The One True Conspiracy

The mail carrier looked at me with fear, and I grew suspicious. The cashier at McDonald's hesitated for many moments when I mentioned my name, and I knew I was onto something. The teller at the bank counted my paycheck money five times before handing it to me, and my suspicion transformed into certainty.

But before then, doubt filled every crevice of my mind. For years I tried to make sense of the world and my place in it, and came up empty. Have you ever looked at the world, really looked at it? It makes no sense. Zero. 

Take the English language: all those silent b’s and k’s and h’s, all those inconsistent rules. “I before e, except after c” was supposed to be ironclad. But do you know how often this rule doesn’t apply? Look it up! They say other languages make more sense, but I could never get the hang of them, not when I took Spanish classes back in school, not trying Duolingo last year.

I could go on all day about how little sense the world makes. You’ve probably heard most of it before, so I’ll just list some highlights: no one ever likes the politicians they vote for, people pay a premium every few years for a slightly upgraded phone, we have magical technology our ancestors could only dream of but somehow everyone is poor, every religion is full of good, practical advice that no one follows. None of it makes sense!

I remember when times were different. I remember mother and father passing down wisdom from on high, wisdom far greater than any religious or political leader I’ve known as an adult. But the world changed. Something went wrong in the last thirty years. Even my mother's words don’t make sense anymore. 

It’s enough to make a man turn to conspiracy theories. And that is, in fact, what happened to me. I lost years deep in some dark corners of the internet. If you’ve heard of a conspiracy, I’ve probably researched it. I’ve been a flat-earther, a 9/11 truther, a Qanon believer, a bigfoot evangelist. Drove my family and co-workers crazy ‘til I learned not to drop truth bombs on them unless they were drunk. I once got a happy guy on the subway to watch twenty minutes of biological analysis of The Loch Ness Monster. He fell asleep with his head resting on my shoulder.

The problem with conspiracy theories is that, despite how logical or tempting each one is to believe, they don’t fit together very well. The flat-earthers and the fake moon-landing evangelists make strong cases individually, but why would a world government hiding the shape of the planet also fake the moon landing? Wouldn’t that just tempt normal people to examine our cosmology and figure out that things don’t add up?

Why would a government engineer 9/11 to start a war, when previous wars were far easier to instigate? Why wouldn’t you assume that Q, who's supposedly leaking info on government conspiracies, just be another part of those conspiracies? Why assassinate JFK if reptiles control all world governments? Who even cares if Bigfoot exists?

I’ve been a member of three different conspiracy websites and subreddits, and I have to tell you, it’s shocking how many of these people will pounce on any semi-logical connections. They don’t care that they don’t work together. One Bigfoot truther (with an account named “TheBigOne”) tried their darndest to fit the big lug into men-in-black conspiracies, suggesting Bigfoot knew the truth and was hiding in the woods from government agents. He advocated a fund to find Bigfoot a lawyer.

This happens all the time; seemingly reasonable, logical people banding together to form conspiracy amalgamations that get out of control. They staple speculative ideas onto each other like office addendums. You should have seen the interpretations Qanon fans hallucinated in their favorite leaker’s missives. I won’t go into it, that would take all day. But sometimes I felt like the only rational one.

And that isn’t a great feeling, being alone. Sometimes I felt too real for people in the real world, but not real enough for my online compatriots. Or maybe the other way around. Or maybe both.

Then I hit on something. It came to me in a dream. I was at the base of a hill, and on top of the hill was a shining point of light. I staggered up the hill, tripped and fell multiple times. If I could just reach that light, I’d realize some greater truth, but I couldn’t get there. When I woke up, the strangest thought was stuck in my head: there was only one light.

I thought about that all day at the office. But it wasn’t until the drive home it struck me what it meant: there is only one true conspiracy theory. Of course! The others must be pure distractions. But which one is the true one? I won’t leave you in suspense but I figured it out: I’m the only person on earth. Everything around me is a simulation. Perhaps the prompt spoiled the reveal anyway. 

This idea explains all the mysteries and inconsistencies in the world. Why does the world make no sense? Because it’s an imperfect simulation. Why does everyone else act so irrationally? Because they aren’t real. Why can’t even conspiracy-minded people fashion a comprehensive model of the world? Because they’re part of the deception. Obviously, this isn’t an original idea, there’s no shortage of media using this concept. But that’s the whole point, the true conspiracy is hiding among all the fake ones, making it appear no different.

I wasn’t certain at first, but within days of watching the world from this new perspective, my confidence only grew. I found myself smiling, and catching the eyes of people on the street. Some looked at me with fear, others with amusement, still others in a heartfelt way. 

I started mentioning my name to various people to see how they’d react, to see if they knew that I was the only real human among them. Some smiled back at me, others had their eyes grow wide in fear. Most froze and appeared confused, like inert sections of computer code. A euphoria I’d never known became my companion during these days. I finally knew my place in the world.

But the feeling didn’t last. Yes, I know the truth now, but knowing is only half the battle. The other half is using that knowledge in a useful way. If no one is real, who can I talk to? If nothing is real, where can I go? I could talk to “people” on the street or on the internet all day and get nowhere, except a possible trip to the looney bin.

Surely somewhere exists an outlet, a way to make myself heard outside the false world surrounding me. Enter Google. Into the search bar I type: “I am the only human on earth.” 

I hesitate. Something is wrong with this statement. I was not always the only person on earth. In youth, the world made so much more sense. People seemed real. I delete and try again: “I am the last human on earth.” Maybe somewhere out there are other people, on some other planet or other reality. Maybe I can reach them! I click through to start the search.

I am immediately disappointed. The first set of links are disaster movie clips. Then come some “what would you do if” thought experiments. There’s even a link to a conspiracy site I’m already a member of. Useless. Not a single true outlet or prospective solution to this riddle. I lackadaisically click the “next” button for more results, my hopes in the toilet.

And then something interesting, the next link is to a short story contest bearing the prompt “Center your story around a person who believes they're the last human on Earth.” The contest is for this week only, and just started yesterday. Can this be a coincidence? If you’ve read this far, you know I don’t believe that.

I haven’t written a story since… grade school? And I was never good at it. Why invent fiction when the world is such a strange place? But I wouldn’t have to invent anything for this, I could just tell the truth. 

My heart runs cold: maybe it’s a trap! Maybe whoever is running this simulation left this contest as a way of finding me, to route out the last human!

But the idea is in my brain now. I can’t be stopped! I searched around the site: fifty entries already? It's only been a day. Some of these writers are quite eager. But this would mean my story wouldn’t even stand out. How would they know that I’m the last true human hidden in a forest of people writing similar stories?

I could even label it as fiction! Speculative fiction or science fiction or something like. I’ll even add the “funny” tag to throw off suspicion. If the Men in Black appear at my door bearing tough questions, I’ll just pretend to be a creative type. I can appear quite normal when I want to.

So if you’re reading this (and let’s face it, you are) and you’re a human too, know that you’re not alone out there. And if you’re just a cog in a greater simulation, you probably don’t know it, so just assume you’re a real human and that you’re also not alone. The full truth is waiting for us to discover.