Notes on the Forum of the Simulacra

Members of the Forum of the Simulacra believe that the world has been copied many times by an entity of unknown origin for an unknown purpose. (Note: A god, a computer, a cosmic force?) They call this entity the Simulacrum and its collection of worlds the Simulacra. The Simulacrum doesn’t just copy the world, it adjusts it, adds things to the world, deletes other things. But its most terrifying power is its ability to alter meaning: to change what people care about or find interesting or the very relationships people have to things, to other people, to themselves. 

CrayonsAreChanging (8.29.2018.8:57PM): I have a sister now. Just walked out of a room that wasn’t there before. She’s nice, I guess.

LuckYNo15 (4.30.2017.12:04AM): No one likes Caramel deLites? How the fuck does no one like Caramel deLites? Apparently people aren’t buying them so they’re discontinuing? What the fuck? (Note: Caramel deLites were awful. Almost as bad as Thin Mints. This is likely just group preferences masquerading as the Mandela Effect.)

JUDAHS4 (6.6.2018.2.09AM): Pretty sure Montana had a population of over a million. Now it’s 20,768. Weird. Also Hawai’i is its own country now. 

It’s impossible to tell if this is truly a mass delusion or a belief system inventing its own mythology. Oldest posts on the site appear to be no different than recent ones. 

TheLostSheepKing (4.20.2007.6:06PM): The house I grew up in now belongs to a very polite old couple. They said they’ve been living there for 37 years. I’m only 21, returning for summer break. They invited me in and showed me pictures of their time in the house. Asked me if I was sure. I was until I saw the pictures. Anyone else experienced something like this?

Neverender (4.20.2007.6:08PM): I have. My childhood home is now a meadow. The town’s name has changed.

Colleen (same time): I woke up this morning in a different house. Parents are the same but the dog is different. Her name is Snowball. She sits on the floor and stares at me and I don’t like it.

Twenty-seven posts on the names of cities changing, all in the first day. By the following day, over a hundred posts about missing people or people with changed personalities or people whose roles have changed. Teachers becoming neighbors. Mothers becoming aunts. One incident of a husband of several years disappearing and turning up as the mailman. Speed of posts was very alarming, and the genuine horror of them. 

What’s strange is that there's no origin post coining the term “Simulacrum.” The concept exists without a referent, rules for the entity sprouting up like mushrooms, simultaneous. The earliest reference occurs over six years after the launch of the site. 

TRutHsEeKR88 (10.04.2013.12:09AM): I’m pretty sure the Simulacrum has been altering the site. I tried to go back through old posts and it gave me a nosebleed. Anyone else getting nosebleeds? 

To date there have been no responses to this post, though other members have described headaches, bouts of nausea, fainting spells. Always around perceived edits to reality.

Interestingly, only a few people without “edit experiences” have posted on the site. Their responses are what you might expect.

Simmons3 (7.23.2012.3:47PM): Are you guys for real?

Shinobi299 (9.11.2014.8:18AM): You people are nuts.

NguyenOcean (3.32.2016.7:09PM): This shit is really messing with my head. Please tell me you all are playing some elaborate joke?

Members of the forum respond to these inquiries with contempt. 

“Another sheep has stumbled their way onto the forum.” 

“Fuck off, sheeple.” 

Or philosophical musings: 

CumulusTen (2.14.2014.11:22PM): “Is it possible that the Simulacrum sends people here every once in a while to mock us? How do we know that what we know isn’t also to mock us? What if we wake up tomorrow and forget everything ?” 

It does feel genuinely eerie that more people don’t visit the site, but perhaps this is my own obsession speaking. Most people probably dismiss the site entirely, and why wouldn’t they? There are only a handful of active users at any given time.  Private conversations with members have proved fruitless; everyone is fully committed to the ruse or they truly believe what they are saying. (Perhaps convince someone to meet in person?)

I’ve been researching the site for months(?) and still have not gotten any closer to understanding why it exists. With each day I gain less clarity, having forgotten why I started this research in the first place. I write these reports and journals and notes and leave them all over my apartment with no idea why I am writing them or who I might want to read them. Each note begins the same but morphs as I continue, until the thing before me fills me with horror. These notes are all punctuated by the same symbol: a circle with arms, a serpent around an apple, an all-seeing eye? I never remember drawing the symbol, and have difficulty describing it. When I sleep, I see it in my dreams. A door opens in front of me, and through it I can see another world, a cityscape with a massive tower, the symbol carved into its front. And a young woman whose features shift like clay-mation putty. Her hand is outstretched to mine, but when I try to grab hold of her and step through, everything turns white, and the scene resets. This other world is always the same and I can feel a sense of longing every time I see it. After several attempts, the woman says, I keep losing track of you, and her voice is so painfully familiar that despair fills me to bursting and I wake up screaming. 

(Please save yourself, my love.) 

Some of the members of the forum believe that the true world still exists, unaltered by the Simulacrum. Most members, however, believe the true world is forever lost. 

They return to places that have been altered like orphans.

Neverender (6.32.2020.5:09AM): I visit the field often. I look at those flowers and I imagine that they are the people of my hometown, swaying with the wind like dancers at a celebration that will never end.

The ones who believe in the untouched world also believe in other worlds beyond a veil no one can see, but are accessible through the ritual of performing unique actions: holding one’s breath for a minute and thirty seconds, jumping from a great height, eating cake on the fourth of July. They believe these mechanisms of travel are gifted to them by the Simulacrum itself, both demon and god in their strange mythology.

Here is the earliest instance I could find regarding the subject of traveling between worlds, transcribed in its entirety:

FlowersJustFlowers (11.22.2013.11:58PM): It is it is my fault she is gone and it is all my fault

Neverender (11.23.2013.12:27AM): I’m so sorry you’ve lost someone. It never gets easier, but please don’t blame yourself. The Simulacrum is the only one to blame.

FlowersJustFlowers (11.23.2013.12:34AM): You don't understand I came from another world I did Terrible Things to stay here and now this world keeps shifting around me likes and I did this she is gone and it is all my fault 

Neverender (11.23.2013.12:36AM): What are you talking about?

TheLostSheepKing (11.23.2013.12:40AM): Which part don’t you understand?

Neverender (11.23.2013.12:41AM): Sorry, I was confused for a second. It’s late here.

JstPssngThrgh001 (11.23.2013.12:45AM): You said you came from another world FlowersJustFlowers. I’m curious about your mode of travel. Do you mind sharing?

FlowersJustFlowers (11.23.2013.12:50AM): Blinks every fifth and 7 in an alternating pattern. 

TheLostSheepKing (11.23.2013.12:52AM): Oh god. That’s hellish.

JstPssngThrgh001 (11.23.2013.1:03AM): That is unusual. Reminds me of the musical meter. If it’s true, the repetition suggests design.

TheLostSheepKing (11.23.2013.1:07AM): Or a cruel sense of humor. That’s a terrible time signature.

BENthoven__420__69 (11.23.2013.1:25AM): I mean, it's more that it's not really a meter unto itself, as 5/7 would be indistinguishable from 5/8, which would be much easier to read. Alternating bars of 5/8 and 7/8 would make sense, but that's not something that I think many people would immediately think of if presented with a pattern of five then seven. A bar of 5/7 could make sense in the context of another time signature conceivably, but denominators that are odd numbers are vanishingly rare. A septuplet is a septuplet by virtue of the fact that seven of them fit in whatever musical space you assign them, but if you want them to be the base rhythmic unit a bar is measured in their function as a septuplet immediately vanishes; 7/7 is just 7/8, and 5/7 is just 5/8 (or 5/4 or 5/2, depending on whether you're using eighth notes or quarter notes or half notes in the notation). No, I think we can safely rule out “time signature” as an explanation.

TheLostSheepKing (11.23.2013.1:17AM): Awesome. Thanks for the explanation. Totally needed all that. 

Cartographer218 (11.23.2013.2:30AM): Yesterday I was walking down the street at midday when a young woman passed me. I thought I recognized her so I turned around. When I did, she was farther than I thought she should be, like the sidewalk had expanded between us. I considered calling out but thought it would be strange; I didn’t know her by name even if I knew her. But she also stopped, and then she turned to face me in much the same way I had moments before. We watched each other as the crowd moved between us. She said, Mother? and rushed up to me. I tried to turn away, but she had me by the arm. She said, Listen, we have to leave this world. It’s dangerous. I shook my head. She sounded insane. She said, Mother, your scent keeps vanishing and I keep losing track of you. I began to tremble. I don’t know why. She asked me if I recognized her. I told her to please let me go. She looked around frantically. People were staring at us. She started again, her voice lower. She said, This world is unstable. I can get us out, but you need to come with me now. I asked her if she was from the forum. It didn’t seem like a stupid question at the time. The woman began to cry. She called me mother again, but did not finish her statement; the sun came out from behind a building behind us and when it hit her eyes the irises changed from dark brown to a startling green. It had to be a trick of the light, but her skin brightened too, from copper to pale white, the tears drying on her cheeks. My head started to hurt and I felt faint. The strange young woman looked around again, but this time she seemed lost. She turned to me and asked me if I knew where the Copley T-stop was. I smiled and pointed the way.

(I am sorry. I need to lie down again.)

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Released: November 15th 2021

Cadwell Turnbull is a speculative fiction writer and novelist and recipient of the 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Award. Full Bio