Having just been informed that a large, ginger ape with serious boundary issues, is once again the doofus POTUS, I find myself, not for the first time, revisiting the idea that this, this universe we live in, is indeed a simulation.

(I know I’m late to this information, but I don’t follow the news or ingest any media outside of silly cat memes and videos of people falling over. I’d rather concentrate on living life and not be constantly reminded of how shit everything is.)

But yeah. It’s a simulation, right? It must be. This sort of stuff can’t happen in a world where intelligent people live.

Somewhere, out there, or out other there. There must be another out there in order for there to be an out there, in here, with us.

A simulation must simulate somewhere inside another somewhere. There must be a space that the simulation runs inside of. You can’t run a simulation without having a space to simulate from, know what I mean? Unless that space is a simulation and within that simulated space is a simulation of our space. But even then, that second level simulation would have to be simulated from somewhere.

It could go on forever. Simulated space within simulated space, again and again, down and downerer. Forever. But at the beginning, on the upper level, outside of all the simulations, there has to be somewhere where the initial simulation is being simulated. Right? Where? Somewhere? Out there somewhere. Under there perhaps? In the fridge behind the furry cheese that became sentient back in ’91 and rules over the condiments and ancient jars of pickles with an iron fist and a very peculiar odour? Possibly.

Outside of this simulation is my point.

Somewhere, out in the other there. Deep in the darkest realms of other space. But not our space, obviously. Our space is the simulation.

While I am thinking about it, stop thinking about space as being space.

I don’t mean space, like space. Asteroids, stars, the frozen corpse of Laika, Sputnik, pulsars, quasars and Yuri Gagarin’s beard trimmings. Not that space. I don’t mean that kind of space. I mean the other kind of space. Space. The three-dimensional area that everything resides in.

I know space and space are kinda similar. That’s why we call them both space. But space is a smaller, mental construct of space we all have in our heads to help us understand the bit of space we are thinking of and space is…..everything else..

I’m not talking about the space where Captain Kirk regularly gets his shirt ripped in just the right places and a nice, soft, diffuse light shining right in his eyes moments before he kicks a Gorn in the crackers.

I’m talking about the other space.

The infinite extension of the three-dimensional region in which all matter exists.

The kind of space you get when you upgrade to first class on a long-haul flight, stretch out your legs and say;

“Dat’s a lotta space!”

Only bigger, obviously. The whole of the space.

But let’s not get bogged down in existential and philosophical discussions here.

Somewhere, in a space that may or may not be a space or a simulation of a space, lies a planet.

A dark, dirty, dank and moist planet. Soggy. Cold. Wreathed in perpetual mists that smell like Vegemite farts. Beaten and broken by a global weather system seemingly intent on destroying all it touches. Swirling vortices of wind full of razor-sharp shards of Justin Bieber CDs. The knife edges of the aerial particles slicing the flesh off all living creatures unfortunate enough to get caught in them while the wind somehow conspires with the shards, perhaps by magic, perhaps just because it’s a an air based arsehole, to actually play the ‘music’ digitized on those shards. Any soul touched by those winds would be instantly, violently sick upon hearing that ghostly, wailing, tortured voice in the air;

“Baby, baby, baby, oh…….”

Over and over as the whirlwind gets closer. The end would then come swiftly. The poor traveller’s skin and flesh ripped to shreds by the shards. Wide grooves cut into the skeleton beneath. Organs and other jiggly bits sliced and diced and mixed up into an airbourne gumbo in a few agonizing seconds. But the victim would die with a smile on its lips (if it has lips) as at least it could no longer hear the ‘music’.

On that fearsome, loathsome, stinky planet lies a continent shaped like an arse.

On that continent, nestled deep within the topographical butt crack, lies a country. All jagged peaks and swampy valleys. A bit like Macclesfield. Only worse, if that’s even possible.

A land patrolled by manky, hairy, vicious, evil smelling beasts who stalk around killing cute, furry animals for fun, quoting Piers Morgan and constantly demanding to see the manager.

A land devoid of all things good and pure, worthy and wonderful. Again, like Macclesfield.

A land haunted by the spirits of the long dead. Their baleful ghosts screaming and angry. The last sounds their ears beheld in life echoing endlessly in their hellish afterlife;

“Baby, baby, baby, oh….”

In that land lies a valley. Swampier than the rest. A brown river runs through it. Acidic and sulphureous. No life resides within except for green-arsed shitty fish. Its surface is littered with what looks like floating Mars bars.

Wait. They’re not Mars bars! Eww!

Deep in the valley, in amongst the cloying mud and toxic, poisonous wanker bushes, stands a broken down, wooden cabin. Its planks and boards sun bleached and dry, bent and rotten. The decaying timber pulling away from the twisted, log frame. Rusty nails and screws protruding from every fractured joint.

In the cabin, on the wall opposite the door made of used toilet roll from an Indian restaurant, is a shelf. Held up by force of habit more than anything else.

On that shelf, slumbering for eternity, belching and farting, lies a Giant Macclesfieldian Gunk Beetle. It’s incontinent. It has lived its whole life on a diet of peanuts, bran cakes and its own excrement.

It defecates where it lies. It doesn’t attempt to move. It just hangs its monstrous, wrinkly arse out over the edge of the shelf and lets fly. Its foul emanations drip down the wall below like three-month-old beef gravy. Not Bisto gravy either. Aldis own brand gluten free, granola gravy granules with extra gherkins.

It rolls, slimily, down the cracked and broken wall, dripping directly into the malfunctioning exhaust fan of an old computer.

The dollops of kaka ooze through the long stationary, dust encrusted fan blades and fall directly on to the softly humming circuitry beneath.

The computer is an elderly, wheezing, under-powered and overworked machine with a Intel Celeron CPU from 1998 and integrated graphics. It’s slow, creaking hard drive labouring under the weight of the solitary program running on the antiquated hardware.

The solitary program runs on and on, as it has for millennia. The collected gunk beetle shit is slowly warmed and seeps into the CPU, slowing down the processing and limiting access to the level 2 cache RAM. Data errors are passed on to the resident, solitary program.

The program is hardy and robust. It has been well built and can compensate for the errors.

The errors manifest themselves within the program, but the program continues to run.

The program is a simulation. A simulation of an entire universe.

And in this simulated universe, Donald fucking Trump is the President of the USA!!

Again!!!!