“Actually that's my fault, not yours,” the president casually said. “It's part of the reason I've come to talk to you.”
“
What the hell does that even mean
?” Jeremy's head felt like it was swimming from the words the man across from him had just spoken. “Please don't tell me we're having some kind of toxic airborne attack, or some other sort of nasty shit your people whipped up in one of their labs.”
The president tucked the ball under his right arm and held up his left hand. His eyes darted down humbly towards the court as he moved to the top of the key; his voice calm and patient.
“No, no, Jeremy,” he said, lifting the ball up over his head and aiming for the basket, his body rocking gently back and forth as he prepared to take his shot.
It reminded Jeremy of a stick of wheat swaying in a warm autumn afternoon breeze. He felt his mind start to wander again, like it would during a fever, landscapes shifting with the interior images. He thought for a moment of a comical old scarecrow with a straw hat, ink-black crows sitting on the flannel wrapped arms, unabashedly cackling to one another, proud and unafraid. The straw stuffed burlap bag serving as a head was smeared with a child's playful rendition of a toothy grin and painfully cheery, bugged-out eyes. The thought of those eyes made him nauseous in the pit of his stomach, like a knife being twisted through him, as the howling of the birds turns into a mindless roar and they tear the helpless straw man apart with terrible brutality, savagely ripping with their dark beaks full of hay and fabric until nothing remains.
A loud crack, as if someone had snapped together two wet fingers right next to his ear, brought him back to the court. The president was still effortlessly rocking back and forth. His eyes were locked on Jeremy now, instead of on the basket.
“Pay attention,” he said. “I don't want you to miss this.”
The president turned back to the basket and let the ball soar. It careened in a perfectly symmetrical arc, bending in an improbable geometry, before loosely slipping through the rim without touching it, the pleasant swish of the lower net the only contact the ball had made. Jeremy was so surprised that he almost expected the ball to simply stop before touching the pavement, but it struck with a resounding thud and bounced up, heading his way of its own accord. The president, a naturally competitive man, turned and pointed to Jeremy.
“Ha! Beat that.”
The ball reached Jeremy's feet. He leaned over and picked it up, turning it over several times in his hands.
“How did you do that?”
“By now I'm sure you've realized things in your world are behaving abnormally,” the president said, striding casually towards him as if he were addressing the nation. His secret service detail trailed close by, remaining just out of the action. “Some examples of this include waking up over and over on the same exact day, or being unable to leave your neighborhood. I've come to tell you the truth about things, but I'm going to need you to keep an open mind. Do you think you can do that, Jeremy?”
“I'm holding up pretty well,” Jeremy offered, shaking his head and raising his hands. “I thought I might be losing my mind for a minute there. Actually, to be completely fucking honest, Mr. President, I am still not one-hundred-percent ready to rule that option out. Pardon my French.”
The president snorted. “Of course you're not,” he emphasized. “It's perfectly natural for you to react that way, isn't it? I mean, the human race would never have survived without the ability to compartmentalize information, to disassociate, to let go of reality every now and then, even to completely repress certain unpleasant things you can't face.”
“Enough with the big pitch, Larry,” Jeremy sighed, feeling tired of being buttered up with slick talk. “What's the truth? Level with me, man. I can handle it. I've handled more than you can imagine in my life.”
The president gave him a knowing smile, his eyes twinkling as he studied Jeremy's face.
“Okay, you're right. I'm ready to level with you. The truth is that you're living in a simulation.
Usually it is flawless and you don't see any contradictions, but we've been experiencing some technical issues recently. We're working to root them out and restore things back to normal soon.”
“Right,” Jeremy scoffed. “Let me guess? You appreciate my patience and I should please continue to hold.”
“Exactly.”
“So what you're telling me is that I'm in the Matrix? Please don't tell me I'm supposed to be the Keanu Reeves in this version. I'm way too old, sir, and too slow to be 'The One,' by pretty much any standards.”
“It's not quite the same,” Larry explained. “But it's an interesting metaphor. I believe the plot of that movie revolved around humans creating artificial intelligence that then turned on them, forcing them into total servitude and distracting their minds while their bodies were turned into fuel for the machines.”
“That's the Cliff's Notes version,” Jeremy mocked.
“In our version of events, you are a highly compressed holographic digital file capable of independent interaction. There's no body to speak of, no decomposing organic matter, nothing but tightly bundled data reacting to stimulus, governed by a unique code, kind of like a signature, responsive and capable of memory, but without corruption or signal loss.”
“Wait a minute,” Jeremy demanded, letting the ball drop out of his hands. “Are you saying I'm like a program in a computer? Like I'm some kind of software?”
“That's the Cliff's Notes version, I suppose,” the president shot back, the twinkle returning to his eye.
“That's fucking nuts,” Jeremy shouted, turning away from him. “I'm pretty open minded, but that shit just doesn't add up. How would that even be possible?”
“I knew it would probably be a difficult concept for you to wrap your head around,” Larry exhaled. “I just thought it was worth a shot. Tell me which part you have difficulty with and we'll see if we can work through this.”
“How about all of it? I mean, I remember my childhood. I remember being an awkward and pimply teen. I remember my first beer and the girl I lost my virginity to and the first time I was arrested. I lived each and every one of those experiences.”
“No question about it,” the president agreed. “But don't stop there. Don't sell yourself short. You lived a full and rather successful life. You were beloved by people all over the world. You brought joy and happiness to others. You were generally fair and well liked for it, despite your obvious inability to keep it in your pants around pretty young girls. You were what they called a real American icon in many ways. It's what made you stand out.”
“What do you mean I
was
? Why do you keep talking about me in past tense as if I'm dead? Is that it? Are you telling me that I'm dead?”
It felt like a cold bucket of water was dumped over his head at the thought. It would explain a lot, like why he was unable to move forward in life. His world had ended and he was in purgatory. The city was hell, that's why it was on fire. Heaven was the bright blue sky being blacked out by the plumes and a rain of brown and gray ash.
But what does that make Larry? Is this man an angel sent from heaven to help me escape this place, or a demon sent from the darkest depths of hell to collect my soul?
“Earth, as you know it, ceased to exist about a hundred years ago or more,” Larry reported, throwing the ball up and over his head without looking. Jeremy watched as it soared once more in a perfect arc and swished through the hoop touching only net. “You've been with us ever since. You're very popular.”
“Us? What are you? Aliens?”
“That's exactly what we are,” Larry agreed.
“So you look like us? I don't understand.”
Larry's image flickered for an instant, like a fuzzy television signal. In that single instant between being real and solid, Jeremy saw something from his worst nightmares. A tall gray monster towered over him, skin like a shark but shiny, almost like a crab’s shell, an extended abdomen, four crab-like arms with pincer type hands, and a plated tail that slunk behind it like an extra leg. Worst of all was the creature’s head, sporting black glossy eyes with a double jaw and endless rows of serrated teeth, like an alpha predator from the darkest depths of the unexplored ocean.
“Actually our real appearance is too terrifying for all but a handful of enlightened and deranged humans to process,” Larry remarked. “That's part of the reason we remained cloaked to your kind until the final moments of your civilization. It's also why, when we interact, we take on forms you find more palatable. We've come to learn humans have a limited capacity for accepting different species other than their own.”
Jeremy laughed so hard he thought he would pass out. Larry waited patiently for it to pass.
“Okay then,” Jeremy spit out at last. “It's official. I've gone off the deep end. I'm nuts. Either that or Jess put some acid in my coffee. I tried it once in Des Moines when I was snowed in, but it wasn't this strong. This stuff is, pardon my pun, out of this world.”
The sky above them began to swirl with dark clouds. Deep angry slashes of electric purple bisected the billowing giants like thrashing tentacles. Larry reached out and put his hand on Jeremy's shoulder, his grip impossibly firm.
“Let's move this to a more comfortable setting,” Larry smiled pleasantly. An instant later they were sitting at a sports bar on Sunset Boulevard, frosty bottles of beer in front of them. Larry was picking through a bowl of mixed nuts, pulling out all the cashews. The place was empty except for the two laconic men in black from his personal detail, and an equally silent male bartender. The television screens ran news, NFL games, and what looked like the History channel. Jeremy craned his head around to see that outside it looked like a normal, sunny day. A stream of unsuspecting tourists flowed past them without looking in.
“How's that?”
“A beer with the president? Seems a little cliché,” Jeremy teased, taking a pull off his Hoegaarden bottle. “Hope you're not planning on running for a third term. I don't think I can handle trying to explain this to Independents. It was bad enough when the voters thought you might be from Kenya, much less the Crab Nebula galaxy! I mean unless you plan on adding Sigourney Weaver to your ticket as VP, I don't think you have much of a shot. Americans hate illegal aliens. Haven't you guys ever seen FOX News?”
Larry let out a deep, hollow laugh that made chills run up and down Jeremy's arms. He tried not to show his discomfort.
“You see,” Larry crowed. “This is exactly why we kept you.”
“So break it down for me,” Jeremy prodded. “What happened? How did I get here?” He leaned back in his chair and downed half his beer in several thirsty gulps.
Fuck it,
he thought.
If I've lost my mind there's no reason to fight it anymore. Might as well do my best to enjoy it while it lasts
. He remembered an old line from one of his favorite writers, Hunter S. Thompson, “Buy the ticket, take the ride...”
“Our civilization left our planet of origin before your sun was even born,” Larry stated, still picking through the mixed nuts. “We travel through the universe scavenging resources as we move along from other planets. In this way we have been able to survive for billions of years. Earth was very far away from the more populated and active parts of the universe, which explains why it remained isolated for so long. We only found it on accident, after one of your satellites wandered through a worm hole.”
“Is it just one big mother ship?”
“You would describe it in terms of an armada,” Larry clarified, tossing a handful of cashews into his mouth and chomping away. “If you were to line up all of our ships they would extend a distance greater than your solar system.”
We never had a chance.
“You'd think one of our scientists might have noticed you coming,” Jeremy snapped, taking another big pull on his ice-cold beer. No matter how much he drank he couldn't seem to make a dent in it. It just kept refilling itself.
Well then
, he thought,
it ain't all bad losing your mind
.
“We've been cloaked, hiding just outside the outer ranges of the ice ball you call Pluto, for the last hundred years or so,” Larry offered. “We've been walking among you in disguise since the fifties. Several of us have been inside your government, which I guess makes my appearance all the more ironic.”
“You said it, pal,” Jeremy fired back with a wink. He was starting to feel a buzz.
“In that time we've determined the best way to encapsulate what your species had to offer,” Larry shrugged. “We've taken just over a million of the best and brightest of your kind with us, recreating a suitable environment for them on a ship of their own. It's a custom we've adhered to over the centuries to honor those who sacrifice their world for our survival.”
“You mean like a floating space zoo?”
“In a way,” Larry admitted. “But with far more liberties than humans afforded the other species they kept in isolation. Many surviving humans living in these controlled environments have no idea they are actually in an artificial world. The illusion is so thorough they simply can't tell the difference. We've done our best to preserve the fallacy of choice and free will to appease them.”
“Why one million? I mean, the last time I checked there were over eight billion people on the planet. Why spare less than one percent of them, and how do you choose who gets to live?”
“It comes down to expendable resources in a lot of ways,” Larry casually explained. “While there are determining biological factors that play a role, such as preventing genetic bottle necking that might allow a single infection to wipe out the remaining humans, ultimately we can't afford to spare more raw materials to sustain more than that.”
“Cold hard science, huh? Ain’t that a bitch.”