The Anomaly

by Hervé Le Tellier

The direct route hates a pothole, and the obscure professes hatred of the inexplicable. The immutability of the law keeps crashing up against the constantly shifting cosmos and the advancement of knowledge.

“Is the fact that I don’t even like coffee written into my program? And my hangover yesterday, when I became a tequila sponge, was that simulated too? If a program can feel desire, can love, and can be hurt, what are the algorithms for desire, love, and pain? Am I programmed to be angry when I realize I’m a program? Do I have free will, despite all this? Is everything planned, programmed, and inevitable? What dose of chaos is included in the simulation? Is there even any chaos? Is there no way of proving that, actually no, phew, we’re not in a simulation?”

We should always favor mystery over science. Ignorance is a good traveling companion, and the truth never produces happiness. We might as well be simulated and happy.

We’re prepared to warp reality if the stake is not losing altogether. We want answers for even our tiniest anxieties and a way of conceiving the world without reexamining our values, our emotions, and our actions. Take climate change. We never listen to the scientists. We spew out virtual carbon unchecked from fossil fuels that may or may not be virtual, heating up our atmosphere, that may or may not be virtual. And our species, which again may or may not be virtual, will be wiped out. Nothing’s changed. The rich fly in the face of common sense and reckon they can save themselves, and themselves alone, and everyone else is reduced to living in hope.”