Daryl Gregory’s 2025 novel We Were Real examines a society grappling with the "Great Announcement," the moment humanity learned it inhabits a computer simulation. The narrative follows a diverse group of travelers on a bus tour to witness "the Impossibles"—glitches in reality that have transformed existential crisis into a lucrative form of disaster tourism.
From Plato’s Cave to the Bostrom Trilemma
The concept of a manufactured reality is not a new obsession. Long before the digital age, Plato used the allegory of the cave to describe humans who mistake shadows on a wall for the true essence of light and existence. This philosophical lineage moved from ancient thought to cinematic spectacle with the 1999 release of The Matrix, which popularized the idea that our lives might be mere lines of code within a vast, artificial construct.
By 2003, this speculation transitioned into formal scientific and philosophical inquiry. As news.google.com reported, philosopher Nick Bostrom introduced a trilemma that remains the bedrock of simulation theory.
- Humanity goes extinct before it ever develops the capability to create high-fidelity simulations.
- Advanced civilizations possess the technology but have no interest in running simulations of their evolutionary ancestors.
- We are, with near certainty, currently living inside a simulation.
Gregory’s work takes these abstract mathematical possibilities and applies them to the messy, emotional reality of human life, assuming the third option is the truth.
The Impossibles and the Rise of Disaster Tourism
In the world of We Were Real, the abstract becomes concrete through the "Great Announcement." This event informed the global population that their reality is a simulation, effectively stripping away the illusion of sovereign existence. However, rather than collapsing into total nihilism, society has adapted through a bizarre new industry.
The simulation is imperfect. It is riddled with hundreds of anomalies known as "the Impossibles." These glitches are not necessarily apocalyptic, but they are visually and psychologically jarring, defying the laws of physics and logic as humans understand them.
This instability has birthed a trend of disaster tourism. People now travel specifically to witness these anomalies, seeking a proximity to the "truth" of their artificiality. The experience is described as something that can be deeply shocking to those who make the pilgrimage, even as the world attempts to stabilize in the wake of the revelation.
Existential Identity on the Bus to Nowhere
The core of the narrative focuses on a single bus tour, a microcosm of a fractured humanity. The passengers represent a cross-section of every possible reaction to the loss of objective reality. The group includes a rabbi, a nun, a realist, and an influencer, alongside individuals facing terminal illness and a woman in advanced pregnancy.
This diversity of thought creates a tension between different ways of finding meaning. For the religious, the simulation might be viewed as a divine creation or a test; for the influencer, it may be just another backdrop for a curated life; for the realist, it is a technical fact to be managed.
The travelers are haunted by a singular, terrifying question: if the bus trip, their conversations, and their very thoughts are part of a pre-programmed sequence, does agency exist at all?
The implications of a programmed future extend beyond mere philosophy. If every event in history and every moment of the future is already written into the simulation’s code, the very concept of "choice" becomes a relic of a pre-Announcement era. The bus ride is not just a tour of glitches; it is a journey through the wreckage of human autonomy.
