Ace and Domino are walking in an urban streetscape.
Ace turns to his friend and says, “I had a dream that we’re all part of a video game.”
“Are we players?”
“Not players but characters. You know, like an avatar.”
Domino asks, “A character somebody made up?”
“I guess so.”
“That’s weird.”
“I know, but listen to this, the choices I made in the game created new worlds. How bizarre is that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time I chose to do something, whether it’s to turn left or right, it created a different version of me doing the opposite.”
They round a corner and continue walking.
Domino says, “You mean, exactly as we’re doing now?”
“Yes.”
“Could you see the other worlds?”
“No.”
“So, If we’re avatars, who are the puppet masters?”
Aces thinks, before saying, “I don’t know. I didn’t see them.”
“Do you think anyone is playing us now?”
“Maybe.”
“Boring game!”
“Yeah.” They laugh as they pass a couple going in the opposite direction, one of whom is wearing a t-shirt with a character from a video game emblazoned on the front.
Domino says, “If you created an avatar, what would it be like?”
”Me.”
“You?” Domino laughs, “What would be your super power?”
“I’d have the power to make any power my own.”
“So, you’d be like a super, super man.”
“I guess. What would your avatar be like?”
“I’d want to make myself look completely different. You know, beautiful.”
“You are beautiful.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think so.”
Ace says, “What about all the things that make you unique? That’s beautiful. I read somewhere that the chances of you being born exactly as you are, with your parents, in your part of the world are 400 trillion to one. Don’t you think that’s beautiful?”
“I guess so.”
Ace and Domino are about to cross the road when they see a car almost collide with a pedestrian. A woman standing next to them says, “That guy should have looked where he was going.”
Ace says, “He did. I saw him turn his head and look just before the car stopped.”
The woman replies, “He was distracted by his phone.”
Domino says, “He wasn't looking at his phone.”
The woman crosses the street. Ace and Domino follow her and enter a cafe. At the counter, they buy coffee and sit at a table to drink it.
Ace says, “Do you think there is an empirical reality?”
“As in?”
“You know, objective reality. My reality is different from yours and yours Is different from that woman’s. Do you get me? We all saw the same near miss but we each saw something different. I mean, who’s right?”
“Mm, I suppose we’re all right, aren’t we? We each saw something the others didn’t.”
They sip their coffee in silence.
Ace says, “There’s a video on the net about electrons but they’re not like we used to think of them. They’re waves of potential energy and it’s only when you look at them that they form electrons as we know it.”
“What? How do they know that?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Sounds like gobbledegook to me.” Domino sniggers, “Once upon a time, things used to be so simple.”
“When was that?”
“Before we started thinking.”
They chuckle as they leave the cafe.
Walking down the street, Domino continues, “What you said before, got me thinking.”
“What did I say?”
“Focus. I wonder if everything is all waves of potential that snap into shape when you focus.”
“I don’t get you.“
"Maybe I’m saying it wrong, but I was thinking, what if what I’m looking at now, in front of me, is only really here, visible to me, because I’m focussing on it. But, if I close my eyes, how do I know anything’s there?”
Ace says, “Hey, I’ve got an even weirder idea… what if everything is as you say it is, then the things we see only exist because we focus on them. So, unless I turn around right now and look, it’s all nothingness, this big blank potential…"
“But what about blind people? They use other senses like touch and hearing. Or deaf people…"
“True.”
Domino says, “I know a diver who swears that fish don’t make sounds. He reckons they don’t because he’s been diving hundreds of times and never heard a thing. I argued that we have our ears and vocal paraphernalia and they have their fishy body parts. You know, they hear things we can’t. Like dogs can hear and smell things we can’t. Doesn’t mean that whatever they can see, hear, or smell doesn’t exist.”
“Right.”
“I saw a documentary confirming my theory about fish. Turns out, the seas are full of fish communicating with each other in clicks and whirrs and bleeps.”
“Do you suppose there are colours out there that we can’t see because we have limited vision?”
“Yeah, we only know what to look for because we make instrumentation that suits us. What if there were entire planets and stars and solar systems that are nothing to us because we don’t have the capabilities to detect them?”
“But we have instruments that can see ultraviolet and infrared. X-ray and Gamma rays…”
They stop walking and look up.
Ace points and says, “See that?”
“The falling star? Wow!”
Domino continues, “I wonder what else is out there?”
Ace says, “Much more than we know.”
Domino sighs, “I do know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Being with you is like being in a dream.”
“It sure is.”
