11 June, 2010

will the rain ever stop?

Stiv: EMILLY
Stiv: EM

I'd just gotten home from an extended trip into limbo--literally; I spent two and a half hours on a dark bus, driving in circles, waiting for them to remember they needed to take me home, too--and I was a bit groggy from the day. I wasn't in my best cognitive mode when God chimed in.

Stiv: I don't think I've ever been more scared by anything than the prospect that my own clone is going to kill me or the fact that I could be a clone.
Stiv: Actually, that would mean that I should be trying to find the original.
Stiv: Unless the original died alone time ago, and I am but one clone in a series of clone experiments. Experiments that all went horribly wrong, I am assuming, by the looks of things
emilly.orr: Slow down
emilly.orr: Start from the top

I wasn't sure yet whether I'd need stimulants or euphorics to deal with this, but someone had the wrong idea about reality, and I just wasn't sure who it was, just then.

Stiv: Emilly, I know you and a number of other people hear me say this a lot
Stiv: but I think Ive gone insane
emilly.orr: Why specifically?
Stiv: Ok so, I watched Moon and have you seen that?
emilly.orr: Oh yes
Stiv: Ok so
Stiv: I was like
Stiv: I'd be more comfortable, after thinking it over
Stiv: if I was a clone
Stiv: I'd feel a bit more relaxed, less pressure
Stiv: you know
emilly.orr: Until you started coughing up blood

Still say it's a reasonable reply.

Stiv: and then I started thinking more and more about why I was created
Stiv: I as in the series of clones
Stiv: So I thought, who would make us?
Stiv: And then I realized
Stiv: I WOULD
Stiv: THE ORIGINAL
Stiv: That bastard

Consciousness began to filter in. Waiiiit, my brain said. Is he serious or is he messing with me? I just don't know, sometimes. But I tried to parse it while he went on.

Stiv: I know what he's trying to prove
Stiv: or disprove rather
Stiv: QUANTUM MECHANICS
Stiv: Through violating MANY WORLDS
Stiv: BY PLACING THEM ALL IN ONE WORLD
emilly.orr: So, you're thinking, in the future, you know much more about science than you do now, so you created a series of clones, to...get drunk and be attractive to MILFs?
Stiv: BIGGER THAN THAT
emilly.orr: Wau
Stiv: I mean, that's probably what he's doing
Stiv: that bastard
emilly.orr: I see.
emilly.orr: So, is your job to...stop him, or help him, or...?

I was still trying to work out what was going on in God's head. (I know, I know, mysteries of the universe, inscrutable is the mind of Stiv, yada yada yada...) What exact combination of homework, booze and videogames had brought this on? Precisely?

Stiv: Emilly, I violate time symmetry
emilly.orr: You do?
Stiv: We do
Stiv: Ok so you
Stiv: You you
Stiv: Are here
Stiv: in this
emilly.orr: Yes
Stiv: This being whatever we are in
Stiv: nevermind, I wont get into that but
Stiv: you are here
Stiv: BUT here, I am and the rest of us along with that bastard who created us
Stiv: that bastard being me
Stiv: or
Stiv: the original
Stiv: wait
emilly.orr: Right
emilly.orr: whom you seem to despise
emilly.orr: Even though he's you
Stiv: Well ok let me try that again

It began to sink in this was worse than being commissioned to write the Gospel According to Stiv, with the switchblades and the hookers and the stripper paradise with eighth-dimension booze imported in.

And ninja assassins. I always forget the ninja assassins part. It was so insane. Ninja assassins sent out to kill the One True Stiv, that camouflaged themselves as...him...to...

Wait....

Stiv: So, we are all here because in a many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, he is USING US
Stiv: to see when he will die
Stiv: OR how he COULD die
emilly.orr: He doesn't know how he could die?
emilly.orr: Alcohol poisoning is up there
Stiv: He's trying to use the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics to become immortal
Stiv: THAT BASTARD
Stiv: he's so clever
emilly.orr: Canny, even
Stiv: wait
Stiv: wait
Stiv: Unless, this is a symmetrical timeline
Stiv: and I'm now realizing
Stiv: fuck
Stiv: Fuck, I could be that bastard
Stiv: or
Stiv: no wait
emilly.orr: Well, you are in college
Stiv: shit
Stiv: Fuck, Emilly, what if I am him and he started this
Stiv: fuck
Stiv: Oh man
emilly.orr: Then...at some point you'll get enough money
emilly.orr: To fund quantum-mechanic research into growing yourself
emilly.orr: And dispersing your clones through a multitude of separate, yet incredibly similar realities
emilly.orr: Likely not the world without shrimp
emilly.orr: But several different reality sets
emilly.orr: Just waiting for Stiv to appear
emilly.orr: And die horrifically
Stiv: Emilly, I think I already did that once and I'm now realizing that. Holy god.
Stiv: Time is amazing
emilly.orr: It is.

It's also, at times, deeply odd. Or maybe that's not time, maybe that's just Stiv.

Stiv: I think I need more time to think this over
emilly.orr: Possibly more alcohol as well.
Stiv: I always have this weird feeling of comfort when I find some new paranoia or psychosis
Stiv: I wonder why that is
emilly.orr: In you, or just in general?
Stiv: In me
Stiv: hmm
Stiv: ooooooh
Stiv: that makes more sense
emilly.orr: It does?
Stiv: We rarely put ourselves into danger where the odds arent in our favor
emilly.orr: Generally true.

Though I did think the 'we' to which he referred was his clones, not humanity at large, which is how I took it.

Stiv: He must have done this to experiment with the limits of our sanity
emilly.orr: Ah. Canny fellow indeed.
Stiv: So that feeling is, what? The many worlds interpretation would see that as an observed sane person (relatively speaking) or an unobserved snap
Stiv: into insanity
Stiv: or if our eventual insanity LEADS to our death and he's trying to pinpoint what stresses cause that
Stiv: that would be less messy
Stiv: no wait, just as messy
emilly.orr: Or, you're all wired
emilly.orr: And he's recording everything
Stiv: Oooh fuck
Stiv: I didnt even think of the possibily of being an artificial construct replica of the original
Stiv: damn
Stiv: If so, he's laughing about the irony of me spending so much time on computers
Stiv: in a computer
Stiv: that bastard
emilly.orr: Oh, well, that's going to happen
emilly.orr: The creators of the greater games like to play them
emilly.orr: Thus, their creations like to play them
Stiv: That bastard
Stiv: You see? He's a bastard
emilly.orr: So is your objective to win, or to defeat him, or just to survive?

I admit, at this point--along with giggling on occasion--I was halfway buying into this.

Stiv: Well
Stiv: if I defeat him
Stiv: let's see
Stiv: our realities will shift so I become the original
Stiv: and therefore, have won
Stiv: so he wins there, because I become him
Stiv: Survival plays out best for both of us
Stiv: which is just what he wants
Stiv: for now
emilly.orr: Likely
Stiv: God, he's a bastard
emilly.orr: Definitely a twisty thinker
Stiv: I was more comfortable being a clone than I am now that I feel like I'm just a participant in the quantum suicide/immortality experiment
Stiv: I'm going to bed before I question existence
emilly.orr: Might be best.
Stiv: Yes
Stiv: Good night Em
emilly.orr: Good night, Lord.

And he poofed into wherever God poofs, when he's not conscious and actively messing with the space-time continuum. Or sending Lily "Crusher" Killowski to beat down Borg.

Here's to hoping he slept it off. Or at least, upon rising, found the quantum key generator to return to Stiv Prime's lab. Now that would be amusing to write about.

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