Head for Jeremy's place

Jeremy and you were best friends through college... although you drifted apart after you and Amber got serious.

Like you, he's a programmer although he works for a big retailer, doing database management things. He greets you at his door.

Jeremy is a couple of inches taller than you, with dark skin and a huge smile. He grabs you and pulls you into a hug. "Damn, Mike, it seems like forever."

"Yeah. I haven't gotten out much lately."

"Not to mention Amber doesn't approve of you having black friends."

"Huh?"

"Ohmigod, you didn't pick up on that? You white people can be so oblivious."

"But she..." You tail off. You don't have to defend her any more. Maybe she was racist. Maybe the reason you and Jeremy drifted apart wasn't just a drift.

"Anyway," Jeremy continues, "tell me all about it."

{if groceries > 0}

You insist on cooking dinner... skinless chicken breasts with asparagus, whole wheat pasta with a bottle of California wine and fresh berries for desert.

{else}Jeremy pops a frozen pizza in the oven.

{endif}

While the food is preparing, you run through what happened... and tell him about your drunken night and flirtation with becoming a prosperity minister.

He laughs. "I just don't see you as a preacher, no offense."

"None taken. Anyway, when I woke up this morning, I discovered I'd become on-line ordained and found an article on my computer about the universe being a simulation."

"Guess I should call you Reverend from now on. But about that sim thing, I've seen that. It's something I guess a lot of scientists are playing with."

"Not that it could matter," you remind him. "Simulation or real, from the standpoint of us in the sim, it can't make any difference."

He starts to nod, then turns it into a headshake. "Ever look at game code?"

"Yeah. Most of it is a mess... goes back to the old days when they had to kludge the computers to get any kind of graphic performance."

"Which means it can be hacked."

"But we're inside the simulation. How can we hack--"

"Hey, you're the software genius. I'm not saying I know how to do it. I'm saying it could be done. I don't know, overflow stack buffers. Backdoor into the level editor system. Write a mod that self-installs. There's a thousand possibilities."

You toss around ideas while you eat, then Jeremy pulls you into his living room. "I've got a little side business streaming games. I've been wanting to stream this two-player cooperative game. Join me and I'll split the take."

"How big a take."

Jeremy laughs. "Okay, so you got me. I don't make shit, unlike some of the big guys who actually make a living at it. A guy called the Spiffing Brit has over two million followers... and all he does is cheese games like winning some fighting game with a fork as a weapon."

"Sure," you say.

But your mind is racing. Being a preacher never really made sense. But could you start streaming an attempt to hack the sim? Even if you didn't actually figure out how to hack it, you might be able to get subscribers watch you try to figure it out. And if you could, that might be a way of changing the world in ways that would let you teach Bentham a lesson on payback for being an asshole.