Cogito, Ergo Sum?

	“But you haven’t conducted an objective test!  How can you present this at the convention without having tested it?”  asked Dr. Ferray.  Dr. James Ferray was short, stocky, and slightly bald.  However, anyone who saw him in passing would notice virtually none of this, due to his overwhelmingly intense eyes.
	“If I tried to run a test with the equipment I have, I’d run the risk of blowing up the city!” exclaimed Dr. Mott Synkil.  Synkil was almost the exact opposite of Ferray physically; he was tall, thin, and had a placid demeanor.  “It’s just a conjecture that I’m throwing out; I want to get people interested, that’s all.  Besides, it does fit the data from other studies.”
	Dr. Ferray, although six inches shorter, looked down on him.  “Well…have it your own way, I suppose.  Just remember to come to my lecture-it’ll be a great surprise.”
Later…
	Dr. Synkil searched the schedule for Dr. Ferray’s presentation.  His own talk had gone fairly well.  The audience, although skeptical, had been intrigued.  Now he wanted to see what Ferray’s surprise was all about.
	As he approached the lecture room, he saw that James was about ready to start.  There was a large crowd forming.  Ferray’s speeches, though rarely given, were usually worth hearing.  Synkil made his way to one of the seats reserved for university professors and sat down.  Dr. Ferray approached the podium, and the room quieted.
	“Thank you all for coming.  I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible for the laymen in the crowd, and leave the mathematics out.”  There were some audible sighs of relief.  “Many of you are aware of the strangeness of the field of quantum mechanics.  Particles can simply jump from place to place in apparently no time at all.  Particles that are miles away can influence each other instantaneously; Einstein called this ‘spooky action at a distance’.  We cannot know either the velocity or the position of a particle precisely, and if we know one well, the other we know very little about.  All this seems very counterintuitive, but it is true.  Amazingly enough, on the large scale these effects balance out to provide the ordinary mechanics that most of you learned in high school.  Many attempts have been made to reconcile our large-scale and small-scale theories of physics; I believe that I have been successful in doing so.”
	While Dr. Ferray paused, Synkil sat back, shellshocked.  His friend Dr. Ferray claimed to have discovered a Grand Unified Theory, the Holy Grail of physics!  And Ferray would never present this without it being tried and tested fact…would he?
	“Quite simply, ladies and gentlemen, the two systems cannot be reconciled.  They are only approximations, good but not perfect, of the real laws of physics.”  What real laws of physics?  What does he mean, real?  “My experiments have shown that our world is in fact a vast computer simulation.  I do not know for what purpose it was created, but I would guess that our world is in fact a model of something.  While it is possible that we have been somehow 'plugged in’ to this simulation, as in the movie The Matrix, I find it more likely that we are all simply very complicated programs, from which the model can be observed.  The sheer computing power required is amazing, but with judicious use of these physical approximations, it should not be infinite.  An advanced enough civilization could certainly achieve it.  Those of you who are interested can find me after this presentation, and I will show you the basic reasoning.  Good day.”  With that, Dr. Ferray stepped down and left the lecture hall, leaving a stunned, silent audience behind.  After a few seconds, Synkil jumped up and bolted after him.
	He caught up to Ferray in the corridor.  “James!  How on earth could you have ever conducted a proper experiment on that?”
	“Oh, I just did.  This was the only way I could do it, really.  I invited enough laymen so that the story would get out into the world.  My reputation for accuracy will be enough to get them to talk about it, although I doubt that they will be convinced.  Our ‘masters’ have to pay some attention to this world; if they exist, they’ll notice.  And I put a document in storage a few weeks ago, stating that this is simply an experiment, so my reputation will not suffer much if my theory turns out to be incorrect.”
	“But what if you’re...right?  They’ll notice that their model no longer conforms to their universe properly…and what will happen to us?”
	Dr. Ferray turned and stared at Synkil with his intense eyes.  “If I’m right,” he said, “then what is the existence of a few billion programs, more or less?”  He turned and strode slowly down the hall.