Optimal

by J.M. Berger

But following prompts and respecting profiles generally led to good results, and ignoring them led to outcomes that were less than optimal—not failure or disaster, necessarily, but friction and frustration. Distraction, wasted time, unnecessary effort, mild anxiety, lack of forward momentum.

If it wasn’t absurd, Jack would have said Lime was doing nothing at all.

“What’s fun without at least a little insanity?”

These tactics worked because of a tiny glitch in the human operating system. We tend to think of ourselves as rugged individuals making our way through the world based on the evidence of our eyes and ears. But that is a lie. Our senses are imperfect. We see and hear things that are not there, and we sometimes don’t see the things that are. The truth is that reality is negotiated by consensus.

Competing consensuses are competing realities, and people are sometimes willing to fight and die to defend their chosen reality. Because the alternative is unthinkable—a world where nothing is real.

But Jack, consider how much you rely on the System to tell you what matters. It’s the first source of information and the first point of distraction.”