Levels

In his dream he was engaged in a vague, slippery competition, but suddenly found himself a spectator, discussing theory before dropping the dense nugget in his hand in such a way as to cast his bet before the two or three athletes, struggling now towards the goal he had been defending, reached a conclusion.

“See, the fourteen is the deep grain in there; some yield better than if we sent back early.”

When the words left his mouth they resonated back into him, and he immediately wondered what he had meant. He looked to his right and saw that the person he was talking to was behind a thick glass, holding a telephone receiver. He looked down at the nugget in his hand and squeezed; the obsidian began to yield in his fist. If he forgot a certain thing and remembered another, he could make the lump a telephone, and he could finish what he was saying...

“There he is. You're there, right? You here man?” The speaker is all angles and lights. Three or four faces, maybe one of them familiar. He continues:

“Remember me? The Tourist. From two levels up. We went to that mountain club the last time? With the elephants?”

“I...” He regards the tourist, and remembers terraces, light and darkness, the surge of great beasts in rhythmic harmony, silver liquid and gentle flight...

The glass and telephone are gone. The same room has shrunk considerably; there is a table and two chairs, and it is brighter than before. The dreamer sits across from the tourist, who is pouring wine into clear glasses.

“This level is really only half out, huh?”

The dreamer knows he's experienced the preamble to this question before, and he knows to respond:

“We're getting there, man. I can't remember the first part, but hit me with the second. That's where we're at, right?”

The tourist looks at him in silence, holding the full glass out for him to take. The dreamer takes it and sips; he is warm and patient in the soft red and brown light that follows. He waits for the tourist to continue.

“So yeah. Simulations within simulations, right? An algorithm among algorithms, simulated electricity within simulated electricity going back to the True Board. Do you know computers and s**t? Electricity being conducted upon conductors? I'm not a priest, but I know what we learn in school. Matter made of mathematics, sensory organs made of same, so no matter No Matter, right? You remember. So here we are now, out on the edge. Traveling down is always fun; it's like having super powers, to clusters like you. No offense.”

This last with a twinkle in his eye; at present the dreamer lacks the context to be offended, but he is vaguely disquieted.

“But dig,” the tourist continues, “we've been going up. Apparently the regression's not as deep as they thought. We just got clusters back from the True Net, like as in outside the True Board. As in outside the material universe. As in, read God's boss's emails about him.”

The dreamer sees his own excitement, and watches himself say,

“What's God's job?”

“He's like a junior programmer. Marketing firm. Some kind of research simulation on neckties; I guess they're looking at all the necks in the Alpha Sim and matching colors and designs with actual social status. Apparently all of our regression levels never even occurred to them; I don't even think they realize it's within each Sim Level's ability to repeat the process.”

“So God's world has neckties?”

“Yeah, it's basically like ours was before we broke through the levels. Except they can't, because they're not a Sim. Unless they just haven't broken up yet. We can't dream into their world, that's for sure. At any rate, it looks like God's real world has all the guns, jobs, cages, and s**t we did before we broke. Like you guys out here on the edge. Who am I telling, though, right? Life in the doubt zone.”

“Tell me about it.”

“But, like I said, we can't dream up into it like we did up to Alpha Sim, which you'll dig, by the way, once you get your s**t together, so this is just s**t the clusters picked up off the internet up there.”

They are floating now; the dreamer begins to sink as the water rises. He swims out and down, and surfaces in a place that is elsewhere entirely.

Later he is plunging his hands into wet sand next to a woman of obscure face and familiar breasts. Her soft words are gentle but alarming, and the pebbles in the sand bruise and abrade his fingertips.

The dreamer awakes, nauseated. It is time to put on his necktie.