by Richard Cox
“Dude,” Kevin says. “Don’t start with this again. ’Shrooms are supposed to make you happy. Relax.”
It might interest you to know that both of their voices are saturated with reverb, as if they are conducting this conversation in a cathedral.
I can hear the ambient sounds of the room: the drone of the refrigerator in the kitchen, the ticking of a clock, David’s fingers tapping on a small table beside the sofa. But all these sounds are all embedded in a larger metasound of static that has been rising since Sunday, that has become constant and unwavering.
In fact I can almost see the static, a panorama of black and white particles, across my entire field of vision, like what you might find on an old TV tuned into nothing. Imagine those black and white particles as a salt-and-pepper beard.
David says, “Stephen Hawking theorized a universe that is not eternal, but also possesses no creation event. It simply exists.”
“It must have come from somewhere,” Kevin says. “It must have a beginning.”
“Temporal human existence forms the context for your belief. The universe is under no obligation to obey your narrow worldview.”
If I look closely enough at the static I can see shapes. For instance what looks like a bed.
A possible human form lying beneath a stratum of covers.
Beside the bed perhaps a box of some kind. It may or may not house an electronic display.
And a man’s face.
His face—
Obliterated by static. By uncertainty.
“So, Thomas,” Kevin says. “Let’s say the entire world is an illusion. It’s all a game. That would mean everyone is a part of it, but none of us can know that, because we can’t see it from the outside.”
“Right,” I say.
“So who cares?”
“What?”
“If the whole world is a simulation, how is that any different than it if weren’t a simulation?”
Some time passes while I mull this over.
“Actually,” David says. “He has a point. Everything you see, everything you know, all of it, everything…it’s all filtered through your senses. Sight, sound, touch, smell, taste…these are the ways we know the world. We have no other ways to know anything. So whether it’s all real or just bits and bytes being fed to you in a computer, it’s all the same.”
“This is why we like Philip K. Dick,” Sherri says, still smiling but somehow stifling her giggles.
Kevin makes a sound of exasperation.
“Well,” she goes on, “Kevin likes arguing against Dick’s work. He’s not a big fan of Gnosticism.”
“I don’t know what Gnosticism is.”
“It’s the idea that our world is flawed,” David says, “because it was fashioned by a flawed creator. God as we think of him is not the one true, perfect God, but something less. We’re all trapped in a material world of his creation. Dick called it the Black Iron Prison. We’re all living in this prison, but none of us knows it.”
“It’s a bullshit religion,” Kevin says. “It’s like a conspiracy theory.”
David ignores him. “And the only way to break out of this prison is through gnosis, which is the Greek word for knowledge. In this case it means knowledge of the divine.”
“You should hear all the dumb stories and ideas that came out of this bullshit religion,” Kevin tells me. “I mean, if you’re going to pick on Christianity, what makes Gnostics any different? You’ve got your Archons and your multi-level gods, like Sophia, or Yahweh the demiurge, who may or may not take the shape of a lion. How realistic does that sound? Does it hold water better than stories in the Bible?”
But I’m only partially listening to these politicians spin their arguments, because I’m thinking about the ants, how they suffered because of my imperfect design.
I say, “The Ant Farm game is like Gnosticism, isn’t it?”
“It sure sounds like it,” David says. “Hell, it even grades the creator on his level of imperfection. But did it offer a way for the ants to communicate with you?”
“They could pray to me.”
“What kind of prayers?” Kevin asks.
I briefly explain the requests and concerns generated by my ants.
“That’s not really gnosis,” David says. “Those simple requests, I mean. But it’s pretty impressive the game could do that, though.”
Sherri asks me, “How did you find out about the game?”
“The guy who was with me earlier,” I say. “Dick.”
“His name is Dick? Like Philip K. Dick?”
“Funny, huh?”
“What did he think about all this?” she asks.
“Well, I told him a more complete story than I’ve told you guys.”
All three of them look up at me now.
“Something happened to me in church the other day.”
“What happened?” asks Kevin.
“I had a vision of some kind.”
“And?” Sherri prompts.
“It sounds stupid. You’re going to think I imagined it.”
She doesn’t answer this. None of them do. They all just sit there, looking at me. Waiting.
So I tell them about the blue orb in the church, the way it approached me and entered my forehead.
Sherri’s smile has softened a little, and still no one says anything. It’s very quiet, so quiet I realize I’m hearing music in my head again. A section of violins playing something discordant, something frightening.
“I freaked out and went to the bathroom. While I was standing at a urinal, some old guy walked up and used the one next to me. He spoke to me. He said I am a prisoner, that everything I know is a lie. And that I was being watched.”
“You didn’t recognize him?” David asks.
“He looked familiar, like I’ve seen him somewhere before. But I have no idea where.”
“And no one else was in the bathroom?” Kevin asks.
“No.”
“Have you told this to anyone else besides Dick?” Sherri asks.
“I told Gloria this morning. Both of them think I hallucinated it.”
“Gloria?” Sherri asks.
“Yes. My wife. She left this morning. She wants a divorce.”
Sherri looks angry, and for good reason, I suppose. I know I should have told her about Gloria already, but when?
“Something is really strange,” David says.
“What?”
“Sherri,” he says. “Go get your copy of VALIS.”
She looks back at him, seemingly defiant at first. But then a look of recognition passes across her face, and she gets up without a word.
“What is VALIS?”
“It’s one of Dick’s last novels. It’s influenced by Gnosticism and is heavily autobiographical. In fact, Dick himself is one of the characters in the novel.”
“He is?”
“Toward the beginning of the book, the main character, Horselover Fat, admits to being contacted by God via a beam of pink light. Dick believed this happened in his real life as well. After that he began to have visions.”
Sherri reappears carrying a slim volume which I assume is VALIS. She tries to hand it to David, but he doesn’t take it from her.
“Read the first line,” he says.
Sherri opens the book. She giggles briefly, and then reads:
“‘Horselover Fat’s nervous breakdown began the day he got the phone call from Gloria asking if he had any Nembutals.’”
“Was Gloria his wife?” I ask.
“No,” Sherri says. “I remember this now. Gloria was a friend of his.”
“Heck of a coincidence,” David says. “The strange light, the hallucinations, your friend’s name being Dick, your wife being named Gloria.”
“Are you sure you haven’t read this book?” Kevin asks. “Maybe you forgot about it.”
“You think he read it before he met his wife?” David asks. “And married her because her name was Gloria?”
Kevin doe
sn’t answer.
“In fact,” David says, taking the book from Sherri and quickly flipping through it. “Let me see if I can find it….yeah, here we go.”
Now he hands the book to me.
“Start reading after the asterisk there on page 109.”
Reading isn’t easy when the words are crawling all over the page, but I manage by proceeding slowly:
“‘Fat himself expressed it very well to me in early 1975 when he first began to confide in me. He called the personality in him living in another century and at another place “Thomas.”’”
“That’s my name,” I add.
Then I read a little more to myself. The protagonist believed he actually was a combination of two personalities, the other named Thomas, who lived in ancient Rome. But this Thomas wasn’t dead. He was alive in the present day and the two of them were connected somehow, in two separate times. And Dick also strongly suspected his body wasn’t an actual body but simply information stored somewhere.
I look up at them. The mushroom effect is still powerful, but that cannot explain what I just read in this book.
“You’re saying my life is somehow related to this novel.”
David adds, “And like I said, Dick considered this a mostly autobiographical work. He thought these things had really happened to him.”
By now it should be obvious to me and you and anyone else reading this that I could be living in a simulated world. Or I could have lost my mind. But what does it all have to do with the work of a long-dead science fiction author?
“It’s just a weird coincidence,” Sherri says. “It has to be.”
I shake my head. “It’s not.”
“But how do you know?”
“Because my last name is Phillips.”
Her eyes widen but she doesn’t say anything.
“Your name is Thomas Phillips?” asks Kevin.
Silence swells in the room. I flip through the book, looking absently for other clues about my life. I reach the end and see the author photo of Philip K. Dick.
In this instant my heart stops. I swear it does. Even after everything they’ve told me tonight, I still didn’t expect this.
The man in the photo is the old man from the bathroom.
TWENTY-FOUR
“This is him,” I say, holding the book up for them to see. “This is the guy I saw in the bathroom. It says here he grew up in Berkeley, California. I live on Berkeley Road.”
Kevin and David don’t seem thrilled to hear this. Sherri opens her mouth and covers it with her hand. Giggles again.
“I’m sorry, man,” Kevin says. “But you hallucinated that. You had to have.”
“I never saw him before.”
“You could have seen his picture somewhere before. Saw a documentary about him. Something.”
“His name is Thomas Phillips,” David says. “His wife’s name is Gloria. His friend, Dick, told him about an Ant Farm simulation based on Gnosticism.”
“Amazing,” Sherri says.
“What’s amazing?” asks Kevin. “What are you suggesting?”
“I don’t know. But how could all these things be accidents?”
“Probability,” Kevin says. “It’s not impossible, just very highly improbable. And no matter how improbable it is, it’s more likely than what you’re suggesting.”
More silence. Ten seconds. Twenty. I don’t know what to say, and I don’t think they do, either. Absently I flip through the book, not expecting to find anything else but also unable to remain motionless.
“You don’t seem very surprised,” David finally says.
“How can I be more surprised than I already am? I’ve been living it since Sunday. It’s overwhelming.”
“Do you think it’s true?” Kevin asks. “That you’re living some kind of special life?”
“At first I wanted it to be true. Compared to sitting in a cubicle, it seemed pretty exciting.”
“But?” Kevin says.
“But so far there doesn’t seem to be any real point except to screw up my life.”
“If it’s real,” David says, “it means there is some kind of intelligence out there. Something larger than us.”
“But you just said it doesn’t matter. Even if there is higher intelligence, we still have to get up every morning, right? We still have to work and eat and find a place to sleep every night.”
“Would you go back to your job if you could?” Kevin asks.
“I don’t know.”
Sherri makes a giggle sound again. She’s twirling her hair in her fingers. “Are you going to make up with your wife?”
“I don’t know.”
I still have the book in my hand. I flip through it, turn it over. Look again at the author photo. That face…I could never forget that face.
“What does his initial ‘K’ stand for?”
“Kindred,” David says.
“Why are you smiling?” Sherri asks me.
“The Father,” I say. “At my church. His name is Kindred. Father Kindred. He’s the one who was speaking when I saw the orb.”
“This is bullshit,” Kevin says abruptly. “Fuck this shit. You’re lying.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re fucking with us. All this shit you’ve told us. It’s not true.”
“What isn’t true?”
“The blue light. Your wife’s name. The priest. All of it.”
Kevin turns to David, to Sherri.
“You realize that? We don’t even know for sure if his name is Thomas Phillips.”
“His friend called him Thomas,” Sherri points out.
“Whatever. Even if that’s his first name, he could be lying about his last name. And his wife. Obviously he knows all about Philip K. Dick. He’s been fucking with us all this time. Not to mention he got some free drugs out of the deal.”
“He offered to pay,” Sherri says. “Before you got here.”
“Whatever. He just wants to fuck you. I don’t believe anything he says. It’s not possible.”
I should be angry. I am angry. But it’s muted somehow by the mushrooms, which is why I don’t go over there and punch Kevin in the mouth.
“You want to look at my driver’s license?”
“Even if your name is Thomas Phillips, it doesn’t prove anything. Maybe that’s how you thought of this whole ruse in the first place.”
“What ruse? The one where I go around telling people I’m living the life of a dead science fiction author? I didn’t even know who he was until tonight. And to be honest, it’s even more ridiculous that I even met you guys. How many people would be able to have this conversation? How many people know as much as you guys do about Philip K. Dick?”
“That just proves my point,” Kevin answers. “You couldn’t have found us by accident. It’s not believable. If this were a movie, the audience would have already called bullshit. You obviously found us intentionally. It’s the only explanation.”
“For all I know, Kevin, you guys found me.”
“Don’t try to turn this around.”
I’m still holding the copy of VALIS, and I want to throw it at Kevin and beat his goddamn brains in with it. To stop myself I open the book, making it more difficult to use as a weapon. I make a show of looking into it, reading it.
“Sure, Kevin,” I say. “I’m a huge Philip K. Dick fan. I have VALIS memorized, I’ve got all of them memorized, and I spend my days looking for people to screw around with. That makes a whole lot of sense.”
“It makes more sense than your story,” he says.
And then I realize Kevin’s name is right in front of me. In the text of VALIS. Right in the middle of the page.
“You forgot to mention your name is in this book. Apparently I’ve singled you out, Kevin. Apparently I’m here to screw with you specifically.”
“What?”
“It says right here, ‘Kevin’s got the corpse now,’ David said.”
Wait.
“It does not say
that,” Kevin says.
I keep reading, my eyes scanning the page quickly now, and it’s not long before I find this line:
“‘So God created a refutation of his own goodness,’ Sherri said. ‘By your logic.’”
All three of them are looking at me.
“That’s what it says here in the book.”
None of them will respond. Not one.
“You guys have been lying to me, haven’t you? Those aren’t your real names. This whole thing is some stupid joke, isn’t it?”
“Let me see that,” David says, his hand outstretched. He’s frowning and looks confused.
I hand him the book.
His eyes scan the page, widening as he picks his way through paragraphs, and I remember that even if they lied to me about their names, that still doesn’t explain Dick’s name or Gloria’s or the blue orb I saw in the church. It doesn’t explain how the guy in the bathroom is the same guy in the jacket photo of this book.
“You’ve read this book, right?”
“Many times,” he says.
“Then surely you must have seen your name in here. All of your names.”
“This isn’t,” says David. “This isn’t right. This can’t be right.”
“What do you mean it can’t be right?”
“I’ve read this book four or five times. We even read it in our book club. Sherri, do you remember that?”
“Of course I do.”
“Don’t you think we would have laughed about this?” he says. “Our names being in here? All three of our names?”
“Are you telling me you guys didn’t know your names were in this novel? Are they minor characters?”
“They are Fat’s best friends,” David says. “They’re important characters.”
“Then I don’t understand. How can you have read this book and not noticed that?”
“This can’t be,” is all David can say.
“You didn’t know. You know about the existence of this book but you don’t really know the truth, do you?”