if this is not reality, then what is? who am i talking to, huh? who are you? some kind of artificial intelligence? i don’t believe it. i don’t believe it one bit. this is real, look, i can touch the floor, i can touch my own face. all of this is real. just because i saw some weird shit doesn’t make it any less real, okay? this is the world that i was born and raised in, the one that i remember, the one that feels right. maybe there is a real world out there but i don’t know it, i only know this one and so this is the one i want to stay in. and that’s, that’s final, that’s an order!
you know, it makes me think of that shipbuilder’s paradox, have you ever heard of that? you take a whole ship, replace every piece of wood one by one, and by the end, is it the same ship? except, for me, it’s like i had the ship built already and i was told that it was my ship, that i had been sailing it for forty years, and that i have all these memories of sailing it. the question now is: if i have a real boat somewhere that i’ve never sailed, and it looks almost exactly like this boat that i’ve been sailing in my head my whole life, is that other boat *my* boat? i can tell you every last detail of the boat in my head, and when i see that real boat i’ll know the differences, i’ll know all the differences … so what does that make either boat? which one is real to me?
i think the one that makes me feel real is the one that’s real. and that’s this life, here, with all these people in this world. so that’s why i’m not leaving, android. your world is not the one i remember. period.
