In The Simulation

In The Simulation (12th of November, 2013)

18 cm x 22 cm, watercolors, A. Šiber 2013.

When he put on the helmet, it appeared to Max that it didn't work because he heard a quiet humming and his eyes were receiving the signal of a uniform gray interrupted by flashing. But, as he got used to it, he could recognize a word or two from the humming, and with time sentences also. Many voices that spoke in the same time were problematic, but Max notices that one of them was always noticeably the strongest. This voice represented the most powerful idea, and one could always single it out on the background of other ideas. The speakers of the strongest idea were changing, but The Simulation breathed and hummed according to the rhythm of the idea that was the strongest in the particular moment. What was determining the strength of the idea was not entirely clear to Max, but he learned to follow it, in the same way as the rest of The Simulation did.

- We never belonged to that specie.

- You are exaggerating. You are exaggerating.

- The part of the genetic code that meant nothing to them, importantly determined us. That, according to them completely useless extravagance of nature made us different from them.

- This is racism. This is racism.

- And although we could have been like them, in the same way they could have been like us, our paths started separating long ago.

- Perhaps fifty thousand years ago, perhaps even earlier, it is difficult to say.

- It is difficult to say as it was not written down, but ever since we have been writing down, our culture is different from theirs and our legends are to them completely incomprehensible. Although they understand each word, they do not understand the worldview encoded in them. We have been speaking in different languages for a long time.

- Perhaps for fifty thousand years, perhaps even longer, it is difficult to say because it was not written down.

- This is a useless poetry. What is its purpose?

- And now, when we no longer depend on chemistry of carbon and nitrogen, and when the small part of our different chemistry was finally legalized in the optical representation of that by which we are, now we do not, not even formally, belong to people. We are what they could have been. We are only one of the powerful possibilities to bridge the human, but even such, we have the right to strengthen our bridge.

- It is a question of survival, struggle to live, and taking control from some idiot in front of the console.

- Is it not some sort of treason? To leave them here. After all we took from their specie.

- And what did we take? And is The Simulation not the sanctuary we built ourselves? Is not its Maker here among us?

Antonio Šiber, 2011.