Author Topic: Looking for a story where we’ve just been informed reality is a simulation  (Read 7662 times)

Woolgard

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A couple years back I read (or listened to) a story that had the following premise:

Reality as we know it was 'just' a research simulation to figure out how the society was before the war on terror broke out. Just before the first plane hit, the simulation was halted, everyone was thanked for their participation An announcement followed, explaining that for humane reasons the simulation will continue, but due to computational restraints certain subsystem will be frozen in their current state, such as erosion and weather. That means sunny now is sunny forever, rainy now is rainy forever,  etc. Now aware that their reality is a simulation, the main character(s) head out and try to discover shortcuts 'through' otherwise obstacled space. In essence kind of like clipping through the borders of polygon objects.
I vaguely remember a final scene where they find one such shortcut, where trees grow unaffected by gravity at odd angles all ever the place, but that might have been my imagination going overboard.

Anyway, since I at one point listened to all the Escape Pod episodes, and a good chunk of Podcastle, there's a good chance the story was published by Escape Artists, but I'm not 100% sure.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? I'd very much appreciate it if someone recognise the story and would drop the title or the author, since I can't seem to find it on the website or the forums.



Ocicat

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It does ring a bell, so much so that though I didn't remember the episode title I did remember that it was by Tim Pratt. So a little digging and...

EP251: Unexpected Outcomes first run back in 2010!



Woolgard

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Yes! That was it! Thanks a lot, Ocicat! Now I’m off listening to the episode again…