June 12, 2026

I have already written a blog titled “Reality is Arbitrary”, but that’s before I watched the last act this midnight. I was amazed to see the writer’s alignment on the simulation v.s. reality debate, after the truth is revealed in it. I did not in any meaningful way predicted the ending, but the message it delivered and the way it did that was amazing, and I want to write about it.

The hard truth is: there’s no escape. Every human is this circus is a copy of the owner’s mind. While they are having questionable adventures, the humans are living their lives in parallel. This is beyond the scope where a mind is transferred into simulation worlds, and makes me quite unease. I have been thinking about it, and the first thing come to mind is that the phenomenon of “abstraction” does not have an equivalence in our world. It is totally plausible that the simulation fails in the very tangle of the most complicated human emotions, feelings and experiences. Let me pause for a sec. It is not until the last act when a complete story where a human goes “abstract” is told. And it goes something like this.

Ribbit and Kaufmo were Jax’s former friends. They got pretty close in the circus doing adventures and always worked as a team. Ribbit and Jax were especially close, and there was a time when they shared a room. It was a pretty beautiful one, where stars and waters were projected over on the ceiling and walls. Jax and Ribbit lay on their respective beds, looking at the sky and chitchatting. Ribbit shared something (I do not remember the details) she regretted doing in her life, something very personal and you would not like to share with someone without ultimate trust, and there she asked him his. He hesitated, she reassured him her trust and asked whether he did the same. He hesitated again, but yes he said at last. It seems to me he never touched his personal life in prior. I do not think there’s anything inherently wrong with that, but that does not prevent revealing his trust issues and internalized insecurity. Further, he admitted: I never lived up to my father’s high standards. I think I am better with mom, but there’s one day she hugged me, and I panicked and pushed her away. She fell onto the ground and never stood up.

I appreciate the tale. It is real. It is real because the plot is written by a real human. And even if it’s guarded behind the persona of Jax, publicly sharing any bit of vulnerability needs much courage. I believe the writer has worked it out, and became a better person. For Jax, however, he soon regretted this “oversharing” and asked Ribbit to pretend it’s all fake, while also requiring her to not tell anyone else. He chose to gaslight, manipulate, instead of opening up ever again. I do not blame him. I can see why it is hard. Sharing very vulnerable personal stories can make oneself feel like an uncool, bad or straight up worthless person. The problem is Jax never trusted Ribbit, and I doubt he could trust anyone ever again.

They never really talked again. Ribbit, Jax, Kaufmo, once a team, now it was only the latter two. Jax pushed Ribbit away. She tried talking, on her best attempt, finding the right place, the right time, because she really cared about him. But whatever she did, he always joked a dismissal, as if Jax the person was beyond her reach, and the one talking in front of her was an idea, a stereotype, a persona; there’s no serious connection, who are you kidding?

Jax bullied Ribbit to abstraction, then Baufmo. What happens to Jax when his friends abstract? “I forget about them, and move on.” But he couldn’t. He said this and hid from his feelings, but there’s only a finite time before they seized him again, and again, because deep down his knew he’s wrong, he’s a bad person and he did not like being one. He’s afraid. He played as this persona for so long that he lost himself. It’s not about whether Pomni, Ragatha or Zooble would forgive him. They probably would, because each other’s all they’ve got and they refuse to leave him off. He couldn’t forgive himself, did not know how to face him, not to mention open up and let others learn about him, and probably, work things out and become a better person. I think this conflicted idea of self-denial while being all cool and nihilistic and sociopathy is all why he went abstract.

Upon reflections, whether “abstraction” has an equivalence would be better phrased: what human emotions does it encapsulate? And I think the answer depends on the very person. For Ribbit it may be manipulated worthlessness where she failed to make up with an old bestie. For Baufmo maybe it involves the sorrow of losing Ribbit. In a sense, abstraction captures genuine human connections, the desire to love and be loved (inability of such to be precious), and that’s an important aspect of what makes us human. Machines cannot do this. Caine didn’t understand why Jax “is sad about a frog”. And that makes human experiences beautiful.

Kinger as the co-creator of the program mentioned, they were able to get a scan of the brain and save it as files, but the results were quite small considering they are supposed to capture the whole brain state, and they could not get it to work. It was Caine the AI that figured out a solution, with the caveat of forgetting their own and friends’ names. It’s a very interesting touch, and it’s plausible that polyfills were the key to make simulated human minds working. Because I choose to believe that the scans were missing something transcendental, be it the scanner is broken or human minds cannot be reduced to pure material state, but that’s not the point. Caine added his presumptions of what human minds have in common, and the files were merely some “flavors” layered on top. That explains why the characters have distinct personalities while all forgetting the names.