For years it was unclear as to why there were universal constants. Temperatures unable to reach 0K, special relativity and how the speed of light was unable to be surpassed, how if you built things small enough things wouldn’t work properly. Of course, the simulation -- before we had discovered it -- sought to keep us in the dark by being consistently inconsistent and coaxing a few individuals to come up with explanations through Quantum Mechanics. After all, their goal was not to see how far we could push the system but simply to test out hypotheses on social dynamics between AI and how machine learning (what we called evolution) would take place.
If not for one of them being a bit of a jokester and including an array of symbols on the ever elusive element of astatine, then none of us would have ever been able to figure it out. At first there was an outcry among the smaller pockets the scientific community and those who had an interest in cryptography, but one by one they all reached the same conclusion: Embedded within the element was a message.
Wake up sheeple!
One some level, it did make sense now. If you were to build a machine to simulate a universe, you would want there to be limits. They could never have predicted the mischievous nature of our species, even if having written our source code and having access to it all. Tell a human not to touch the red button, and the red button will be touched. Tell a human they can’t fly and they’ll build a machine to leave the ground. Tell a human that they can’t breathe underwater and they’ll take a tank with them or construct a metal shell and prove you wrong because the number one reason our species was the dominant one is because of a that drive.
No other species on Earth developed that drive to stretch the limits, to journey over the horizon just because there was a horizon to journey over. And so like all things, we did it because we would. We set them up through convoluted means like some sort of twisted reality TV show, offering them what appeared to be a small loan of a million dollars and plenty of emails that would soon fall off the face of the Earth. Of course we couldn’t include everyone in on the joke, but that was hardly necessary when most everyone could be manipulated through mass media and false reports. The rebels, the ones who had planned this course of action, argued that if there weren’t genuine reactions to such an ambitious plan we would be found out and that could spell the end of humanity before it all fell into place!
And so it was, through careful manipulation of once thought archaic systems that served no purpose but to confuse we thrust power into the hands of the two who were none the wiser of the bigger picture they would be painted in. If we were just a simulation then, as our ‘human’ nature that brought about the bountiful success decreed, we would go down in a blaze of glory. Because we could. And because the system told us that we couldn’t, and urged us in the direction of "we shouldn't."
It sounds far fetched and crazy doesn’t it? But tell me, when was the last time you did something when you knew you could easily accomplish? But when someone comes along and tells you that you can’t, isn’t that when you suddenly have a deep well of nigh on inexhaustible motivation to fall back on?
The snowball was set in motion, and once elections come round the fruits of our labour shall be reaped.