WHAT IS REAL? A TALE OF MEILORI'S

 Meilori's felt eerie tonight ... which was odd to say since it was a haunted French Quarter night club.

One, there was not one ghost in sight.

Two, neither were any of my characters who people my novel in this club.

Science would say I was delusional ... many of my friends at work would agree.

But I suspected that life was not as straight forward

as long thought.

I stiffened. 

Above me, through the bronze-hued mists, Perry Como's mellow voice sang "All Through the Night."

In my Dickens' homage, Beware the Jade Christmas, it was the Seraphim Provocateur, Darael, who had done the same thing for his human friend, Lucas.

 

I turned the cream and rose wallpapered corner and froze.

An escalator.

 Meilori's never before had had one ... and this was guarded by the only entity from a recent horror movie that unsettled me.

I forced out of a dry throat, "DayStar, I don't mind you think me stupid, but I do mind when you treat me as if I were."

DayStar? Don't ask. You'll sleep better. Let's just say he sees through your shadow ... and laughs.

A hollow chuckle rumbled beside me. "My doing actually. The Rules I live by insisted I balance a kindness with an unkindness."

I looked to my right ... the side away from my heart. 

Darael.

"No, not the Dark One. You are much too much a minnow for him to want to fry. I suspect that is why Elohim has kept you off the Best Seller list."

"What?"

"You want the treatment that Rowling has gotten of late ... or worse."

I thought about arguing with him.  He was the original unreliable narrator, but I was afraid he would tell me what that worse might be.

"Where is everybody?"

"The ghosts know that Elohim is coming here soon. Your creations are slightly miffed you have left them in limbo of late."

"What? Coming here? Meilori's?"

"This Mortal Plane."

"H-How soon?"

"Define 'Soon.'

I sighed. Darael was like this. I thought about taking another tack.

"Where are my characters?"

Darael gestured grandly about us. "Your friend, Michael, believes all the world, this universe even, is a Cosmic Simulation."

"Is it?"

He flashed his paper-cut grin. "You still expect a straight answer from me? I admire your optimism."

He smiled dryly. "I will demonstrate why you should never ask a direct question of a Seraphim Provocateur ... and actually answer it."

"Ever since the philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed in the Philosophical Quarterly that the universe and everything in it might be a simulation, 

there has been intense public speculation and debate about the nature of reality."

"Physicist Frank Wilczek has argued that there’s too much wasted complexity in our universe for it to be simulated. 

Building complexity requires energy and time. Why would a conscious, intelligent designer of realities waste so many resources into making our world more complex than it needs to be?"

He flashed his paper-cut grin, pointing an accusing finger at me. "The Answer is quite simple really. You are to blame."

"What? Me? How?" 

"I see confusion limits your vocabulary, Son of Adam."

"Not just you, of course. But any author of talent, being shaped by the Finger of the Creator, can bring worlds into being themselves. 

Conan Doyle, John D. MacDonald, Hemingway, even minnow You."

He shuddered. "Even that racist Lovecraft."

"Midnight likes him."

"That furry menace would. If you write this up in a post. I wonder what your friends will think?"

His left eyebrow rose and he said sardonically,

"Of course, it well may be your friends are not creators but seers,

viewing different realms 

of already existing realities."

As he slowly faded away, leaving me once again alone, he sighed, 

"Only Elohim knows, and He comes by His Lakota name, The Great Mystery, for a reason."