretty well, for something that isn’t even supplied with electricity. We can still discern Sanderbach’s face, deeply lost in thought.

“The Walking Night, yes…”

A small pause, before starting again.

“I have always been fascinated by reality distortion phenomena, Mr. Vertighel. When I was in my twenties, I’ve witnessed a lamppost eating a dog, in New Langdon, only to disappear immediately after. That’s the kind of stuff that makes you doubt you are living in a real world, if I may.”

Vertighel nods and takes notes, subtly, almost unnoticeable, but he does. Surely, a new Traveller episode about The Mysterious Dog-Eating Lamppost will enter production soon.

“That’s when I started delving into simulation theory and information projection. You posed the right question, that is, are we living in a simulation? The answer, though, is not straightforward.”

Sanderbach stands up, waves his hand. The holographic projectors activate, showing several panels worth of text and diagrams.

“In 2022, Vopson crafted his eponymous theory, based on his second law of infodynamics – in an isolated system, as entropy can only increase, information density tends to move towards a minimum instead. The two concepts are linked and seem to point out to the existence of a… global garbage collector, that regularly disposes of superfluous information in order to free bandwidth. All in all, Vopson’s theory seems to be self-consistent – if our world were a computer simulation, you wouldn’t want valuable memory or processing power to be used for useless computations.”

“Garbage collector? Something about programming? So, this theory says we are part of a Matrix created by mysterious puppeteers?”

Vertighel doesn’t seem amused by Sanderbach’s frequent use of “difficult words”. He probably hoped for more sensationalism and clever references to movies dealing with the concept of a simulated world, instead of dry physic facts. Still, he can’t just stop his guest like that. He needs crackpots to believe they are at home in his show – so, he resorts to his tactical questioning. Yet, Sanderbach continues undeterred.

“That would be a possibility, if Vopson’s theory was correct. And that’s the point – the second law of infodynamics doesn’t work at a global level, especially when ROPES enter the picture. There’s a lot of lingering information that not only doesn’t get deleted, but is also able to become active again, against all the odds. How familiar are you with quantum mechanics, Mr. Vertighel?”

“Not… very familiar. I know the basic ideas and some facts about tunneling, due to the Running Man case…”

“Yes, tunneling. That’s where I wanted to get. At a microscopic level, particles can pierce through walls even if they shouldn’t, with a probability that depends on how high the barrier is compared with their energy. As a broadly incorrect yet descriptive analogy, the particles “borrow” some energy from the environment and, as such, are able to move where they shouldn’t – but this borrowing process must be fast. The higher the energy violation, the smaller the time before the universe corrects itself. The same applies to ROPES – the more their existence contrasts with the laws of physics, the shorter the time they can exist before being deleted. The more the observers, the faster the universe registers the violation, the faster the corrective measures happen. Herland and Aiample called this process tide stabilization or reality inertia, in their seminal 2060 paper.”

Sanderbach waves his hands once more, additional panels shown up, with pictures and text, newspaper articles.

“Cryptids are, most likely, examples of early ROPES. The Sasquatch, Nessie, the Chupacabra. Creatures that don’t diverge too much from what is expected from this reality but that – ultimately – were deleted from existence after their borrowed time expired. This explains why nobody ever found real evidence of them – they simply don’t exist anymore. The universe corrected itself. The same can be said for divine apparition and ghosts. Lingering clumps of undeleted information that manifested for a short while, before being filtered out.”

Silence. We can see Vertighel biting his lips. Saying that those creatures don’t exist anymore is robbing his show of several potential episodes. We can only surmise that he wasn’t informed of this angle by his authors. Yet, he has to ride the lightning – the budget is what it is and reshooting every part of a show is expensive. And Sanderbach is not over yet.

“Which brings us to the topic – this correction mechanics has been severely damaged or put out of commission in recent times: The existence of documented, long-living ROPES with a half time of decades and regular daily sightings before deletion, is in direct contrast with this very concept. The garbage collector, if any, isn’t working as it should. Which means that either we aren’t living in a simulation or that the simulation is broken at a fundamental level. Data keeps on being leaked and information that should have been long disposed of, is still lingering. And, if we need to find the root cause of this change…”

The holographic display changes. More newspaper ads, more pictures. We recognize one. It’s about the Helsinki Meltdown.

“It’s here. March 2014. Since the day of the Helsinki Meltdown, our physics, biology and chemistry experiments have been finding more and more anomalies, at an unprecedented, ever-growing rate. Whatever happened in Helsinki… broke our reality, to say it mildly. If this were a simulation, it would be the equivalent of accessing unallocated memory and triggering undefined behavior. From then on, the program was unbound by the rules of its own logic... and could crash anytime. Or go forth for centuries. Or never stop. We just don’t know.”

Static on our display, again. Isn’t it interesting? This TV is working, despite all the odds. Maybe Sanderbach has a point. Maybe, this TV is a ROP itself. Or maybe the ROP is what is tuning it to this channel, so long after electricity was cut to the whole building.

Vertighel nods, a spark of excitement in his eyes. Crackpottery at its finest, but sugarcoated with science-sounding words. This is what he might be thinking.

“So, Dr. Sanderbach, I’m not sure I follow… are we living in a simulation or not? Could you help us solve this mystery?”

One shot down for mystery. No controversial, though, this time.

“My personal point of view is that no, we aren’t. If we lived in a simulation, whoever was monitoring it would have already plugged the cable long ago. In its current state, with our garbage collector out of commission, our world is a walking hazard that could cause the computer running it to die at any moment, an exploit that could pollute the whole network. Too dangerous to be left unchecked.”

Sanderbach sits again on his chair, looks towards the camera.

“To make a clearer example, whenever a person dies, whatever information about their existence dies with them. In a universe abiding by the basic laws of simulation theory and the second law of infodynamics, that would be the end of it. But in our universe, residual information remains stored in what we can call the reality matrix.”

“As in the movie…?”

“Not that Matrix, Mr. Vertighel. I’m talking about a more abstract concept.”

The holographic pictures change again, turning into a representation of Conway’s Game of Life, with black and white squares alternating and flickering every second.

“In a self-consistent, information-minimizing reality, all superfluous data would be discarded or marked as to be overwritten. But, until they are, they linger around, in an inactive form. At regular times, the universal garbage collector is activated and removes the unused data. In the past, during these cleaning phases, some data could spontaneously return to the material world for a short time, as an exception. These are your ghosts, Mr. Vertighel, your vengeful spirits. Now, though, since the garbage collector is broken, the information coming from dead creatures and destroyed places linger longer and longer inside the matrix, sometimes reaching a critical mass.”

Vertighel squints his eyes. This is getting weird even for him, but Sanderbach doesn’t seem to care.

“Now, tell me, Mr. Vertighel… what do you think would happen if one million people died in the same place, in the span of less than one hour? Where do you think this massive amount of lost information would go?”

He looks again at the camera.

No, it looks directly at us.

Static. Static. Static. The image loses consistence. The pixels die. The display shuts down.

Suddenly, it’s dark again.

And silence is the only answer to that last question.