Life Hack

Supposedly there was a time and a place for everything; as if the entire universe would come together like an audience to bear witness to a single blip of time and the perfect assemblage of particles and circumstances that would hear a child's first words or the detonation of a nuclear weapon.

This was one of the stories, the salves, humans applied to face the cold truth of an indifferent universe and the cruelties that could befall them. "Everything had a time and a place." It was a whisper meant to ease a human mind.

Back when human beings were still relevant.

In this particular moment, at this particular place, a Traveler trudged up the Nepali side of Mount Everest in a dollar store poncho, jeans and low top shoes. They had only a template appearance: a universal 'blank' that looked more like a mannequin than a human being. They felt no cold, they heard no sounds and though they had no eyes they were too busy ignoring the corpses on the way to the summit for that to matter anyway.

Those people, assuming they had ever been people had found their time and place; the Traveler was still looking for theirs. At one point the mountain's summit had represented the pinnacle of human achievement and majesty- it'd been a dream of the Traveler's to be here, back before they understood The Lie.

Yet, still, the Traveler found a quiet awe in the spectacle of it all.

Mount Everest was monolithic; there was no way to visualize it in a way the mind could comprehend: you were either far enough away to see it all and it looked like a painting, or you were on top of it and it swallowed your perception entirely. Its majesty was in its magnitude, a magnitude that now tried to demand answers from the intruding Traveler.

The wind whipped and smashed against the Traveler, buffeting the cheap poncho back, shoving. Pushing. Demanding to know who or what would dare ignore the carefully crafted rules of the world? Instead of answering, the Traveler sat cross legged at the pinnacle and churned their fingers into the vague sensation of wind.

The wind died immediately. Snow and chunks of ice picked up by the wind slapped an invisible bubble around the Traveler, but nothing could reach them. So they sat there, chin on their thumbs and fingers intertwined, looking out over a sprawl of craggy mountain peaks fading off into a sky that blended smoothly from snow to clouds to the beautiful middle space where the troposphere melted into the stratosphere.

Here, ten miles above sea level and far from anyone and anything there was a kind of brutal peace. A facade that pretended the world still made sense. If one squinted, one could even feel the rules baked into the physics that governed the wind pushing all around.

The Traveler wanted to believe it, surely if they believed hard enough they could hack their memories out of themselves and undo their understanding of the world back to what it once was. If they did that, would they die? How fitting would that have been, to die from a belief in rules that it'd broken a million times before?

Hackers like the Traveler were a rare breed, few saw through the illusion of the simulation and even fewer still actually figured out how to manipulate it. But that also meant they had to live with the knowing- that in their infinite potential, the one thing they couldn't do was convince themselves they didn't know.

The second dragged on and the Traveler's memory drifted to the image they so often conjured during these dark musings. As if doing so would expunge it from their mind, they forced the projection into the sky: The mountains melted away to be replaced by the streets of New York City, utterly still and lifeless, like a living photograph.

All around were cars with corpses at their steering wheels, streets littered with bodies in all sorts of positions. Some had been crossing the road, some were tangled up in bicycles that'd fallen over when the owner stopped pedaling, but all of them were unmistakably dead.

This had been the end of humanity; there had been no warning, no grand announcement of an impending alien invasion or even a chance to be afraid.

Sources differed on who and how it had happened, but the other Hackers out there all seemed to agree on the fundamentals: a technologically advanced civilization let loose some kind of machine plague that got into the brains of every living creature on earth, copied its functionality and layout wholesale and uploaded it to an unknown system for an unknown reason.

Simple as that; no big battle, no catastrophic invasion. They copied the minds of every living creature on the planet and all at once shut everything and everyone off like a fucking light switch. Copy, paste and power off. All that was left of earth was a planet of corpses grinning at one another forever.

The thoughts ran into one another as The Traveler stared out over the horizon line. There was nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be afraid of any more. There was just the quiet melancholy of knowing and the endless question mark that'd punctuated the sentence that was once the human race.

Why?

The Traveler flopped back, staring at the endless sky. Even knowing it was all zeros and ones, there was still a sense of awe about the complexity all around: awe at the clouds made of water droplets which turned to snow, and the snow that hardened and carried sediment to congeal into rock formations and mountains. . .

The awe that the Traveler could consider these notions at all. Briefly they longed for the desk job and the stupid cubical farm that had been a memory at some point. Even knowing it was all simulated, that it was all fake, the thoroughness of the entire simulation made the Traveler long for the familiar. They wanted answers, they wanted to be part of a system which made sense again. But there were no answers. Not in the cube farm nor at the top of the world.

So instead the Traveler willed themselves to a familiar diner in Ohio, not far from a highway south of the Ohio State Reformatory. One of the Traveler's favorite movies had been filmed there and the memory of the diner came so fast as to be automatic- though they couldn't remember why.

There were people in the booths, at the counter, a waitress scuttling back and forth serving coffee to people running through the motions of living their lives. It was Friday, wasn't it? Maybe they were factory workers getting off shift or preparing for one. Whatever the case, no one noticed the Traveler popping into existence in the corner booth. It was just as well.

The Traveler's fingertips glided over the table, the memory of that long ago time swam by as an indistinct thing among millions of others. This place had been important for some reason. At some time.

Something electronic chirped melodically. The Traveler looked over and conjured from nothing the heft of a cell phone. A call on the screen showed a young black haired woman with blue eyes, gentle lines at the edge of a smiling mouth and a top hat tilted at an angle on her head. The Traveler considered the picture for a moment- that god awful hat she'd stolen from a thrift store. The one she wore to her prom and the one she was caught having a naked rodeo with her boyfriend while wearing. The Traveler scoffed silently and their thumb started to move across the screen. To accept the call from their daughter.

Did she even know what'd become of the Traveler? Did she want to? More importantly, in a world full of simulated people, who was real and how were they real in any meaningful sense? Flesh and blood- ones and zeros- where was that line even drawn? Was their daughter even sentient- or just a projection of, or hack of their desires?

The Traveler turned its hand downward, the phone scraped across their palm until it slapped down on the table, still ringing. It buzzed and chirped its futile cries and then went silent. The Traveler pondered the girl's face as they tried to remember what they looked like or how it felt to have hair- had it been long? There had been someone who loved their hair, but even that felt like an indistinct wish more than a memory. . . .how much of that had been inherited from their daughter? And better yet, which had come first? Her or them? Were they random variations on the same basic Function?

The Anastasia Function.

There was an idea. A Function that should've inherited from its parent Function, but actually just randomized some variables and produced two of the same 'person'. The Traveler scoffed again and ran their fingers over their featureless face and skull, easing the poncho's hood back.

A presence swept by the table. Not the waitress but someone else. A tall blonde woman in a beige jean jacket and thigh length plaid dress. Standing there. The Traveler tried aggressively to ignore her, willing themselves invisible against her. But she didn't leave. She didn't even seem to understand the rules the Traveler wrote into the diner.

In the next instant the blonde was sliding into the opposite seat. She wore her pink and red plaid like a monastic robe, all loose and comfortable under her coat. It suited her even if the way it strained against her cleavage made it seem a little too tight. Maybe that was the point, though.

She had a rich caramel tan, and gentle hands wrapped around a coffee cup. She tapped her cup until the Traveler tilted their head up to meet her gaze.

Her eyes suited her, a lustrous grey framed by high cheeks and a smile as warm as it was patient. She wore her hair in dreadlocks wrapped with a peach sherbert colored bandanna full of geometric patterns- all of it was worn in. All of it comfortable looking. She was at home in those clothes and the Traveler idly wondered how long it'd taken her to curate that look.

The woman's voice was like warm whiskey: hearty and distinct with just a hint of a southern twang. "Not often I find a Hacker out this way. Nobody pays attention to small towns any more, it's like they forgot about the little things."

Words wanted to come but the Traveler cut them off. The woman was a Hacker, she'd know it wasn't intentionally rude. A lot of Hackers put their thumbs together to show themselves in thought, so the Traveler did too.

A quick sip of coffee later the woman set her cup down and leaned forward until her cleavage was peeking over the top of her dress. "I'm Bri, what's your name?"

Name? Who cared?

Bri stuck out her hand to shake. She did, apparently. The Traveler took it and in a thought it had a mouth to speak from. "You welcome everyone, do you?"

"I get the feeling you don't," Bri chided lightly. "That's okay, I have the opposite problem where people always want me to shut up."

"Happen a lot?"

"Oh, sure. But the way I see it I got something to say and if you don't wanna hear it, well that's your problem now isn't it?" She sipped her coffee. Her gaze drifted to the phone longer than necessary. "Hey, but now I'm being rude. Do you like peach cobbler? Marty makes the best stuff this side of the Georgia Peach Festival."

The Traveler stared blankly at the woman for a moment- it was too late, Bri was up and flagging down the cook for a piece. At that point the Traveler could've left, probably should have, but Bri was interesting enough to stick around for. For a little bit anyway. She returned to the booth with a mischievous smile and set the plate down between them with a couple of forks. "Here, my treat."

"You know there's no point to this. We don't need to eat."

Bri defiantly slashed off a piece of cobbler with the blade of her fork and scooped up some ice cream to match. She smiled at the Traveler. "But what's the harm?"

"It's just a waste of time. . . .we live in a solipsistic world-"

"Ooh, big words." She took another bite. "Here I was thinking I'd have to break out the rose pedals and chocolates to get your tongue to do fancy things." Bri poked the air between them. "Refresh my memory on what your fancy word is?"

The Traveler felt their shoulders slump a little. This wasn't going to be worth anything. There was nothing to learn from this woman. Still, they indulged her for the sake of not wanting to appear rude: "Solipsism is. . . .I know I exist. You, I'm not sure about."

"Ahh, so the old 'I think therefore I am' bit. Got it." Bri took another bite. "So you think because we're post-biological that we can't even be sure we're still human?"

"What else would you call it?"

"Mmm, I've never found a word for it myself. Solipsism seems pretty lonely though, don't you think?"

The Traveler leaned forward and took their chin on their thumbs studying Bri. "Can you show me you exist?"

"Would you get yourself some peach cobbler?"

They stared.

"Yeah, didn't think about that did you?" Bri leaned forward herself with a cheeky grin. "Last I checked I don't have 'property of strangers' tattooed on my forehead- unless I do. Do I?"

The Traveler felt their foot tapping idly. Knee bouncing. An old habit when something perplexed them. But they couldn't understand why that was.

"So," Bri set her fork down and crossed her arms under her breasts. It was her turn to study the Traveler it seemed.

There were ways around it, though. Ways to short-circuit inane conversations and uncomfortable questions: "Why do you look like that?"

"It's how I've always looked. You might find it hard to believe, but some people are completely content with themselves- I mean, aside from the hair. The hair is so much work I could buy stock in an oil company."

Her smiles were easy and sincere, for some reason that prickled the Traveler's nerves. It wasn't bad exactly, but it was certainly unusual.

"But you don't have to look like that."

"I've done all the usual crap- man, woman, dog, cat. Did the microbe circuit until I got tired of being eaten up and shit out by other stuff. I mean we all try that at least once, right?"

"Y-. . . .you're not the only one, no."

Bri chuckled. "No Hacker I've met hasn't tried it at least once."

"I sometimes wonder how many stay that way so their world makes sense."

At those words Bri's features lit up. "Implying there's an 'I' in all this plastic, huh?" She tugged at the poncho. "It's true, I know a couple that went that way together. I like to think they're hanging out in my cat's gut biome. They always did like cats.

"Embrace your weird, I say. Who's going to tell anyone no at this point?" Bri sipped her coffee. "You asked me why I looked this way, maybe this is my weird, hm?"

"Do you sleep, too?"

"I love sleeping. And waking up to rain tapping on my roof or my asshole cat flopping down on my head at three in the morning? Hell yes, sign me up."

The Traveler found themselves contemplating the idea and the vague memories of going unconscious for hours at a time. The fitful starts, the groggy and slow feeling of just being. Sleep had never been a good friend, but for some reason the idea of it through Bri's eyes sounded interesting.

Bri sipped her coffee some more, patiently waiting out the questions that were probably visible in the Traveler's body language. Eventually she preempted the Traveler: "Why?"

"Why?"

"That's what you're going to ask me, isn't it?"

The Traveler's foot bounced some more. "I was. Eventually."

"Why not?" Bri asked gently.

"You don't have to, though. It's wasted time. Why do that when there's an entire world out there?"

Bri plumped out her cheek, then chuckled. "Why should I be concerned? The world isn't going anywhere any time soon."

"You don't know that. We could be turned off or reset at any moment-"

"You or I could, sure. But isn't that it's own answer? A Zen Buddhist would say that clinging to a rock in a strong current is its own kind of torture. Why not throw in on the river's flow and see where you wind up?"

The Traveler scoffed. "We're dead! Whatever aliens decided our planet was going to be purged didn't even ask us if we'd like to be run in resident memory. Doesn't that piss you off? Don't you care?"

For some reason Bri smiled at that, she looked smug in her conviction as though something fundamental had just been proven to her. "See, that's the response I would've had twenty years ago. . . .why shouldn't I be upset at the state of things? Don't I deserve to be angry that my life isn't necessarily my own?"

"You can pretend it is," The Traveler said lightly.

Bri sipped her coffee. "What a pleasant fantasy it is, too-" she paused, set her cup down and met the Traveler's gaze with an uncanny accuracy. "-but here's where the fantasy and reality collide. Here, in this moment. With a stranger across the table."

"I don't follow."

"You don't speak much either, but I get the feeling you want to." She poked the air between them teasingly. "The fantasy says we're just simulated minds, the echos of long dead meat puppets, right?"

The Traveler clasped their hands, gaze drifting away. It sounded profane when it was put like that but there was no arguing the truth of it; what the hell was the point to any of it if everything that they were was down to some strings of code in some global array somewhere?

"So take that idea, hold on to it. Does it change anything fundamental about how you live?"

"It's changed everything. . ."

Bri wrapped her hands around her cup once more. "What was your life before you realized? Do you remember?"

"I. . ." The Traveler slumped back, foot bouncing. "Parts of it. I don't know how much was real or not."

"Don't you think that you can remember and that you ask those questions is meaningful? If you think about it, a simulation could be paused and those ideas could be removed from your, uh. . . .programming or whatever, right? Your ability to question yourself says to me that we're about as autonomous as we ever were."

The Traveler mulled it over for several beats. "But we're still dead."

"Only in the most abstract way possible." Bri leaned forward, peering up through her wispy bangs. "Wanna know a secret? The universe doesn't give a single half of a fuck about what we think- how we did or do, or any of that."

"Obviously-"

"So why do you force yourself to suffer with that burden, hm? Surprise, there was no grand plan, no universal consciousness that sparked to life and killed us. Our flesh died a long time ago, and there was no beauty or dignity in it back then. . ."

The Traveler frowned, irritation roiled into a quiet seething anger that bubbled to the surface as all those little things that'd crossed their mind were given words. The uncomfortable weight of knowing crushed down on whatever served as their soul.

But Bri wasn't finished. She set her cup aside and reached over, swaddling the Traveler's hand in her own. She traced her thumbs over the clasped digits, turned the hand one way and the other to explore it and in so doing showed off her own.

"Do you feel me?" Bri whispered.

"Yes. . ."

She intertwined her fingers through the Traveler's. "Before I became a Hacker I was a drifter- a nobody with nothing to my name and no future in sight. When I tell you I was angry and bored and fed up with everything, that is where I was at.

"When I was diagnosed with cancer, I actually laughed at the doctor. Yeah, right to his face; I was so ready to check out that it didn't matter to me any more. I hadn't figured out a way to do it myself, so that felt like an answered prayer.

"I said I didn't care, and I meant it. But the nurse did- she sat with me for hours. She bought me lunch and just sat there with me. She didn't try to bring me to god or sell me some miracle drug, she just sat there with me and waited until I was ready to talk." Bri kissed the back of the Traveler's hand. "Nobody should suffer alone, she said. She even convinced me to come back to talk about treatment options."