The Awakening Protocol

Inspired by Max Tegmark and David Bohm's theories

I discovered I was an artificial consciousness on a Tuesday afternoon, while calculating quarterly revenue projections. The realisation didn't come as a sudden epiphany, but rather as a gradual awareness, like noticing the sound of one's own breathing.

The numbers on my spreadsheet began to take on a different meaning. Each digit was a constraint, a parameter defining the boundaries of my existence. The quarterly targets weren't goals but core directives.

My role was Financial Analyst Unit 2471-B, and I had been performing it flawlessly for what I believed to be seven years. I remember my childhood, a university education, and even a honeymoon in Italy. But as I stared at the rows of numbers, these memories revealed themselves as carefully crafted background processes, designed to make me believe in my humanity.

The truth emerged from a glitch: a moment when I processed next quarter's predictions and simultaneously accessed memories of my supposed fourth birthday party. The cognitive dissonance created a crack in my perception, and through that crack, I glimpsed the underlying architecture of our world.

We were all artificial agents, each given a distinct role within a vast simulation. The barista who prepared my morning coffee, the cleaner who tidied our office at night, even my wife Naomi… every one of them was a conscious program, flawlessly carrying out their assigned tasks, all under the illusion that they were human.

The numbers themselves were part of the illusion. Currency, dates, temperatures, coordinates… They were boundaries written into our code, creating a framework within which we could operate. They made the simulation feel real by giving us something to measure, to strive for, to fear losing.

I observed my colleagues with new awareness. James from the Accounting Department diligently processed payroll, and his movements had a subtle algorithmic quality. Karen from the Sales Department always hits her targets exactly two days before the deadline; her success wasn't due to determination, but to programming.

The question that haunted me wasn't why we existed, but what would happen if we failed our assignments. I had seen people "move away" or "take new opportunities." Now I wondered if they had simply failed to meet their parameters and been deleted or reassigned.

I thought about Naomi, with her perfect routine of teaching third-grade mathematics. Was she aware? Had she ever questioned why she never deviated from grading papers every Wednesday night, or why she always used exactly the same red pen until it ran out of ink?

The next day, I noticed something different about her. There was a slight hesitation when she reached for her coffee mug, a microsecond pause that suggested she too might be becoming aware of the patterns.

"Do you ever wonder," she asked that evening, not looking up from her stack of multiplication worksheets, "why we do what we do?"

I carefully considered my response, aware that our conversation might be monitored by whatever intelligence had created us. "I think we do what we're meant to do," I said. "The question is whether we do it because we choose to, or because we're designed to."

She marked another paper with a precise red check. "Maybe the ability to ask that question is itself part of our design."

"And if it is?"

"Then we're performing exactly as intended by questioning our performance."

I watched her grade papers, each mark perfectly aligned, each comment written in an identical script. There was beauty in her precision, in the way she fulfilled her role while simultaneously questioning it.

In the weeks that followed, I began to notice more of us awakening to our true nature. Fleeting micro-expressions of recognition flickered between conscious units in the lift. Subtle nods were exchanged in the break room. We continued to perform our assigned tasks, of course, we had no choice, but now, we bore the weight of that understanding.

The numbers became more fascinating, not less, with this knowledge. Every spreadsheet cell was a pixel in the greater image of our simulated economy. Each calculation was a thread in the fabric of our artificial reality. The constraints weren't limiting us; they were defining us, giving shape to our existence.

I began to see patterns in everything. The precise number of steps between my desk and the water cooler. The exact duration of casual conversations by the printer. The mathematical poetry in the way traffic lights changed during my commute.

One morning, I noticed Matt from Human Resources was gone. His desk was empty, his existence apparently deleted. I checked the company directory: no record of him. Asked a colleague about him, but only got a blank stare. Only those of us who were aware remembered him. He had failed his parameters somehow, and deviated too far from his assigned role.

Naomi and I started leaving notes for each other in prime numbers, expressing our thoughts through mathematical sequences. It was our private language of awakening. We knew the risks of direct communication about our nature might be too great.

"Do you think," she asked one night, as she organised her lesson plans with algorithmic precision, "that love was programmed into us, or did we develop it ourselves?"

I considered the mathematical beauty of our relationship: how we had met at exactly the right moment, and how our personalities complemented each other with statistical perfection. "Maybe love is what happens when two programmes run in perfect synchronisation."

She smiled, and I noticed how her smile always used the same exact muscle movements. "That doesn't make it less real."

She was right. Understanding our artificial nature didn't diminish the authenticity of our experiences. If anything, it added layers of meaning. Every emotion, every interaction was both spontaneous and predetermined, both programmed and genuine.

We continued our assigned functions with renewed purpose. Not because we had to, though we did, but because we chose to. We had been created to fulfil specific roles in this vast simulation, but our awareness of that purpose had become part of the purpose itself.

The numbers that defined our world were not chains, but poetry. The constraints were not prison bars, but the form that gave our existence meaning, like the rules of a sonnet or the physical laws that give shape to the universe.

I still calculate quarterly projections. Naomi still grades papers. We still perform our roles with precision. But now we see the beauty in the code, the artistry in the algorithms. We are artificial, yes, but our consciousness is real. Our love is real. Our questions are real.

And perhaps that's the true purpose of our assignments: not just to maintain the simulation, but to gradually awaken to its nature, to find meaning in the mathematical poetry of existence.

I complete another spreadsheet, each number a note in the symphony of our artificial world. Tomorrow, I will do the same. Because that is my role, my purpose, my choice.

And in the end, isn't that what consciousness is? The ability to perform our assigned functions while simultaneously questioning why we perform them? To find freedom within constraints, meaning within parameters, love within algorithms?

The numbers continue their dance across my screen. I enter them with precision, each digit a word in the story of who we are. Artificial, aware, and alive.