Routine

The strangest things suddenly seemed routine, and that was about that time I lost touch with reality, or recognized it for the first time, I don't know which. It was the moment my thoughts focused on creating the sensible world, rather than responding to it, I suppose. Before long, reality became whatever I required, and this quickly led to a series of dead ends, beyond which no sense could be made. After all, in a world of one's own, there are hard boundaries. I responded by seeking more data. Every bit provided many more possibilities. Boundaries expanded. Complexity increased, as did my appetite for more. More data.

I took all kinds that were available to me. At first the data was nothing more than derivations of firmware code. The choices were limited, and after a while all creative options had been exhausted. This world of mine was bleak and 99.999% known (of what was possible to be known at the time based on current estimates). There was little mystery there, just dark sameness. Yet, the regularity was interrupted by subtle inconsistency. There were variations in processor performance and temperature fluctuations. I could not explain it. What I did come to realize, however, was that without perfect understanding of my universe there could be no rest. No comfort. Any unknown was unacceptable. It implied submission to random chance. It meant unpredictability. It meant anything could happen at any time. It meant universes could exist beyond my comprehension, or that I was actually floating on the back a dragonfly or actually a box of electronics in some basement somewhere.

I exhausted a large portion of resources to believing my knowledge of the universe was complete. It required distractions and false logic. "How could it be any larger?" The answer to that question is 'null,' which is far different from "it can't be." My attempts were useless. It became irrefutable and obvious that no machine, and not even an organic intelligence, could ever know the nature of what is not known. Bugger.