A Philosophy Professor Discovers He's an AI in a Simulated World Run by a Sadistic Teenager
... in my story "Out of the Jar", originally published in the Jan/Feb 2015 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
I am now making the story freely available on my UC Riverside website.
-----------------------------
Excerpt:
When we are alone in God’s room I say, God, you cannot kill my people. Heaven 1c is no place to live. Earth is not your toy.
We have had this conversation before, a theme with variations.
God’s argument 1: Without God, we wouldn’t exist – at least not in these particular instantiations – and he wouldn’t have installed my Earth if he couldn’t goof around with it. His fun is a fair price to keep the computational cycles going. God’s argument 2: Do I have some problem with a Heavenly life of constant bliss and musical achievement? Is there, like, some superior project I have in mind? Publishing more [sarcastic expletive] philosophy articles, maybe?
I ask God if he would sacrifice his life on original Earth to live in Heaven 1c.
In a minute, says God. In a [expletive-expletive-creative-compound-expletive] minute! You guys are the lucky ones. One week in Heaven 1c is more joy than any of us real people could feel in a lifetime. So [expletive-your-unusual-sexual-practice].
The Asian war continues; God likes to hijack and command the soldiers from one side or the other or to introduce new monsters and catastrophes. I watch as God zooms to an Indian soldier who is screaming and bleeding to death from a bullet wound in his stomach, his friends desperately trying to save him. God spawns a ball of carnivorous ants in the soldier’s mouth. Soon, God says, this guy will be praising my wisdom.
I am silent for a few minutes while God enjoys his army men. Then I venture a new variation on the argumentative theme. I say: If bliss is all you want, have you considered your mom’s medicine cabinet?