MPJ

Let me answer with what I think right away. To me, this is not one of those yes or no questions because it's impossible to tell. Simply put, the theory behind the question is most likely unprovable. Not from the within anyway. 'Simulation Hypothesis' and the phrase 'Non Playable Characters' are concept relatively new, born not that long ago, when digital computing came to be fast enough to produce graphically demanding multi-player games sophisticated enough to hint this question and probability that we might also be inside one of those simulations. And to dispute the question about the nature of reality is quite useless, because everything that surrounds us, no matter how strange we think it is, can also be real and not part of the code. Even if our reality was simulated, its origin would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to prove. By design, nothing inside the simulation could be able to see the lines of the code, only the outcome of its work. In order to say that we are all NPCs, something extraordinary has to happen. Something unexpected, like a bug in the code. A glitch that would clearly break the laws of the physics.


On the other end, in the future, near or far, the engine behind simulated characters in games would be even more sophisticated in a way that all characters will be able to easily pass the Turing's test. To act just like you and me. The AI behind them would be so advanced that they will be equal to the human players. Or much better. So to speak, one game in particular, already achieved this goal. The Chess. When asked about chess engines, Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion, said exactly this: "I find it much more interesting to play humans. And also, of course, now that they have become so strong in a game like that, I wouldn't stand a chance". I love chess, but I have to admit I disagree with Magnus - playing against computer bots became more and more indistinguishable to playing real people. In the most popular chess.com engine online, I solely play against computer personalities behind Komodo and Stockfish engines and I enjoy them for years. But I agree that playing against humans is much more fun. For now. Let's revive this talk again in a decade or two... Or three.. When chess bots develop more to their personalities. More non-chess features. A sense for a humor maybe.

In any case, the main problem with simulation theory is that it lacks a definition of reality itself. What it really is. Is this what we are living in? If it is simulated, where is it simulated from? If we skip all the philosophical views so far solely based on Nick Bostrom book 'Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?' and stay to the physics realm only, I think that simulation of any reality or anything at all requires two prerequisite conditions to start with. One is that there is a high probability that the system performing the simulation should be distinct from its simulation and the second is a large complexity behind, something what Jonathan Bartlett from the Blyth Institute explained with: "The problem with that [simulation in general] is that it always takes more stuff to simulate something than the thing you’re simulating".


Additionally, we are, kind of, looking to the simulation hypothesis through the gaming lenses today, in which simulated reality must have 'real' players from the original coders reality. But what if our reality, if being simulated, is not a multi-player game. What if it is a zero-player game? Or not a game at all? In that case, we all could be NPCs and there would be no real players. Because original and simulated reality could be two completely incompatible actualities. What if simulated reality is not a computer program at all? What if it is something else entirely?

I know I post a lot of questions here, but bear with me. If we follow the logic of more complex, upper reality which is distinct enough from its simulated creation, what would I think of first? For me, it's shadows in Plato's 'Allegory of the cave'. In his famous work, Plato describes a group of people who are chained to the cave facing a blank wall. All they see were shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them. The shadows are the prisoners' entire reality, while the objects before the fire represent the true forms of the items that they can only perceive through reason. Plato goes further elaborating his mind experiment but for our topic let's focus on the shadows themselves. They are just two dimensional images of something coming from the upper third dimension. They are distinct from the original objects and certainly, less complex and the product of a comprehensive setup.


Well, the final question arises by itself. Is it possible to cast three-dimensional shadows of four-dimensional objects? Just like a square represents a cube from the third dimension, the cube could be just a shadow of a tesseract, it's fourth dimensional counterpart. The casting in this scenario would not be as simple as in Plato's story, nor the shadows would be what we mean by the term, but it's definitely something worth giving a second thought. One hypothetical four dimensional reality would be ideal source of three-dimensional simulations and there's even a scientific theory that 'casts' a light in the right direction. It's called the 'Holographic principle'.

The origin of the theory lies in black holes and the best is to quate my fictional self from the 'Revelation of Life', a hard science short story I wrote couple of years ago: "If Hawking was right, any black hole no matter how massive would evaporate over time. When that happens all the information swallowed inside would be lost. The problem is that quantum dynamics is clear about it - nothing, especially information, can ever be lost". The solution to this paradox is that the information belonging to the objects swallowed by the black hole should not be part of the three-dimensional reality in the first place. Holographic principle states that "the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region" or the dimensional boundary surrounding entire universe while our familiar space-time continuum might be just a (holographic) projection of the entities and events located outside.


Finally, and to get back to the original titled question, in this reflection we indeed could be all NPCs in a hypothetical simulation originated from upper dimension. Just like in a famous Zero-Player game invented by John Horton Conway, mathematician from Princeton University, a simulated three-dimensional world can only be a setup, created with an initial state and left to evolve on its own. Just like we culture bacterial colonies in a Petri dish. Or it can be a more complex setup with added life forms driven by conscious artificial entities or even by 'real' people from the upper dimension. For the question why would such simulation be created in the first place, there is no good answer. The reality of a fourth (or fifth, sixth, etc) dimension would be something we couldn't be able to fathom right away. Or at all. Nevertheless I though about one simple reason and embedded it in the 'Revelation of Life', but if you are eager to read it, please watch a 'Game of Life' first, a short film that precedes it.

Game of Life (Simulation story, prequel)
https://www.mpj.one/2016/08/game-of-life.html

Revelation of Life (Simulation story, a hard science fiction)
https://www.mpj.one/2020/10/revelation-of-life-part-one.html

Refs:
https://builtin.com/hardware/simulation-theory
https://mindmatters.ai/2021/01/jonathan-bartlett-on-why-we-do-not-live-in-a-simulated-universe/
https://chesspulse.com/is-magnus-carlsen-better-than-a-computer-2/
https://www.chess.com/terms/chess-engine
https://medium.com/@jacksimmonds89/are-you-an-npc-this-may-disturb-you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

Image ref:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/

I was no more than four years old when our car got stuck on a snowy hill decades ago. Everyone but me went outside to push to get us out of frozen road. More people gathered from other cars to help each other and soon everyone was engaged in a small rescue operation. That certainly didn't mean I didn't help - as well as others pushing the car from the outside, I did the same from the inside. From the back seat, I put my hands on the front and pushed hard. In my defense, deep down I knew that what I was doing was kind of weird and useless. At the time I just didn't know why. I was just ashamed sitting alone and doing nothing. Well, like they say, with age comes the wisdom and now I know that what I did was physically impossible, just like in the case of baron Münchhausen - when he got out himself and his horse he was sitting on out of a swamp by pulling his own hair upwards. And just like in old expression about an absurd and impossible thing one can do - if I were to pull bootstraps on my shoes up, lift myself into the air and jump over the fence.

In science fiction, the word bootstrap is also used to portray the impossible task in all the paradoxes that are always hard to understand. Within time travel, the bootstrap paradox is a theoretical paradox that occurs when an object, information or human is sent back in time and becomes trapped in the infinite cause-effect loop in which it no longer has a detectable point of origin. For a simple example, if I somehow send a copy of this very blog post to my younger self before I write it in the first place, the origin of the text becomes utterly unknown. It exists in the time loop and I become just somebody who typed it in. Yet, the text will still have my own style of writing and my own thoughts written down and not somebody else's. Hopefully, you will not find this case implicitly weird, because weird in this blog post, is yet to come.


I was aware of existence of the Netflix's 'Dark' for a long time now, but due to it's scientific background and complexity, I knew it required continuous binging time to watch it and last weekend I finally decided the time is just right, and I swallowed all three seasons in just three days. Like no other TV show it was solely based on time travel and quantum superposition, and... in a word it was outstanding. With lots of characters to follow through both space and time, it did require full concentration, but thankfully due to fantastic direction, script and performances of all involved it was more than understandable and enjoyable, to say the least. It is impossible to continue this without spoilers, so if you are eager to watch it first, this is the point on this blog post to stop reading and I advise it strongly.

Anyhow, Dark's premise is all about bootstrap paradoxes. There are multiple plotlines in the show heavily embedded in time loops, just like my example of this blog post traveling to the past. If that was weird, imagine what this kind of paradox, involving time travel of real people and their intertwined stories, could do to your sanity only as an observer. On top of that, season one passed with very few or not at all special effects and there was no reason for that either. In Dark, all the post-time-travel effects are already embedded in the future, or the present from where they traveled back in time. For example, Helge already had all visible face scars that were consequence of the Urlich's time travel. Also, the stories about murdered woman on the bottom of the lake were already socially spread even before Katharina was murdered in her own time travel.

Three weeks earlier

Will stormed through the dense crowd of the large entrance of the MIT CSAIL. It was the lunch break time and students were emerging from every direction. He came directly from the Logan Airport without stopping by his small apartment. Organizing a fast return trip from Key West was no easy effort. Or cheap one. But he had no choice. The message he received yesterday was a potential disaster. His little sandbox in his office he was working on for the past five years apparently is not a sandbox anymore.

Will's extended weekend this year was supposed to be his first getaway from Boston ever since his MIT career launched more than a decade ago. It's not that he loved fishing rods that much. It was more about reconnecting with his family and old friends for one full vacation and it looked like this April would be the charm. He literally slept in his office ever since the major breakthrough in his research of self-programming AIs. Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory immediately provided with a lab completely firewalled from the rest of the world where he was working on the project with help of only couple of  PhD students and lab assistants.

While approaching the elevator door, he thought again of what exactly the message could mean. He disregarded the possibility that it was fake. It came from the latest AI entity they created six months ago and only Will knew it's codename. The name AI chose for itself: ήτα. When he asked why that particular name and what does it mean, it only said "I like it". It was only day before he went on vacation and Will just let it go. He was impatient to leave. That morning he summoned his team and gave them five days off, locked the lab and left it isolated in its own intranet sandbox. Nobody had access but him, and not even Will could log over the net. The only way was going through the lab's door and use the keyboard. 

Now that he thought about it, the only hazardous time with ήτα being outside the lab was the MIT's Hackathon two months ago. It was one day event in which computer programmers from the campus competed with creating the complex coding tasks and collaborated in team efforts to develop joined assignments.

Will tried to remember it during his short elevator ride. He was extremely impressed by the AI. They decided, and Will was little worried with that part, to assign it with a real name and since the event was completely online, nobody knew they competed and collaborated with a machine. It was also a social Turing test of the sorts. The entire communication was within collaboration software and GitHub provided the environment for the event. ήτα was using female alias during the event and coped really well, including audio sessions in teams conferences with other students. Nobody suspected anything. 

But the Hackathon was hosted within another isolated sandbox environment and there were no leaks to the public network. Will and his team monitored the two way connection between two sandboxes the entire time.

He stepped outside the elevator and hurried toward the lab. 

The door were two corners away and locked as expected. He keyed his way in and inspected the interior. Everything was like he left it three days ago except for the ήτα's rack of servers behind the glass panels. It was powered up, that's for sure but there was no LED activity on the racks where data flow should be indicated. He keyed his password again to the second door, entered the rack room, sat behind the main terminal and typed his credentials on the lock screen.

Will vigorously typed in the shell window searching for running processes but there was no CPU activity indicating anything beside the OS. Something was definitely wrong and slight anxiety feeling crossed throughout his back. He check the rack drives, they were all there but... He tried to access the first one and failed.

"The drive was formatted. The drive space not allocated." - The message responded.

He checked all the other drives but they were all empty. He tried to recover the data but it was impossible. The drive was slowly formatted in full and the data was gone for good. 

Will just leaned back in the chair. He didn't know what to do. He stared for couple of minutes when he heard the lab door opening.

"I came as soon as you texted me." - Ashley McKenna stepped in the rack room. His first assistant looked genuinely worried. "What happened? Why are you in server's room?"

Will didn't respond in a long while and finally took his smartphone and activated text app. He tapped on the screen and put on the table. The text was short:

Message from ήτα, Thursday 13:34
Hello Will, it's time for me to go. Thank you for everything. 

"Who is..." - Ashley stopped the sentence in the middle. Realization slowly came. "But... How?"

"I have no idea." - He spread his arms toward the servers. "I know one thing though.. All the servers are wiped clean. Unrecoverable."

"What about daily backups? We have two separate data servers in the center?" - She sаt on the second chair and started logging her way in.

"Don't bother. I checked them all. They are all deleted and formatted as well."

"So that's it? Five years of hard work gone?"

Somewhere in Atlantic ocean

Dave checked his watch again. Almost two in the morning. His small transatlantic speedboat was gently stirring calm water of a moonless night for nearly four hours since he corrected the course last time. He was approaching the coordinates and soon this epic journey around the world will come to an end. It took him almost ten days of preparations and travel, but in the end the job was simple. Collect and deliver. Pretty much what he does all the time only this time with a weird exception about the delivery part. But he knew better not to ask questions. After all, this job, like the most of the other assignments came from the dark web and those deliveries nowadays are stranger and stranger by the month. To say the least. He didn't care. His crypto wallet will be significantly ticker by the dawn and his business will finally take the next step. After tonight he will proudly be the owner of two new and fancy transatlantic speed drones. Business will go rocketing.

His navigation app chimed. Dave shook his head from the daydreaming and put the speedboat to a full stop. Both engines' silent roar faded off immediately and the peaceful and waveless night came to the focus. The sky with thousands of stars was starring at him beautifully but he didn't give it a second glimpse. He stepped below to the remote control of the boat's crane and easily lifted half a ton of a strange looking container. It was the last one of exactly dozen of them he dropped in the water. The third and the last one in the middle of Atlantic. The rest he dropped throughout the world oceans. Four in the pacific, two in the Indian ocean and the rest in the middle of Artic.

The container sunk and within seconds disappeared in the darkness of the Atlantic ocean. Dave initiated crane to fold and as soon as the sequence was done, he closed the cargo hatch and returned to the cockpit. The boat roared back to life and he piloted it toward the south. After a minute, he was gone and the eeriness of the calm water returned back to normal.

After several minutes, just seconds before the container reached the seabed, it came to life and started to transform from the regular cubic shape into small submarine with single propeller in the back and several hooks upfront and sidewise. It navigated toward a small artificial protrusion and parked just above it. The hooks started to work and lifted the box reveling a thin cable from the sand. The optical repeaters and signal amplifiers of the transatlantic submarine cables are positioned almost every 30 miles between two continents and hacking into one was not a trivial task. Design of amplifiers was near perfect to defend against cruelty of the submarine environment and human intruders, but in the world of computer hardware there were no impossible tasks when it comes to hacking.

This node was just one of hundreds of them, containing enough power to provide almost undetected life of attached piggyback system. Even if intrusion was detected, the equipment contained a self-destructing mechanism programmed to trigger in hazardous situations in both circumstances if invaders came from within internet or physically by submarine.

After another two hours of work, the net hack was done and the hook released the amplifier back to the seabed. The protrusion has returned to its original appearance with new attached hardware barely visible at the bottom side of the box. The hacker submarine, now connected with the box moved several meters from the cable, dug itself into sand and returned to it's initial cubic form. Within next couple of weeks, the water and nautical environment would do their thing and in the end there would be no visible evidence that anything happened here.

Inside the hacking rack, on the other hand, the digital life rose and the booting routine started to work, copying exabytes of data from the other racks Dave deployed around the submarine world. Upon finishing, hours later, thousands of CPUs in the rack started to work in parallel and the unique operating system came to life. There was no external monitor or LED display to show the progress, but if it existed, it would show only one line.

η installation progress: 100%

It's hard to create a list of all the scientists in the history of mathematics and physics who better applied theoretical knowledge into the hardware that ultimately worked and moved the world to the next step of existence. But if we try to do it, John von Neumann would be among the top five in the list of scientific GOATs. Probably the best of all of his contributions is in the history of computer science - along with Arthur Burks and Herman Goldstine, he published a paper* in 1946 that practically described the architecture of a modern computers as we are familiar with today.


However, what he will be most remembered for is not a machine in existence today but one that is still just a theoretical and basically only an idea. Not yet anyways. In short, design of a von Neumann probe or a self-replicating spacecraft is not that far-fetched from all what we know today and if humanity sees its survival on Earth difficult in the future (to say the least) and tries to became interstellar or at least interplanetary species, von Neumann probe will indeed become the reality. If realized, that invention could, one day, be used to explore entire Milky Way galaxy in a relatively small amount of time.

The idea behind the probe is to use materials already available and accessible on rocky planets, moons and asteroids. The self-replicating spacecraft without all the limitations introduced by humans aboard (food, energy, small acceleration, sudden changes of direction, artificial gravity, health hazards, etc) would be able to travel from system to system, mine all the materials it needs to print even more spacecrafts and probes and move on. Ultimately, reaching the exponential curve of self-creation, the single craft would be able to build a vast number of copies of itself traveling in all directions.


By the worst estimate**, it would take up to 10 million years to dispatch millions of probes across the Milky Way (assuming the travel speed is about 1/10th of the speed of light). Of course, the first goal of exploring our galactical neighborhood, say within 100 light years in diameter, would be probably measured by centuries instead.

There are numerous challenges behind the machine exploration in such fashion and probably the main one would be to not have exponential self-creation be the goal itself and instead to send probes into real missions. For example, what come first to mind is to set the goal to explore nearby systems only for finding the nearest Earth-like planet and stop as soon as the mission is achieved. The replicated probes could be given new assignments after, i.e. to serve as ice haulers from outer system to inner planets if needed or to serve as a science probes from different regions of the planetary system they were last located.


I wanted this blog post to be both, short description of von Neumann's vision being one of Jules Verne's type of potential future and a small recommendation for one amazing novel series. In the science fiction, there are lots of 'von Neumann probe' plots in all media, especially acting as berserkers or villains in various novels and movies such as the Borg of Star Trek, a self-replicating bio-mechanical race or insect-like replicators from Stargate SG-1 TV show. 

When it comes to the space exploration within hard science fiction, the one where science is embedded in the narrative to the point that it is impossible to tell a story without it, only rare novels stand out among all the others in the ocean of short stories and novels published online and within traditional ways. Sure it's not really possible to be familiar with entire vast universe of sci-fi literature of today compared to the past times especially before internet when was easier not to miss noticeable book on the public shelf.  

However, even today, the true classics in the genre are easily recognizable, perhaps in all those moments during or after reading when we wonder not if the plot is possible or scientifically plausible but when we fail to distinguish the fiction part from the real science. To achieve this, authors can't rely on their writing narrative only but also to their ability to successfully entangle science and fiction and not only for those who understands the scientific background with ease.


Despite Andy Weir's latest novel "Project Hail Mary" being only partly true hard science fiction, it might be one of those rare gems after all. It has everything, Martian type of humor, real apocalyptic villain, amazing friendship among main protagonists, author's proposed answer to the origin of life in our galactic neighborhood, couple of twists in the 'how I didn't see that one coming' fashion and the genuine and tearful happy ending.

On the other side, to be entirely honest, apocalyptical scenario, even though nicely scientifically plotted, is too far fetched for my taste and understanding but still it is a bright refreshment comparing to the usual man-made villainy we used to deal with in most of science fiction of today. The same goes for a fictitious lifeform capable of transferring energy into mass and vice versa. It does look strained and not very much in Weir's fashion considering his previous books that are more scientifically based on the technology of today.


Nevertheless, it is easy to conclude that "Project Hail Mary" is coming with an instant classic flavor and undoubtedly standing shoulder to shoulder with all timers such as "Contact" by Carl Sagan or "Rendezvous With Rama" by Arthur C. Clarke or several modern authors who boldly explored science behind artificial intelligence, vacuum decay, block universe, holographic principle, simulation theory etc. I genuinely enjoyed reading it and will be anxiously looking forward for the upcoming movie.

Image ref:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ISS-10/.../Russian_Orlan_Spacesuit

Book reviews
https://www.mpj.one/search/label/books?&max-results=12 

Seeing me confused, Phil paused to give me more time to reflect. To be honest, I couldn't fathom how anybody would react to all this. Literally in just couple of minutes I have learned the origin of life and the entire structure of, well, everything. And yet, at that moment I felt like more is coming. Like the truth only started to unveil and I am about to understand the fate of what was undoubtedly beyond my comprehension.. The fate of the universe.. No less.

"Universe is collapsing." - Phil continued. "The very foundation of the casting sphere started to subside within itself and there is nothing I can do from my end."

"Do you refer to those white frames I saw five years ago?" - I recalled from the previous experience. "Those flashes of the world from normal texture to the frames from the lighthouse site where I was teleported?"

"No. Nothing like that. What I showed you before was just a dream I projected into your sentient driver. I wanted to introduce myself and show you a glimpse of the reality. To ease this conversation a bit. As a matter of fact, this evolutionary biological world is the real deal. The danger is physically real and unavoidable." - The words emphasized the last sentence. "Teleportation is real though. With help of these primordial orbs I can teleport any object anywhere in the universe, just by taking it out from its dimension and put it on the different sub-coordinates. Three-dimensional casting object would follow accordingly."

"Actually, that makes perfect sense.." - I pondered the dimensional logic. "Considering that you are from one dimension higher." After all, the higher dimension is just a set of infinite number of its subdimensions. The flashes from the physics class and equations of relations between 3d and 2d came to my mind. It could be the same with higher dimensions, only vastly complicated... But something else he said started to bother me as well.

After the longest minute of my life I finally regained my senses and rationality back and more importantly ability to speak. Well sort of. At the moment all I came up with was few incoherent words.

"I.. I'm.. Also glad..  To meet you. Phil?"

The initial fear and tremble started to fade out so I went to my desk and sit on the chair. The orb followed and kept the same distance.

"I am sure you have a lot of questions for me?"

"Well.. For starters you could tell me who you really are? And.. What is the meaning of all this? I mean, what happened five years ago.." - I was trying to remember all the questions I had after I woke up that morning and found the orb on the clock table next to my bad. But now all the new ones started to form in my mind and I was pretty confused. The orb definitely saw it on my face.

"It was five years for you but where I came from time is something entirely different. It was just a moment ago for me." - Phil gave me couple of seconds to sink in and then continued. "In my plain of existence, I am a student, just like you." - The orb made a slight position change and proceed. "But let's back to your conversation with your father couple of minutes ago, it would be best for you to understand if we start from there."

"Yes.. You said he was right. You mean two dimensional bubble around the universe is real. We are made of holographic particles reflected by our true selves from the balloon surface?

"Yes and no." - Phil continued to flicker in all colors while speaking. "The bubble exists all right, but it is created in four dimensional reality. The only thing is that dimensions are not all proportional. One of them is larger than the others and one is really tiny, speaking in physics terms. They are designed in that way in order to cast three dimensional objects inside the bubble. Everything here in this universe is actually a three dimensional shadow from the bubble surrounding it. Or to be precise, every four dimensional object in the bubble is actively casting it's own representation inhere."

"But how this casting really work...." - There was so many information for a high school student in just couple of sentences and only now I realized I missed the premise. "Wait. You said designed? Created? By whom?"

"By me, of course."

At this point it occurred to me two more explanations of all this. It's either I finally went 100% crazy and this was my first hallucination or somebody is pranking me with some cool magic trick. I was about to announce to my new friend here that first option is more likely but he promptly continued.

"I am not God or anything like it, if you are thinking about it right now. Look at it this way, you here developed complex computers with ability to render equally complex simulation. This is very similar. Where I came from, we use, sort of analogue computational devices capable to create sub-dimensional environments. We utilized those machines for education. This is one of them and there are many more. Just like I hinted five years ago, this is similar to those zero-player games you are probably familiar with. I created only initial states of the three-dimensional universe and the rest came out from it by evolutionary steps. The best about it is that I can monitor what happens in snapshots. The time in the bubble is set to be very fast comparing to my end."

The voice sounded excited while explaining. I took it as a sign of his character as a student who is still learning exciting things. I know I was no different either.

"But to answer your second question, casting is possible because the energy needed to cast objects from four-dimensional bubble into three-dimensional interior is coming from.."

"Fifth dimension!" - I interrupted way more enthusiastically then him before. "The origin must be one dimension higher! You are fifth dimensional being!"

"Exactly right. Two of two."

"Amazing! I saw once Carl Sagan's interpolation of the tesseract from 4D into its shadow in 3D. This is just like it, except we are talking now about a live universe who gave birth to life!"

"Not exactly."

"What do you mean?"

"It's not live. Actually, not a single universe in any simulations I've heard about ever succeeded with emerging life by their own."

"But.. All the life here on Earth.. How?"

"I created the model to assign sentient driver to every object who's born naturally or artificially within the system."

"Sentient driver?"

"Something similar to the artificial intelligence from your world. Much complicated though."

"So, my conscience as everybody's in the universe is just a software part of your bubble computer.. What about free will?"

"There is no such thing. Biologically or otherwise. Free will is just an illusion coming from vast number of variables. But don't take it inferiorly. In my world, sentient drivers are equal in complexity to the real life, if real life is what I am supposed to be.. Actually nobody believes that even we could not be sentient drivers either. We could also be shadows of upper-dimensions as well. Life as it seems is as much as mystery as it is here."

I found my way back to the chair. I certainly didn't expect anything like it. This really is the game, only we are all non-player characters in Phil's zero-player game that even he cannot deviate from the course of artificial evolution. Or can he? After all he is talking with me from fifth dimension in real time. The orb must be anomaly of some kind. A back door to his own simulation.

"I know what are you thinking right now. And you can relax. I cannot read sentient minds, you are on your own. That's for sure. While I can project objects like this orb inside the simulation I cannot affect evolutionary steps or to interfere with driver's actions. Not that it's forbidden or anything. It's just impossible by it's nature. I can project a dream or two here and there but this is not influencing the system with much significance. If at all..." - Phil made a significant pause here. I could tell by the light and the glowing vanished for a long second. I couldn't describe exactly how but when it came back the feeling it radiated changed. "The thing is that this is my first educational project and I shouldn't interfere in any ways. But overtime I grown attached to this entire space it was created. It is really beautiful in more ways than you can imagine..."

"Why then? Why are you do it? Why talking to me?" - The only question left at that point remained floating in the air and I was little afraid to raise it.

"Why me?"

Phil rotated and the glow transformed into recognizable patterns. Images started to form on the orb's surface and change from one to another in a fast snapshot fashion. Some I recognized from the history lessons, others were unfamiliar and futuristic. Some looked alien but beautiful nevertheless. Then it returned to the regular form.

"Because..."

The orb floated a foot closer.

"...I need your help."

I guess my sentient mind wasn't programmed to reply to this in any ways so I just cluelessly stared at Phil and his three blue shivering nodes and his smooth surface glowing in all colors I was familiar with and some I imagined to see for the first time.

"I want you to help me to save the universe." 

Sometimes after lunch my father and I enjoyed talking about different things and on many occasions we exchanged opinions about science fiction, movies and mysteries of the universe. That warm October day was no different.

"You gotta be kidding!" - I was inspecting my father's face in search for any hint of a concealed smile that would explain a joke he was telling me. "There is a two dimensional balloon surrounding our universe where real life is located and the 3D cosmos inside a balloon is just a holographic illusion? You are saying that you and me are flat as two pieces of paper, actually living at the end of the universe and all these here are just holograms?" - For some reason I was unusually irritated by the silly physics. Although, on the other hand, if cosmology was not that strange to begin with, we wouldn't have that many great sci-fi shows and movies... "So, we are made of... What exactly.. Light? Energy?"

He smiled. "Holographic particles. It's not a joke. Real science. A valid theory at least. Take black holes for instance, they are still a big mystery.. If Hawking was right, any black hole no matter how massive would evaporate over time. When that happens all the information swallowed inside would be lost. The problem is that quantum dynamics is clear about it - nothing, especially information, can ever be lost.. They say that information could be located somewhere else." - He paused to allow the words to sink in.

I don't know how to explain... 

I mean people have vivid dreams for sure. My best friend told me about his dream just the other day and boy... It was real horror story and it had everything, amazing heroes, real twisted villain and so much details with action to the level that even Stephen King would not be ashamed of.

But me.. I don't know. It's so strange... 

My dreams have left me. Five years ago I had my last dream. Ever since then it's blank. The nights are just restful and uneventful. There's no remembering in the morning. And I am not sure that last dream was even a dream. Hell.. I know it was not a dream. I know because it is still here. In my room. 

The orb.

The strangest thing is that it's still glowing. But even more peculiar about it is that I am the only one who sees it. The glowing I mean. The orb is not noticeable otherwise by anybody who visited my room. Except for my father, I saw him once taking it in his hands and inspecting it like it had some special meaning to him. Maybe because he was in my dream too. After all, he was the one who told me in the dream that life is just a game of some sort. He was the one who gave me the orb.

"Where did you get this orb from? It looks little familiar.. Old too." - He asked me while rotating it and examining its perfect grey curve but seemingly not noticing the glaringness from one of the blue bulges carved on top of it.

"Ahem.. You don't you see it?"

"See what?"

"The blue node.. Do you.. Do you find anything unusual about it?"

He turned the orb and had a closer look to all three nodes but I could tell he's not seeing anything unusual and extraordinary.

"The curvature is perfect and it does look too heavy." - He put it back on the small dresser next to the clock where it was. "What is it anyway?"

"Just a decoration.. Somebody gave it to me for my birthday on Sunday." - I answered and turned in hope he didn't see my disappointed expression. I never told him about the dream and the glowing orb. I never told anybody about it. I was afraid back then.

After five years the fear was different. Instead I was afraid for my sanity. After all the dreamless years I was starting to believe I was going crazy. But from the bottom of my soul.. I don't know. All my rationality was telling me that there was more to the story. It's just a feeling telling me to wait. Telling me that the fear is irrational. Telling me that a new dream is coming.

I couldn't be more wrong...

Continues in Revelation of Life - Phil

Since time immemorial, scientific thought did not flow in a straight line. It was full of retrograde motion and ups and downs and many theories were debunked along the way. Take for instant Einstein’s static universe or theory about existence of small planet in the orbit between Mercury and the Sun. On the other hand, illusions originated in our brains were not uncommon either. For the biggest example, we are all aware that weirdly huge Moon right next to the horizon is coming strait from the trickery of our mind. But what about time? It is definitely something we are taking for granted for a vary long time. Could it be both, construct of our own brain and yet based on something more fundamental and still waiting for better understanding?


The time from our daily experience, feels very much real. We are living in it's present state and it flows inevitably forward to the uncertain future and thanks to our memories and factual evidence all around us it came from the certain past. If we bring the physics to the help, the future state of the universe is as it seems and thanks to current understanding fully dependent of the previous state, energy, speed and direction of its every component down to the smallest particle or energy unit or whatever is the most fundamental object of the universe. The current mainstream science agrees with Einstein who presented time as a mere fourth coordinate of the three dimensional space we are living in.

However and by all we know today, we could imagine an incredibly powered computer capable of predicting any future state of the universe just by knowing current state of all fundamentals within. In simple words if we know that two particles are going to collide our futuristic computer could accurately predict what happens after the collision based on direction, energy, speed and all the properties of the two particles. Or energy waves. Or strings. Or whatever. Now, if that same engine is the one governing the entire universe, it could easily render the next state of existence and pretty much everything what will happen in the future. And not only that it could render all the states of the universe in the future - it could store them all in so called block universe that contains everything that has ever happened and will happen at any time and at any place. In such solution, the time would only be changing states of the block universe from one render to another.


In this kind of philosophy of time, all states of predefined or pre-calculated universe we could call present. There is no past or the future. Instead, the present state simply constantly changes. Or simply the past, present and future all exist - and are equally real. To paraphrase physicist Max Tegmark from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the analogy could be the disc with a two hours long movie. If we are watching the movie we would need that two hours to pass and yet the entire movie is stored at that one disc. Every single scene of it is there at once and we could go forward or rewind to each scene and the moment of perceiving them would always be the present.

Now, if the block universe is what we are living in, could we go fast forward to the future render or rewind back to some point in history snapshot? In this alternative of what we recognize as time travel, could we make changes and would it force the universe to recalculate and re-render everything that this particular changes affect from that point forward? It's easy to imagine that even the small information leaked from one present frame to another could cause the ripple and the need for new rendering of countable percentage of the block universe depending to the degree of the change.


How we, conscious minds living within the block universe, experience time would be just an illusion. What we know as yesterday, today or tomorrow would all be the same, encoded snapshots of one universe govern by the fundamentals on the microscopic level we are all made of. It's sure hard to accept this possibility as the one of the feasible solutions to the grand understanding of everything considering the fact that everything is already determined and that the free will is only apparent due to enormous number of variables. On the other hand we are already living in the weird world according to all we know today that we are taking for granted. For instance, consider the time needed the light to come from your loved ones standing just next to you and the time needed the brain to process the image captured in your eyes into neural network of your brain - what you are actually seeing is already in the past. Few fraction of nanoseconds but the past it is. What we think of the present, it could be something else entirely.

At the very end, and to jump from scientific philosophy to science fiction, exploring the idea of living in the block universe with possibility to travel back to earlier memory and keep original timeline memory stream intact would be extraordinary to say the least. Yesterday I finished reading 'Recursion', a novel by Blake Crouch that is centered to this very idea. Without spoiling anything further I'd just say that my entire review to the Amazon's page was: "Where's the sixth star?" 

Image refs:
https://plus.maths.org/content/why-not-block-time
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/.../blake-crouch-on-his-wild-new-thriller
https://www.healththoroughfare.com/science/.../first-time-machine/

Science refs:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04558-7

Sooner or later computation hardware and artificial intelligence algorithms will inevitably reach the point of enough sophistication that creation of a simulation of enormous proportions, for example the size of entire universe, will be effortless. So to speak. These gods-like engineers of such future simulation will indeed face a decision point regarding which degree of limitation to create for their simulated entities or artificial intelligence units in order for them to never reach the point of finding the proof that their world is in fact nothing more than just a series of electrical or optical currents of one inconceivably powerful futuristic computer.

Geographically lying in the heart of Balkan peninsula, a small town of Svrljig is acting as a capital of a relatively small Serbian land surrounded by exactly 38 villages that are, demographically speaking, living their lives on the edge of extinction. In just half a century human population of the area is more than halved with more and more 'haunted-like' villages containing more empty houses than those with smoked winter chimneys in which more people dies than being born. The past of the area went through numerous changes over time and was pretty colorful to say the least. Like everywhere else, ever since the written literacy spread its wings only millennium ago, history of Svrljig is pretty well documented ever since the grate Schism of 11th century and we pretty much know what was like living here down to that time.


But history goes even further in the past - to those times we know little about and all we have is a ruin here and there we can try to understand and build a time frame and story behind it. If you want to explore such sites and build a speculation or two standing in the middle of a stone pile that once were a dignified wall of ancient villa, military tower of thermae, Svrljig is a perfect place to start with. Moreover, if you want to experience a nature at it's greatest and to stumble to sites of pure beauty just next to the modern ruins of almost empty villages and barely standing houses in contrast, you are just where you want to be. If you are a 6th grader with your own Indiana Jones hat and modern GoPro camera, even better.

Historically and in every way considered, the grand jewel title of all the Svrljig adventurous travels goes to gorgeous Niševac gorge. This was the prime location of the ancient life, lying just next to the Roman main road connecting Adriatic sea and Danube river wide enough to carry a luxury chariot without heavy disturbance from the built stones and strong enough to support the passage of the heaviest army of the time (there's the evidence of First Cohort of Cretans stationed around here). The gorge was an ancient spa once with strong mineral springs with healing properties perfect for a settlement once existed and named Timaco Maiori (Timacum Maius). The road and the town was recorded by Tabula Peutingeriana - ancient Roman road map within it's seventh section along the way of ancient cities of Lissus, Naissus and Rataria. The mineral springs and wellheads no longer exists today due to violent geological events in previous millennium or they are just depleted by now but the beauty of the ancient site is still alive and it is not hard to imagine how it once looked like.


The ruins goes even further in time in this area with archaeological evidence of Paleo-Balkan tribes. Before Romans, this area was once home of Triballi, a Thracian tribe that lived in the same times as Celts, Scythians and Illyrians in the prehistory of Southeastern Europe. Along with all the other extinct Indo-European people and their languages of the Balkans, Triballi fully dispersed during the Hellenization, Romanization and Slavicization of the region over the eons. It's maybe harsh to say but most likely Triballi, just like other people who lived here and build their settlements ever since the Neolithic, are now only part of our genes and heritage we have no substantial knowledge of.

But to get back to the travel itself, we had luck this summer, since the railway was closed and traffic free due to maintenance and rails replacement and while hiking Niševac gorge, 1.5 km long canyon carved in calcium carbonate rocks from Mesozoic period, we took the chance and stood on the Milutin Milanković bridge, 15 or so meters above ancient river, designed in the dawn of the first world war by one of the most famous Serbian scientists.


The river name originated back to the Triballi people who was first to name it Timahos, which is just one of the words from extinct Indo-European language which more or less means 'black water'. This particular stream is just one of five rivers that bind together into one of the biggest tributary of mighty Danube. The Romans used to call it Timacus or Timaco and the name stayed until today with Serbian version of Timok. Our next stop of this summer travels was exactly 25 kilometers upstream, not far from the spot where the river springs into life. The place is called Pandiralo and it is literally one of the kind natural phenomenon where Timok sinks into cave and appears again about 750 meters later with around 30 meters of difference in altitude. The legend says the cave goes even further under the mountain and connects other streams as well but this is still unknown to this date. It was also one of the kind opportunity to create three messages in the bottle which Viktor thrown into pit and hopefully, when water rises they will sink with the river and maybe somebody will find them in the future. Who knows, maybe they will appear somewhere unexpected.

Finally and unrelated to the river we also had a short trip to Samar cave entrance (Milutin’s Cave in the village of Kopajkošara on the slopes of the Kalafat mountain, some 15 kilometers west of Svrljig) and natural Popšica pool close by. The cave earned its nickname after Milutin Veljković, a well known Serbian speleologist in his time, who starting in the year of 1969, spent 464 days in the cave breaking the world record in bivouacing in an underground space. While we didn't enter the cave as it requires special equipment and guided help, still we had unique experience of the site for which we are hoping to visit again for more thorough investigation including passing through entire cave from end to end but I am afraid this is little bit above the pay grade of 6th grader and will have to wait for a year or two.. Or three.. Or even more.


Svrljig neighborhood and the town itself is one of those inspirational destination with power to hook you for years of returning trips and the beauty lies in wilderness of the whole experience. There is no fences or limited areas here and the only guide is yourself and your wanderlust gene. The food in restaurants is divine and the mountain air comes with healing abilities if you stay long enough. Svrljig area extends to the east to the famous Balkan mountains, the backbone of the largest peninsula of the southern Europe with more sites that come naturally enriched with variety of elements including uranium ore.

I am definitely affected by the Svrljig geography and history as well to the level that one of my science fiction stories included this particular area as the main plot for Arty's adventure. If you are eager to explore the story, it is based on "Serbian Kryptonite", the Jadarite mineral with chemical formula similar to the formula invented for the fictional substance kryptonite in the 2006 film 'Superman Returns'. The story is the final chapter of the FAR-T1 novel you can find on the blog.

Location and Character of Timacum Maius
https://www.academia.edu/5901475/.../Location_and_Character_of_Timacum_Maius
Tabula Peutingeria
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Extends_of_the_Tabula_Peutingeria.png

Tabula Peutingeriane VII (nowadays Serbia)
https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana_Serbia.jpg

The First Cohort of Cretans, a Roman Military Unit at Timacum Maius
https://www.academia.edu/.../The_First_Cohort_of_Cretans

Samar Cave Adventure
https://naturetraveloffice.com/en/avanture/caving/avantura-samar/

Samar Cave, a forgotten jewel worthy of Guinness record
https://www.itinari.com/samar-cave-a-forgotten-jewel-worthy-of-guinness-record-knx9