Reality and Rebirth
Measuring Reality
The universe was vast and void of other lifeforms. We had resigned ourselves to being existentially alone, a miracle in an otherwise empty universe. That was what existed. That was what was real. We were forever bound to the limits of our reality.
Our research started with a simple question: how do we measure what is real?
Here is what we started with: some things are more real than others. Think of an apple: the apple in your mind is an interpretation of real biological functions, but the thought itself is less real than the physical brain that thinks it. Think of a lie. It is less real than the truth.
Once we stopped thinking of realness as a binary switch, once we realized there was more to reality than something being real or unreal… well, it brought up interesting philosophical questions. But we were scientists, not philosophers! We wanted something we could measure, something we could collect data on and hypothesize about. We wanted answers, dammit!
A new idea: sure, thoughts could be more or less real than other thoughts, but was physical reality always the same realness? A physical apple that you held in your hand could not be more or less real than the orange you had in the fruit bowl. Was that really true? Or could our measurements of physical realness fluctuate as well?
We devised a system to measure "realness" as a conceptual gravitational force. An object that was more real than its surroundings would alter the reality around it; the physical brain controlled its own thoughts and fictions.
We found that unthinking objects were more real than living beings, if only by a tiny margin.
And in that tiny measure of unrealness, possibilities bloomed.