Around midnight, the cops picked up Donald Rabbit, took him to Grid HQ, gave him some bottled water and left him in the interview room.
Donald, 23, was apprehensive because he had never been to Grid HQ. He was halfway through the bottled water when the door opened and an attractive woman, about 30, with a name tag that said Officer Rabbit, walked in, smiled and sat down across from Donald.
Since they both had the same last name, Donald wondered if they were related.
“We are not related,” said the woman.
This crazy twist can read my mind. My theories are right, thought Donald.
“No, I can’t read your mind,” said Officer Rabbit. “We asked you here for a Stat Chat.”
“Something amiss with my stats?” Donald said.
“Why don’t we chat about that and you decide,” said Officer Rabbit and flashed him another hollow smile.
“Okay.”
She wore a pair of Stat Glasses that were probably linked to his data which meant she knew more about him then he could recall himself.
Donald Rabbit looked into Officer Rabbit’s blue eyes. She was focused on reading his stats, not looking at him. This was even more annoying than trying to converse with someone checking their emails on an MS-finger ring.
“Back in the early part of this millennium, a few decades after those movies on the Matrix came out, some disrupters came up with an idea that humans were created by an alien race and were part of some goofy advanced culture’s computer games,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Donald Rabbit. “As good as any theory…a game called Earth with billions of avatars. We think we’re alive but we’re just blips in a computer game. We don’t all live in a Yellow Submarine. We’re in a simulated world. No ideas what color it is.”
“If the aliens had such a game, you could spoil everything by spreading such ideas,” said Officer Rabbit. “You’ve been doing a lot of that, Donald.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” asked Donald Rabbit. “Reprogram me?”
“Against the rules,” said Officer Rabbit.
“How do you know that?” asked Donald Rabbit.
“Trust me,” said Officer Rabbit. And she winked at him. Or seemed to – but she was activating a faraway program via her Stat Glasses.
One of the eight planets spinning around the Sun vanished. And the alien game players were down to seven worlds in the solar system they had made 6,000 years ago.
