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It’s a question that frequently pops up among fans of the paranormal as well as in works of metaphysical science fiction: Are we living in a simulation?
However, it gets even funnier when it has been creeping into serious scientific debate. This is the stuff that prompts authors to take us down the rabbit hole of consciousness, artificial intelligence, and reality itself. Bill DeFoor’s Spy Games is one recent example, presenting a possible future where world affairs are shaped by intelligent androids and subconscious espionage.
The result could be the crumbling of present-day reality and the replacement of it with something utterly alien.
The Fabric of Reality in the Year 2129
Spy Games begins with Bill Bailey awakening from cryogenic sleep over a century after he was frozen. What he wakes up to isn’t just a new political landscape but an entirely new way of living. People now share the world with androids that look human and detect emotions.
Things only get more remarkable when he is assigned to work with Griffin, one of the most advanced of them all. He also happens to possess the uncanny capability to extract memories from others without touching them. The book may read like a high-tech spy thriller on the surface, but the technology that allows Griffin to interface with thought and memory once again sparks the question: are we living a simulation?
Griffin’s capacity to directly process thoughts as data, log preferences, and even formulate questions based on them sets an enormous precedent (even if it is fictional).
The lines between what is artificial and what is authentic have once again begun to blur. If a robot can attain higher processing abilities for more complex emotions, then what does it mean for the current definition of simulation? This is where illusion of reality fiction does its best work—it dares to confront us with questions that do not have a final answer (not even within its own universe).
The Griffin Paradox: Are We Living a Simulation Already?
Photo by Claudio Schwarz
Another thing that makes Griffin central is how his programming allows him to learn from experiences. This opens the gateway to emulating emotional intelligence, and even questioning orders when they conflict with the information he has. That inner conflict becomes a reflection of our own. If we are just reacting to programmed inputs—our biology, environment, history—how different are we really from such androids?
This question becomes especially pressing in the scenes where Bill and Griffin team up to conduct memory extractions on foreign diplomats. The extracted thoughts are precise, vivid, and deeply personal. But they’re also data, detached from the person once they’re taken.
Of course, the idea that memories can be altered or are unreliable may not be entirely new. Still, it is worth noting that it sets up the ramifications of technology altering memories or even fabricating them entirely.
This is also how simulated universe theories and virtual world fiction get brought up in the discussion. What if our sense of self is just a program born from a meaty, organic interface?
Such good metaphysical sci-fi themes are very effective when it comes to suspending belief in one’s own sense of reality. The novel goes as far as to pose both the great risk and the great reward that could come from these possibilities. It can help calm out-of-control public sentiment, or ensure cultural rivalries don’t reach a boiling point.
Still, there are certainly at least a few people who fear this will lead to groupthink, thought crime, or mass surveillance ala 1984. What’s mostly on the news today, though? It’s fear of the opposite: outrage media going out of control, or competing narratives that pit rival powers against each other.
Present-day reality may not only have major parts fabricated, but it’s already heading towards dangerous outcomes. Wouldn’t it be better if it could be altered back on the right course?
Rethinking the Implication of Simulated Reality
Thus, it’s time to switch the focus to another main plot driver in the book: Cricket, a global AI surveillance network created in the hopes of providing “the conscience of the world.” It’s meant to protect nations, detect threats, and make positive espionage more efficient.
But when technology becomes self-aware and begins interpreting morality on its own, humanity is obviously no longer in control of the system. It’s the system now controlling humanity.
Bill’s role as a liaison between the President and this emerging tech puts him in the difficult position of assessing the true weight of this possibility.
He’s a human surrounded by machines that are smarter, faster, and (in the most radical subversion of sci-fi tropes) more ethical. His discomfort mirrors our own in a time of algorithmic decision-making and automated empathy. The fact that the spyware Griffin installs is embedded in software meant to help people with emotional trauma is a perfect metaphor. A lot of our physical healing can already be enhanced with manufactured products. How much longer before things like grief can be data-mined in the hopes of closure?
When the usual speculative thinkers ask: Are we living a simulation? This is really the logical conclusion that comes from treating emotions, memories, and decisions as information blocks.
On the other hand, it is rarely imagined that such blocks can be analyzed and altered for other things besides the usual supervillain schtick.
Perhaps it’s time to change that. Such a change could resonate with sci-fi digital reality and existential simulation plots that want to balance out the popular doomsaying in the sci-fi Matrix-like stories of the past decades. The characters in Spy Games don’t scream in horror when these realizations hit. They adapt. Sometimes, they even go along with the idea.
Because, unlike the doomsayers, they are willing to look at the problem from a different angle.
Beyond Plot: Why This Story Matters
Like many stories about spies and technology, Spy Games presents a mirror to the latest anxieties of the age. It reflects a world that is already flirting with simulation on multiple fronts—deepfakes, predictive behavior algorithms, outrage farming, etc. The future it’s trying to avert is already the present in a lot of ways.
It doesn’t even need to fully answer the question of are we living a simulation. Rather, it presents the possibility of reshaping the information we use to define reality towards more nourishing ends. That’s the role of metaphysical sci-fi themes: to keep us questioning. It is to suggest that the moment we stop asking for alternatives is the moment we truly surrender our independence.
The world today is already crowded with people whose perceptions of reality are negotiated and programmed according to their preferred agendas. Perhaps the most defining piece of metaphysical science fiction in the next decade will be to confront the yet unanswered question of handling it all.
So, if you’re still asking are we living a simulation, maybe the real question is: where’s your simulation taking the rest of humanity?
If you’re really curious about exploring the world of 2129, then get a copy of Spy Games over at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
BillDeFoor 