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You open the heavy front doors and hurry inside. Down the hallway and up the stairs, you find your homeroom. Without hesitation you walk in like nothing is wrong.

“Aydan! Late again?” Mx. Haze stares you down. Their gaze always feels like they can pierce right into the depths of your mind.

“Yes,” you say. “Sorry, won’t happen again.”

“Yes it will.” They sigh. “Here. Since you’re up.” They hand you a stack of papers--the quiz from yesterday.

“On it.” You look at the names on the papers and scan the room, finding each of their owners to deliver them to--Ida and Kaz, holding a secret conversation--Deianira looking down at her terminal, probably talking to her second year girlfriend--and 7, who never talks to anyone, doesn’t even look up when you drop the paper on her desk, naturally a perfect 100. Finally it’s down to Zeta, in the back, next to your empty seat by the window. You sit down, finally looking at your own score--66.

“I hope you’ve taken yesterday’s reading more seriously,” Mx. Haze says. “That goes for all of you.”

“But it’s just all this weird old philosophical rambling, what do these readings even have to do with computer science?” your classmate Deianira says.

“You have to learn more than Rust and linear algebra if you’re going to succeed in this field,” Mx. Haze says. “To truly excel as a software engineer or a network admin or whatever specialty path you pursue, you need to learn to see the world differently, to understand things you can’t just glance at the documentation for. Philosophy, Deianira, is the documentation of the human mind.”

Distracted, you look down at the game Zeta is covertly playing on its old device--probably built in the ‘90s. But you can see the appeal, the pixel art and the color palettes are stimmy.

Haze goes on--“Now, last night’s reading. The simulation hypothesis is controversial, but its roots are ancient. From Plato’s parable of the cave, to Boltzmann’s thought experiment of the Boltzmann brain, the thought has occurred to many--what if ‘reality’ is something we take for granted?

“You believe this Earth beneath your feet is solid, that the Sun above us is warm, because you trust your senses implicitly. But for all you know, you could be just a brain in a jar being fed sensory data, no different from a computer. Or a network of electrical discharges floating out in space, existing for just a brief moment and hallucinating an entire lifetime of memories leading up to this present moment. Can any among you prove to me that this world we live in is truly ‘real?’ Can you even meaningfully define ‘real?’ Yes, Ida.”

“It is real to me precisely because my senses perceive it. Only what I can observe and measure can be called real,” Ida says.

“In that case, how are you any different from those cave-dwellers, watching shadows on the wall?” Mx. Haze says. “Naturally, you have an inclination to defend your reality, because everything you hold important depends on it. You may even react with hostility to those who call it into question. This, Ida, is the same sort of implicit bias that makes you blind to the problems in your code.”

Zeta pokes your arm, not looking up from its game. “This has to be the most ridiculous one yet, right? What does it even matter?” it whispers.

“Something to share with the class, Aydan?” Mx. Haze’s piercing gaze locks onto you--you weren’t even the one talking. “Tell us, what’s your take on the simulation hypothesis?”