What Happens After Everything Ends?

[Music] at 5 45 a.m a woman named maya wakes up in a new unfamiliar city today is her first day at a new job after having recently moved at 7 20 a.m she waits at the train station nearest her apartment at 5 28 pm she will take the same train again home this first morning she gets on the last car at the back of the train every day at 5 34 pm a man named reeve takes the same train to work for his night shift then again at 7 25 am he takes it home reeve

always rides in the last train car preferring the back for reasons he's never really thought about today like every other day he sits in the back left section of the left corner today unlike any other day maya enters the train for the first time and sits just a couple seats away in the same section as she does reeve notices her and then quickly looks down to his phone pretending that he hasn't almost simultaneously just missing eye contact maya notices reeve as well also quickly looking the other way both sit quietly on opposite corners of the

same section of the same car of the same train as they glide through a city of millions of other things and people both thinking only about the other at this exact same moment in time on her way home from work maya gets on the rear train car again and sits in the same relative section several stops later like he always does reeve does the same as he rounds the corner of the train's doorway and moves down the aisle he meets eyes with maya in unison a small subtle lip smile automatically forms on each of their

faces immediately followed by a downward break of eye contact in this moment through some weird shared connection affirmed by a soft contortion of the face an inexplicable sense of almost fate fills each of their heads barred off by nerves and the quirks of interaction though neither wanting to bother the other and both fearing the strangeness of rejection and failed attempts they sit quietly secluded each screaming in their heads imagining notions of romance and lust and futures that hurt a little less as more days go by maya continues to get on the same train car on

which continues to sit reeve each day seems to almost exclusively contain their brief exchange of smiles and nods the days blurring together only made truly lucid and worthwhile in these introverted yet potent acknowledgments of each other eventually somewhere around the second or third week of sharing the same train schedule a certain unusual confidence overtakes reeve on his way to work this day getting on the 5 30 pm train following maya he notices an open seat next to her for the first time he takes it after a brief pause and a hidden explosion of nerves and

self-doubt and an act of benign but heroic courage he turns towards her hi i'm reeve reeve meant to say but actually said something that sounded more like hi reeve as a result of a small nervous tick inflection of his voice maya also nervous says wait who's reef despite sort of realizing in real time that reeve had mumbled what he meant to say i'm reeve reeve replies with a nervous laugh unsure if maya is joking or not oh hi my name i'm i'm maya maya responds also with a sort of nervous laugh and stammer of her

words this shared inability to speak successfully somehow makes both a little more comfortable with each other the hello quickly turns into a conversation about this and that where they're going each day where they're coming from and what they would prefer those destinations were if it were up to them the conversation turns into more conversations across more days the two always sitting or standing next to each other more conversations turn into a series of dates dates turn into a relationship a relationship into love a love neither have ever experienced before a sort of love that horrible

unrealistic stories and movies peddle to deny the dog from hell that it otherwise normally is the two fight and complain and clash over all the usual topics and hitches of relationships but the love seems to pervade through it all the desire to find solace in the confusion of being and non-being to fill in the missing parts of self and purpose to alleviate the strangeness and anxiety of existing in the unknown they have woken up to all sustain the love even at the relationship's worst the world feels worthwhile in the clutch of it as far as

one can be maya feels for the first time in recent memory like she is okay on one night reeve takes maya wakes up disoriented and almost scared the feeling quickly goes away though as she gets up gets ready and leaves for work on her drive she can't help but think about the dream she had last night and how it almost feels like an actual memory of another life her concerns of the oncoming day quickly overtake and replace her thinking though dissolving the dream setting and characters into some oblivion that will never be known nor experienced

nor remembered by anyone including her again maya works as an architectural designer one for a mid to large size design firm she has recently started working at a new firm after having left another her main goal in life has and remains to become an architectural project manager developing and controlling the design plans of buildings and city features from the ground up for all intents and purposes she is passionately obsessed she has given up relationships and left loves unfounded she has moved three times she has sacrificed a great deal for it but she can't imagine a

life in which she would be doing anything else her work is her way of escaping the uncertainty of everything else the clarity and purpose and self-control she finds in it seems to make the chaos and confusion of the world and her inexplicable place within it worthwhile today she is pitching several new concepts for seating integrations to potentially be applied to a large restaurant redesign that the firm is working on after nerves and stress and an almost blacking out of awareness the pitch seems to go perfectly her designs are brought onto the project as more time

seems to go by more and more of maya's work is utilized and developed into project plans she is soon promoted to architectural designer 2 the next higher rank-up at the firm not long after she is promoted to designer three eventually after a long stretch of time that seems like almost no time at all she is promoted to project manager her teenage dream now finally a reality as far as one can maya feels okay like it has all been worth it her first two projects are a great success both well received by the clients and highly

regarded by the firm and local industry at large her concepts are a perfect balance of being both simple yet innovative subtle but effective her third project is off to a great start as well on track to be equally successful on one of the build days maya visits the construction site to ensure that everything is in order everything is off to a great start and the day is like any and every other day then for no explainable reason the partly constructed building suddenly collapses in on itself the surface almost peeling back into a collection of rubble

and the rubble seeming to almost disappear or dissolve into the ground in a way that should be impossible sudden disorientation and horror overtake maya terrified that she has made a horrible mistake then in nearly the same instant the other surrounding buildings and homes within her view seem to also simultaneously fall in a similar manner peeling away from themselves and then dissolving into the ground maya begins to black out in a disorientation as she hazily looks around and notices the other workers panicking and frozen one by one they all appear to peel off themselves and dissolve

the ground appears to begin the same maya now in a physically active panic quickly tries a man named david reflects to himself briefly as the software exits out the project file clears and the experiment resets he and two other researchers discuss the experiment's results in a dark lab room in front of them a large 180 degree multi-screen monitor connected to a state-of-the-art supercomputer finishes its reset and spews out a collection of data results it's the second trial of the day and the sixth of the week the results have remained inconsistent with the intended hypothesis yet

again rendering the experiment mostly useless david his two partners and a full team of assistants are researching consciousness through a new highly controversial mind modeling software which maps and replicates the functions of a brain in which certain codes and commands can be executed that simulate the electrical activity of biological brain neurons reproducing any mental and perceptual state this then allows the software to interact back and forth with an artificially created exterior world forming a hyper real comprehensive imitation of human experience and ordinary conscious phenomena specifically in this experiment david uses the software to set up

a character entity with baseline genetic dispositions false memories and influences of a childhood and adult life effects from altered states like dreams and so on the character is then sent through a variety of scenes and moments of decision making and performance assessment all for the purpose of testing david's hypothesis of free will in conscious like agents david who is lead researcher and one of the staple figures of the technology's development has spent his whole life researching and uncovering mysteries of the mind he has been given several major grants and awards over the span of his

career and is regarded as one of if not the most important figure of the 22nd century subsequently he is one of six individuals who have been given clearance to utilize the mind modeling software under a variety of strict guidelines that limit the complexity nearly every day david constantly rediscovers the childlike wonder that got him interested in science and philosophy in the first place each needle pushed forward creating a grander and more enthralling magic show of reality david is 176 years old he is of one of the last generations who just missed a major transition into

substantial anti-aging technologies just prior to he was diagnosed with a late stage irreversible brain cancer one of the last to be diagnosed with any form of cancer at all of course it is only getting worse each day and with mind uploading technologies still not fully figured out they're unlikely to catch up to him in time with the reconciliation of free will randomness and determinism being one of david's great remaining goals in life he spends nearly all his time in pursuit of this knowledge after two more years of research at age 178 a series of simulations

run consistent with a set of david's predictions confirming his hypothesis on this day the truth of self-agency and free will is discovered as david looks down at the final test results as far as one can david feels like he is okay like it has all been worth it his greatest moment achieved after a series of successfully reproduced experiments by other scientists david's theory is accepted by the majority of the science and philosophy community and not long after by the public at large a few weeks later david passes away from his cancer following a series of

complications during a group of individuals watched the digitally projected screen fade to black in the virtual reality theater they are collected in it is the premiere of an art exhibit by ray delar delar a famous simulation artist codes and creates complex worlds and stories through autonomous characters coded with artificial intelligence algorithms all run on a simulation inside a massive quantum supercomputer in which the characters are sent through simulated universes governed by sets of laws that delar configures anchoring and compelling the characters to his intended storyline like a marionettist with strings made of code and a

stage made of fabricated reality as characters move through various maps and scenes the simulated world creates and deletes parts of itself in real time correlating with the characters observations of it the simulation adds environmental features consistent with the character's imagined pasts simultaneously encoding them with confabulated false memories making it seem like things are upwards of billions of years old when in fact everything is hours minutes seconds or not at all each character contains a fully simulated brain with a simulated sense of self-awareness and sensory inputs of a non-existent physical external universe delar is known and

renowned for his absurdly meta style many of his characters are often coded to doubt their realities to suspect that something is off and to become curious about what is to consider that they are in something or something is in them to ask why where and how all for the purposes of inciting story lines through his character's attempts to solve and deal with these uncertainties through art and love and self-improvement and knowledge and the creation of other realities of course like all art dalar's work is a product of his own fears anxieties thoughts and theories he

himself feels what he gives many of his characters a skepticism or doubt in reality a feeling that his sense of what is real is sufficiently detached from what actually is he constantly wonders if he is most likely just in someone or something else's contrived reality like his characters are in his if he is living in a dream or simulation or a vat of nutrient solution elsewhere if some evil genius is in his head or if the entire universe is in the head of some evil genius delar doesn't feel like any of this is true but

he also recognizes that he doesn't know what any of these things feel like he only knows what he feels like and he feels like everything could be anything his sense of what feels real and natural tells him that everything is real and natural but what if what feels real and natural is nothing but a byproduct of the very thing he fears is not how can he trust what he feels without having any way of knowing what he does not how can he know what exists outside his head without ever being able to step outside of

it and so he creates art to deal with this confusion and anxiety and self-doubt and to explore all possibilities he creates worlds of other characters who feel the same after the screening ends as always following a massive ovation delar opens to a q a with the audience several audience members ask about coding techniques his thoughts on the limitations of current 23rd century computing power the prospects of creating entirely self-sustaining simulated worlds concerns of ethics and so on the q a goes as normal and is wrapping up the last audience member in the line approaches the

mic to conclude the event he asks the following hi this is probably the simplest question of the night but i'm wondering your work seems to always bring up questions of epistemology obviously doubts of actually having sufficient knowledge of knowledge to know if we can trust anything we think you create worlds and people that think and act and feel like they are just as real as we think we are but are of course not real in the way they think they are at all but so my question is as a true skeptic you seem to doubt

all things but i'm curious have you ever doubted if any of that matters the audience member pauses for a short moment and then continues i mean love is felt in the dreams of your character's characters right passions and purposes are had and made in worlds within your worlds apparent truths are discovered and wonders are found in realities made of no more than art and entertainment if experiences are experienced in anything anywhere does it matter any less if it's real in the way one thinks and does it matter if one can or can't prove it you

show that knowing what is real or not is likely impossible that we all very well could be inside some simulation or a video or a story right now that we could exist in some pre-coded or deterministic system without any of the free will that we yearn for and feel like we have but does that matter haven't you more revealed that the uncertainty and unknowns of these hows and whys and wheres and whats is in fact a sustainable and desirable quality that builds a potential infinity of love and desire and curiosity and isn't that you exist

somewhere able to experience any of these things all that you can truly know and all that ultimately needs to matter the audience member subtly nods his head and steps back away from the mic to imply the completion of his question the virtual theater is quiet delar pauses and thinks for a moment then responds i am [Music] do [Music] you