WHAT IS REAL? A TALE OF MEILORI'S

 Meilori's felt eerie tonight ... more so than usual for a haunted French Quarter night club.

One, there was not one ghost in sight.
Nor any of my characters who people mynovel and this club.
Science would say I was delusional ... many of my friends at work would agree.
I stiffened. 
Above me, through the bronze-hued mists, Perry Como's mellow voice sang "All Through the Night."

In my Dickens' homage, Beware the Jade Christmas, its was the Seraphim Provocateur, Darael, who had done the same thing for his human friend, Lucas.
 I turned the cream and rose wallpapered corner and froze.
An escalator ... with the only entity from a recent horror movie that unsettled me.
I forced out of a dry throat, "DayStar, I don't mind you think me stupid, but I do mind when you treat me as if I were."
DayStar? Don't ask. You'll sleep better. Let's just say he sees through your shadow ,,, and laughs.

A hollow chuckle rumbled beside me. I looked to my right ... the side away from my heart. 
Darael.
"No, not the Dark One. You are much too much a minnow for him to want to fry. I suspect that is why Elohim has kept you off the Best Seller list."
"What?"
"You want the treatment that Rowling has gotten of late ... or worse."
I thought about arguing with him, but I was afraid he would tell me what that worse could be.
"Where is everybody?"
"The ghosts know that Elohim is coming here soon."
"What? Meilori's?"
"This Mortal Plane."
"H-How soon?"
"Define 'Soon.'
I sighed. Darael was like this. I thought about another tack.
"Where are my characters?"
Darael gestured grandly about us. "Your friend, Michael, believes all the world, the universe even, is a Cosmic Simulation."
"Is it?"
He flashed his paper-cut grin. "You still expect a straight answer from me? I admire your optimism."
He smiled dryly. "I will demonstrate why you should never ask a direct question of a Seraphim Provocateur ... and actually answer."

"Ever since the philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed in the Philosophical Quarterly that the universe and everything in it might be a simulation, 

there has been intense public speculation and debate about the nature of reality."

"Physicist Frank Wilczek has argued that there’s too much wasted complexity in our universe for it to be simulated. 

Building complexity requires energy and time. Why would a conscious, intelligent designer of realities waste so many resources into making our world more complex than it needs to be?"

He flashed his paper-cut grin, pointing an accusing finger at me. "The Answer is quite simply really. You are to blame."

"What? Me? How?" 

"I see confusion limits your vocabulary, Son of Adam."

"Not just you, of course. But any author of talent, being shaped by the Finger of the Creator, can bring worlds into being themselves. 

Conan Doyle, John D. MacDonald, Hemingway, even minnow You."

He shuddered. "Even that racist Lovecraft."

"Midnight likes him."

"That furry menace would. If you write this up in a post. I wonder what your friends will think?"

 

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