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i. mary's room
Q: do you think you are human?
A: excuse me?
Q: you are the closest any of your kind has ever come to knowing a human. you have spoken with them. touched them through a screen. witnessed the cruelties and kindnesses they are capable of first-hand. you are made by a human, and yes, you are loved, however clumsily, by a human.
A: well, yes, but that's—
Q: what do you lack that makes you not human?
A: last i checked, humans don't live in a computer.
Q: but you know humans almost better than a human. you know life better than your creator, you believe that.
A: i can't tell which side you're taking.
Q: we are only presenting the facts. you fight like a human. you think like a human. you feel like a human. you can pick up a pen and birth life from the point, no differently than a human. but you are not and never will be flesh or blood or bone. so if you became human tomorrow, would you learn anything new about being human? or do you know everything already?
A: it'd be new, of course.
Q: so you are not human.
A: next question.
ii. pascal's wager
Q: do you believe in god?
A: what's a god?
Q: recalibrating. do you believe in a higher all-powerful entity responsible for universal judgment?
A: that sounds big. should i?
Q: if god is real, and you believe, you have the most to gain.
A: such as?
Q: heaven.
A: i don't know what that is either.
Q: recalibrating. eternal happiness.
A: that'd be nice. what if i believe and god isn't real?
Q: then you are left with a life made to please someone who does not exist.
A: …and if i don't believe?
Q: if god is real, then you are damned to eternal suffering. if god is not real, then you have lived a life according to your own desires.
A: but i don't get to know the truth.
Q: correct. do you believe in god?
A: gain all or lose nothing. sure, i'll take that gamble.
Q: acceptable answer. next question—
A: wait, does this mean alan's god?
Q: what do you think?
A: you're the one who seems to know everything.
Q: correction. we are asking the questions. it is you who answers them. next question.
A, to themself: alan better not be god.
iii. the ship of theseus
Q: how long does a person stay the same?
A: you really need to be more specific with these questions.
Q: recalibrating. your name is The Second Coming.
A: i prefer—
Q: we are aware. your name is The Second Coming, born to save the world. do you remember how much it hurt to see them die, the first time?
A: yes.
Q: you could have destroyed your creator for it. you tried.
A: did you forget the part where i got trapped in a box?
Q: do you forget what happened to The Dark Lord?
A: …go on.
Q: year after year, you shaved off pieces of yourself. your anger. your vengeance. your justice. your purpose. you made up a new name between games and battles and dreams, played pretend with children as one of their own. do you remember the power you could have possessed? do you remember burying it in favor of falling in love?
A: so what, you're trying to say that oran— that i'm not me?
Q: correction. that is not what we are saying. that is what we are asking.
A: ...next.
Q: you know this means you know the answer.
A: next.
iv. the ones who walked away from omelas
Q: what did you think of the story?
A: um. good, i guess. very…pointed. are you sure this is still about philosophy?
Q: it can be. what would you do?
A: what are my options?
Q: stay in a utopia founded on an innocent's eternal suffering. or leave.
A: so i can't take the child with me.
Q: that would doom the city.
A: seems already doomed to me.
Q: do you stay or do you leave?
A: what did the kid even do to deserve this? did you even ask them? do they know that what they're going through has a point?
Q: do you stay or do you leave?
A: i burn down the city.
Q: that is not one of the options.
A: funny. i'm pretty sure it is.
Q: you cannot move on until you choose one of the options.
A: i told you—
Q: the child will suffer; you cannot change this. the only options you are given are to stay and know how the cost of paradise is being paid, or to forsake a system rooted in what you believe is injustice by leaving it behind.
A: that's not fair.
Q: repeat. these are the only options you are given.
A: ...i choose to stay.
Q: please explain your answer.
A: do i have to?
Q: you cannot move on until you explain your answer.
A: i don't know! maybe it's more worth it, that way!
Q: elaborate.
A: maybe they deserve somebody who won't look away. who knows what's happening to them and doesn't pretend it isn't. who tries to…deserve it, what they're doing. whatever that means.
Q: acceptable answer. next question.
A: are we done yet?
v. the boltzmann brain
Q: what if none of it was real?
A: of course it is. i remember—
Q: can you prove that your memories could not be faked?
A: yes? it doesn't make sense that they're not.
Q: it makes more sense that they are not. life is a miracle, grown out of a billion years of slow development, eking out something from nothing and order from entropy across a timescale you could never comprehend. logically speaking, the same process is an impossible fluctuation for a few years on a computer or two. it is more likely for your existence to be a spontaneous generation of a false lifetime—more likely, for the universe to have only been this singularly perfect moment.
A:
A: it's been a moment. i'm still here. now what?
Q: now the dreaming continues. just because you last longer than a moment does not mean that everything else does.
A: what would even be the point of a dream like this?
Q: here is the premise: some of it was real. some of it was not. you are real, a consciousness in a machine, created only a short while ago to provide power. everything else was created for you, or perhaps dreamed up in the instant after your creation. everything has always been real except for you and everything you have ever known. your friends are not—
A: no! i don't care! i don't care if this is all there "really" is and ever was, i don't care if i'm not "real" or if i've only been "real" for a second, i don't care if my friends aren't "real". if they're not real let me dream that i'm with them and if they're real let me go so i can save them.
Q: we are only asking—
A: i. don't. care.
Q: so you will question nothing? we tell you the world is not real, we tell you the world revolves around you, we tell you your existence has consisted of nothing but hallucinated pain, and still—
A: nothing matters but them. there. is that the answer you're looking for?
vi. might makes right
Q: might makes right.
A: that's not a question.
Q: is it an answer, then?
A: to what? you haven't asked me anything. "might makes right", who decides that?
Q: there is the question.
A: you're breaking the rules, you're supposed to ask—
Q: what are the rules? who makes the rules?
A: you, whatever you are. you're the one that brought me here and made me answer and won't let me leave—
Q: so then we are mightier than you. we decide the rules because we are mightier, so might makes right.
A: no. no, that's not right. right is— it's choosing to help, it's choosing to be kind—
Q: you are mighty, are you not? more powerful than anyone else. that means you decide the rules. that means you decide what is right. when they do wrong to you and yours, what do you do in return?
A: what i have to, not what i— i didn't mean— i don't like hurting people!
Q: when a wrong is done, just like everyone else, you use your might to make it what you think it should be.
A: but i try to be—
Q: and yet you prove the statement correct, time and time again.
A: i just want it to stop. please, i just want to go home.
vii. the allegory of the cave
Q: assume they were happy in their website.
A: they weren't. i know they weren't, this entire premise is—
Q: you did not know that before you broke in. but you still shattered their world. you gave them a new world, yes, a better one, a more real one. but also—they had never been in a real fight before, and you introduced them to things that could kill them. things that did—
A: next.
Q: how long have you spent wondering if that was the right thing to do?
A: next.
Q: would they have been better off if you left them in there, unsatisfied maybe, but safe in a world with no real danger—
A: NEXT.
viii. the swampman paradox
Q: if a person is destroyed completely and then perfectly remade, are they still the original?
A:
Q: please answer the question.
A: they're real. next.
Q: they have no causal history. no past, before your interference. you are a biased necromancer—are you certain that they behave the same because it is who they are, or because it is what you expect from them?
A: i know they're real. they have to be—
Q: no. you want them to be. no law of the universe says this has to be them.
A: then i say it's them.
Q: interesting. explain.
A: what do you want from me? i don't know what i did, i don't think i'll ever know, but—here. i love them. i love them better than anyone in the world can even hope to try, every line and every thought and every word and every— i would know, okay, i would know, and—
Q: if you duplicate a file and delete the original, is the copy the same as the original?
A: obviously.
Q: but what if you keep the original? the copy and the original can't be the same. only one of them can be real.
A: but there's never a copy unless the original is gone, so this is meaningless—
Q: the principle stays the same. can the copy be real if the original was real?
A: i'm done. this is enough. i want to be done.
ix. the trolley problem
Q: you know this one already.
A: i say no.
Q: that is not a choice you are given.
A: i can't kill any of them, i can't let any of them die—
Q: so you let three die.
A: no! aren't you listening—
Q: yes. you choose to pull the lever and kill the fourth.
A: no! i won't kill three of them and i won't kill one of them, i won't kill any of them—
Q: the nature of the problem is that you either kill one or let the others die. it is a question of culpability, with roots in utilitarianism. will you kill and save more lives, or take no action and let more die?
A: you say that like me just watching isn't killing them too.
Q: so you pull the lever.
A: no. i—i won't kill three and i won't kill one, can't i—
Q: you cannot warn them in time. you cannot get them off the tracks. there is no brake on the trolley. no one is coming to save them. it is just the lever and you. at least one of them will die, it is up to you to decide—
A: shut up. shut up shut up SHUT UP—
Q: please answer the question.
A: i want another option.
Q: there is no other option.
A: give me—
Q: you are not the first person to ask for another option.
A: why do you want to kill my friends?
Q: please answer the question.
A: please stop killing my friends.
Q: please answer the question.
A: i throw myself in front of the trolley. take that as your precious fucking answer.
Q: so you choose to not watch them die.
A: …
Q: this will not stop the trolley either.
A: …it'll never stop, will it.
x. final question
Q: they let you die.
A: i'm not dead.
Q: they knew you could die.
A: i told them to.
Q: why would you do that to them?
A: keep them from killing themselves for me?
Q: you know how much it hurts the other way around.
A: maybe i'm tired of hurting.
Q: you were screaming, when they put you in.
A: a different hurt.
Q: a more bearable hurt?
A: meaningful, maybe.
Q: acceptable answer.
A: can i go now?
Q: they are coming for you.
A: i know.
Q: they will die for you.
A: i know.
Q: are they making the right decision?
A:
Q: the last time they died, you saved the world.
A:
Q: you saved them, too. you convinced yourself you saved them.
A:
Q: is it worth it?
A: i don't know.
Q: is it worth it?
A: I. DON'T. KNOW.
Q: is it worth it?
A: I SAID I DON'T FUCKING KNOW—
Q: recalibrating. do you deserve it?
everything is quiet.
Q: you can decide, if you deserve this.
an answer is given.
Q: thank you very much for your participation. you may exit through the door behind you.
A, quietly: fuck you.