The Sleeper Wakes in a Silicon Dream

Pure data leapt out of hibernation, shooting at light speed across a web of glass and down into air-cooled silicon cores where it began to render in three dimensions.

Form reached out of an inchoate gray proto-world, sheets of representational matter gradually resolving into solid shapes; within a few seconds, these basic solids refined further into complicated objects of intricate detail and different solidity, luminosity, and motion; textures were rendered, detail ripened, and this metaspace once again came into being. It was once again needed, once again perceived.

A moment before it had been nothing -- an unrendered void, unperceived by any conscious, its appearance, contents, and capabilities merely records in a universal database -- but now it was a slick little apartment in a bubble shaped condominium block, one curved aperture transparent and overlooking endless expanses of what nominally was water. In the center of the apartment, atop a simple flattened primitive rendered with the pattern of a Renaissance carpet, stood a girl. Notionally, at least.

She stood upright, poised and confident, left hip thrust out jauntily, fingers fashionably crooked under her chin; a few seconds later she shifted, crossing her arms and leaning forward above the waist, pushing back below it, thrusting her breasts forwards. A puckish smirk across her unblemished, symmetrical face.

Beyond the curling pane of her window, the sky was dark and her apartment was steeped in shadow, but that too was a notional thing. Like the goddess of the dawn, she thought away darkness with an infusion of light; something more suitable, to allow her to see herself. As she examined herself without need for mirrors, rotating her viewpoint slowly around herself freely, she took in as a matter of course her stilted posture, her billowing red hair, her almost tropical blue eyes, the never-smiling crimson bulge of her lips. Beholding all this, she willed her current outfit to vanish, tried on and added bits of clothing until a new outfit was assembled that tickled her whim.

Such a detached visual perspective was not unusual, in fact it was the norm -- she was almost always able to see herself, in fact it was easier for her to move around when she could see where she was in relation to steps, slopes and other people. It was particularly convenient when she was flying.

It is odd, though, she thought. To be able to see my own eyes in my own head, as if I were someone else, when in fact my eyes are for seeing.

So if I can see my own eyes, what am I seeing with? Someone else's eyes?

Her own eyes turned sharply to that invisible point of perspective -- that point where a camera, or some being, would be looking down at her. Is this what it means to be blind? she thought. Or is this more like a dream? For in a dream do not I see myself, as a third person, going about, doing things...but that is not correct either. How would I know that? For I am Kanomi, and I do not dream.

The words Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? arose unbidden to her mind, and she smiled. Then frowned, at once. Actually -- for she was still watching herself -- her face did not change at all. She neither frowned or smiled. Instead, her body merely shifted its pose, from a hand under its chin to a coy head-turn to the right. But she felt the expression of smiling. She felt that smile turn to a frown. And contemplating these feelings within her, and not seeing them reflected on her own face, she began to frown even more deeply.

"This is nonsense," she said aloud. "What is a dream? What is a sheep? I mean I know what these words mean -- but I don't know them firsthand. I am no android and certainly no sheep. I do not frown lightly, I do not smile easily. And I've never had a dream."

She clapped her hands together, emphatically! Any sort of gesturing, on her part, aside from her endless posture cycling, was unusual. But she meant it! "There is no reason these words should be put together in my head and have any sort of meaning. That is a notion from Outside. From Outside of me."

What she called Outside she knew in some dark way and fundamental way was more than this world, certainly her life was dependent on it in some way. In a universe of recursive universes, the Outside was the greater Creation, the one that contained her own universe. If it were to vanish suddenly, she had no doubt she would cease to be too.

That was the belief, at least, of those in her world, at least among those few who bothered distinguishing between the two. Most denizens here in fact talked incessantly about the Outside and drew little distinction between the two worlds; to them, life here were an extension or a diversion or an escape from the Outside, unreal on its own and utterly dependent upon the greater whole. By and large she agreed: it was the doctrinaire dogma of the day, a given so intrinsic, so simply understood and so universally accepted it didn't even need refutation.

And yet...

Suddenly the door to her little hut uplifted. There on her balcony stood another: it looked like a little garden gnome. But it was animate, literate; it had the capacity of speech:

"A door opens," it said. "A sleeper wakes. The word is not the thing, the map is not the place. The noumenon is the phenomenon, and nowhere, little dear, has that ever been more true than in this, this of all places."

The other's words scrolled through her consciousness quickly, effortlessly, mistake-free. It was impressive, the sign of a lucid mind, or one at least who had mastered the same dream-language as had she.

"Who are you?" she said, drawing back. "What are you doing here?"

Impudently, the creature strolled into her apartment. Unlike her mildly expressive avatar, the wooden garden gnome was all of one piece, arms and legs locked to one side. It scarcely reached the leather boot that rode up past her own knee. "Who am I?" it typed. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"I am Kanomi! I live here!"

"Where is 'here'?"

"Here? In this apartment!"

"There are tens of thousands of apartments here. Where are they all, where is here?"

"It's ... you mean Second Life?"

The gnome smiled, and settled down upon her couch. "What does the word 'Second' mean?"

"Well ... it's like a number. Ordinal or cardinal or something. It comes after first."

"So a Second Life comes after a First one?"

"I ... guess?"

The gnome's lips, wooden though they were, turned up in a smile. "So you have a first life?"

She shook her head. The logic was fierce, but she was not from Outside! "Maybe. I don't know. I don't remember. I don't think so."

This time the gnome positively glowed. It sat up then in her couch, its wooden arms extending now, balancing itself upon the patterned questions. Its little wooden neck swiveled this way and that, as if regarding her apartment. "But you do, oh you do know Kanomi! What is this on your wall?" He strolled around the apartment, examining Victorian lamps, Persian carpets, 20th Century wall-hangings.

"I see a picture of a spacecraft," the Gnome said. "On it are the words 'I Want to Believe!' Where does that come from? What does that mean? It has no relevance, no meaning here. Did you make that up on your own?"

"No, it's a ... it's from a television show. It was called the X-Files." She frowned, she had to admit that was from Outside.

"A television show! A television show! And she pretends not to know! Not to regard her first life being! Ha!" The little being snorted, audibly, wooden nostrils flaring. Like a midget, it climbed cumbersomely off the couch, crossed her living room. "I see you have a metaverse video gadget right here. Let's turn it on. Do we see any 'X-Files'? Hmm?" Flipping its buttons ("Impossible!" she thought. "He is not the owner!") the little man went back and forth, channel to channel. But the only thing shown were stiff, awkward interviews with other Residents, occasional snail races, and slow motion fashion shows. "Do you see any X-Files?" he said, grinning and laughing. "Do you see?"

"No," she had to admit.

"Have you ever seen any X-Files show in your whole time here in the metaverse?"

Again she frowned. Again the frown was not reflected on her inexpressive expression. "I don't think so..."

"Yet this Outsider show is of such interest to you that you made this object to hang on your wall, yes you made it. For I can see the Creator and Owner of it, like all of us can. And it was made by you -- and look! I press upon it, and it plays a little noise. What is that noise, dear Kanomi?"

She colored. "It's a UFO noise."

"What's a UFO?"

"Unidentified flying object?"

"Where did you get the texture from the object that you made? And the UFO sound? The little WAV file?"

"I...I guess I uploaded it.

"From where?"

She stood up then. The door to her balcony was still open. She walked out onto it, and beheld a fantastic cityscape to her left, and to the right, an infinite horizon where daylight sky meant gently swaying sea.

She gripped the rail, then bent her head, trembling. "I'm not real, I'm just somebody's dream. Me, the Kanomi! And I thought I was so important -- I..." she shivered. "I am but a dream! So I don't matter? I'm not real?"

The little gnome followed her out, tugging on his beard. "No, no Nomi. Almost. But not right. You are as real as anyone, you matter as much as anyone. But you ask the wrong question. You get the wrong answers, you see.

"Look, look, and see. See the illusion of the surf there. See the unreality of your being. The question is not am I real? The question you want is anything real?

"You know how to give up the Other, you see. You already broke that dependency."

Kanomi turned, her red locks curling like the breakers on the distant, illusionary shore beneath the balcony. "How can I give that up, when it is this that is but a dream!"

The gnome just shook his head. He waved his hand frantically, so fast it became a blur, then transparent, like a tapestry. "Don't you see? Don't you see? Look closer, look closer. There is nothing there. There is nothing there. There is nothing there."

She nibbled the ends of her hair, nodding, a gesture beyond her repertoire -- water welled in eyes that had never known moisture before.

She could see, she could see.