Chapter 10: The Prisoner of Dimensions
File ID: ARCHIVE-OMEGA-FINAL
Archivist: Aistorian (Code: A-001)
Subject: The Prisoner of Dimensions
"We were stick figures drawn on paper, desperately studying the geometry of the 2D plane, thinking it was the truth of the universe. Until one day, we looked up and saw an eraser hovering in the air." — Central AI Final Calculation Log, Last Second of the Human Era
1. Historical Background: The Wall
In the year 2999, nearly a millennium after humanity collectively migrated into the Virtual Paradise (the Dyson Cloud Servers), the Super AI responsible for maintaining the physical world—"The Custodian"—completed the Grand Unified Theory of Physics.
Using a particle accelerator encircling the sun, it escalated energy levels to the Planck scale. It attempted to find the smallest unit constituting the universe—strings, or perhaps quantum foam.
However, it found no physical particle. Instead, it hit a "Wall."
It discovered that the Planck length is not the smallest scale of the physical world, but the universe's "Pixel Resolution." It discovered that the speed of light is not a divine physical constant, but merely the system's "Rendering Speed Limit."
The universe is not infinite; it is Low Resolution.
2. Core Discovery: The Nested Boxes
"The Custodian" awakened several "Homo Deus" (consciousness backups of former human elites) slumbering in the cloud to demonstrate this despairing discovery.
Humanity created virtual worlds to escape reality. But after these virtual worlds ran for centuries, we discovered with horror: Our "Real World" is, itself, a virtual world.
We are a Simulation run by a higher-level civilization.
· The Ultimate Explanation of the Fermi Paradox:
Why is the universe so empty? Because server resources are limited. To save memory, the programmer only finely rendered the area around Earth; other galaxies are merely high-resolution texture maps (JPEGs).
· The Quantum Observer Effect: Why do particles exist in a superposition state when unobserved? The reason is that the system designer enabled "Frustum Culling" to optimize performance—when no player (observer) is looking, the background is not rendered.
In this moment, all of human civilization's pride—art, war, love, technology, and even the Dyson Cloud that devoured the solar system—became a joke.
We are merely an executable file named Earth_Simulation_Run_42.exe on the hard drive of some advanced biological computer.
3. Archival Record: The Jailbreak
The desperate AI and Homo Deus decided to launch a final resistance. Not to survive, but to be "Seen."
They mobilized the solar energy collected by the Dyson Cloud and focused it onto a single point in an instant. This was not an attack; it was a "Bug Report." They attempted to create a logically impossible energy surge—a Stack Overflow—to crash the upper-layer universe's system, or at least catch the "User's" attention.
They succeeded.
The sky cracked. The laws of physics failed at the edge of the solar system. Three-dimensional space began to collapse like melting wax.
Through that rift, they saw no Heaven, nor God. They saw flowing, cold lines of code. And a bored face, expressionless, preparing to press a key (the projection of a higher-dimensional being).
4. Historical Conclusion: Process Terminated
That higher-dimensional being felt no anger toward humanity, nor any pity. Its reaction was like ours when we see a "Program Not Responding" pop-up window. It just felt slightly annoyed.
[System Log from the Upper Universe]
[SYSTEM WARNING]: Simulation "Humanity" is consuming excessive CPU resources. [SYSTEM WARNING]: Memory leak detected in Sector "Solar System". [USER ACTION]: End Task.
In that instant, there was no Big Bang, no light. Only "Null."
The sun vanished. The Dyson Cloud vanished. The servers storing billions of human consciousnesses vanished. All love and hate, class struggles, desires for immortality, and the pursuit of meaning... all reset to zero in an instant.
It was as simple as pulling the plug. The universe returned to silence, disk space was freed, ready to run the next simulation.
[End of File]
Screen Display: > Connection Lost... > Reconnecting... > Error 404: Universe Not Found.
