In the residential area of Jacksonville, near the Rockies, lies a community of well-off folks. Their cookie-cut houses stand side by side, with their red and yellow mesa tiles, fire-resistant bricks, and high tinted glass windows were always tainted with a clear white layer of snow. Coniferous tress blanketed the rolling hills of the surrounding area of Jacksonville. Even though as you approach this recluse community, it was a fairly small yet urbanized community closeted from the major cities like Seattle and Chicago city with only one entrance and exit – the Potomac River Bridge.
There was one resident however, John
Newmann, who embodied perfectly the calm and destitute place he is accustomed
to. John was known as one of the most intelligent student in his high school.
He knew that by studying excellently, he would do just fine in life; and by
doing so, he would reach almost any dream to be conceived. Aside from his usual
academic ventures, he would, day and night, read dialogues and inquiries on the
various discussions on philosophy, metaphysics, and philology.
One day, while going home from school, he
noticed that a hummingbird was flying almost too lively among the snow covered
pine trees. He remarked it as peculiar because at this time of the year,
hummingbirds are known to migrate far south. John, now curious, followed the
hummingbird to its nest. He looked up at a young oak tree; there it was, the
hummingbird, feeding its young. But as John looked unceasingly as to know the
exact reason for the hummingbird’s stay up here in the north, he was suddenly
baffled. The bird disappeared as it had rotated clockwise to the right behind
the oak tree. Seeing this, John looked far to his right to see where the
hummingbird had gone. Surrendered, he looked back at the oak tree where the
nest was positioned. To his utter surprise than before, the hummingbird flew
past the tree from the left and stoop down on the nest.
”How odd!” he exclaimed
to himself.
By that time, the snow had fallen rapidly
than before, and there it was, the hummingbird that broke the laws of physics. He
flinched for one second, and then the hummingbird was gone again!
At that moment John took a glance at his watch.
”I was standing here
for almost thirty minutes?” he thought.
Realizing that he was late for home, he eventually took his
leave and walked.
John had been
walking briskly; it was close to twilight when he reached the turn before the
next couple blocks across from his house. But as he was about to take a left
turn down Mulberry Lane, a milkman suddenly appeared out of nowhere. John
bumped the milkman’s shoulder,
“Oh,” John anxiously
said, thanking silently that the milk did not spill, “I’m sorry.”
The milkman had smiled
at him and said with enthusiasm, “Good Morning, Sir! Milk for your breakfast!”
then he tipped his white hat and continued walking.
“Peculiar!” remarked
John, “Milkmen now deliver at night?”
Then he realized, it
was the 2020’s! There aren’t any milkmen anymore!
Growing more anxious of his surroundings, he hurried back to his
house, went upstairs to his bedroom, and locked his door tight.
“What was that all
about?” he asked himself, “Why is everything so weird today?”
He glanced at his
bookshelf and picked a lengthy volume titled, “The Modern Metaphysics”. John
fumbled through the pages, looking chapter by chapter for that one part of the
book that will explain his strange day.
“The Simulation
Theory,” he said under his breath. The Simulation Theory was proposed decades
ago, stating that as technology progresses, there is a chance that reality can
be made through simulation, and consciousness completely fabricated by
computers.
Completely
exhausted by the knowledge he had regained, John leaned back on his chair and
stared at the dark hued night, blanketed by stars. But he noticed something out
of the blue; there was a white square patch on the sky. Getting his telescope,
he quickly pointed it to the patch on the sky.
As he examined
the small patch on the sky, his jaw immediately dropped. The hair at the back
of his neck stood, and he froze on the spot,
“Oh my God,” he was
appalled, “That patch looks like a dead pixel on a computer scree-“
Then it went
white, his eyesight that is. John’s senses were cut off. His hearing completely
impaired; and his motor and cognitive senses shut down, his consciousness
disappeared.
At that moment, he stood there like a marble statue, his body
stiff, and the expression of horror still evident on his face – he was not
moving. The snow outside stopped mid-falling, and the swaying trees locked in
position.
Just then, a
person clad in a white hazmat suit and wore red rubber gloves entered John’s
bedroom as it was not locked shut. The person took out a syringe filled with a
seemingly glowing yellow liquid then injected the frozen and rigid John Newmann
with its contents. After so, the mysterious white person produced a field
journal from his hazmat pocket, then proceeded to write on it – Experiment No.
261303: Failed.
The mysterious
person sighed, then said in a low baritone voice,
“Mr. Alexander, you
have to reconnect this one’s neural circuit board to a capacity of 600
terabytes, close to the modern Nexus-8 version.”
“Copy that, Alpha One”
an electronic voice said, resonating in Alpha One’s ears.
With that, Alpha
One produced another item from his hazmat suit, a beeping mechanism that
resembles a pre-war tazer.
“Reconnect and realign
to reality no. 261304, commence in 3, 2, 1,”
As Alpha One said “1”, he attached the tazer-like mechanism to
the back of John Newmann’s neck, producing an electric spark.
John woke up startled. He looked at his duvet, covered in sweat.
He had a weird dream; something about white people and hummingbirds.
He quickly realized that it was a school day, and naturally glanced
at the alarm clock on his bed side desk. 7:10 AM, the clock depicted. Getting
up, his head immediately felt dizzy. He took a shower first then dressed
rapidly so that he would not be late to catch the school bus.
As he was leaving
his room, he pondered if he had recently set-up his high-powered telescope on
the side of his desk. He squinted at the telescope then came to a realization
that maybe his sibling had set it up before he came home yesterday, or perhaps
his father did. “I don’t know,” he thought to himself, “last night’s a blur, as
if I just existed today.” With that, he continued on his way outside of his
house, walking past the snow-covered pine trees of Jacksonville, Washington.