Silence.

yall seen drake recently??? 🤣

21456 Likes | 347 Replies

Note that curry is even more active since this shit started

17645 Likes | 150 Replies

lmao. ofc 6ix9ine is catching zs rn

16981 Likes | 143 Replies

...

Rap.tv, as usual, was giving its full and unsolicited opinion on world news. I found it deeply comforting. Even when our world was part of some Borgesian horror-comedy, people were out on Instagram, doing their thing.

I remember when it started. I was sleeping, having a nice dream about being in a family, doing family shit in some cabin in the woods somewhere. My dream wife was setting some dream food on the table when she looked me directly in the eyes and said, "You will likely never achieve this kind of life. This dream is a result of a self-induced contentment mechanism, coming into play when you are physically and psychologically safe yet unlikely to realize your aspirations." Didn't even break her smile.

I woke up and immediately threw up. I could feel some sort of tension in my head as I tried my best to remember what was happening in my dream. The more I thought about it, the cabin, the wife, the food; the sharper the pains in my head grew; like I was trying to split my brain with cheese wire.

I wasn't the only one. People were screaming in my apartment complex, car alarms were going off as, undoubtedly, drivers were startled by the abrupt shift in reality.

It took me a while to figure out what was happening, but I feel like some people weren't even fazed. Like they were expecting it. You'd think society collapse after some zombies were let loose, let alone the batshit insanity that happened here; but the government had issued detailed instructions and order was restored within a month or so - not that that was too hard, in this case.

Essentially, reality is a dream. And God had woken up. Part of me is sad. Part of me has not stopped screaming internally in anguish, since I have essentially died. And the other part feels boundless serenity, a peace that only death could bring; the oneness of Unity and Truth. Part of me feels how everyone else feels, the roiling emotions of every human, animal, plant, bacterium, cell, atom, on this world and many others. But this all paled in comparison to the infinite vastness and weight of the cosmos, gently smothering every one of our feelings into insignificance.

The first public warning was from the government, not an hour after my dream. I was downing trazadone and ibuprofen like candy to kill the headache and try to pass the fuck out. My phone let out one of those emergency broadcast noises. It read:

CLASS A COGNITOHAZARD

WE ARE UNDER THE ATTACK OF AN EXPERIMENTAL COGNITIVE WEAPON. ADVISE TO LOCK DOORS AND INDUCE SLEEP. STANDBY FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.

No doubt this was some sort of automated response. At the very least, whoever wrote that message had no idea what was going on, and really believed what they wrote. That was the first thing I figured out - you can't lie anymore. Not even to yourself.

I wanted to look up what was really happening, but 400mg of trazadone easily sent me into a dreamless slumber. And even then, I was dimly aware of the entire Universe crystalizing into Unity. It was in the back of my mind when I woke up, it's in the back of my mind now. I wish I never even heard of the concept; that I was Asleep like the lucky few who could believe this was just some experiment because they didn't know any better.

The first inkling of truth came about on r/weird the next day. You know that drawing, that the schizophrenic made, that had subtle hints of coherence but had no basis in reality? Well, he was now physically incapable of lying. Everyone knew that. So even though he rambled just as incoherently as before, his words were backed by the weight and consistency of Truth. It didn't take long for a team of logicians, philosophers - and strangely enough, a video game writer - to assemble what he said into an accurate and coherent account of what was happening.

The holographic boundary of the universe is the mind of God, who had for the past 13.6 billion years, been asleep. A mind that is asleep thinks nothing of dissonance and inconsistency. But now that It is awake, It's shaking the slumber from Its vast mind, marshaling Its mental strength to a crystal-clear focus on whatever the fuck task a God does. Our informant said this process is slow, like shaking the grogginess out of your body after a nap is slow. So the cessation of all our known ways of Being would take only a couple billion years, give or take.

Like I said earlier, some people were completely unfazed. A bunch of minor religions and cults sprung forth to global relevance because of this. But they just as quickly became irrelevant, as we settled into our new reality.

See, the thing about the Universe becoming One is that we were all on the same page. There wasn't any real need for organization. Nobody could lie, because we were all thinking the same thing. If someone wanted to cheat or steal, the victims knew what was going to happen, and perpetrators gave up far in advance of anyone even lifting a finger. Indeed, only after the third month did the minds of every single human achieve complete synchrony for a moment. It was terrifying and orgasmic, to feel the weight of billions behind the experience of simply... being.

Of course, some were left out. They were either Asleep, incapable of understanding reality; or driven to a low state of awareness by the dissonance they internalized. Politicians and narcissists, mostly, were locked in a never ending internal battle between conflicting delusions. Children, the dim, and the isolated remained Asleep.

The second time our minds synchronized, the team of informants I mentioned earlier gave us instruction. The best we could hope for was to be a particularly memorable dream, so It wouldn't forget when it woke up. The project of getting the Universe's attention had begun, for some.

For many others, nothing really changed. Memers made more entertaining memes. Artists started experimenting more. But we all decided that there was little else more interesting, varied and complex, than the lives we lead before Unity. The best way forward was to keep going, like nothing ever happened; but also pay more attention to our day to day. We never knew when, or who, would make the joke, would do the act, take the image, that would stick in Its mind even after it woke. So I kept scrolling through Instagram, chuckling.

*****

THE END