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Bottleworlds

Bottleworld
Image from Steve Bowers

Snapshot:
Fighting again in the shallow sea. So few fish now, and those to be found are small. I'm hungry. People scream and splash over the treacherous corals. I'm running knee deep looking for smooth stones for my sling. The water is red with blood and I can't see. A spear pierces my back. I fall.
I Can't Breathe.
*
what was best in your life?
My family. My husband. My children. It didn't matter how hard things were. We loved each other.
you have good memories of this life
Yes of them. Many good memories.
all true memories?
True enough. All memories are part lies are they not?
indeed. and even if they weren't true they would still be true memories of love would they not?
I suppose they would yes.
you died.
Yes. Fighting in the Sea.
even if that memory isn't true it matters doesn't it?
Yes.
you suspect where you are.
I am in an afterlife. I suspect my life was not true.
you are correct.
I also suspect my life still mattered.
you are correct again. would you like to know of this life?
I would.
you can remember now.
Ah. Epsilon Eridani. Inner Sphere. Terragen space. I can have a new life here.
yes.
I'd like to start now.
of course.

Bottleworld Relief Archive: Psychosurgical dialogue therapy in spool up.

Bottleworlds: closed virtual reality environments

Vast simulated environments and virchworlds where the inhabitants do not know their reality is an emulation, and may be poorly treated.

In most known virch worlds, all the properties of the world can be controlled by its people if they so desire. However, there is a growing opinion that most virches, and the most intensive ones, are not the known ones. Instead, many across Terragen space have concluded that at least some archai have vast simulated environments, simulated universes even, which they use to simulate possible futures, modelling worlds and universes using physics which accurately represents the physical world, and at as high a level of detail as is required for the task at hand (these would tend to be worlds where the minds of the inhabitants run directly on the simulated laws of nature in the virch). The entities in these virches, usually digis who were 'born' inside the simulation, are not aware that their world is a virch, and nor can they control it, beyond whatever their role in the virch allows.

Instead, the virch is controlled by the archai who is running this particular emulation of reality. However, as the inhabitants do not know this, they are not in a position to protest against their treatment. These hypothetical worlds have become known as Bottleworlds.

Many people, and higher toposophic entities, are of the opinion that such virches are unethical, to say the very least. However, none of the archai alleged to be involved in such behaviour allow baselines, or indeed anyone, to inspect their thought processes, so it is rather hard to tell how true the allegations are. Despite this, some of the Archai who are alleged to be running these non-ethical virches are rather vilified for it, and several sophonts rights organizations are working to ensure that the Archai do not abuse lesser intellects for whatever reason, either in virches or in the physical world.

Some people suspect that, despite this, there may be at least as many entities in these unethical 'simulation' virches as there are in the known 'free' virches of Terragen space...

 
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Appears in Topics
Cultures and Sub-CulturesCybercosm, TheMyths and Rumours
Virtual
 
Development Notes
Text by Tony Jones
Snapshot by Ryan B (Rynn).
Initially published on 31 December 2007.

 
 
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