Even back in Eorzea, I had some theories about where I was and what happened. Some I liked more than others, some Tsu'na didn't much like at all, and none of them really explained why what happened to me happened. But, you know, inclination to make patterns out of chaos.

I didn't have a lot of philosophical tools to work with...Descartes only goes so far. So what I've come up with is a result of reworking ideas I've already been exposed to. Reasons that things are existing the way they are, so that I can accept them and either move on or try to explore them. The simplest ideas in Eorzea were twofold...

Multiverse

Ever wonder where stories come from? Are they just the fever dreams of people with ideas or wishful thinking? There's an awful lot of worlds described in stories. How do people keep thinking them up?

What if they don't? What if there's multiple universes out there, and somehow writers are getting glimpses of them?

If there is more than one universe, it's not unreasonable to extrapolate further and say that there are infinite universes. With infinite universes you can have infinite differences between them. Which means a universe in which an Eorzea or something really resembling it can exist is possible.

So if writers can get ideas by having visions of other universes, perhaps the designer of FF14 got a glimpse of an Eorzea universe. Which I somehow happened to stumble into. And then out of again.

To call it unlikely is sort of meaningless, in comparison to any of this happening at all. Tsu'na prefers this theory since it allows for the existence of her home and her self.

On the other hand...

Gestalt Reality

My ideas of magic and spirituality have been heavily influenced by White Wolf's tabletop roleplaying system called World of Darkness, and in particular the part of it called Mage. It's such a comprehensive and effective way of describing how a system of magic can work that I tend to think of it when I'm dealing with things outside of conventional reality.

The basis of Mage is the idea that reality is a product of people perceiving it and having beliefs about it, that what is possible and impossible is determined in part by what the majority of people think is possible and impossible. Dragons and unicorns don't exist because people believe they don't exist. Nuclear weapons do exist because people believe they do.

One aspect of this is what Mage calls "mythic realms": spiritual planes based on certain shared beliefs, such as imagining what a given story looks like. The readers of a story may "know" the story is fiction and its world isn't real, but they can still imagine what such a world would look like if it was. So there might well be an Arthurian realm, or an Atlantean realm, or a Lord of the Rings realm, brought about because millions of readers could collectively picture them. Make movies or TV shows about them and it gets even easier for millions of watchers worldwide to imagine being in the show.

Does FF14 have millions of players? I haven't actually checked, but it is a worldwide player base, and even if that's smaller than, say, the Star Trek fanbase, it's still a collection of people who not only see Eorzea, but run around in it and interact with it on a daily basis. It's not just real to its players...it's personal. So if a mythic realm could exist at all, how plausible is it that it could exist for a MMORPG?

Tsu'na hates this idea, because it suggests the world and everything in it (including her and her history) was created by people that don't even live in that world. But, again, it's only as unlikely as the fact that she's in this world at all.

But until we came to this world and I made that phone call, it didn't occur to me that there was a third significant possibility.

Total Recall

I have a copy of Original Me's memories. I also have a further copy of Eorzea Me's memories. Logic suggests I was somehow created a week ago with these memories added in to me.

But what if I never was in Eorzea? What if I was somehow manufactured in this world and given a set of memories and (somehow) Eorzea skills, without Eorzea ever having existed? Tsu'na too, except that since she had never been in this world before her memories are completely fiction.

Tsu'na and I both hate this one. Unfortunately, Mr. Occam might like it because it has the fewest moving parts. It doesn't require an entire other universe to exist. The circles...well, the circle...is a lot simpler and possibly unrelated. It doesn't explain how or why we'd've been made, but then, neither do the other theories.

And then of course I suppose I have to consider one more.

Solipsism

Steve Osgood is in a hospital in a coma, and dreamed all this up.

He thinks, therefore I am.

Maybe I won't mention this one to Tsu'na just yet.