Escher

I have an idea for a short story, which takes the form of an Escher painting. 

Alright, how goes it?

In the 1930’s an English archaeologist is working on an excavation site in Egypt. They discover a hidden tomb and force it open. The tomb hides invaluable treasures. When he is alone in the treasure chamber, a falcon statue starts speaking to him, without moving head. The falcon tells him that the tomb is protected a spirit, and that he is to be subjected to a curse for breaking the peace. The punishment is that he will start doubting reality. He is spooked, but convinces himself that it must be heat stroke. The following nights, he has feverish dreams that he is very ill, but when he wakes up he feels no pain. One night, he dreams that he wakes up in a hospital bed, surrounded by a team of doctors. 

As we enter the second chapter, the main character is referred to as “the patient”, and not “the egyptologist”. The doctors tell him carefully that he has suffered from a total psychosis, and he has hallucinated vividly for several days. He spends the whole day recuperating in his hospital bed, eating food and reading the paper. The year is 1931, in England. As he falls asleep, he dreams that he wakes up and is an Egyptologist. 

So it is a dream within a dream?

No, it is not a double abstraction, or a mirror image of a mirror image. When the Patient dreams, he is the Egyptologist, to the fullest and without loss of detail. When the Egyptologist dreams, he is the Patient, also without loss of detail or internal logic.

So the question is: which one is real?

Yes, precisely. The normal way to tell between dream and reality is that reality has an irreducible core of self-consistent logic. After a while, a dream starts contradicting itself in a way that cannot be explained in another way than that the events in the dream world are simply being made up on the fly. When a world has a simple internal logic, then it is a computationally simple task to answer pretty much any question about the world without contradiction. When things are just being made up by a brain without a core idea, the constraint of being self-consistent becomes computationally intractable after a while. 

So the problem for the main character is that both worlds seem to contain a natural explanation for the other world?

That’s exactly the kicker. The Egyptologist’s world explains the Patient’s world as a part of the Ancient Curse. The Patient’s world explains the Egyptologist’s world as a figment of a psychotic mind. 

Now I understand your reference to Escher: it’s like one of the drawings where the white and black fields are the complement of each other, but they are also both motifs by themselves. So how do you make a story out of this?

I figure the conflict should be that he resolves to learn the truth. He reasons that there is another asymmetry: when a dreaming man dies, he simply wakes up. But when a waking man dies, he will never dream again. So if he can commit suicide in the false reality, then he will know which one is true for certain. The risk is of course that he will mistake himself and commit suicide in the true reality. So he must know for certain. He uses the above reasoning about self-consistent reality to figure that if he goes to a place with a lot of things going on, then he will start to notice cracks in of one of the realities. So he resolves to go to central London. The Patient feigns health and convinces his doctors to discharge him. The Egyptologist manages to get a work leave and heads back to England. The Patient arrives in a hotel near Trafalgar Square on, say, the 2nd of July. He spends the day walking around and chatting with people on the street and notices nothing out of the ordinary. He goes to sleep in his hotel room. He wakes up on the 3rd of July as the Egyptologist whose boat arrives in London at lunchtime. The Egyptologist goes to the same hotel and finds a room booked in his own name. 

And he meets the Patient there?

No, the Patient is not in the room. The Egyptologist spends the afternoon likewise walking around and talking to people on the street. His reality is indistinguishable from the Patient’s. He goes to bed and wakes up on the 4th of July, thinking himself now again the Patient. However, he is no longer so sure. Items that the Egyptologist has moved in the hotel room have been moved in the Egyptologist’s reality as well. In a mysterious way, they have become the same man. If you have seen a few Escher paintings, you know that in some of them, the white fields and the black fields to join up together in the bottom of the painting. The worlds that seemed to be complementary to each other do turn out to be part of the same reality in the end.

Simpletown

A short riddle story I wrote, called Simpletown. The purpose is to guess the true name and purpose of "Simpletown".

Mr. Jones lives in Simpletown, which has about 100 000 inhabitants. In the morning, he gets up at 06:00 and sits down to have his coffee and oatmeal. Before starting breakfast, he takes a small round plate of crystal glass from his freezer. He holds it in his mouth for a few seconds, and then puts it back in the freezer onto a tray with other plates. After breakfast, he must ride his bicycle to work. His wife, Mrs. Jones, must walk. Their neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Berke, drive a car. When he arrives in his office at 09:00, Mr. Jones places his briefcase under his standing desk. About 10% of his coworkers use standing desks, and have been doing so for about 10 years.

At 11:50, Mr. Jones goes down to the cafeteria for lunch. As today is Thursday, he must choose the vegetarian option. He is supposed to meet Mr. Peters. He spots him a few meters away, and calls on him. The man however, does not recognize him. The man looks just like Mr. Peters, down to the birthmarks. Oh well, happens every now and then in Simpletown. Eventually, Mr. Jones does find Mr. Peters and they sit down together. At 12:00 exactly, a short musical tune is played in the loudspeakers in the cafeteria. Everyone takes a small plate of glass and puts in their mouth at the start of a second tune. They hold it there for as long as the tune plays. After lunch, Mr. Peters must run 5 kilometers. Mr. Jones must lie down and read the newspaper. Everyone leaves work at 17:00, except 50 of their colleagues who must leave at 18:00. To compensate, they arrive at work at 10:00.

Mr. Jones arrives home at the same time as his wife. They cook dinner carefully from a recipe. Before eating, they say prayers while holding another glass plate in their mouths. After dinner, Mr. Jones must call his mother for 30 minutes, as is his daily routine. Mrs. Jones must engage in friendly conversation for 30 minutes with their next door neighbor, Mrs. Berke. Mrs. Berke looks exactly like Mrs. Jones, down to the birthmarks. This is unfortunate as it causes confusion for Mr. Jones and Mr. Berke, but it cannot always be avoided in Simpletown. Mrs. Jones must also run 5 kilometers, read for 30 minutes, and listen to classical music for 1 hour while relaxing on the sofa. She has a full evening.

Mr Jones however, has to do none of those things, as he has a very important bi-weekly appointment at 20:00. He must go to see his confessor. The purpose of seeing the confessor is two-fold. First, Mr. Jones must carefully retell all that has happened to him since his last confession. He must also recount his experience of it: did he feel energetic? Did he sleep well? Had he been ill? This is the confession part. Secondly, there is the repentance part. Mr. Jones is given careful directives from his confessor as what to change in his behavior until the next appointment. He is given a small slip of paper. On today’s paper, it says:
- Do not read the newspaper during lunch time. Instead, run 5 km.
- Eat one candy bar every evening one half hour before dinner.
- Go to sleep at 23:00 every evening.
- Drink decaffeinated coffee for breakfast.
- Watch television for one half hour before going to sleep.
Mr. Jones looks at the slip with a sigh. He always gets in a bad mood later in the evening when eating a candy bar after dinner. He tells his confessor so. The confessor says he can make no comment to his recommendation, as usual.

The last part of the confession is the very important Sacrament. First, Mr. Jones is given a round plate of glass, with a single drop of blood on it. He must lick the plate carefully so that no blood remains on the glass. He gives the plate back to the confessor. Secondly, he is given a clear plate with no blood on it, as well as a small needle.Mr. Jones hands back the second plate, with a drop of his own blood on it. He also hands over all the glass plates he has collected since his last confession. He exits the confession house, and starts walking home.

“Tomorrow is my wife’s confession day” he thinks to himself “I hope that she also has to watch TV before sleep, so we can watch together”.

What is the true name of Simpletown? A hint is that one need only to replace a single letter in “simpletown” to get the right answer.