In a place that looked much like the house I am in, I heard some strange noises. I got up to investigate, but had a lot of pain in my head. Somehow there were people in the bedroom, and a large man greeted me. Not quite sure how he introduced himself, but he seemed to think he knew who I was.
me: "So you believe we've met? What year was that?"
large man: "We met in 1982, in Memphis."
me: "And what year do you believe it is now?"
large man: "It's February 20th, 2064."
Note
He was specific about the day and I think February, but the strongest of those I can remember would be the 2064.
me: "Okay, well from your point of view, am I a simulation?"
large man: "Yes."
He turned and I walked to follow him to where some other people were, and when he turned I noticed he had some kind of odd black section implanted on the back of his neck. It looked like a technical thing for connections; the way an IR transmitter on the front of a remote control looks. The room we were in transformed a bit and it looked to be kind of orderly but not a bedroom.
me: "So are you a simulation?"
large man: "No, I can't put myself in a simulation here, it's not safe. Nothing is safe. Going out to the store is not safe...they've got everything gripped up. And what they want to do is resurrect all the Jews from the Holocaust and then kill everyone else. Though what they're actually going to do is just destroy the whole world."
A younger seeming man with one red and one blue eye walked up to me. He reminded me of a similar looking person in Coursonaggoni.
red and blue eyed man: "What happened is there were four personality variants of you, released at the point you became open source. You could be distributed and work on more problems that way--then put the pieces back together."
The scene shifted a bit and I was back in the bedroom of the house--a false awakening. I got up and went to the dresser and my head hurt, I could hear a man's voice talking. I couldn't tell if it was the same voice.
voice: "And I wind up having to do all the billing for it. This talk about killing yourself, you'd better not. Come on, what are you talking about, there's a lot more work you could get done. If you quit now the checks are going to stop coming and the whole contract will go to hell! YOU BETTER NOT!"
The voice got louder and more angry as it went on.
me: (calmly) "Look, we just finished talking about corruption and stuff to be concerned about with simulation. If you can make voices in my head--and connect with me inside a simulation through these means, that suggests you could do much nicer things like explain your case reasonably and in a reasonable tone. Otherwise I'm going to default to assuming we are not friends."
The voice then screamed in more frustration. I walked into the next room which faces out toward the street, and saw a brown van turning the corner and coming in at me. It dove through the wall in a cartoonish sort of way, but slammed me to the ground--and there was darkness for a moment. When I came back to the van was gone and there was a secretary of some sort sitting illuminated in the corner of the room.
secretary: "So they want you to sign these papers."
I looked at the papers, which didn't look like good legal forms...rather sort of like they had been drawn by kids with colored pencil saying "important legal paper". There were details on how to set the price for the contract, and instructing them to use some price optimization algorithm that I had designed.
me: "They who? They who run over me with a van and yell at me and won't give me any help inside of a simulation but leave me there to suffer? I am reminded of V for Vendetta..."
I stood back to re-enact the scene where V stands off against the enemy and defeats them with knives to their machine guns.
creedy: "Defiant to the end, huh? You won't cry like him, will you? You're not afraid of death. You're like me."v: "The only thing that you and I have in common, Mr. Creedy, is we're both about to die."creedy: "How do you imagine that's gonna happen?"v: "With my hands around your neck."creedy: "Bollocks. Whatchya gonna do, huh? We've swept this place. You've got nothing. Nothing but your bloody knives and your fancy karate gimmicks. We have guns."v: "No, what you have are bullets, and the hope that when your guns are empty I'm no longer be standing, because if I am you'll all be dead before you've reloaded."
I wanted to quote the "no, what you have are bullets, and the hope that when your guns are empty I'm no longer standing" part. I was trying to cite my confidence that forcing me to do something by running me over with an animated van in a dream doesn't really do much for me.
But I misquoted it, because I thought the line was "No Mr. Creedy, what you have are bullets". And when I got to that part the secretary smiled and interrupted me as if to gesture her understanding of the importance of the line.
secretary: (smiling) "No, pretty lady..."
me: (confused) "Oh. The head bad guy in V for Vendetta, at least the version I've seen, was male."
secretary: "Hadn't seen that version, I saw the one with Darling. She loves that film, I might like to go back and make it too."
Note
She said Darling as if it were a person's name.