Reality™
notes from the overdraft: #18
It arrived with the supermarket flyers and the charity envelopes, folded in a polite shade of beige (the sort of colour that apologises for existing).
NOTICE OF CONSULTATION:
The Department for Civic Continuity invites you to participate in a Trial Vote on the Continuation of Reality™.
Question: Should Reality™ continue as is, or be replaced with a more “enjoyable” alternative?
Polling Day: To Be Confirmed, depending on feedback.
Most people said it was just junk mail, another low-budget campaign to get people interested in the colour of bins or broadband. The font looked official, the kind that screams neutrality. Beneath the crest it said:
“Your World. Your Say.”
At the bottom, in smaller print:
“In the event of existential uncertainty, contact the Helpline (Mon–Fri, 9–5).”
Nobody did, of course. We’ve all learned not to phone helplines unless something’s on fire. Instead, people took photos, posted them online, argued about the watermark, and wondered whether the government had finally gone full conceptual.
That night, the news showed a panel of experts discussing what would happen if Reality™ just…changed. One said, “I’m sure the fundamentals will remain,” another said, “This might actually be good for productivity.”
A man in the audience shouted, “What about the fucking sea?”
They cut to adverts.
Community Correspondence:
Letter 1 - Resident Inquiry
To whom it may concern,
Before I can decide whether to renew Reality™, I require clarification.
Will gravity still apply under the new system?
Will I be able to keep my existing houseplants/dog?
If Reality™ is discontinued, what happens to my current Direct Debits/Debts?
Regards,
Mrs I. Foughthard
Response - Department for Civic Continuity (DCC)
Dear Mrs Foughthard,
Thank you for your interest in the Referendum on Reality™.
We wish to assure all residents that continuity of core physical laws is a top priority. Gravity, light and basic emotional regulation will remain (mostly) in effect.
As for houseplants: transitional wilting is possible.
Dog: may be replaced with a more “fun” and “language-based” subservient creature.
Direct Debits: will be paused pending a metaphysical audit.
Debts: will not.
Yours in service,
The DCC Team
Letter 2 - Anonymous Submission (unverified)
They won’t tell you the truth.
The vote already happened.
Reality™ has been lost.
For years.
For an eternity.
They’re scrambling around trying to find it as we speak.
What you’re living in now is a holding pattern.
We’ve been in the condemned cell since forever.
Now they lead us to the Gallows.
Time has stood still.
It stands, still.
Check your clock (the minute hand’s been looping the same sixty seconds since Tuesday).
Internal Memo - DCC (For Review)
Please remind staff to reiterate the official position:
Current Reality™ remains provisionally active, pending results.
Do not get excited.
Do not engage with entities claiming to represent “the winning side.”
Both sides will ultimately lose.
Letter 3 - Concerned Business Owner
Dear DCC,
As a small café owner, I need to know whether we’ll be using the same currency in the new Reality™, or whether I should start accepting “belief” as legal tender. That’s what people keep trying to pay with, anyway. That, and “hope”, but people seem to be running out of that.
Yours,
Dean (Dean’s Beans - est. 2012)
Response
Dear Dean,
Thank you for your letter (and your entrepreneurial spirit).
Currency will remain broadly symbolic. Just trying to figure out which one. We may well put it to a public vote.
We are exploring alternative models, including “emotional exchange rates.”
For now, you may accept “apathy” and “reluctance”, but you must absolutely not accept “hope”.
Please keep receipts.
Sincerely,
The DCC
Letter 4 - Public Submission #78413 (abridged)
Stop asking us to choose.
Reality™ hasn’t been working for years.
The buses don’t run, the world’s on fire, trains are more expensive than flights and people who complain about having no free speech seem to have the most speech. It’s fucking annoying.
Just reboot the lot, but remember to give us a password this time.
Internal Note (never sent)
64% describe current Reality™ as “unsatisfactory,” 18% as “fine, I suppose,” and 3% as “a simulation I simply cannot afford to leave.”
Recommend postponing the referendum until morale improves.
On The Matter of Choosing
At a certain point, it stopped feeling absurd.
The more the letters came, the more plausible it became that Reality™ might need replacing. We’ve replaced everything else: the news, the weather, even memory; upgraded, streamlined, improved until it barely functions. We now log our memories into devices so that we can free up space in our brains for other inane shit. And ultimately, they get forgotten.
Perhaps a new Reality™ would come with free Wi-Fi, fewer regrets, and a horizon you could actually reach. Perhaps gravity could be optional on weekends? I don’t know.
It’s difficult to defend something that’s worn you down for decades. Most people didn’t want to actually end Reality™; they just wanted a say in how it ignored them. It needed to be acknowledged that it just wasn’t up to scratch. Existence wasn’t all it cracked up to be.
I remember walking home and seeing a man at a bus stop staring at the leaflet like it had been hand-written with a reed pen on some papyrus. “They should’ve done this years ago,” he said. “The old Reality™’s gone brittle. Brittle, I tell ya”. He stared at me for a moment before saying, “Like, why the fuck can’t we fly and stuff? We’ve been here long enough. We could give all the best feedback to make it, like, actually good”. I nodded in agreement. He wasn’t wrong.
By then, the air itself had started to feel beta-tested; the Sun flickering like a faulty strip bulb. I thought of the line they’d printed in fine italics:
Reality™ Polling Day: To Be Confirmed.
And I wondered if that’s what we’ve been living in all along, the waiting room that sat between the confirmation of meaning.
Further Correspondence
Letter 5 - Media Office (Circular)
PRESS GUIDANCE:
When asked about the purpose of the Referendum, use phrases like:
“community listening exercise”
“forward-facing existential audit”
“citizen-led perception review”
Avoid words such as “collapse”, “void”, or “better than this shit”.
Letter 6 - Final Notice to All Residents
Dear Citizen,
The Referendum on Reality™ will now take place this Friday.
Voting booths will open at sunrise and close at sunset.
Please bring one form of identification and a clear sense of what’s real to you.
If possible, bring your meaning and/or purpose in Life™.
Refreshments provided (subject to supply-chain stability).
In the event of overlap between the old and new Realities™, please remain calm and just blindly follow the sound of the tannoy.
Yours faithfully,
The Department for Civic Continuity
Epilogue
The library opened early that morning. Rain slicked the streets like someone had reheated them.
A queue already wound around the car park; pensioners, teenagers, a man in a suit holding a broken mug that read Keep Calm and Try Not To Kill Yourself.
Inside, the booths were set up between Local History and Fiction, as promised. Each ballot paper bore a hologram watermark that shimmered when you tilted it: Choose wisely.
Nobody spoke. A hush fell that wasn’t purely silence but anticipation (the kind that comes before a glitch).
When the clock struck twelve, the fluorescent lights trembled, and the outlines of things began to soften. Tables dissolved first, then the pens. The paper lingered the longest, faint as breath.
People kept queuing even as the floor grew uncertain. Some swore they saw the sky peel back to reveal another one beneath it. A clearer, kinder sky, yet slightly out of sync.
It seemed as though the decision was being made in real time. As though the Earth was listening to us. Compiling each vote and bending to the will of the people.
The sun set.
For the first time in history, everyone on earth was fast asleep at the exact same time. And woke up together too.
No one ever announced the result. By Monday, the DCC website had vanished, redirecting to a wellness app.
Life resumed, though it didn’t feel quite the same. The bus stops displayed new timetables, the pigeons looked cleaner, more hopeful. The sun hit us and we bathed in the apricity. It felt as though the Sun was trying to remember us, learning us all over again.
Occasionally, when the sky holds still for too long, you can hear the echo of a tannoy somewhere above the clouds:
Thank you for participating. Your input has been invaluable.
And for a moment, you almost believe it.
Question: Are you happy with the current version of Reality™? Or do you want an alternative? Let us know below…
This is tricky because my own personal reality is lovely. I dare say I’m happy with my life. But I know so many others suffer and struggle, so how does that fit in? Will humans ever be satisfied or are we hardwired to find problems? I remember a few days ago my boyfriend was marveling at how easy life at that moment was, and it was the most simple moment. We were hungry, walked in to a store, picked the food we wanted, paid with our smartphones, left and ate. His appreciation of the ease of that small moment made me think that he has the wisdom of someone who’s lived many lifetimes and lives in a state of appreciation. I’m much more problematic, so it’s good to have his steady presence around. Maybe we can change reality just by changing the way we perceive it?
This was a good read, I wouldn't mind trying an alternative reality for a short spell!