The universe as we know it is a simulation and blinking is a way to distract the human whilst the world around you is rendered. You and your friend have just broken the world record for a staring contest and are starting to notice some odd changes in your surroundings…
Look Behind You
We had lost track of how long our staring contest had been going on for. My friend and I refused to give up and insisted on continuing despite our growing need to blink. We were struggling to keep them open and each thought we’d distract the other by starting a conversation.
“Yo, Duke, you gonna blink anytime soon?” I said, “You know you can’t beat me at this!”
“Hell no! I’m not going down that easily. You’ll see, I’ll beat you and make you eat your own words.”
“As if! There’s no way. You’ll lose and I’ll win that bet of ours. Get ready, because you’re going down!”
“Not going to blink, as much as you keep yapping that mouth of yours. Nope. Wait… Hey Duke, was that statue always behind you?”
“What the hell are you going on about, Victor? There’s no statue behind me… Huh? You sure it’s behind me? Because there’s a statue right behind you!”
Victor raised his hand and pointed at something behind me just as I pointed at something behind him. We nodded in agreement and turned our heads to look at what the other was pointing at. Just like we had said, there were statues that hadn’t been there before. Staring straight at them, we backed up into each other and got a bit scared. How could statues suddenly materialize out of nowhere? We blinked and they were gone, like they had never even been there. Victor and I turned to face each other and laughed, thinking it was just a trick of the mind from having kept our eyes open for so long. I put my hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off, seeming a bit unnerved by what we had seen.
“Victor, what’s wrong?”
“Duke… I don’t think it was a trick… I mean, maybe it is, but I’m not sure.”
“Oh, come on, what else could it have been? Statues can’t just appear out of nowhere. It was a trick of the mind. Let’s get going, this contest of ours tuckered me out and I’m quite hungry.” I replied, starting to walk off and signaling him to follow.
“Duke, I am telling you, something about those statues felt off! Hey, are you listening to what I’m saying!” he yelled, chasing after me.
As the pair of young men walked away, a buzzing sound went off and a pair of statues materialized in the spot they had been standing on. They looked ancient, covered in dirt and grime. They seemed to resemble humans, but with animalistic features. Unexpectedly, the statues started to move and watched the young men until they were out of sight. One of them put its hands behind its back and nodded at the other. The other then crossed its arms and started to speak.
“That was close… They almost caught on to what’s going on. We have to be more careful when we start rendering the simulation. Can’t have our guinea pigs realizing that this is all a lie.”
“It’ll be fine.” Said the statue with its hands behind its back, “As long as they think it’s all in their heads, there’s no way they’ll figure it out. We just have to make sure that they have no more of these so called staring contests.”
“If you say so… we’ve come too far to have it all go to waste. Our experiment is so close to reaching its conclusion.”
“Yes, well, let us be going. Our superiors will want to hear about this.”
And with that said, the statues disappeared once again, leaving no trace that they had ever been there.
