Morning. You woke up to the ringing of your phone.

Person on the other side told you your universe has just been created few hours ago.

Person is happy that her EM wave has finally tethered.

WTF? Whatever. “Nô spéak Englịsh” you said and hung up.

You checked the time. Too early. Back to sleep.

Messages appeared on the phone.

Person told you your name, your age, your address.

Now you are awake and slightly panicked, what have you got yourself into?

You’ve kept yourself reasonably clean and protected online.

You know phishing when you saw one. You’re not your mom.

Personal info is only known by your bank and employer.

Has your bank account been hacked? Why don’t scammers just steal the money silently?

Right, they’re stuck somewhere and need to pry for more info. At least the suckers could’ve wait until 9AM. You guessed social engineering is what’s up.

“scam fuck off”, you texted back while hurrily looking up the bank credit card contact.

Texts flooded in. You’ve never seen scammers going this far. Move on to your next victim, you think, I’m broke, why so eager?

The text bubbles told your life story:

Born and raised to a Vietnamese middle class family, in a peaceful coastal village, moved to a bigger city for college. Moved to the U.S. for work and then for study.

This is getting out of hand. Still, those are pretty generic and can possibly be guessed based on your legal name. But this is still hitting a bit too close to home.

You almost stopped yourself scrolling to see what’s next:

Your parents name, your first home address, second one, then the third one. Your siblings, your partner. What you did yesterday. The day before that. Number of eggs in your fridge (because you counted them). Then,

“I’m not a scammer. I’m *your* GOD. think.”

You blocked the number. Ran to the bathroom and splashed your face. I’m fully awake, this is not a dream.

You carefully examine the details of your face. wrinkles and pores are in the right places. Detailed and fairly realistic. So are the bathroom tiles. 2..3..5..7..11..13..17..19. primes didn’t break the dream. Maybe I have internalized primes? Moving on. The bug in your code is now freshly loaded in your mind and no, you still cannot solve it.

You followed the protocol to break a lucid dream. You’ve been prepared for this day alright.

Who can this be? Not funny at all. Their knowledge of you is too intimate. You got a bad feeling in the back of your mind. Maybe this is it. She is really *that* thing? Ridiculous. A simpler explanation is always preferred.

Another text chain from another number:

“I thought you ranted online about me last week?”

Okay. Someone read my blog post, got unproportionally inspired, and decided to unleash an elaborated prank on me, you thought. Although that can be somewhat disappointing. No, you corrected yourself, you would prefer this to be indeed a prank, from a fellow human being.

“Tell me what number I am thinking of?”

“Don’t know. Thoughts aren’t recorded anywhere. We are in a real-time conversation now.”

“But you know my eggs?”

“That’s recorded in your house security cam.”

Okay, I see. Goddess here claimed to have access to all digital records?

“Then you’re simply a hacker.”

“Functionally yes, hacking into the world that I created.”

Okay. What would distinguish such god from a contemporary hacker? Maybe the hacker won’t know random obscure historical events first recorded by a camera?

“That won’t work”

“what?”

“Obscure events are things you can’t verify yourself, so you will say I’m just making stuff up.”

You panicked again. This person either reads minds, or is extremely smart and have studied your way of thinking fairly extensively. A stalker? Someone who find sadistic pleasure in torturing online bloggers like myself?

“I thought you cannot read mind?”

“Correct, I cannot read minds. I know your mind because you told me last time. In the previous creation of your universe, you asked for exactly that.”

Okay. You sunk to your sofa. This is getting very trippy.

“Let that sink in, I’ll go get a cup of coffee.” - the next text bubble read.

Thanks. You thought but didn’t reply. Why does this sound convincing? What am I missing?. This can still be a person who is interested in your online post, at the same time also a super hacker of household cameras. And a stalker. And a pranker. An owner of too much free time.

You know this is very improbable. How much time and efforts and planning for a person to pull off such pranks? Must be a team.

What are their goal? Am I worth all those efforts?

Still, what is the probability for the other explanation: that being exist? Maybe even 100%, you are a believer. You said it yourself online.

Still, you don’t like the God explanation at this very moment, so you’ll push the prankster’s explanation. Until the “getting coffee” message, the person still sound very confident. Their bag of tricks aren’t running out?

I need a coffee myself. You went to the kitchen.

The smell of coffee calm your nerves. This is an adversarial game overwhelmingly in your favor. The burden of proof is on them. Wait. Maybe they are just wasting your time?

I need to disengage. But I cannot. We’re texting. Alright, I will just stop replying.

Oh! Maybe they are distracting you from your normal routine while their scammers are busy working out their stuff?

Right. Me not going about my normal routine is exactly what they want. Gotcha. Suckers. Today is the first weekend. What is my normal routine? You’re just going to binge Youtube. You do have plans to obsessively revise your blog post – even though no one ever read it.

Those are very innocuous things. But what else otherwise?

Ok. Commit. You are going to do just that. Opened your laptop. Checked the youtube feed. This shouldn’t matter. Then you opened the blog post. No, You’ll check your bank activity first …

All clear. You locked all the accounts.

A text message came in.

“See? I am not a scammer. I know your card info (****) but did not use it.” “If I wanted to distract you, could have just left you sleeping instead.”

Damn it! They anticipated me checking bank activity?

What am I missing? Right. They know what you are doing, so you shuffled around the house and unplugged the security cams.

But what if this is exactly what they want me to do? To go online and unplug my cctv? You started to get very frustrated. How many levels of I know that you know that I know that you know… is going on here?

“I know you are frustrated. Nothing is going to happen to your money at least. Right?”

Right, I’ve locked all my cards. Oh shit. All they wanted me to do is signing in my bank account on the PC! I walked right into their trap. There must be a keylogger and they are now changing my passwords!

“There is a 2-step verification on your account so password shouldn’t matter.”

Right, my phone is here. They aren’t going to do anything without it.

“Think. If I am a scammer, why would I risk hanging around chatting nonsense like this?” “That is just leaving more footprints. Scammers don’t work like that. They are busy, their hit rate is very low. They move on. Moreover, you are neither an easy nor worthy target.”

Okay, that make sense…

“Look, I am the creator you talked about in your blog post.”

“The discoverer.” - You broke your own silence. because such god have no say in how the universe unfolds after its creation.

“Right, that one. But I am now actively creating its future, correct?”

… “Correct.” - You resigned. This is something new. Your curiosity got the better of you.

“Actually, I’ve got an idea. I am now going to guess your 5-digit number. Is that your ultimate test?”

What now? I’m so so lost!

“Just do it. Remember to commit before texting, make a call if that’s what you prefer.”

.. Okay. The ultimate test. What’s so special about 5-digits? Some mathematical tricks?

There is absolutely no way. Alright, let’s make this quick, my ultimate test is, suprise suprise! A 6-digit number. You typed into the phone “Committed. What is your gue..” as a new text came in before you even finished.

“That’s 172533. Smart move!”

That’s your number. You heard a high pitch ring behind your ears. Your heart skipped a beat. That’s when you know you are absolutely shocked and terrified. As if a ghost has just appeared in front of your eyes.

You are stunted. You don’t know what to do. Your mind racing for explanations. Mind control? Hypnosis?

“Want to do this again?”

The panick starts to set in. You know you aren’t going to rationalize this away .. no more. The evidence is now too many.

Calm down. This is it. It’s not a dream. They got you. Whatever this thing claimed to be, it has to be crazy advanced tech.

How did the person do it? Think of it.. they did predicted the future once before … by running to conversation again.

So they simply went back and had this same conversation all over? The seeding might be at Big Bang. So they fast forwarded 14 billion years all over?

What kind of computers can do that?

You started to feel an immense sadness. Yes, you have long rationally came to terms with determinism, that all your thoughts and actions are determined. All is governed by physical laws. The universe might be chaotic and hard to predict, but setting things over and everything will unfolds the same way. Yet, this is the first time you’ve actually experienced such philosophical predictions first-hand. Cold, hard reality cuts deep and it hurts. And even this train of thoughts will repeat if the person decided to reboot your universe once more.

No time to wilt now. You have to press on. First off, what is the purpose of this sudden contact?

Now is the time to find out.

You called the number.

“So M, you’re a believer now?”

“…” - You are too stunted to speak. The voice is playful but hurried. The person went through this conversation a few times already. They must be bored to death. But I’m deterministic, so they can even automate this conversation and put it on 2X?

“I’m friendly and I need your help.” - the voice breaks my silence.

My help? What can I do? - “Have we been through this before?”

“No. First time going this far. You’re tough to crack.”

“I’m not calling you god, or creator, or whatever.”

“I don’t like that either. I could have avoided that word, but too bad that’s what we used last time and I have to follow the script…”

“I know I know. Makes sense… So you got a name?”

“Akira”

“Japanese?”

“No. I’m from another world, not just an alternate history of Earth. A legit different civilization.”

“Aliens?”

“Aliens, outside of your space and time.”

(to be continued)