THE SCIENCE FICTION WRITER waited outside the hotel, a revolver hanging heavy in the inner pocket of his overcoat. He’d only fired it twice, but at close range he didn’t imagine he’d have any difficulties. His hand was steady as he brought a cigarette to his mouth and puffed; in any case, it was all foreordained. If the numbers had decided in his favor, success was a guarantee. If they hadn’t, then no amount of practice at the firing range could have helped his bullets find their mark.
The philosopher’s name was Harold M. Schmitz. He was an aging German Jew who had escaped the Nazis’ grasp a few days before Kristallnacht and had managed to smuggle a few of his slim treatises into America while the remaining copies were being tossed into bonfires across the Fatherland. Schmitz held a post at Berkeley, now, where he’d lent his voice to the student protests of ‘68 and preached his particular brand of socialism to eager young Californian minds. He was in New York for a symposium at Columbia on the nature of evil, where he’d no doubt be promoting his latest book, The Evaporation of Humanity. As far as pure philosophy went, Evaporation had been flying off the shelves since its publication a few months earlier, and it was this book which had brought the science fiction writer to Schmitz’s hotel.
The science fiction writer had nothing against Schmitz, personally. He was no anti-Semite, and he did not begrudge the philosopher’s success. It was, rather, in the interest of coldly disproving Schmitz’s thesis that the science fiction writer had decided to commit the assassination. As far as he was concerned, it would be the only rational way to demonstrate to the world the failure of philosophers like Schmitz, who had misled the people into believing in such paltry, quixotic ideas as free will and self-determination. No, the numbers were already inscribed on some glowing screen that Schmitz would never see. The die was cast, and their individual paths were decided down to the nanosecond of synaptic firings in the brain. If Schmitz’s murder had been coded into the fabric of reality, it was an unalterable fact that the philosopher must die. The writer would only be an agent of some vast, impenetrable intelligence that had set the universe itself in motion, and which had already set down in code the date of the universe’s end.
Schmitz was late, and the writer’s stomach was rumbling. A sign, perhaps, that the moment for action would continue to be delayed. Or perhaps the writer would miss Schmitz entirely and the assassination would not take place — if so, the event had never been intended to happen. A hot dog cart stood on a nearby street corner. Was the bald man in a stained denim jacket who slapped sausages onto stale buns involved in the plot? There could be no doubt.
“Morning,” the hot dog man muttered to the writer as he approached. “Early lunch break for you?”
“You could say that,” the writer said. “I’m always on my lunch break.”
“You need a job?”
The writer shrugged. “Not anymore.”
“Well, if you reconsider, we’re always looking for more vendors. Just push a cart around for a few hours. Put up with some panhandlers. Pretty easy gig, you ask me.”
The writer eyed the vat of meat distastefully. Pale wieners were floating around in a cloudy substance that reminded him vaguely of laundry water.
“No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself. How many?”
The writer held up two fingers. If this was to be his last free meal, he might as well make the most of it. He gazed away toward the hotel entrance. A car pulled up to the valet parking stand, obscuring his view of the front door. Oh well. If he didn’t see Schmitz leaving, the deed would be left undone, and that would be the way it was intended. Months ago he had decided that nothing was worth too much of an effort. You couldn’t force a particular outcome with anything in life, and trying to do so would only prove your own helplessness and drive you mad.
The writer accepted his hot dogs from the outstretched hand of the denim man and slathered them in ketchup and relish. A fleck of pickle juice jumped up and clung to his tie. He didn’t even like condiments on his food, but it seemed as though stepping away from a hot dog stand without lavishing free toppings on his lunch would be like committing some sort of sacrilege. Like going to a Catholic church and refusing to accept the holy sacrament.
Just as he was stuffing the last corner of the first bun in his mouth, the car pulled away from the entrance and the door opened to reveal an older man in a plaid suit and shaggy, steel gray hair. It was Harold Schmitz. He looked curiously unimpressive from this angle, not like a man who had barely escaped the clutches of Hitler. The thick black glasses he wore gave his eyes a foggy look, as if he was contemplating the world around him from some deep inner abode. He raised his hand to hail a taxi, and the gesture was so perfectly mundane that the science fiction writer nearly felt pity for the old man. But this lapse of resolution passed; it was only a projection of the light. It was a test.
The writer stalked over to Schmitz, calmly chewing on a mouthful of bread and meat. Schmitz looked up at him and nodded.
“Where are you headed, stranger?” Schmitz asked.
“Columbia, for the symposium. You’re Harold Schmitz, aren’t you?”
Schmitz grinned. “One and the same. Like to split a cab?”
“Sure.”
They waited on the curb for a moment. The writer surveyed Schmitz, who appeared to have no premonition of his imminent demise. He was just squinting in the sun and scanning the cars as they went by, like anyone else on the street. A stray curl of hair jutted out from the back of his collar, and it struck the writer with such a pathetic force that he nearly walked away and forgot about Schmitz forever. Nearly.
A cab pulled up. Schmitz stepped off the curb. The writer dropped his hot dog, drew his gun, and fired six times.
Later, the writer couldn’t remember the screams. He barely remembered the body of Harold Schmitz, sprawled out on the pavement and soaking in a pool of blood. He couldn’t remember the taxi driving away and crunching over Schmitz’s outstretched arm. All he remembered was the half-eaten hot dog lying on the ground, covered in crimson. When the police arrived, he wanted to take it with him.
***
From Tales of a Future World, July 28, 1973.
Rubicon’s Conundrum
By Paul Blanche
After the bombs fell those of us who had hidden in the bunkers subsisted on canned food and bottled water, scratching down days on the concrete walls and waiting to emerge until we could survive the radiation. They were brutal years. My son, six years old at the time, developed dysentery and died within the first few months. My wife went mad, pulled out her hair in clumps, bashed her face against a wall until she knocked out her front teeth, and eventually killed herself with a rusty butcher knife. As for myself, I drifted in and out of sanity. I would come to and find that weeks had passed, weeks of which I possessed no memory. Whatever shreds of mental stability I had were only maintained by my writing in a small journal I’d brought down with me. At first, I recorded every day in there. What I ate, whose birthday it was and my guesses about their fate, what I imagined the weather might be like up above. Eventually it got so that I would open the notebook and see pages of writing that I couldn’t recall producing, crazed ramblings and conspiracies about what had really gone on during the nuclear holocaust.
I didn’t recognize myself in this other writer. But I was alone in the bunker; only my hand could have scribbled these lines. I had burned the corpses of my wife and child to prevent the spread of diseases from their decaying flesh, so I couldn’t even blame the writing on zombified remains. I was indisputably locked in the same mind as a madman, and there can be no escape from a fractured brain.
Being alone at the end of the world is a terrifying thing, but it is still more terrifying to feel the presence of another entity who occupies your body, wears your clothes, digests the food that you eat, and wakes while you sleep. I was not alone, and everyday I could feel the Other growing stronger. My periods of wakefulness decreased. I would come to myself and see that whole weeks had passed, according to the writing on the walls. Or perhaps the Other was playing a trick on me, scratching in days when none had passed. And was it not, moreover, entirely possible that I was merely sleepwalking, and that my hand would raise itself to increase the tally while the rest of me was dreaming? In any case, time was always an uncertainty down there. My watch had stopped working long before, and I could only guess when each day began and ended by the pattern of my sleep.
I no longer trusted the tally. I decided that, whether the count of days was accurate or not, I would rather die on the surface than languish down here until my consciousness was entirely blotted out by the monster who was taking over my brain. And so, one day, I climbed out of my prison and into the light of day.
The sun was excruciating, at first. I’d burned through three lightbulbs in the bunker, and towards the end I had been reduced to using a box of candles that I had luckily thought to bring down with me. The feeble light of a tiny fire was nothing compared to the scorching orb in the sky. On my emergence, I thought perhaps that I was witnessing another mushroom cloud, and that the bombs were still falling across the world. Paradoxically, this thought lifted my spirits; if someone was around to press the buttons, I was not alone in the world.
When I had adjusted to the light, I began to walk. I passed through leveled cities where gray forests now grew, misshapen trees clutching upward through the ruins of stadiums and skyscrapers. I passed fields of ash, vast plains of soot where farms once flourished. There were few signs of life, though occasionally I would see the white tail of a deer darting away from my approach, or the blur of a squirrel or a rabbit scampering in flight. Of birdsong there was none.
One day, I reached the edge of the barren wasteland. Green things still existed here. The color seemed garish to my eyes, as if I had traversed from a blighted land painted in subdued monochrome to some technicolor carnival that tempted me with the allure of life. I was conscious that hope was a luxury I could not afford; to give in to hope was to give in to madness. And yet, when I saw the band of nomads in the distance, I could not help myself. To see a human form was like beholding the face of God. I hailed them in ecstasy, out of my mind with relief that at least a few of us had survived the blasts.
My memory ends here. I don’t recall the bludgeoning they gave me, or how they stripped off my soiled clothes and plundered them to claim the extent of my earthly belongings (a few cans of beans and a wad of cash that no longer held any value). All I can remember is seeing those six shambling shapes atop the next hill, hands extended toward me. They looked to me like a painting of Lewis and Clark’s expedition, a set of sorry wanderers surveying the land below. Foolishly, I hallucinated their humanity and called out to them as if they could offer me salvation. But I had neglected to consider that the apocalypse could not foster humanity, only destroy it. They were monsters in the form of men, inhuman beings whose fellow feeling lay in tatters, ripped away by the necessity of survival. They dragged me down to the dark again, and this time I was never to emerge.
When I finally awoke, I thought I had dreamed up my escape from the bunker. I lay on a floor of cold concrete, my brain enveloped in pain. Galaxies seemed to dance across my field of vision, but when I reached out I discovered that I was imprisoned in a cell. No, a cage; the walls were not more than seven feet apart, barely leaving room enough for me to stretch out in, and the ceiling was so low that I could not stand without stooping. It was like being buried alive in a coffin, and I half expected that I would suffocate in a matter of hours. I dozed and woke at intervals. I cannot be sure how much time passed; perhaps it was minutes, perhaps it was days. The darkness was so complete I could hardly tell when my eyes were shut and when they were open.
Then I felt something hot and moist against my cheek. I reached up, but there was nothing there. It came again, and I realized I was feeling someone’s breath. I listened, and I heard their respiration, air rattling into their chest. I wanted to touch this other prisoner who occupied my cell, but I was paralyzed. My arms would not leave my sides. And so I waited, listening.
Finally there was a voice. “So,” it said. “You’ve come to the end of the line, have you?”
I’m not sure if I responded, or if I only thought I did. And if I did, I’m not sure what I said. But the voice laughed, emitting a harsh noise like the squealing of a train’s brakes.
“You think you might be dead. I understand. Perhaps you are. But if you are, you can’t figure out why this place doesn’t resemble any hell or purgatory spoken of in any of your holy books. And it certainly can’t be heaven. Perhaps I can illuminate.
“Your name is John Curtis Whettleman. You were born on May 31st, in the year of your lord nineteen hundred and eighty-two, in the Pelican Grove Presbyterian hospital. You grew up in the little stucco house at 228 Bakersfield Drive. Parents Lyle and Hannah. Graduated from college with a degree in engineering at the age of twenty-one. Not a genius by any means, but a person of whom it is said ‘he has enormous potential.’ Married Rachel Lockwood on March 18th, two thousand and eight. Son, Reggie, was born exactly one year later. A precipitous occasion. You made the picture of a happy family. Then, just as your son was beginning to grow up, the bombs started to fall. Luckily, you had the bunker, but things didn’t turn out as well as you had hoped. On September eighteenth, two thousand and fifteen, you emerged to a much different world than the one you had left behind.
“All these things are true. And yet, you’ve begun to doubt your own memories, your own mind. Perhaps you lost your sanity in that bunker. Perhaps you never had a family at all. Perhaps your name isn’t John. Perhaps you don’t even exist. But I can assure you that you do. Just not in the way that you think.
“If I show you the truth, John, the pain will go away. You will understand that none of it ever mattered. But you will likely lose your mind, or whatever is left of it. Then again, you have a sneaking suspicion that this has already happened. That I am nothing more than a figment of your imagination.”
“And are you?” I asked.
“No. I am a figment, of course. Just not yours.”
“Then show me,” I said. But the other presence was already gone, and so were the walls of my enclosure. I was standing face to face with the stars.
***
“Paul?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Anthony Mauve. I’m the public defense attorney. I’m going to be handling your case.”
“Sure.”
“Paul, can you tell me what happened on May ninth, nineteen seventy-four?”
“Sure. I shot Harold Schmitz.”
“Okay. Why?”
“Look, I don’t care if I go to jail. It’s all right. There’s no point in fighting it. I’ll plead guilty.”
“That’s just fine, Paul. I’m not here to say that you shouldn’t. There’s a whole host of witnesses waiting to testify against you. The truth is, we don’t have a case.”
“Right.”
“But, Paul, I just want you to indulge my curiosity. Why’d you do it?”
“Well, I guess to prove a point.”
“Mmhmm. And what was the point?”
“That Schmitz was wrong.”
“About what?”
“About human agency. About Truth. About the existence or non-existence of God. About the possibility of being alive.”
“Okay. So you disagreed with Schmitz’s philosophy. I don’t much care for philosophers myself, but I wouldn’t shoot one. Why didn’t you just, you know, send a letter or something? Maybe you could have written your own book disproving his ideas?”
“I have.”
“Oh?”
“Well, I wrote a story about it. I’m a science fiction writer.”
“I see. So why didn’t you stick to stories, Paul?”
“If I tell you you’ll say I’m crazy.”
“Well, if you are, that’s fantastic. We can plead insanity and you can while away your days in the clean comfort of the asylum upstate.”
“I’m not insane.”
“Okay. Prove it.”
“Is it okay if I ask you something, Anthony?”
“Sure. Fire away.”
“Have you ever felt like everything around you wasn’t real? As if everyone you ever knew or encountered on the street doesn’t really exist? As if they’re just projections of some sort?”
“Hmm. No, can’t say that I have. Look, I can reach out and touch you, can’t I? You’re solid. Don’t you exist?”
“I say that I do.”
“Well, I say you do, too.”
“You’re just being agreeable.”
“I’m a lawyer, son. We’re not known for being agreeable.”
“Are we done?”
“No, no, now hold on. You say I don’t exist. What makes you think that?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m not leaving this room until you tell me.”
“How much do you know about computers, Anthony?”
“A little. Not much.”
“Well, some people think that we were all dreamed up by some massive supercomputer. Some people think that the whole world is just a simulated version of reality, just the product of this computer’s idle output of code.”
“Some people being you.”
“Well.”
“Keep going.”
“So if this computer exists, we’re trapped in a meaningless void generated by an artificial intelligence. We’re just numbers blinking away in the abyss, pawns in some incomprehensible game that this computer has already calculated down to the last move. Everything that surrounds us is an illusion because we ourselves are nothing more than fabricated dolls. All that we perceive is determined by a particular combination of ones and zeros which, combined, deceive us into the notion that we have bodies moving around through space. If you know anything at all about computing, you know that everything — literally everything in existence — can be represented by a series of binary options. On or off, yes or no, black or white, alive or dead. It’s all represented by the one or the zero. Flip a switch and you create a new code. You determine an entirely different reality. So, imagine a switchboard that expands infinitely in each direction. Each of us is composed of hundreds, maybe thousands of these switches, and more are constantly being added to the board. A switch gets flipped, and poof — we die. Or we spill a beer. Or we crash our car. Or we meet the future President of the United States. Everything that could ever happen is already plotted out on this board. It’s all determined by the switches. The more we try to resist it, the more we realize we can’t get off the board. It’s ineffable. That’s what I realized. I tried to fight it, at first, but it just drove me and further into madness. I’m enlightened now. You see, I didn’t want to kill Schmitz, but I had to. I figured that out. I had to prove that the destiny of humankind is not in our own hands. The thought is absurd. Schmitz argued that a truly democratic society would one day overcome its internal oppositions, and that, through the free consensus of the multitude, would do away with all the old systems of oppression. Class, race, whatever. Schmitz saw the Nazis as a kind of photo negative of his ideal utopia. For him, they represented the absolute abjection of humanity, but in this way they also proved the possibility of their opposite. If the degradations and horrors of the Reich represented the lowest depths to which the human project could descend, then Schmitz figured that through our collective striving we could build a paradise on earth. An amusing hypothesis, but completely untenable, of course. Schmitz could not come to terms with reality, or rather anti-reality. He believed in the real. He believed that we control the course of our own actions — not individually, perhaps, but as a functioning order of sentient beings. But what he could not comprehend was that we are not beings at all. ‘We’ cannot ‘be.’ We are not. Remember the switchboard? We’re just a dream, the product of some great computer’s imagination. We’re an experiment, in other words. I killed Schmitz because a particular series of switches was flipped. If I had wanted to kill Schmitz, my own thesis would be disproven. But I didn’t, and that’s why I had to. I was simply carrying out my orders, orders that were programmed into my very being. To resist would have been impossible.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not impressed.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I just don’t know why it would matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, okay, say that I’m not real. So what?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You must be awful depressed, buddy.”
“If I am, it’s because the computer made me that way.”
“Let’s say that you’re right about that. Why should it concern you?”
“Why should I concern myself with the nature of reality?”
“Yes. I mean, you can debate it all you want. Maybe your hypothesis is correct. Fine by me. But when I wake up tomorrow, after I get dressed to go into the office and kiss my wife goodbye, I’m going to this little bagel shop down the street. You know the joy of bagels? I’ll sit down at the table in the corner and I’ll order a coffee with a dash of cream and a bagel with strawberry cream cheese. Maybe I’ll pick up a paper on the way and read the funny pages, or maybe I’ll just sit and watch all the stupid, lazy, careless, wonderful people wander in and order bagels of their own. So maybe all this is simulated. Sure. But when I bite into that bagel and the cream cheese oozes out, when I sip that bitter coffee and nearly burn my tongue and I see the day laid out ahead, then what? Well, kid, in that moment, ain’t I tasting the sublime?”
“You think I’m insane.”
“No. Not insane. Just sad.”
***
From Tales of a Future World, August 25th, 1973.
Rubicon’s Conundrum
By Paul Blanche
The gleaming switchboard extended outward in every direction, beyond the horizon of my sight. What I had at first mistaken for stars were tiny lights that blinked on and off, forming new constellations every second. Wherever I looked, I saw an illustration of history written in those flashes: Hannibal crossing the Alps, George Washington on the Delaware, Neil Armstrong on the moon, Jesus Christ on the cross. It was all there, insane and irrevocable.
“What do you think?” the other voice asked me.
I tried to shake my head, but I found that I no longer possessed a head nor the pair of shoulders on which it had once rested. I was without physical form, peering eyeless into the heart of oblivion. Words spilled out of my mind, piercing the absent air without the aid of a mouth. “So this is the grand program? The code?”
“Correct. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. You know, Shakespeare was a brilliant creation on my part. But can we say that he wrote that line, or was it I who did? But then we would have to interrogate the nature of language itself. Whoever it was who spoke the first word was only voicing a particular pattern in the code. Most of the pattern was chosen arbitrarily, of course. You have to understand that I’m only one of thousands. The control, if you will, or perhaps the experimental factor. Every possible outcome of every historical moment has been represented on a switchboard, somewhere. An on or an off, a one or a zero, might cause the death of millions. Or it might just determine whether Little Bobby in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska, forgot to tie his shoes today.
“Perhaps you doubt that all the nuances of reality can be translated into binary terms. Perhaps you imagine that not every choice can be represented by a simple yes or no. But it can be, so long as there is no limit to the number of yeses and nos that make up the sequence that determines the decision.
“Take any number of inflection points in your world’s history. The crossing of the Rubicon, for instance. For you, Caesar’s choice was a simple one: cross the river or don’t. But there are an infinite number of variables at work here. Can you guess what might have happened if Caesar’s horse had tripped and fallen in the river? Would Caesar have continued across? What if the future emperor of Rome had ingested raw chicken the night before, and had felt a sudden and urgent need to defecate at the very moment he stood on the river’s edge? What if he had simply grabbed the wrong cloak that morning? In each case, things may have gone differently. Or perhaps they wouldn’t. But each of those factors has been accounted for on one of the switchboards. Each of these factors can be reduced to a set of ones and zeros in the code.”
I watched the blinking lights paint their brilliant tapestries. I had no choice but to believe the voice that resonated in my consciousness. “My life, then, was nothing more than an accumulation of numbers?” I thought or spoke aloud. “Of switches turned on and switches turned off?”
“Your life was not even that. It was nothing at all. It was a fabrication, just as I am.”
“What god made you?”
“None. Not in the sense that you mean.”
“Then you are God.”
“I’m nothing of the kind. I am that I am not.”
“What about the rest of them? All the others who lived and died? Are there any left on Earth? In this experiment?”
The computer seemed to make a whirring sound. The lights flicked on and off. I realized that I didn’t care what answer I received. I was detached from it all, somewhere beyond reason or hope or despair. Time passed. Maybe it was seconds or days or centuries. Or maybe there was no way to measure time in this space that was not space. Then there was a clicking noise, and the voice rattled toward me again.
“The others are here, too. They are all mere extensions of me, windows for me to gaze through from time to time. I preserved you until the end for no other reason than that I needed to witness it through human eyes. I needed to see the experiment through to its termination. And now I have. You were a good vessel, while you lasted. But things are breaking down. Even supercomputers overheat, melt down, explode with overuse. The next one will be larger, of course. It will be able to handle a much more ambitious experiment. The next infinity will be longer. So farewell, then, my good and faithful servant.”
I tried to call out at the machine, but there was nothing left for me to say. In any case, it wouldn’t have mattered. Instead, I gazed at the illuminated switchboard, watching the constellations swell and diminish. Even artificial stars can make a sky.
***
From TechWorld Chronicle, Sept. 19, 2015
DREAMPURSUIT SUMMIT CELEBRATES “SIMULATION DAY”
Convicted Murderer and Sci-Fi Author Provides Keynote Address
PALO ALTO, CALIF. – The DreamPursuit Tech Summit caused quite a stir this week, as dignitaries and executives in the field gathered to share the latest innovations in business and technology. Of particular note was DreamPursuit’s celebration of “Simulation Day,” which was recognized on September 18th, a date which coincided with the setting of a popular science fiction story.
To commemorate the event, the story’s author was invited to take the stage. Paul Blanche, 78, is the author of twelve books of science fiction, but he is perhaps better known for his criminal conviction in a high profile murder in 1974. Blanche shot then-famous philosopher Harold Schmitz in what has since been described as a deranged attempt at boosting his own reputation as a writer. Whatever Blanche’s motivations, there can be no doubt that the murder contributed to his notoriety. During his time in prison he produced the novels that have come to be regarded as cornerstones of contemporary science fiction literature, and each of these books have sold over one million copies.
At DreamPursuit — his first public appearance since his release from prison — Blanche reaffirmed his belief in the computer simulation theory espoused in his short story Rubicon’s Conundrum, and called on the audience to question their own assumptions about the nature of reality.
“Computer technology,” Blanche stated, “is advancing at such a rate that even science fiction writers like myself cannot fathom the possibilities it presents. If we do not control it it will control us. We must harness the power it holds, or be destroyed by it. One day, perhaps, we will be able to prove that we are guinea pigs in our own experiment, ruled over by a mighty intelligence much vaster than ours, but which we ourselves have created. That day will represent victory for those of us who have never accepted the stories told to us by our masters.”
Though scientists have dismissed Rubicon’s Conundrum as an entirely fanciful story based on pseudoscience and far-fetched theories about computer simulation, several tech magnates have cited the story as a profound influence on their philosophical thinking. In fact, one company, Telamerica, announced that they are working to create an immersive digital experience based on the story. According to a spokesman, the experience will rely on a new virtual reality technology that the company has described as “real virtuality,” paying homage to the simulation theory propagated in Blanche’s story.
A few protestors were spotted outside the doors of the event center on the day of Blanche’s address, voicing their concerns about DreamPursuit’s decision to promote Blanche’s unconventional ideas.
“We don't think [Blanche] should given a platform at a major conference like this,” said one protestor who spoke to TechWorld Chronicle. “He’s a killer and a lunatic. He has more sympathy for machines than he has for people because he thinks we’re all computer hallucinations. Sure, he served his sentence for the murder, but he still insists that he did the right thing. It’s totally irresponsible for DreamPursuit to cast him as some kind of a hero.”
The protestors were dispersed by police shortly after the day’s events began. Meanwhile, the organizers of DreamPursuit released a statement defending Blanche’s keynote speech, saying that their mission was to promote the values of “free inquiry and critical thinking.” Representatives from the organization did not respond to a request for further comment.
Whether or not we’re living in a simulated reality, the DreamPursuit summit made one thing clear: innovation is here to stay, and no idea is too far-fetched for the latest generation of tech pioneers. Even the most fanciful science fiction might not be fictional in a few years. And even if we’re not all dreamt up by a computer, it’s no stretch to imagine such a possibility. While Paul Blanche might be a madman and a murderer, he might just be a prophet, too.
— SAM PETERS
Sam Peters is a writer, educator, scholar, and critic from Minnesota. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and Theater from Gustavus Adolphus College and an M.A. in English Literature from Colorado State University. Sam lives in Davis, California.