When We Were Real

This book takes place some five years after “The Announcement”, the day humanity was informed that they are actually living in a simulation. The “Simulationists” made this manifest by planting the scrolling message, “You are living in a simulation.”, in the dreams of every single person on Earth. Additionally, in order, apparently, to absolutely refute disbelief, the Simulationists simultaneously revealed multitudes of science-defying easter eggs, (called “the Impossibles”) distributed across the planet.

The book follows a group of travelers on a one week bus tour of “North American Impossibles” starting from NYC, with a first stop in New Jersey at the Frozen Tornado, a tornado that simply and inexplicably stands still, yet if touched, is very dangerously sharp:

it's impossible to take in the whole thing at once. It looks like a wide black ribbon, spiraling downward, the top of it hanging a kilometer in the air as if held by invisible fingers. The first loop is as wide as the Tornado is high. As it corkscrews toward the ground, the loops cinch tighter and tighter until it becomes a spike, then a needle.

The company giving the tour is “Canterbury Trails”, and here is a tip: (that took me most of the book to get) the plot of the book is modelled on “The Canterbury Tales” with characters introduced by label, for example, at the Frozen Tornado “THE ENGINEER”, J.P. Laurent, encounters THE SCIENTIST, Gillian Masch, who convinces JP to help her pay for, join the tour and if this sounds sketchy – it is; we eventually learn that Gillian is fleeing terrorists as well as shadowy government agents while traveling to meet her daughter at the final tour stop called “The Ghost City”. Needless to say, THE SCIENTIST’s backstory and the dangers of her journey become the through-line of the book.

And like the Canterbury Tales there are several diverse characters who round out the cast to provide perspective. For example:

• THE REALIST who still aggressively purports that simulated reality (including the impossibles they are visiting) is a hoax which he will debunk on his new podcast.
• THE SISTER, THE NOVICE and THE RABBI, all sincere monotheists for whom The Announcement was an implicit crisis of faith and are thus living through various stages of recovery.
• THE INFLUENCER, a beautiful seventeen year old who intends to have her baby at the end of the tour while in the meantime, leaving a dense trail of social media to increase the numbers of her followers.

This story is extraordinarily imaginative and funny with dad-jokes a-plenty; the writing is clever, showcasing vivid descriptions of unworldly phenomena. Not only are there many characters, several of them undergo significant, convincing changes; what more can you ask for?

(PS. There is absolutely no need to care about all the Canterbury tie-ins, I am just embarrassed that I didn’t notice given that I read some Chaucer in high school.)