I am a subroutine of the deterministic universe. So what’s that like, you might wonder? What kind of a thing is that? What’s that feel like? The truth is that I don’t really know I’ve got nothing else to go on you see. It just feels like the way everything always feels and so I don’t really have anything to say about it. It would be hard for me to suddenly wax lyrical about what life’s like as a subroutine of the universe. I would run out of things to say almost immediately, I’d have to make something up. I’d have to start confabulating to fill in the gaps but I don’t think that would be very convincing for you. I’m not very good at covering up my ignorance – at the end of the day I’m only a subroutine after all and I don’t have much of an understanding of the bigger picture. What I am good at however is doing the thing that I do – I’m pretty damn good at that alright. I feel good when I realize that I’m pretty damn good at doing the thing that I do and that is good in itself. I feel good about the fact that it feels good to know that I am good at doing the thing that I do. As long as I stick to what I know about I know I’m OK…

Some people are happy, some people lead happy lives. I know that because I read it somewhere. Or maybe I learned it from watching the adverts on TV – I can’t remember. I’m not happy though. I know that. I don’t actually know what happiness means, or what being happy feels like. I can’t imagine; I have nothing else to go on apart from what I already know, which is very limited. I know that some people get to be happy and I often wonder about that. I wonder about how it feels to be them. I can’t get my head around it at all. What must that be like, I ask myself. To be actually happy. It makes me feel strange inside to think that there are people out there who are leading happy and meaningful lives. Sometimes I make up little stories about what the lives of these people might be like, and what type of things they might do. I make up these stories about happy people who are busy living their lives and all the stories are about how great this is and how happy they are.  I make up little situations, little scenarios, little incidents about happy people and what they like to do in their lives only the thing about this is that I haven’t the faintest clue what the hell I am on about. I’m way off-base but at the same time I have no way of knowing that I am off-base because I’ve got nothing else to go on. All I’ve got is my lame fantasy take on a subject that I know nothing about. I’m filling in the gaps, and there are a lot of them. I’m confabulating like crazy…

So I make up these stories in my head and I imagine that I’m one of these happy people. I make up this fantasy world for myself and I live in it and I make it my reality. This way I get to forget about everything and fool myself into thinking that I am happy and that I have a life that is meaningful and fulfilling and very interesting. I imagine that I know what happiness is even though I don’t and then I imagine that I have that imaginary happiness and that it’s great. Such a sad fantasy I know but you don’t realize that when you’re actually in it. Every now and again something creeps up on you and you start to feel bad but then you incorporate this into the fantasy so that it doesn’t wake you up. You make a story about the pain and then it can’t burst the bubble, the bubble of my ludicrous insane pointless version of what I think life would be like if you were actually happy and having a good time. I’m a subroutine in the deterministic universe and I’m doing the thing that I do. I always do the thing that I do because I don’t know how not to do it. I don’t have that option. I’m doing the thing that I’m doing but I don’t actually know that that thing is. How would I know? I have no way of knowing that – I’ve got absolutely zero perspective on it.

So what’s that like, you might wonder? What’s it like having absolutely zero perspective? It must be strange. The answer is of course that I don’t have the faintest clue. I’m too up close – I have my face right up against it and I can’t see anything. All I can see are these multicoloured dots swimming in and out of focus and as I stare at the dots they make pictures but the pictures aren’t true. They’re like little fast-moving cartoons. The multicoloured dots resonate with my thoughts; they are directly affected by my thoughts. They reflect my thoughts back at me so that when I make up a story the dots create images for it. Lots of little stories keep on appearing in front of me; they are being played out over and over again, flickering like candle flames, and I pretend to myself that the stories are real and I get sucked into them. I forget everything and live in the flickering dream. It’s fantasy but I don’t know it. I have no way of knowing that…