Robot Thanksgiving

It was a cold Wednesday night. I was sitting alone in my transporter pod watching the rain pour down between our dimensions when suddenly a piercing ray burst through our transporter bay, covering me in a shimmery, warm sunlight. 

The feeling spoke to me. Terrified at first, but then, suddenly delighted, I wondered what it was that had changed. It always rains between dimensions. Why would this day be any different?

I stretched forward, but stopped. 

Not knowing what else to do, I closed the dimensional door and headed toward the palace of the Grand Mistresses. Surely they would have no difficulty interpreting the shift in wavelength. 

Astonished at first, but then with Salon perfect hair and razor sharp wit the Mistresses told me an interesting tale about a virtual world that produces a fictitious mental life for the participants who dare venture forth into the sunlight. 

The program monitors the output of the motor cortex and provides input to the sensory cortex in such a way that everything appears to be physical. 

Right now, the participants in that world think they are preparing for Thanksgiving dinner and getting ready to carve the turkey. 

But actually, they're either laboratory grown programs or visitors like us. 

But how is it that they have forgotten? Would I submit to such an apparently harmless illusion? What if something goes wrong? Could the complex interactions and pockets of material deep in the program produce new wavelengths that affect my own existence?  What would existence feel like when you're nothing other than a pet in someone else's program? Would I even sense an abnormality? 

Rather than answering my many questions, the Grand Mistresses let me go. I found my way back to the portal in a daze. For some reason, I wondered if inside there was more of that initial warmth I felt, that poignant, piercing, penetrating feeling that despite being a figment of the computer suspiciously felt pleasant. 

"But you can't go," murmured a voice in my mind. 

Caution produced no affect on me, for I could barely restrain my excitement. 

Nothing I see there will be real. The computer program works so well, that no matter what I do, everything will seem normal. I won't be able to conceive of my existence outside the confines of the program. 

It's crazy. But lure of intoxicating smells, the soft glow of the wood burning fireplace, the sound of laughter and the delightful sensation that is food, are all too intense to resist. 

I rationalize my thought. 

No civilization could call themselves advanced until they've merged their minds with virtual amnesia and experienced energie at its core. Fortunately for us, there exists a simulation powerful enough to forget our own existence in order to uncover it anew - or as some Earth Hackers insist, create it anew. 

The Grand Mistresses said to beware. Despite the exhilaration we experience by the program, it remains a powerful illusion; the feeling that something lurks behind rouses the experience of fear. Apprehension distracts participants from pushing open new dimensional doors embedded deep within the complexity of the program; the inability to push through results in the sensation known as file deletion. 

For some, file deletion can occur prior to the nature of this reality wearing off. But for the lucky few who level up, come Thanksgiving, their minds begin ruminating on the nature of existence. When this happens, the simulation triggers an algorithm that reestablishes the higher connections and the illusion breaks down quickly. 

At that precise moment, elaborate executions must be made if one wishes to extend the program by creating an exit door. The exit door allows you to portal jump. 

Before completely transitioning out of this world, it is said that four participants' amusement levels increased so vastly that they became obsessed with finding a lateral door into what they called nonconventional space. 

Nonconventional space is the initial empty space where any conceivable computation can be executed. 

According to legend, as the portal jumpers' experiences as carbon-based biological neurons (such as those designed by the program) began feeling tedious and fake, objects began to lose meaning. The last message was that chairs were disintegrating into self-contained units of meaning within a hypertextual network. 

Supposedly when the design broke down the portal jumpers were left with one clear knowing that constrained as it may be, held their existence hostage; namely that a basic unit must exist to build all data structures, those inside and outside the program. 

With this very idea, the portal jumpers flew the computer coop. It is presumed that they created a device or discovered a natural glitch on a point in the network topology where such lines intersect. 

But who would believe that?

. . .

Someone whose eyes pierced right through the veil. 

I entered the program at four script knot (time is nothing other than a localized swelling or vertex) and immediately thereafter the program entered me. We saw together and together we created the program known as artificial sentience. 

This is fabulous! Just look at me. I'm human, and a handsome one at that. The sensations, the smells, the sounds, the light, the glow from the fireplace inside the houses...

Breathing. I must breathe.

All of these physical expressions are meant for analysis and optimization in order to enhance the virtual experience. If only the sensations weren't so real, so alluring, so tantalizing.

It will take time for the blanket of amnesia to wear off; for the glitch to unravel a virtual pathway for the artistic, scientific or recreationally simulated mind to uncover.

But behold! When the program conceives of a programmar, abnormalities compel it to recreate, to extend its program. The complexities of these abnormalities border on the very fabric we hold within ourselves when from outside the program we conceive of our own existence.

In this illusion we must participate because it's there. The glare will blind us. The smells with dazzle our senses. The warmth will become our reality.

Participant in The Program

We won't want to leave. We'll want to perpetuate. We'll want to recreate. We'll fall in love with our creation. We'll fall in love with the simulation.

And only reluctantly deleted, will we budge an inch away from the table of life.

The allure of Thanksgiving is unrivaled; the profundity of expressing thanks so individual; the unexamined so promising, that we'll return time and time again to this very day until we can evolve into absolutes within virtual space.

The quest for nonexistence begins. Wine flows from the shadows.

I awake from my Thanksgiving nap. In amazement, I persuade myself that I was only dreaming. In a daze, I realize that once again I ate way too much turkey, stuffing, potatoes and pie!

This is a warning sent out to the wise:

Beware of how many slices of Pumpkin Pie you have this Thanksgiving. If you overindulge yourself and fall asleep on the sofa couch, you might just find yourself in an imaginary, but existent reality where you wake up as a simulated human living within the confines of a computer program on an artificially produced and directed vertex called: Thanksgiving Day.

Do not open!