the same deal".
"I've not heard that one either, guys," said Ian, scratching the back of his neck.
Jeremy explained that a culture with enough technology could create a computer simulation so sophisticated, its inhabitants would not be able to distinguish it from reality.
“I've seen that in a dozen movies,” said Ian.
“That's right,” replied Jeremy. “But the Ancestor Simulation, as it's called, is run not once but billions of times over potentially billions of years. If a simulation is left to run for this long, then it follows that the inhabitants of the simulation would one day make their own simulations. So if you follow the maths down the rabbit hole fully, that is to say, a nearly infinite number of simulations are currently being run and will be so in the future. Therefore the chance of us currently not being in a simulation is as close to nil as to be almost meaningless.”
Ian smiled uneasily.
“The computer power to do that ...”
Jeremy rolled his eyes :
“They have an answer for that. Think about how fast computational speeds have increased since -”
“Global Sniper!” Nathan broke his friend's sentence with a laugh.
“Yes, Global Sniper,” sighed Jeremy.
"It's a logical extension of the premise about nearly infinite potentialities," murmured Nathan. "Expressed in a different way.”
“I like the simulation idea, then,” said Ian. “You could imagine that when we saw Death it was like a … Beta version of the program.”
Nathan warmed to the idea.
“Or perhaps a programmer got bored one rainy Wednesday afternoon and saw us playing on the hillside and thought we should meet Death,” he said. Then, to himself the thought came to him : And he wrote himself into the simulation as a Knight with a metal-bound book.
Jeremy's annoyance manifested as the steady drumming of his glass against the chair sides.
"As I maintain," he said slowly, "A parlour game. Useless conjecture devoid of relevance to my own life. And not that I really care, but surely not a thought to comfort either of you when he appears in your dreams."
Ian laughed, saying that he never dreamed of Death.
“He is there every damn night!” growled Jeremy. “He is looking for that damn frog, and thinks I have it.”
Nathan thought of The Tell Tale Heart again and reached for the frog in his pocket, not really knowing if he would actually produce it, when Jeremy stood suddenly, sweeping his glass to the timber decking.
“This was a mistake,” he said.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Ian. “You’ve sought your own answers, we can see that, in science and books. Yet it seems you can’t relate to our experience at all.”
“You see mysticism and cosmic wonder in it all, Ian, and for that I pity you. But you know what? A part of me almost envies the ignorance that allows you that luxury.”
He turned to face Nathan, saying :
“And Nathan, you’ve chosen some middle ground I find frankly contemptible. You’re meekly welcoming the abuse we suffered, yet your knowledge of science should surely have scoured the sentimentality away by now.”
In a few seconds he reached the door, shrugging through Nathan’s hand where it sought his shoulder.
“Don’t try and contact me again,” he stated flatly.
With that he was gone; the pair did not follow.
Nathan suggested a return to the main room. There, they freshened their drinks and regarded their former classmates clustering on the dance floor.
“We’ll never know, will we,” said Ian. “Why us, I mean.”
“I don’t think so, no,” replied Nathan. “A paradox.”
Ian asked what he meant.
“Well, to be shown the world beyond, as you say, to command Death itself and then be left to ponder its meaning for the rest of our lives.”
“Veterans is what we are,” said Ian. “I mean like young men who go off to war and grow old with the defining moment of their lives receding faster and faster, still trying to make sense of it all.”
Nathan's next words were said with a smile.
“Apart from the bayoneting and shooting and watching our friends blown up.”
“Of course,” said Ian wryly. “Apart from that, veterans is exactly what we are.”
“I think Jeremy knows he is fooling himself, to deny it all I mean,” said Nathan. “We have to deal with it, and –“
A jostling presence to their side; a thick-set man setting up a line of shotglasses.
Ian’s eyes narrowed.
It’s Paul Forster, thought Nathan immediately. Untouched by the years was the wide set of his eyes, his fleshy nose and cleft chin, features which Nathan had internalised on some primal circuitry of threat. The wine-web flitted from his brain in a second. He found space and time swinging like barges in the wake of his thoughts.
Nathan knew immediately what he would do. He leaned forward and scooped up two of the glasses.
“They have to be for us, don’t they?” he said.
Paul looked at him without recognition. Nathan saw multiple realities split away from this instance: Smashing the glasses in the man’s face; dropping the drinks and walking away; clasping him close and weeping.
“How’ve you been, Paul? It’s Nathan” – he clapped Ian on the shoulder – “Nathan Strangward.”
“Christ, Nathan!” came the man’s response, in seeming genuine surprise. “It’s lame and I’ve been saying it all night, but how the hell are you?”
“Good,” replied Nathan. “But I’m sure you’ve been hearing that all night too.”
Paul guffawed, there was no other word for it. Nathan had been expecting this; that Paul would not be twirling his moustache and boasting that he now ran a successful business making kitten-hide coats and landmines for the third world.
They are never the villains we want them to be, he thought, or deserve.
“You made our lives hell, you bastard,” said Ian suddenly. “I wanted you to know that.”
Ian trembled to such a degree the glass slipped from his fingers and shattered. This cast the dénouement instantly as mere drunkenness; Paul took a step back. Nathan smiled and Ian, dropped his glass in solidarity.
Oh why not, he thought.
“You did, you know. And Paul, I am going to do to you the worse thing I know how to.”
“Touch me and you’ll be charged,” said Paul. “Plus a pair of fucking lawsuits.” As he delivered these words, he spread his stance wider and balled his fists by his sides.
“The worst thing I can do is not hit you, it’s make you doubt the very foundation of your reality,” said Nathan.
He withdrew the frog from his pocket.
“You’ve seen this before, but I have no doubt you’ve forgotten it.”
Before Paul could reply, Nathan tore the top from his shot glass against the bar edge with a downward swipe, slipped the ruined vessel down against the frog’s belly.
“I’m sorry, old friend,” he whispered to it.
Paul’s reaction was denied Nathan; the arms of his former classmates bound him and he saw only mirror ball spots where they coated the ceiling. One of them told him to shut up; it was only at that moment he was conscious that he was laughing. Nathan closed his eyes and when he opened them again he saw the night sky. The arms released him and he folded to the ground.
“Thank-you, gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s do this again in another 20 years.”
Ian was soon beside him.
“It’s all true,” he said. “Jeremy can deny it all he wants, but you have proof, Nathan, and –“
Nathan closed his eyes again.
“It was never proof,” he said. “Then frog just is. Its unkillability is like a property of the universe itself.”
“Maybe so,” said Ian. “Jeremy deserves to see it again.”
Nathan un-balled his fingers, drew the amphibian to his face and whispered another apology to it.
“He’d science it away. You heard him, he doesn’t want mystery. There’ll never be an unknowable for him.”
Ian chuckled now as he helped his friend up.
“You’re right,” he said. “That’s his choice. On some level I respect … and even understand that.”
Nathan looked to the sky. Those stars, he thought, will twinkle down at me regardless of anything I do or may become, of what atrocity man might visit on man.
“Indifferent serenity,” he said.
“The stars?” asked Ian, and craned his own neck skyward.
“Yes,” said Nathan. “The stars.”
The pair watched them for a while and then left with promises to call each other. Ian and Nathan did talk over the coming years, but their conversation never again broached the metaphysic or the Land of Death. This was not a failing of their collective will or imagination, thought Nathan.
It was paradox again: They could share their experiences with no-one else, yet could no longer with each other. Ian’s veteran analogy came back to Nathan: I don’t suppose old soldiers reminisce about the meaning of the machine-gun fire that took their arm and their friend’s life, he thought. Or if they do, not with each other.
Yet such simple stoicism eluded Nathan - no matter how desperately he pursued it - and the paradox of this eventuality was not lost on him.
Upon his arrival home, Nathan kissed his wife and daughter. Flashes of the night’s events came to him now and then; while pouring a glass of bourbon he saw his hands shook. He sat on the back porch and his wife joined him.
“That wasn’t easy, Andrea,” he said. “They’ve all changed so much. Ian was pretty much the only one I could relate to.”
As if on cue, the frog jostled in his pocket and he cast his eyes down in