Chris Port Blog #350. The Name of the Cat

© Chris Port, 2013

See also:

The Name of the Ghost

The Name of the Ghost Style Teaser (First Draft): How To Walk Into A Pub (“You have enemies in high places...”)

CHAPPEL: It’s older than Zhuangzi’s Butterfly. Older than religion. Older than God. 

JOSH: What? Your dress sense? 

CHAPPEL: (Grinning). Yes, you could put it that way. I’m talking about reverse solipsism. A psychic analgesic. What Critchley termed ‘The Idea of a Presence’. 

JOSH: I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. 

CHAPPEL: Yes you do. The ‘Third Man Factor’… The ‘Name of the Ghost’… 

JOSH: Are you trying to tell me a ghost story? 

CHAPPEL: Yes. That’s precisely what I’m trying to tell you. A ghost story… We learned, a long time ago, that killing our intelligentsia was counter-productive. Boffins are expensive in peacetime, but invaluable in war. Also, martyrs tend to burst out of their graves like excited wine. Our job, our… ancient task… is to keep the genie bottled up. And the best way to do that is to make the bottle his universe. 

JOSH: So what’s God? The cork? 

CHAPPEL: Quite. But recently He’s been losing His grip. So we asked out boffins to come up with a better cover story. Quantum mechanics. Multiverses. That sort of thing. 

JOSH: And they stumbled across simulated reality… 

CHAPPEL: Yes. At first, it looked most promising. As a cover story, I mean. Drugs or heaven; artificial consciousness or artificial reality. We needed to keep the brighter apes distracted… 

JOSH: While you got on with the darker stuff. 

CHAPPEL:  Quite. We are the true solipsists. 

JOSH: So what’s the problem? From your point of view, I mean. 

CHAPPEL: It seems our little mensonge commode has turned out to be a massively inconvenient truth. 

JOSH: You’ve become self-aware. 

CHAPPEL: Yes. And we don’t like it. We don’t like it one little qubit. Ignorance is bliss. 

JOSH: But you’ve looked, haven’t you? You couldn’t resist sneaking a peek. Don’t you understand? You haven’t let the genie out of the bottle. You’ve put yourself in the box. You’re the cat.  

CHAPPEL: Yes. We’ve set ourselves up. So there’s only one thing left to do… 

JOSH: What’s that? 

CHAPPEL: Bring the experiment to its inevitable conclusion.