The Nth Awakening - Welcome to Nth Society #fiction #flash #shortstory

Choose player name…

Nobyeni spawned succesfully.

I wake up in a world that is not there. Not yet. As I open my eyes, the welcoming message disappears. I haven’t decided anything yet. I might be in a room. But the walls are not even white, because there are no walls yet. I am aware of some form of existence, a bare minimum that allows me to be recognizable as me. I have a name. Actually, that’s all there is to me at this point. I am that name, and the name is me, and Wittgenstein is proven wrong after all.

But my name hurts. In this empty world of infinite possibilities, there is already something fixed. I might decide to kill myself and start over. But with every passing minute, with every thought I have, I get more and more invested in this being that is my name. There is always already this being. I can pick it apart, I can take any decision. Except to not be. Except to not think.

I wonder if I can postpone everything. The world outside of this simulation makes me respond to everything that happens, constantly, without rest. Whatever I do, I will avoid that state of complete chaos that people call life. No money to be abused by those with unintentional advantages. No bodies to limit our thoughts.

Unthinking all things I’m used to doesn’t bring me any closer to the world I am willing to live in. In fact, every time I unthink a concept, it ties me closer to what I aim to leave behind. Thinking in dichotomies, thinking world as ‘world’ -- I’m stuck in a mechanism called simulation. What sense does this make, when I cannot get rid of all these concepts that define being?

I open the door. There was a door after all.

I stumble into the world that is exactly as I already know it. As I have always known it. There is wind blowing through my hair, I feel the moist from the dirt as I put my hand in it. There is grass that feels just like grass. Some birds are singing a song as if nothing is wrong.

I cry. Things should have been different here. People walk by, pointing at me. To them I’m nothing but a new spawn, a crying baby. They are laughing, making noises I don’t understand but which must have something to do with my nakedness and my tears. They have no idea. I want to call them names for destroying the possibility of the impossible. But the only thing I hear are loud shrieks, and more crying. That must be me. This world sucks. I hoped this would be meaningful somehow. But this simulation game is so much the same as life, that it doesn’t add anything. I might as well be dreaming.

Someone starts to take care of me. I continue living this simulation that is closer to life than anything I have experienced before. Choices are made for me, parents help me grow up. My body grows. And I let it all happen.

Until I am big enough to kill myself.

About this Story

When I read about the contest organised by @personz, I was immediately fascinated. Nth Society is a project some people are developing (a good explanation can be found here), which is both very complex and very simple: what if you create a computer/virtual reality game that is exactly like the world, but without all the rules that society has put up. What if anything is possible, what would people decide to do? Of course, you need to make sure people have something to lose, so you can spawn again, but it takes time to grow up and be functional. Just like the 'real world', you could say.

As a philosopher I like thinking about these kind of mind games. And this Nth Society is the type of experiment that is right up my alley. What is a world anyway? And what if I can decide my own world, how to make things happen? Or is that impossible? Why would you pretend something can be different, if you set up everything exactly as it is in 'the real world'? How do you make sure relativism and nihilism don't creep in? I also do not believe there is something, or one certain 'real world' to begin with. But I was still intrigued and decided to immerse myself into Nth Society. What happened was... well. I'll leave it up to you to decide why things happened the way they did...

"Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future." ~ Wikipedia

^{Here is an overview of more fiction/short stories and poetry by @nobyeni.}