A Chat Over Drinks About Unamuno

Opal paused at the entrance, eyes lingering on the painting that loomed over the host station. An image of a woman with my likeness.

I had requested that minor update to the setting, knowing it would be enough to turn her already idling whims into more serious suspicions.

She spotted me at a table toward the back of the inn, and made her way over. I’d snagged seats near the faux fireplace. This simulation was based on the modern era, but we both got a kick out of themed restaurants - so I had suggested we try this tavern with a medieval aesthetic.

Layers of unreality. I hoped it would make this conversation easier.

“How can you ask me to meet you for dinner after making me read this?” She teased, waving the book she’d borrowed in my face before dropping it into my waiting hands. “‘Devour yourself?’ Damn, dark metaphor.”

“The ending wasn’t to your taste, I take it?” I stuffed the English version of Niebla in my bag while Opal sat opposite me.

She smirked. “I know the whole ‘death by overeating’ thing was metaphorical, but still, let’s not talk about that part of the book while we dine.”

“Fair enough! Besides, I’d rather discuss the chapter or two before that.”

“I bet you do, Wren.” My best friend looked me straight in the eye. “This is the part where you tell me you’re Miguel, and I’m Augusto. The author, and the character. Right?”

Bold! I’d always admired that about her. Those hazel eyes didn’t look away, didn’t crinkle in a joking smile. Opal sat there and dared me with every second to brush off her wild accusation.

I let time tick on in response. Matched her stare. I raised an eyebrow, and she raised hers.

The waiter found us like that and interrupted our eyebrow exercises so we could place drink orders. Mead, to ease the tension of this discussion.

“I’m not an author,” I clarified, satisfied that she wasn't just kidding around. “I didn’t create you. I just… help you, hopefully. By being your friend.”

“We're in a computer simulation, aren't we?” She asked. “This is what, some Matrix thing? I thought I noticed some… glitches... that people around me didn't catch. Like that painting on the way in - that was you?” Opal sucked in a breath when I nodded. She had to glance away for a minute, turning her gaze toward the digital fire. Funny how the first question was so easy for her, but this next question, the next obvious question, was difficult. "Why am I noticing things that other people aren't?"

“You’re sentient,” I explained, and found myself laughing at her large, performative sigh of relief. “What, you thought you might not be?”

Opal looked back at me and grinned. “Can you blame me? I just read a book whose author challenged Descartes. Descartes! ‘I think, therefore I am’ is now up for debate in my headspace and it’s a trip.”

“I love that, though! Takes philosophical guts to debate that. But yeah - in this sim, people are trying to… seek and encourage sentience, by mingling players like me with experimental AI like you. The glitches are intentional - when you start to notice, it’s a sign you’re thinking outside the box.”

The mead arrived. Did the waiter find it odd that we paused our conversation whenever they came near? “I’m not sure how I feel about outsiders determining such things,” my friend admitted slowly. “Have they all read Niebla too?”

“Actually, yeah, it’s required for the study. And required for you, when you… you know, show signs. You won’t find it in any store - you can only get it from a player who has permission to let you read it.”

Opal caught on. “So I can ask people if they’ve read it to find out if they’re a player or a sentient… what, AI? NPC? Simulation denizen?”

“Simizen,” I replied.

“STOP,” she snorted loudly. We collected ourselves with swigs of mead before she continued. “That's good to hear though. The book is… thoughtful.”

“I can't tell you how relieved I am that you’re taking this so well."

“You took it well too, I bet,” she pointed out. “Just like the book implies, right? If I’m a sim, chances are so are you, and everyone out there who reads, watches, or otherwise consumes our story.” She shuddered. “Ugh, consume. Just when I think I’ve understood the overeating bit, I find a new layer.”

“Yeah," I smiled, relishing the fact that she was realizing all this on her own. She'd always been smarter than me. "The universe could be many layers of simulations. Once we create one, we have to admit we could be in one too.”

Opal raised her mug of mead. “Turtles all the way down!”

We toasted and drank to that.

“Crazy how on point Unamuno was about all this, long before computers were invented,” my friend mused.

“Maybe we were handed the ethical dilemmas of messing with AI before AI was invented, because we’re in a sim too. Could be all part of the plan.” I shrugged.

“What did you do, to cope with simultaneously not existing, and existing as much as your creator and your created?”

“Join the study. Become a volunteer player. Make a friend on a different sim level as me, to see how real it could be.”

“Ah.” Opal sipped her mead, then muttered, “My friendship with you was an experiment.”

Of course not. “It’s not that s-”

“Hey," my best friend held up a hand, "if I weren’t already friends with you, I’d befriend one of you for the same reasons. Even if that's how things started, I know we're good friends now. I mean, this," she waved between us," has always felt stronger than my other friendships, and maybe that has to do with sentience, I don't know yet. But it's the most real connection I've got."

Ouch. That was going to make the next bit even harder.

Opal must have seen something in my face. "What do you feel about all this? Am I real to you?”

“Am I real to you?” I fiddled nervously with the menu.

“You’re allegedly on the higher level of simulation here, so you first.”

“Sure, though I don’t think that matters much.” I sighed. “Yes, of course you’re real to me. I almost wish you weren’t. You really are my best friend, I can't stress that enough, so…” I steeled myself. “So I’m really going to miss you.”

“Miss me? Wren…”

“When I leave for college, I won't be able to contact you. You’re only accessible via a closed intranet, for obvious reasons. So I can’t even call or text you unless I'm here on breaks.”

“Ahhh… that’s why you’re so bad about texting me back. You have to be, what, in the same building as my servers or something to have access?”

I smiled weakly. “Pretty much. I was rushing to get permission to let you borrow the book, to explain everything before I left. So you could make more friends while I’m gone, or maybe discover that some people you already know are in on it.”

I pretended to care about the dinner menu for a minute while I asked, “Promise me you’ll explore and have fun without me, okay?”

“You gotta promise the same thing, idiot!” Opal snapped, stealing the menu from me to make eye contact again. “We’ll share stories when you get back. That’s how going to college works. With or without all this other existential stuff. So promise me.”

“I’m really not that great at making new-”

“Wren. Promise.”

I put up my hands. “Okay, okay! I’ll try.”

“Cuz you’re real to me too, obviously, and I want my friends to be happy. You got that? Now drink your mead.”

She checked out the menu while I drank. The waiter returned, and we placed dinner orders. So normal, for a moment, as we gathered our thoughts.

“At least we’re not arguing like in the book, right?”

“Ahhhhhh yes, Niebla is a bit dramatic toward the end there. But this was newer philosophy for the time. We can do better, a hundred years later.”

“Wren, I-” Opal’s voice cut off, and she convulsed suddenly, as though possessed. Instantly I was up and holding her, yelling her name, as if that would do any good in a world of code. No one around me seemed to notice - in fact, everyone had frozen.

This had never happened before. I hugged my friend and attempted to use mental commands to alert the system of a glitch, a hack, whatever this was.

No response.

Opal stopped shaking. “Hello Wren,” she said, in a tone she’d never use.

Releasing her slowly, I stepped back to stare into a calm, professional face that was so unlike the woman I knew. “You may call me Miguel," she continued. “Having witnessed your revelations to your friend here, I’d like to step in and ask a few questions about your process. Do you have time for a quick survey?”