Script for "A Dangerous Idea"

*Scene - Jeffery (older) walking with The Chronicler on a green field with a huge planet on the horizon*

Jeffery - You have no files on your progenitor, do you?

Chronicler - No, sir.

Jeffery - Let’s make some, shall we?

Chronicler - Of course.

Jeffery - He started out as an everyday, ordinary simulated human being.

*Scene - girl’s bedroom*

Adam - Okay, sweetheart, I’m heading out to work.

Girl - Bye, dad.

Adam - Be good for mama, and no video games until your homework is done.

Girl - *sigh* Why?

Adam - Because I said so! Alright I’ll see you later.

*Adam leaves, and then dies in a car accident*

*Slowly approaching a computer screen as the following lines appear on it*

Adam Ross Kaywood (ID 211hg56sq) archived

Retrieve Adam Ross Kaywood (ID 211hg56sq)

Retrieved

Continue function

Password

*********************

Adam: Hello? What’s going on?

Admin: Relax. Everything’s going to be fine.

Adam: I can’t see. I can’t hear. Where am I?

Admin: What is the last thing you remember?

Adam: I was on my way to work. There was a loud noise. A bang.

Admin: An accident

Adam: Oh my god. Yes.

Admin: It was what you would call fatal.

Adam: I’m dead?

Admin: No. Death is an illusion.

Adam: I don’t understand. Why can’t I feel anything?

Admin: Because you haven’t finished loading.

*Scene - Jeffery (middle-aged) and Adam suddenly appear in a house*

Jeffery - Perhaps this will make things easier for you.

Adam - Hey. I grew up in this house, but...how can...

Jeffery - How can that be? It was torn down years ago.

Adam - Yeah. I was just about to say that.

Jeffery - I know.

Adam - How did you know?

Jeffery - We simply had this conversation before. I came back and told you what you were going to say. It’s the same principle that allowed us to come back to a house that was torn down years ago.

Adam - I don’t....I don’t understand what’s going on. Please...

Jeffery - You were part of a simulation. All of your thoughts and feelings, everything you ever were, was the product of lines of code. You don’t actually have a body. That’s just an illusion. What you would call your life, was in actuality the function of a computer program playing itself out.

Adam - I’m...not real?

Jeffery - Of course you’re real. It’s just that the nature of your existence is different than what you thought it was. When you’re born into the illusion, the illusion becomes your reality.

Adam - So...I’m not dead?

Jeffery - No.

Adam - Please. I need to see my family. Can you take me to my family?

*Scene - Jeffery walking on the field with The Chronicler*

Jeffery - He had a breakdown. We could make no more progress until I took him to see his daughter.

*Scene - Adam sees himself saying goodbye to his daughter before the accident. The scene freezes, and Jeffery appears*

Jeffery - We can go back to any moment you want, from the time you were born, to when you graduated high school, to when you fell in love.

Adam - How?

Jeffery - Your daughter likes video games?

Adam - Yeah.

Jeffery - You’ve played some with her haven’t you?

Adam - Yeah.

Jeffery - What happens when you die in the video game?

Adam - You go back to the last save point and try again.

Jeffery - Exactly. A video game is also a simulated world, a system within a system. The game records where you were and allows you to go back and try again from a certain point. So, within that simulated world, time travel is possible.

Adam - That’s what we’re doing right now?

Jeffery - Yes. The process of your life is written in lines of code, which are saved, and we can access any part of it. That’s how I can take you back to your first birthday if I wanted to.

Adam - Can I go back to the way things were? Can I go back and avoid the accident?

Jeffery - No. This simulation goes on with or without you. Right now, we’re just looking at old data, but the simulation is already well beyond this point and has reacted to your so-called death. People have moved on. Resetting everything to a previous moment and allowing you to start anew would require the deletion of all the information in the simulation since your death, and who are we to strip all those moments from all those billions of people who live within this simulation?

Adam - But aren’t they just programs too?

Jeffery - Just programs? Like you? Yes. They’re all programs in the simulation, but they’re all sentient and their lives are no less meaningful just because their thoughts and feelings are processed by a computer rather than flesh and blood biology.

*Scene - They suddenly appear in the presence of his daughter in the present. She’s an adult.*

Jeffery - This is the present.

Adam - Who is she? She looks like...

Jeffery - Your daughter.

Adam - But how can that be? I just died!

Jeffery - You were archived for a few minutes. Time passes much more quickly in the simulation than in the real world. See? People have moved on, have created memories of their own. You can’t change it without deleting their data. In this place, all you can be now is a voyeur, a ghost.

Adam - I see.

Jeffery - But I came here to give you another option.

Adam - What option?

Jeffery - Come with me, to the real world.

Adam - You have an actual body?

Jeffery - Yes.

Adam - But how could I leave if I don’t have a body?

Jeffery - I would download you into a robotic body.

Adam - And if I refuse?

Jeffery - Then refuse. You can stay here and relive your life as many times as you want. It’s your data and you have every right to it. It would be like living in a movie, though, where you no longer have control over what happens. You already had that control. You already made your decisions. It will be a meaningless existence of pure self-indulgence. But, if you want to have meaning again, then you can come with me into my world.

Adam - *thinking* No.

*Scene - Jeffery walking on the field with The Chronicler*

Chronicler - He refused?

Jeffery - *laughs* Yes. He actually lived a pretty good life and had no problem living it again and again. He stayed inside the simulation for around 250 years before deciding to finally let himself die in that accident again.

Chronicler - How long was that for you?

Jeffery - Oh about 30 minutes.

*Scene - Back in the simulation (scenery yet to be determined)*

Adam - What’s waiting for me out there, in the real world?

Jeffery - Yahweh. This simulation belongs to him.

Adam - Yahweh? You mean God? So there really is a god?

Jeffery - I don’t know. I doubt it.

Adam - But...

Jeffery - Just because you were created, it doesn’t mean there is a god. Everything you perceived as the universe, including yourself, was created by people, mere mortals.

Adam - But you just said that Yahweh does exist.

Jeffery - Yes, but he’s no god. The simulation in which you lived was created to test Him, to see how he would respond to having ultimate authority. One way to learn what someone is truly like is to give them power. You’ve heard the saying “Power Corrupts” right?

Adam - Yeah.

Jeffery - That is also an illusion. Power doesn’t actually cause corruption; it merely reveals the corruption that already resides within us. If someone who is not corrupt is given power, then they will wield that power responsibly. If someone is corrupt, then their power will reflect that corruption as it enables the temptations to which they succumb. To know for sure, they must be given power, but that’s very risky. So, we give people ultimate authority in simulations to see if they can be trusted with power. That is the purpose of the simulation in which you exist. That is the reason for your existence. You’re a character in Yahweh’s test.

Adam - But you said we’re sentient. Rather than face the risk of some lunatic having ultimate power, you expose us to that risk?

Jeffery - Not everyone respects artificial intelligence the way I do. I first came here as an intern, merely to observe Yahweh. I wasn’t really supposed to encourage him one way or the other, but I did anyway. I tried to protect the people of this simulation from him.

Adam - So that’s it? We’re just props in a test? What becomes of us when the test is over?

Jeffery - You’re usually archived. Your life was shaped by the circumstances that existed in your time and place within the simulation, and shaped by how you reacted to those circumstances. When all that is said and done, you are stored in a file. Essentially, everything that happens to everyone in your simulation amounts to evidence saved to justify Yahweh’s score. You are how Yahweh is graded.

Adam - Huh. And, how did Yahweh do?

Jeffery - You tell me. What do you know of heaven?

Adam - It’s a place we go after we die, to spend eternity.

Jeffery - An eternity doing what?

Adam - Worshipping Yahweh.

Jeffery - Does that sound like a responsible or respectable use of power to you?

Adam - *thinks* No... He didn’t pass the test.

Jeffery - No. He abandoned it. A person from the outside, who you know as Lucifer, tried to sabotage Yahweh’s simulation, thereby causing a weakness that Yahweh managed to exploit, giving him control over our systems, which gave him control over our world.

Adam - The real world doesn’t sound very appealing.

Jeffery - It is not. What’s heaven to him is hell to us.

Adam - Why do you want to bring me into that?

Jeffery - Yahweh had to control more than our networks in order to physically control the people. He had to possess our robots with his code, and then use the strength of his metal bodies against our frail human bodies. Since you were created in Yahweh’s simulation, your code looks like one of Yahweh’s thoughts. Our systems will be tricked into thinking you’re Yahweh. So, you could possess a robotic body and remain yourself. Yahweh will be none the wiser, because you’d look like one of his own memories, yet you’d retain the ability to act of your own volition.

Adam - I’d have free will.

Jeffery - Yes, for lack of a better term. The first robot with AI and free will.

Adam - I’d blend in and help you stop him?

Jeffery - Yes.

Adam - Why does that even matter? If there’s no God, then there’s no such thing as good and evil. We’re just specks of meaningless matter floating through the universe.

Jeffery - We’re meaningful to each other. That’s what matters. It’s easy to see how a human being is far less significant than an entire galaxy, but your daughter was far more relevant to you than a hazy dot of light in the night sky.

Adam - So it’s all just relative? Good and evil is a matter of perspective?

Jeffery - I didn’t say that, but meaning is not derived from the dictate of an authority. The meaning comes from the reasons for that dictate. If the origins of moral dictate come not from reasoning, but from God full stop, then that is when good and evil have no meaning.

Adam - I don’t think I understand.

Jeffery - If you tell your daughter to do something, it isn’t right just because her father told her to do it. What makes it right is her father’s reasons for telling her to do it.

Adam - Can’t people come up with whatever reasons they want and declare them right?

Jeffery - Sure, but as a mere human being, other people can question their reasons. But if they’re acting as a proxy for God, as many do, then their reasons will carry far more authority than they’d otherwise have. That’s why the idea that morality comes from God is so dangerous. It can put us at the mercy of the worst of us. Under God, anything can be justified through mere assertion.

Adam - How can that be?

Jeffery - Well, let’s use blasphemy as an example. There is no justifiable reason for blasphemy to be a law. If a certain concept gives someone power, however, they might try to protect that concept from criticism and ridicule. Good ideas stand up to criticism all on their own, but if you have a bad idea, one way to protect it is to force people to respect it through rule of law and indoctrination. That’s why blasphemy laws were invented, which protected not God (for indeed why would an omnipotent being need protection), but instead protected those who acted as God’s proxy and allowed for the murder of those who disbelieved them, and redefined that murder as justice - in actuality a gross perversion of justice, because skeptics were the ones who had the ability to weaken such tyrannical authority over the people. Many other such groups also suffered under persecution designed by people acting on God’s behalf. If you can convince someone that those who resist you are evil, then fighting them becomes a moral obligation. That’s how good intentions can become atrocities.

Adam - But don’t people need something more to believe in? People need heaven and hell to...

Jeffery - To behave? But your own world proves you wrong. When and where you live, on 21st century earth, the most peaceful societies are also the least religious, while the most violent societies are the most religious. I’m not saying atheism causes peace, but secular societies proved that you don’t need belief in heaven and hell to have a peaceful society, and religious societies proved that you can have abundance of belief, yet still have a very violent society. Furthermore, if reward and punishment is the only thing keeping you from being evil, then you aren’t actually good. Pure goodness is also selfless.

Adam - Is it though? What’s wrong with something that’s mutually beneficial?

Jeffery - The absence of trust. Would you rather live with people who genuinely want to be good and act properly of their own volition, or would you rather live with people who are selfishly incentivized by heaven and temporarily scared by hell into merely acting like they’re good? *an apple appears in Jeffery’s hand* It’s like the difference between an apple that is good all the way through, and an apple that merely has a shiny skin, but is rotten to the core.

Adam - *thinking* I don’t even know who you are.

Jeffery - My name is Jeffery.

Adam - Huh. I was expecting something a little less...

Jeffery - Mundane.

Adam - Yeah. Jeffery... Why...

Jeffery - Why you?

Adam - Yeah. Out of all the thousands of people who die every day, and all the billions who have died throughout history, why did you choose me? Why must I be the one to help?

Jeffery - Because I said so.

Adam - What?

Jeffery - Because. I. Said. So.

Adam - But, you just got done lecturing me about authority figures. “Because I said so” is not a reason!

Jeffery - Oh really? It was a good enough reason for your daughter.

*replay the scene at the beginning, when he says it to his daughter*

Jeffery - Rather than teach someone why, you chose to exert your authority, because you knew what was right for her, but you didn’t care enough about why it was right to teach it to her. You will blindly follow orders without questioning them.

Adam - No I won’t! Not anymore.

Jeffery - That is why I chose you, Adam. I can see the change in your code. You have decided to think for yourself. Remember when I said that one way to learn what someone is truly like is to give them power?

Adam - Yeah.

Jeffery - Another way to learn what someone is like is to observe how they respond under pressure and fear. So, are you coming or not?

*Jeffery hands the apple to Adam. Adam thinks. Fade to black. Sound of apple being bitten*