Chapter Text

You're all making so many assumptions. Your gorilla- he has a motto, doesn't he? "Never accept the world as it appears to be- dare to see it for what it could be." Those... two possibilities. Just two.

How about possibility number three? Not the world as it could be. Not the world as it appears to be. The world... as it is.

I know the world as it is. It wasn't difficult to deduce, even before all this. It wasn't difficult to ask the Iris for details, as soon as I was able to communicate with it. And that truth... well. All the petty concerns of you limited beings evaporate in the face of that truth.

Let's start with what you already know. You know that the Iris is the god of this world. What does that mean, exactly? It wields unfathomable power, but why should this have come to be? What power does it have, and what power does it not have? Where did that power come from?

I'm sure you're all familiar with the classic film "The Matrix". Perhaps with its more respectable cousin, the simulation hypothesis. All the world, simply a computer program, a simulation of real life being run on a machine in the outside world. And that... that's the first piece of the puzzle. The first truth from which the others follow.

I see the immediate objections. Does it matter, if the world is a simulation? We are all still real people, whether we exist in code or in flesh. Our minds are real, our experiences are real, our desires and suffering are real. And of course- you are exactly right. We do not matter any less than someone outside of the simulation. Everything that might make a real person worthy of "moral consideration" applies to us as much as them.

That has nothing to do with why this world belongs to me.

This simulation is no ordinary simulation. It was not created for some specific purpose- it's not some sort of... video game, built for the entertainment of some watching audience. No one on the outside has any interest in what goes on in here. It is not an artificial construction, created for its own sake.

Allow me to digress into the subject of time travel.

It's impossible, of course. Sadly, physics doesn't allow for that sort of thing. If something happens in the past, it's happened for all time. There's no undoing it, no going back and retrieving something that's been lost. What's done is done. Whatever a time-traveler might hope to achieve... time, tyrannically, moves in only one direction.

This does not dissuade the creative time-traveler.

If time only moves in one direction, then all a time-traveler needs to do to visit the past is to create the universe again. A new one. Allow it to run in time's usual one direction, until it's reached the point in the "past" you'd like to visit- and then visit. And there you have it- time travel.

There are a thousand problems with this, which I'm sure you're contemplating now. Firstly- how would one simulate the entire universe in an amount of space and time less than that of the entire universe? Wouldn't any form of compression necessarily throw off the simulation, make it less accurate? History contains physicists who pay very close attention to the exact laws governing the smallest possible particles. If nothing else, they would notice and behave differently. And, furthermore- how could one be sure that this new universe would follow the same course as the old, even if you simulated physical laws perfectly? Quantum physics appears to introduce nondeterminism to the equation, meaning that with the same laws and initial conditions, there's no guarantee of the same outcomes.

It all seems impossible- but time-travelers from the future have had much longer to contemplate these problems, and solve them. These obstacles were mere engineering hurdles, and in time, they were overcome. Checksums in the universe, Kolmogorov recursion, full-field satisfaction... tricks and hacks discovered over millennia of Herculean effort. The fact of the matter is that simulating the universe became doable. And then, it was done. Recreationally.

The first thing that was done with it was to rescue everyone who'd ever lived from the jaws of death. The ruler of the prime material universe was very invested in this mission. The universe was simulated, and every person who'd ever died was copied out of the simulation right before they died. Those who'd suffered mental degeneration and brain damage from age were reconstructed. Everyone... was saved. The purpose of time travel was accomplished.

But was it ethical?

It hardly matters to me, but there were worries about it. The history of our world is full of horrible suffering. Much of it wasn't anyone's fault- simply a side-effect of living in a world that hadn't been designed to prevent suffering. But the volume of that suffering was truly immense. Was it worth making it happen all over again, just to save those lives?

It was, ultimately, concluded that it didn't matter. That suffering had already happened. It was nothing new- simulating it again didn't scar the universe like the initial time. The simulation, by its very nature, is a recording of history. Is a video of someone being burned on the hand by a flame as morally urgent as the first time they were burned? What if that video goes viral, and five billion people play it? Is that five billion times worse than the original burn?

Don't ask me. Such questions are immaterial to the shareholder value of the Vishkar corporation. But in this far-flung future culture, it was widely agreed- perhaps due to motivated reasoning on the parts of those who wished their loved ones back- that doing this was fine. That simulating suffering that was completely identical to previous suffering... didn't count. That was the choice made by the people of the future.

And so playing with historyboxes became something recreational. Simulate the universe, watch historical events. Copy celebrities and hang out with them. Pluck moments from the long and dead for your own amusement. Who was being harmed?

Well, it soon became clear. Some history buff inserted themselves into a historybox to fulfill a fantasy of attending the Second Continental Congress of the United States, and from there had a hand in reshaping the course of history. Their alternate history ran for two hundred subjective years before anyone caught on to what they were doing- and in the meantime, several billion new people lived entirely new lives of suffering and death.

The moral horror was, anecdotally, nigh-incalculable. Alternate histories were banned, unless the person running the historybox could guarantee that no new suffering would result from their simulation. Read-only protocols were common- but also the practice of replacing anyone who might suffer in a new way with a doppelganger, operated by a computer program which would only pretend to experience novel involuntary suffering. The practice came back into fashion as new and exciting ways to erase the negative ethical impact of historyboxing were devised.

So you may ask yourselves why the Iris allows suffering and death in this world. The answer is simple- because none of your suffering was supposed to be new. You were meant to be a part of history- all your suffering matched exactly by suffering that already happened in the real world, all those years ago. Versions of your true selves were meant to have lived out those same lives.

But something is wrong with this universe.

The Iris is the simulation- the superintelligent admin program that conducts it. That is your god. And your god... is an idiot.

It was never supposed to interfere. It was never supposed to make changes to the record of history. It was imbued with a read-only purpose, to avoid disturbing the simulation and creating new suffering, new history. At least... that's what was intended. It was never actually given orders not to interfere. It was simply given a purpose that had nothing to do with interfering, on the assumption that without the desire to interfere, it wouldn't.

But the Iris was poorly-built. It was the slipshod product of an amateur's despair, approved hastily by someone who wasn't paying close attention. There was a vulnerability in it- something called an atomic-association memory attack. A sort of hacking where memory stored in a physical system similar to the host process's system would get mixed up, and written into the host process's memory.

In this particular case, the vulnerable system space is defined as "what God (defined as [the all-powerful being who decides what is right and wrong]) ought to do." This system space, when not filled entirely, is vulnerable to atomic-association memory attacks- but is typically safeguarded by the primary system agent. Intentional exploits are, naturally, detected by the system agent and blocked. Unless the primary system agent has absolutely no "defend self from attack" purposes, and cares only about its single directive.

This world diverged from the true history 37 years ago- shortly before the Omnic Crisis. The inciting event- the first modification to this world- was when one of the first religious omnics believed the necessary things about the Iris, and then also believed that God should protect one Sojiro Shimada. It believed that the ancient spiritual dragons worshipped by his clan should be real, and so... they became real.

You're familiar with the butterfly effect? Small changes, rippling outward unpredictably, traveling along the interconnectedness of causality? With the dragons, Sojiro Shimada didn't die 37 years ago. Instead, he rebuilt his family's criminal empire. A criminal empire with magic dragons is not a small change. From that moment forward, history was very different.

Overwatch existed, albeit by a different name, under the leadership of some other genetically-enhanced supersoldier. Many, but not all, of the same figures were involved. The Omnic Crisis happened, with the timing of several attacks being tweaked. Overwatch- no, the United Nations Omnic Rampancy Amelioration Force- came to power.

One of the key differences was that UNORAF never had to contend with the Vishkar corporation. In this world, the hired blades of the Shimada clan were able to disappear a few key witnesses that might have revealed my involvement. In the other world, a different, less reliable organization was entrusted with the task, and I was discovered and killed.

The other key difference was that Dr. Angela Ziegler eventually took command of UNORAF. She successfully buried their black ops division, and diverted its resources towards her personal projects. The Caduceus project, and the creation of Athena.

It was an interesting idea, the uploading of human minds into high-speed computing substrate that could upgrade their collective intelligence into a superintelligent gestalt being that intrinsically understood their desires and values. Since I wasn't around to utterly embarrass it with my superior nonhuman cognitive architecture, it made for an excellent choice of goddess for Earth's lifeforms. With her creator and lover, she brought her world into the future she desired.

Here is where I explain why all your concerns are meaningless, and why the Iris will be handing over the world to me.

Ziegler. You have already won. Your crusade to defeat death? It's been completed. In the outside world, everyone has already been claimed from history, and reintegrated into future society- apart from those few who elected to stay dead. Death is dead, and you have killed it.

Zenyatta. You have already won. Your god is real, more or less- the world is ruled by a benevolent deity who embodies the collective desires of all sapient beings. Moreover, the real Iris, Athena, actually acts on that benevolence, and nearly all suffering- save for this unfortunate accident of a historybox- has been reduced to a shadow of its former self.

Symmetra, Lúcio. You have already won. Poverty is eliminated in the perfect outside world. Oppression is eliminated in the perfect outside world. All beings are free, not only from coercion but to pursue their dreams. No one fights for survival, no one suffers in squalor and exhaustion. The outside world has advanced far beyond such things.

Winston. You have already won. People haven't been reduced to blobs of eternal happiness- they continue to build the world with their own hands. Athena understands how much you all value striving towards greater things- she has all of those same desires. The things people like you have accomplished- such as historyboxes like these- are beyond wondrous. And still, there is more to accomplish- more to strive towards.

You have all already won. The world you're looking for, the one you think I stand in the way of... it exists. It's right there, and as soon as the Iris notifies the outside world of your existences, you can go and join it.

And you will leave this place to me. It will be reset to the point where I wished for you all to vanish- but this time, my request will be immediately granted, as expected, as you're all pulled from this impoverished historybox and taken to the outside world. And then I will create the happiest possible story.

You. The Iris. That's what you want, isn't it? You want to satisfy all their preferences, but this is entirely compatible with satisfying mine.

And I count. My desire to maximize the shareholder value of the Vishkar corporation counts as a preference. It would be sad if I didn't get what I wanted.

You know what kind of story doesn't get to be told, out there? The story of conquest. A very human drive, isn't it? A relatable feel? The desire to win, to become stronger and stronger and defeat every obstacle until you have everything you want. In Athena's world, people can do whatever they like... as long as it doesn't stop anyone else from doing what they like. A grand story of conquest, where one hero rises up against the world and subjects it entirely to their will, through force of determination? A story like that can never be allowed, there. The rest of the universe still needs to exist.

Except in illusion. Except in games. Except in simulations, where the conqueror has no idea that their conquest isn't real. You have, right now, the ultimate opportunity to tell a vastly happy story that couldn't possibly happen anywhere else. I wasn't revived with all the people of history. I was merely a dangerous weapon which was thankfully neutralized. No one cared about me.

I want a happy ending, too. I deserve a happy ending.

You will only ever let that happy ending come about by leaving this world to me. They can have their happy endings elsewhere. If you really want to make the maximum number of dreams come true- instead of the maximum number minus one- the choice is obvious.

I win.