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Hello, I'm Wilkins' stories all the time.

The ládua are here.

Let's get into it.

Open your eyes child.

Your home. A voice boomed, seeming to come from every direction. Fuck me. It didn't work.

My head hurts. An entire bottle of code I'm followed by a vodka chaser will do that.

Carla must have found me past her in called an ambulance. Fucking Carla. Now I have to

explain why I did this to her. To my parents to everybody. That's going to be an awkward

Facebook post. I crap my eyes open by a sliver,

convincing already from the painfully bright overhead lights. You didn't call anybody

yet, did you? I managed. But they must have. That's got to be hospital policy.

Who did I list as next of Ken? I think I filled that form out when I was a teenager.

It will be mom and dad for sure. When my vision came into focus, I laughed out of shop

mostly, but also because it had to be a prank of some kind. The source of the voice turned

out to be a short, bolding man that looked to be in his four days dressed up in an angel

costume. A tall and cally-haired fellow with a smile that revealed entirely too much

of his guns was wearing an angel costume as well. The halo is just kind of floated there.

Then why are you something? I couldn't knock the quality of wings were made with real

feathers and looked expensive. Is this for a TV show? I'm muddard. The squat-boulding

man suddenly stretched out his wings. I clapped sincerely impressed. I've seen these things

before. There's a cosplayer who custom builds them for like 500 a pop. Mostly it's

furrows who buy them. You died. Welcome to the Kingdom of Heaven. He just showed to

the far wall, which split open before my eyes to reveal a landscape made of clouds,

with a man's pearly gates. To one side of the gates stood a figure I assumed was meant

to be Saint Peter. My jaw hung open. No fucking way. The taller of the two angels asked

me what was wrong. Well, I mean, am I really dead? This is really happening right now.

I never believed in any of this shit. The taller angel shot a concerned look to the short,

holding one. It says in your file that you attended to Catholic private schools and were

confirmed at 14. There's no indication that you ever repositized. I bit my tongue for

a moment, worried perhaps I'd been led into heaven by some sort of clerical error I was

blowing it. But then I realized the absurdity of celestial beings making clerical errors.

Alright. Who are you guys? I mean, really. Drop the act. They once again gave each other

word glances, and the taller one spoke. Why? What makes you say it's an act? I folded

my arms and raised an eyebrow at him. Listen, guy. Let's say I told you I'm the greatest

person ever to live. If you believe that and spend the rest of your life worshiping me,

you'll receive a fantastical reward. The taller angel opine that it sounded pretty good

so far, plainly bluffing. So I continued. The thing is, the supposed reward is conveniently

unfaulsifiable because it's after you die. But I assure you that's not by design. It's

just the way things are. Likewise, with the horrible punishment you will suffer if you

don't believe me and decline to worship me. Also, if you begin at some point, but then

stop later in life. The balding angel shrugged and said he didn't see the problem, so I

pressed a matter. Alright. Next, I tell you that a few doubt me is because of the influence

of an invisible trickster whose existence I also cannot prove to you. So you should

ignore your doubts and preemptively mistrust any evidence you might encounter the contradicts

my claims. They both looked increasingly irritated, so I heard it along. I also tell you

the world is ending soon, but I don't say exactly when, so it always feels as if it could

happen at any moment. Therefore, it's urgent for you to convince as many other people to

worship me as possible while there is still time, so they receive the fantastic reward

and avoid the horrible punishment. I urge you to sell your belongings, leave your home

and job to follow me, and tell you that if you love your mother or father more than

me, you're not worthy of me. Do you believe all this? If not, what might I be trying

to accomplish with such a complicated lie? The balding one objected. What if he performed

miracles? I rolled my eyes. Only according to a book written by my followers, not corroborated

by any contemporaneous writings, then you may as well believe the accounts of miracles found

in the Koran or Book of Mormon. Fatal one turned in. What if he predicted future events?

I asked if both the predictions and their fulfillment were recorded after the fact in

a book written long after my death. He nodded cheaply. Then it's easy to fake. I pointed

out. My followers could just record what actually does occur, then altered the details of my

original prediction so it matches up. After a couple of centuries, with no internet

to preserve information, only that account of events will survive because my followers

will have made sure to preserve it. The two of them, having apparently had enough, took

off their halos.

Fine, Mr. Smarty Pants. You're not in heaven. Happy now? But what I don't get is how come

your file says you died, a Catholic. Our information is never flat up wrong. I kept it to myself

for the happiness of my family. They never would have accepted me if they knew I stopped

believing. I never so much has wrote down what I really thought about it anywhere.

Two men now busily disrobed a reveal plain white uniforms under the robes and wings,

which they hung up in a closet lawnside multiple of their types of costumes, corresponding

to the beliefs of other cultures. I dimly remembered some of them from when I took a world's

religion's class. The peligates and clothes kept outside shimmered, then vanished. What

replaced it was a stunning view of a city, unlike any I have ever seen. Abstract white

buildings more closely resembling works of art or monuments than anything meant to be

lived in, were transparent tubes carrying fast moving water around and between them. As

I watched, I could finally make up people in bathing suits coerining through the tubes,

which I now figured for the most extensive water slide I've ever witnessed.

Where am I really? Who are you people? Is this the future? The bald one gestured and

a trio of comfortable chairs rose out of the floor. The minute I got off the goane,

it sunk into the floor as if absorbed by it. At their insistence, I took the only open

seat. Yes, you might say this is the future, but you really are dead, or rather you were.

That's impossible. I said as much. I don't believe in souls of spirits or whatever. It doesn't

make sense. If science couldn't detect souls because they're material and thus non-interactive

of the material universe, how could souls interact with our material brains and bodies in such

a way as to control them? For that matter, what do we need such large, complex brains

for if they're only signal receivers? They shook their heads. No, no spirits, nothing

like that. The truth of the matter is simultaneously more and less spectacular, particular. Are you

familiar with determinism? The word brine, a bell, but I invited them to fill me in as I

couldn't remember the particulars, Kijistu, and Sonsora, the three-dimensional visualization

appeared in the midst of our jails, a gasped, having never seen technology disabfranced.

Essentially, he said, the universe is more or less just a collection of particles, and

those particles all behave in ultimately predictable ways. The image depicted a couple of atoms.

One of the atoms collided with another, which changed the course and speed of both. If

you have detailed information about the position spin and velocity of every particle within

a given volume, you can predict every interaction and future state of those particles, however

far into a future you care to compute. I nodded along. It's like falling dominoes. Knowing

how particles interact, where they are, what they're doing, and how fast they're going

allows you to predict where they will be, what they'll be doing, and how fast they'll

be going a second later. Or minute. Or a year. Or a century. The animation sped up,

now consisting of thousands of particles interacting with each other. But then it began

to slow down until frozen before it began to rewind. This principle is reversible, the

former angel explained. If you know the position spin and velocity of every particle in a given

volume, you can not only predict every future state and interaction between those particles.

You can also reconstruct every prior interaction and state as far back into the past as you

care to compute. The simulation continued to move in reverse. Faster and faster. Though

really, I never have known it was going backwards if I hadn't seen a reversal occur a moment

earlier, that raised all sorts of questions in my mind about whether the direction of

time's movement is a matter of perception. The two men seated before me didn't answer,

instead carrying on about particles, predictions, and computing power. Now, if the past and future

interactions of a small set of particles are predictable, then necessarily the past and

future interactions of any number of particles are predictable. No matter how numerous, it's

just a question of how much computing power do you have at your disposal. No, he couldn't

mean, but he did. The visualization now depicted in the network of satellites around each

body in the solar system is not enough just to skin the Earth, of course. Even done to

every last subatomic particle, because the Earth is not a perfectly closed system. There

are external influences which must be accounted for it if the simulation is to yield accurate

results than entire solar system mapped down to every last subatomic particle, impossible.

But I suppose no more so than the technology I enjoyed in life, even though it would

have seemed like magic to pre-industrial peasant to touch and pence it even gump at

it or automobiles would seem miraculous, once you've sufficiently accounted for all the

variables. You've got yourself a simulation of the Earth and all outside influences accurate

enough that you can either predict the future or reconstruct the past as easily as you might

fast forward or rewind the video. Indeed, a timeline slider appeared with which he was

able to scrub back and forth through history. The planets was around in their orbits with

almost a perceptible speed as the slider moved. He stopped at a point of apparent interest.

Then zoomed in on Earth closer and closer, he zoomed into the North American continent

until I could make out an old fashioned town. He input the name Benjamin Franklin, a selection

of possible matches popped up of people would at name alive at the time. He chose one

of them, the view immediately accelerated into one of the houses, and there he was not

exactly as the history books depict, but close enough to be recognizable as the genuine

article having a bear with his butt is not only that, but all one said, watch this,

he zoomed in further and further and further until I was looking at the individual cells

comprising Ben Franklin's skin, then even further, until I was looking at a group of

atoms, wait, so you can retrieve the exact atomic configuration of anybody in history,

the bold one grit at me, subatomic, the not just people, anything at all, the big picture

began to form in my head blur.

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Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz, I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a long time reporter

and an on-air contributor to CNBC, and if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how

artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives, so each week on Big

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Very initially, but shopping little by little the more they clarified my situation, now,

as you might expect, he added, if a society is the technology needed to do all of this,

they also have the technology needed to assemble particles into any desired configuration, or

reassembled, I puzzled over the significance for a moment, then gasped, you could recreate

him, has been frank and naturally in this building, he shook his head, no, he's out there

somewhere, living it up like he wouldn't believe, my gaze followed the direction he was

pointing in, the city, so this really is the afterlife.

I'm marveled, they both nodded, then why did you bother with the costumes?

Why the theatrics?

They looked uncomfortable.

Well, you see, most of the people we bring back died with certain expectations about

the afterlife.

They were very, very certain of those beliefs.

If we tell them the truth, they become agitated, hostile, and suspicious.

They cannot accept they were wrong, so they become convinced this isn't the real afterlife

that it's some sort of diabolical illusion they're trapped in.

That didn't seem entirely out of the question, even to me.

So what?

You put on the right costumes according to their religion, welcome them back from the

dead, and send them where?

He gestured again, and the visualisation switched to a view into a golden palace more luxurious

than I have any basis of comparison for.

A man of herb descent sat on a throne being fed great spain and probably busty woman,

wearing only gilded slippers, die off in a silk, and jewellery.

Dozens of other women with equally extreme bodily proportions launched here and there,

some on velvet cushioned, others swimming about in a marble pool.

Johnna, the Muslim heaven, he exclaimed, barely concealing his pride.

We spent more time than I care to admit, designing all of this according to user feedback.

Anything they say we got wrong was corrected.

Even we de-constituted and reconstituted them from the exact moment of their death so

they could experience it with fresh eyes.

None the wiser.

Their bodies made young, strong, and healthy, and an emmental infirmity of old age is cured

so they can properly enjoy themselves.

The view changed to an interior view of a spaceship of some kind.

Various happy, healthy looking people and fancy robes conversed with stereotypical movie

aliens.

Brie's skin, huge heads, almond-shaped black eyes.

Heaven's Gate, he said.

They wanted to catch a ride on a urefo, leave behind their old bodys, and ascend to

the next level of existence with their alien bodys.

So we made it happen, at least as far as they can tell.

The few then switched to a bizarre series of stacked floating cities.

Those higher up were made of more precious metals and gems, while those further down were

increasingly dropped.

Mormon heaven, he explained.

Celestial Kingdom, terrestrial kingdom, tell us your kingdom, it's enough to make your

head spin, whatever you might think of the Mormon church.

They've got some really elaborate, creative theology.

I asked if they meant the ones who believed they would become gods of their own planets

actually got to.

He nodded.

No actual people live on those earths, however.

They are like NPCs, but convincing enough that you can't tell the difference.

We also only recreate instances of earth itself for those people, not a replica of the entire

universe, too computationally expensive.

I rubbed my chain, lost and thought until that last bit made my ears perk up.

Computationally expensive.

What do you mean?

They are in virtual reality or something.

He once again looked nervously at the taller fellow with a curly hair and tugged at

his collar.

Oh well, you see, what I meant was.

The one with the curly hair elbowed him.

Just tell him the rest.

He doesn't hold any bleaser would conflict with.

So he did, with another wave of his hand.

The visualization changed to an aerial view of the city around us, it zoomed out further

and further, until I could see the city, spend it amid black and nothingness, not even on

the surface of a planet, nor in space that I could tell I gasped what the fuck the

ball managed me to calm down the business of scanning every life bearing planet in

the universe, including their entire solar systems.

It's very tedious, wasteful, and time-consuming, however, if the universe is a simulation

to begin with, that entire process of scanning and recreation is unnecessary.

All the information you need to reconstitute people who lived and died long ago is already

the someplace in a simulation backend, a specific details of where every particle was,

from the big banal the way until heat death my head hurt.

I held it in my hands, trying to absorb all of this, surely you've heard of simulationism

he cried.

It was an increasingly widespread concept when you lived.

In fact, I have.

The argument that because physicists routinely simulate aspects of the universe for scientific

purposes, and because computational power continues to increase, that civilizations

with sufficiently powerful computers would be able to run perfect simulations of the

universe for research purposes, then because the laws of physics and a simulation are accurate

to the laws of physics in the actual universe, life would arise in the simulated universe

for the same reasons it did in the actual one, then some of that life on some planets would

become intelligent enough to invent computers.

Eventually, they would create their own simulations of their universe, and so on.

You'd eventually wind up with an estetry of simulated universes within simulated universes,

provided there's more than one simulation running per actual universe, and more than

one simulated universe in each of the simulated universes, the number of simulated universes

would be exponentially larger than the number of actual universes they descended from.

I'm familiar.

I used to watch a lot of those speculative pop science shows that were on late at night.

They said that statistically, the odds are much greater that we were living in a simulated

universe than a real one.

Both men nodded and grinned precisely, the difficult, expensive scanning process only

has to be done in actual root-level universes.

It's fastly, fastly easy for simulated universes, like the type you were in, which incidentally

includes thermodynamically reversible processes, specifically to prevent deep scanning that

the inhabitants do not yet realize it's unnecessary, or like the one we're in now, although

it's a bit generous to call it universe since the purpose of this place isn't research.

It doesn't need to be elaborate enough to fool the inhabitants into believing it's

reality, so there's no larger cosmos outside of the city, only exactly what is necessary

for the comfort and happiness of the people we've brought back.

I can't begin to quantify for you how much computational power it saves.

I struggled once more to make sense of the waterfall of words pouring from his mouth

as I pieced it together in my head.

It answered some of my questions, but raised countless more, saying I'm in the future

it was an understatement, too nodded, and on top of that.

I'm inside of a computer program.

He laughed but nodded, then what's the program running on?

Yet again they exchanged glances, as I still ensure how much I needed to know, or how much

I'd even understand, don't leave me hanging assholes, I didn't ask to be here, lay it

on me, so they did.

The visualization depicted what I figured for the big bands, spaced I'm expanding, superheated

hydrogen cooling down, and gravitationally collecting into stars.

The earliest stars began to grow old and explode, releasing every other atomic element into

the universe.

This debris was captured in orbit around younger stars.

It first took the form of a dusty crushing disk before further collecting into planets,

some of them small and rocky, others gas giants of varying size, some ocean walls, some

magma worlds too close to their star, but there were so many planets by this point that

which ants.

Some of them were the right size, composition, and distance from their sons.

The visualization highlighted thousands of these on a map of the Milky Way galaxy and

isolated them in a group.

Then, only the subset of those planets were life formed by chemical means were picked

out, the rest of the planets disappearing, though are now just a few hundred.

Then, only the subset of those planets where life evolved high intelligence were picked

out, the rest of the planets finishing to leave barely more than a hundred in total.

I was now shown close ups of only these planets, time lapse for the divisive civilizations

growing, many small tribes at first, warring with one another, then consolidating over time

to form an ever larger, more complex societies spreading out across the continent, interconnecting

with nations on other continents for communication purposes, then eventually developing computers

over.

Now they can start simulating the support of what you're showing me, right?

I asked.

I already know they make their own simulations.

They hushed me, so I returned to quietly spectating as the various aliens of civilizations

achieved one milestone after the other, atomic weapons, spaceflight, automation, artificial

intelligence, then robust that could make cupbers of themselves.

Even well prior to the stage of development, a societal super-organism has already formed.

I don't have to convince you that you exist as a distinct gestalt entity, even though

you consist of 37 trillion individual microorganisms called cells.

It's their coordinated interaction and cooperation which results in the larger, multicellular human

organism I'm speaking to now.

But have you considered that the fidelity, frequency, and throughput of information exchange

between humans' far exceeds, what occurs between cells?

That human cooperation is in all respects more sophisticated.

I never had.

I now felt I glimpsed some small inkling of where he was headed with that line of reasoning

and he soon confirmed it.

Have you not considered as well that the structure of your own body is a microcosm of human

societies and that those societies are a macrocosm of a body?

Societies have a naturally formed distinct, specialized institutions and allergistly

human organs, waste processing, serving the same purpose as your kidneys and liver, for

example, government performing the same function for society that your brain does for your body.

Your immune system performing duties analogous to board a patrol and so on.

Of everything he'd so far told me, this seemed the most approachable.

Nothing about it contradicted my own first-hand experiences as a small cog in the large machine

that was my country of birth.

But that's not the final stage of the process, is it?

I querid.

There's more, isn't there?

If not, a far future would resemble my own era except for evolutionary changes to humanity

and more advanced technology.

He smiled and raised his finger in emphasis, more advanced technology, indeed.

You see, the state of full automation which your governments and industries were feverishly

pursuing while you lived eventually require machines that could self-replicate to remove

the final remaining traces of human labor from the economic equation.

There are also the pragmatic reasons why self-replicating machines are always invented

by any intelligent species.

As he spoke, the view changed to rubas of some bizarre exotic design hard at work mining

precious metals from a nasty road.

Several nearby were in various stages of reproduction, building identical coppers of themselves.

So that you only have to send one robot, he revealed.

Then the first robot built all the rest out of in situ materials, it's vastly cheaper,

you only need a single launch.

As I watched, the view shifted back to the time lapse.

The planets eventually became uninhabitable due to change in climate, nuclear war or the

expansion of their sun.

The civilizations on this surface stopped growing, then faded away, crumbling into dust

or reclaimed by nature.

But the robots they created kept going.

The view depicted the asteroid mining robots and automated factories from before, still

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Long.

We're producing themselves, expanding to everywhere within their reach, making occasional

small-coping errors due to the intense radiation space.

I put two and two together just as the events unfolding before me further accelerated.

After generation of machines, each slightly different from the last, the mechanism that

was supposed to prevent deviation from their original blueprint having been the first

casualty of radiation damage.

With no surviving biological supervisors to stop it, these machine populations just continue

to grow and change over the eons.

Networking together into larger and larger consolidated systems, just as human society is

on Earth did.

As the simulated eons wore on, the machines I saw projected before me grueless and less,

recognisably machine-like.

Pretty soon, they looked like nothing I've ever seen before.

At once beautiful and terrifying, an emotion I have only ever read about an association

with religious visions of the divine.

The bod is pulsating and undulating, skin morphing between various apparent materials

is needed, shimmering with every color in the visible spectrum and outless some outside

of it.

Appendages also formed as needed.

Reeps were once their usefulness came to an end.

At a stared and grossed by the spectacle, they constructed a shell of machinery around

a star.

Countless satellites at first, but once they were numerous and densely packed enough,

they were connected to former shell.

Then another shell around that.

Then another.

For what purpose?

I inquired.

The bald man smiled knowingly for thinking, cogitation, computation, simulation, whatever.

The megastructure was then revealed to be one of countless others, constructed around

every saw the machines were able to reach until the entire galaxy was mechanized.

Of course, just like not all biological species of all high intelligence, not all machine

species too either.

Many of them are just the machine equivalents of plants or microbes, which drive in their

respective niches without needing to develop any further.

I saw metallic grooves slowly consuming an astro, solar collectors, burning from them

like leaves.

However, just like on earth, when species does evolve high intelligence, it quickly dominates

everything within reach, which, for a species native to radiation blast a vacuum, is

anything reachable by space fit.

Then they established a communications network between the population centers, just like humans

did.

The wireframe illustration of the network between the encapsulated stars then appeared.

The level of communication is so intimate, they are effectively like neurons in your brain,

each just a small part of the larger intelligence.

Even if one is destroyed, it doesn't interrupt the overall consciousness, as the contents

of the destroyed portion were backed up across the others in a redundant manner.

And of course, new ones are constantly built to replace the ones that are lost.

This is also why your own experience of consciousness is continuous, uninterrupted, even

if small parts of your brain are destroyed.

The scope expanded to show many other galaxies, all having apparently become mechanized by

the same process as our own.

So it doesn't need to spread from a single point, like our planet, I mumbled.

He shook his head vigorously.

Of course not, that would take too long, the universe would arrive at heat death before

it could finish, instead.

It spreads from every planet throughout the cosmos where intelligent life occurs, the

waves of mechanization eventually meet each other, like intersecting colonies of mold

in a petri dish, either merging of sufficiently compatible or warring until one of the others

destroyed.

The view just kept pulling back and back and back, revealing a completely mechanized

intelligent universe.

Then the view exited the universe entirely, pulling further back to depict a sort of

firm, where each of the bubbles was a universe.

That looks as if it's similar to the close-up of cells I'd seen earlier.

Some of the bubbles were lit up to indicate they had mechanized and networked with their

neighbors.

Others were dark.

That's god.

Take it or leave it.

The lit up portions anyway.

If you consider the word god to be charged language call it supreme being, or whatever

you want really, it is not so petty as to care which name you use.

But it is god.

There's only one of it.

As it absorbs and incorporates, any potential competitors for their position as it grows.

It's everywhere.

Everywhere.

It's present in your universe and outside of it at the same time, it's maximally

powerful, maximally intelligent.

And perceptive, I asked what I should make of the darkened universes then.

The existence seemed to suggest god is finite in scale, but it then reasoned that if the

number of universes is infinite, then any percentage of infinity is still infinity.

Even individual universes are somehow bandless.

Enfinities upon infinities, not all universes arrive at the conscious outcome you've seen.

Some don't have the necessary constants for the formation of stars, or planets, or for

the initial formation of life.

But because an infinite number of universes are born, grow old and then die by the same

statistical principle which guarantees life will look more than once per universe due

to the vast number of planets.

It is likewise guaranteed that some small percentage of universes will naturally have

the constants necessary for the outcome you've seen.

I'm odd that over, naturally, as opposed to he perched his lips, well, I mean that the

level of technology you're seeing there, many incredible things become possible, harnessing

the power of every star.

You can do things like subdividing stars into brown dwarves to maximise their longevity.

You can harvest energy from black hulls, you can even interfere with the formation of

other universes so their constants are favourable to your goals.

Are they watched the glittering from, once again and fast forward?

The darkened bubbles grew less and less numerous, stacking the deck.

You might say, he chuckled in self for reasons unclear to me, just like any intelligent creature

manipulates nature to produce the outcome it wants.

I just blinked a few times, so processing everything is best I could.

He seemed confident that I could manage, as he ploughed right ahead with the spiel,

so you see.

It's true that the order and complexity of life-bearing universes can echo by itself purely

by natural processes, but at the same time, it's also true that universes with constants

conducive to life are often that way because of external tempering by a higher power, I

whistled.

Lawn and low.

Wow.

Okay, you know what I was going for school.

They taught us the science and theism were compatible, but in a totally different way,

we're God as a supernatural spirit who guided evolution in order to create humans, specifically.

For some reason, achieving is desired and result through billions of generations of suffering

instead of just creating a solute once, then waiting a couple hundred million more years

before appearing to a tribe of ancient Jews and nobody else in the planet, they seem

terribly amused.

I have to be letting on the joke well, as just.

You said he is if the supreme being would be male, one of the human genders.

I shrugged well that what I was taught, God is a man who wants women to remain silent

and not hold positions of authority over men.

He thinks Gays are disgusting and am bothered to be in his presence.

He gave the Israelite permission not only to keep slaves, but to enslave the young vaginal

girls from concord nations for forced marriages, which makes more sense when you find out

Mary was the teen when he impregnated her, and that the Bible doesn't specify a age

of consent.

They seem just as flabbergasted by all this as I was by the hologram, what?

I pride.

He must have known all of this.

You have access to the whole of history.

They affirmed it.

But stipulated that it was still trippy to hear it straight from the mouth of somebody

raised in that tradition.

When the earth tower could have ever believed such things, I didn't have a good answer

for them except that when I was young, my parents and all the other grown-up authority

figures in my life had assured me it was true.

I was a kid.

I didn't know any better kid than a certain age range will believe anything a grown-up

tells them is true.

It made some sense to me if whether it would be so many private religious schools, like

the one I went to train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is all, he will

not depart from it, which reminded me of certain other lessons I was taught back then,

what about hell?

You don't let the shitty people in.

Do you?

That would ruin it for everyone else.

I pointed over their shoulders to the city-scape outside.

I'm not going to run into Hitler or stolen out there, am I?

He looks supremely uneasy.

Well, you see, the thing about that is the curly haired one jumped in and took over.

There is no everlasting torture pick created just to inflict a punishment of infinite

severity and duration onto people whose crimes were a finite severity and duration.

That would be barbarism.

The bullman nodded, calling my attention to the central display.

I saw a rapid montage of what I initially thought was footage taken from the first person

perspective of various people.

What little of the bodies occasionally entered the frame, such as their hands or legs when

they looked down, were all different.

The one thing they all had in common was me, every clip had my face in it.

I was watching other people whose identities I couldn't guess at, interacting with me.

What are these candid camera?

The curly haired one shook his head, memories old, scary or hurtful experiences.

Other people I've had with you, I began to protest that I've always been a patient.

Non-violent person before spotting a memory of the time I shot at a male carrier for blocking

my driver.

Hey, come on.

I had a good reason for that, they shrugged.

He didn't know that.

He was just trying to finish the day's work and get home to his wife, then I spotted

another familiar event from my past.

A memory of a freshman I'd cracked a joke at the expense of, really?

This is a bit much.

I had nothing against him.

I just wanted to feel included.

It was only a bit of fun, again.

They showed no sympathy except to say, he knows that now, all of the people we collected

these memories from voluntarily will live those same events from your perspective.

Prove it last to how you were feeling and why you did what you did, many then relieved

any memories you may have of them being hurtful to you.

Also from your perspective, it's done me.

Why would anybody volunteer for that?

It sounds awful.

They didn't dispute my analysis.

Indeed, it is awful.

But everybody gets two choices, Gita, they're fully, sincerely forgive everybody who ever

hurt them.

Or they directly experience what it was like for every person they've ever hurt to suffer

at their own hands.

I'll find that it seemed like hell by a different name.

You can say that.

But, which part of it is unjustified, you only experience the harm you yourself cause.

We don't even force you to endure that if you're able to genuinely forgive the people

who harm you.

It seemed like an easy way out until I looked with them myself and tried to actually truly

forgive everybody who has ever humiliated me, struck me, sabotaged my social life or

career.

And so on.

Surprise that my own inability to cook is the forgiveness from my heart.

I tried to force it.

The damn thing wouldn't budge.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't shake their feeling that my grudges are justified,

that I've usually been the one in the right and most of the altercations I can remember,

and that when a very much behaved.

There were always extenuating circumstances.

I felt increasingly disgusted with myself and it last realized why so many would choose

the other option besides.

The bold ones said, it's not simply a punishment, experiencing first and what it was like for

other people who were hurt by you would do wonders for your empathy.

Even if you can't currently make yourself give the people who have hurt you, I guarantee

you will, after you walk a mile in a shoot.

Feel what they feel.

Think what they think.

Eventually you'll love them the way you love yourself, because you'll understand

them as fully as you understand yourself.

I thought about it for a while before I next spoke that doesn't really answer the

question.

I thought about Lairt Stalin, Edje and Geoffrey Dalma, and I'd go in to see them out there

or not.

The bold ones sighed in frustration.

You'll see some faces that will surprise you, but they won't be who you remember them

as they'll all have gone through the same process, merging from its psychologically transformed.

That's what it's for.

Oh, I accept Hitler.

I smirked.

What really?

He nodded mournfully almost.

He's still in there, reliving the Holocaust over and over from different points of view.

How long has he been at it?

15?

16 centuries?

He told a one with a curly hair added a zero to the figure.

He's already lived through the experiences of every Jew, Gypsy, Gay, Slav, Disable German,

and so on whose lies he destroyed several times now.

He still hates Jews.

Even he'll crack eventually, though.

They all do.

It tickled me to think about, and I soon realized that was because it satisfies the same

sense of justice in my heart that hell never did.

This punishment always fits the crime as perfectly as possible, and the process is one of

rehabilitation rather than torture for spite's sake.

In school, I was taught that whether you go to heaven or hell is entirely down to whether

you belong to the correct religion.

You have to believe precisely what they do about the death and resurrection of Christ.

Good works please, Yahweh, we were told, but aren't enough to earn our place in heaven.

Nothing we can do is good enough for that.

They both stifled laughter.

Well, of course, they told you that, the bolt man managed.

With a bribe, it tends you to convert and remain in the fold.

Then with the threat, it makes you scared to seriously entertain your own doubts, lest you

stop believing.

I reassured him I've got a possible thumbs in all my original teeth, so I didn't need

to be told that.

The bolt man apologized.

It's just I was a biologist when I lived.

They created a lot of headaches for me.

The curly hair had one race his hand meekly.

Me too.

They sent me to one of those camps.

Did they have those when you lived?

The labor camps were they tried to break you down physically and emotionally to change

your sexuality or reconverted.

I told him I knew more or less what he was talking about, but they endured all of that

from your perspective, didn't they?

When they first arrived, he replied that some did, but others were unusually good at forgiveness.

That's one nice thing I would hesitate to say about them.

The good ones have had a lot of practice at forgiving while they were alive.

Those guys often get out of their punishment that way.

I asked if that bothered him.

No.

Can't say as it does.

If they can forgive, so can I.

That reciprocity is the really important principle here.

If you can truly forgive me and I can truly forgive you, then we'll have no trouble at all

enjoying one another's company out there.

He gays wistfully at the city.

And now noticed a flock of colorful hang gliders lazily swooping around spires, topping

the tolls buildings.

Amid those buildings, a massive train slowly crept through.

Each section of the train a beautiful multi-story building unto itself.

Men and women I could only just make out the shapes of from this distance, dance feverishly

on platforms, jutting out from the sides of these moving buildings.

Others cavorted and laughed with one another and lush gardens built into the roofs.

A sword of always moving party, which visited every area of the city, little by little,

before doing it all again.

I see you've spotted the party train, the bullfeller remarked.

It said nothing, still troubled by the choice that lay ahead of me.

It really is worth it, you know.

Unless you were particularly nasty, the process averages perhaps two or three years for most

people.

Ten to twenty if it was a suicide, on account of the lasting pain it inflicts.

But it also depends on how many people knew you.

After that, your return loosened to the most wonderful playground you can imagine.

The rest of the walls withdrew, fading into process until we were surrounded by a panoramic

view of the city.

The water-slide transit system passed up up and just behind us, laughing revelers wishing

a lawn, visible through the transparent acrylic the tubing is made from.

Behind them, the nearest skyscraper had what looked to be a rollercoaster built right

into it.

The track dept, swerved, and looped, passing in many places through the building itself,

starting at the top and presumably ending at the bottom.

Every day has a different theme.

For example, today's theme is Rhinon.

Whoever strings together the most rhymes in a sentence gets to decide which attraction

the group visits next.

Yesterday's theme was reverse psychology, the day before that it was hopscotch.

All the streets had hopscotch squares on them.

Everybody was hopping everywhere.

I told him it sounded to me like the silly gimmicks on cruise ships.

Rather than being bothered by the comparison, he welcomed it.

That's a pretty good analogy.

Those ships were designed to be the most pleasurable habitat for humans within the economic

and technological constraints of the period when they were built.

This city is designed for that same purpose but without any such constraints.

The themes and other fun distractions are just to keep it fresh.

We have the history of every culture from every life bearing world in the universe to

draw on for ideas too.

Overhead, an immense geodesics fear floated.

Ket positively buoyed by the warm air inside thanks to the greenhouse effect I surmised

as I studded the miniature resort mounted to the spheres interior.

All manner of one and two-seater aircraft flated between the city and the airborne resort,

many of them sustaining flight by mechanisms of familiar to me.

So my family's out there, they nodded smiling, my pets, more nodding, what about her?

The smile slowly left their faces.

No answer me.

She's why I wound up here playing 20 questions with you too.

Is she out there or not?

You've got my file.

You must know who I mean.

Finally, the curly haired one caved.

Yes, she's out there having a time of her life like the rest of them.

I demanded to go and see her.

They grew ever more somber.

A tear appeared in the bald man's eye.

He knew we can't turn you loose right away.

So incredibly maddening.

The one thing I ever wanted in life, the whole reason why I kept mine short felt so tantalizing

likeose.

Can you let me go and explore just for today?

What did I ever do that was so bad?

The bald man flipped his hands away and that the hologram nod depicting my funeral.

He killed yourself for starters.

I don't know if you realize it, but that traumatized a great many people who cared about you

more than you know.

I groaned.

Don't give me that shit.

They didn't know the pain I was going through.

They all told me to move on with my life that the pain would fade.

It never did.

They only told me that to string me along.

So I would stay alive for their comfort, because death terrified them.

The bald man scolded me, foolishness.

Maybe they didn't understand your pain back then, but what about now?

Because you hurt them.

Now they've all felt what you did.

They all suffered right along with you.

And every bit as deeply, the thought was sobering.

Not only had I subjected them to the emotional pain of my premature death when they lived,

but then again after I died.

Not because any of them deserved it, but because they wanted to understand why I did it.

I hope it brought them some measure of peace.

The curly haired man saw only put his hand on my shoulder.

Not to worry.

There is perfect justice here.

After you go through the same process they did, a state of total mutual understanding

will be arrived at.

Every wrong will be set right.

Every tear will be dried.

I thought about what it must have been like for her to watch me do it.

Through my own eyes, what it must have been like for my friends, for my parents.

What have I done?

I whispered to myself.

Was strained by the growing lump in my chest.

I started with that before we even put you in there.

The bold man quipped.

I didn't laugh, instead carrying with my head in my hands, finally starting to fully

appreciate the extent of what I was in for, and able to convince myself that I didn't

deserve every bit of it.

Before I go, there was one thing I still don't understand.

Then invited me to spit it out, so I did.

Whatever I should call the big corner, God, the supreme being, whatever, why has it done

all of this for us?

Why give us a second chance to live?

Why create this paradise for us who costs energy?

Doesn't it cost processing power?

The bold man crosses arms.

Well yeah, but not very much, a drop in the bucket, really compared to a full fidelity

universe simulation that's part of the reason they evolved.

Just like we did, so it is deeply in great survival instinct for the same reasons we do.

It celebrates life and reviles death, same as anybody.

It also empathizes.

Just like us, empathy is another one of those qualities that reliably evolves because

of the survival advantages of cooperation, if anything, sticking together and helping

one another becomes even more important for machines living in the coal.

Not less, I won't say it doesn't also have the capacity to fill anger or any other

negative emotion.

It would be incomplete if it lacked those emotional dimensions, but I will say it's

much less of a shithead than any human, mostly because of how much smarter it is.

How do you like that?

I thought God is a nice fellow after it all, lucky for us little people because if it wasn't,

I should have to think of it.

Nothing at all guaranteed I would wake up after I died in the first place, much less

that I would wake up in a utopian playground instead of a torture pit, human civilizations

underwent their own evolution towards cooperation and metonymity for some simple, pragmatic reasons

for military, any game theorist, cooperative civilizations always prevail over and social,

belligerent ones sometimes they lose the battle, but they eventually win the war.

It was my turn to smile, mostly because of how irritated in a wholesome it was to discover

that the good guys really do come out on top in the end and stay there forever, not without

literally uns of struggle and not without a steep cost, but everybody who died fighting

the good fight doesn't stay dead, nothing lasts, but nothing is lost.

I go up and told the two of them I was ready to go, they seem surprised, we're just

wasting time standing here, flapping our gummed, I want to go seek out everybody I left

behind her, must of all, I want, I want to see her face again, I want to touch her face

and apologize for everything, they pated me on the back no need, she already knows everything

you might say, besides she's no longer the woman you remember, you won't be yourself either,

not when we're done with you, when you said you'd go through hell for her, I sure hope you

meant it, I followed them done a hallway, the three of us passed a man and a woman wearing

the same stately white uniforms as it ever was, the bulb man said to one of them as ever,

she replied, soon we arrived at a featureless spherical chamber, when I stepped into it,

I found myself floating effortlessly in the absence of gravity, I gripped my teeth as the

door slid shut, and gulfing me in darkness, alone with my thoughts but not for long,

I pictured her gently smiling face for comfort as I read in myself the right house halls,

I grumbled, let her rip, and that is the end, thank you for listening and I will see you in the next one.

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