How does green look like?
Revix opened his eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm alive" he said with a hint of a surprise. "Of course I am, why did I just say that?" he continued, with even more surprise in his voice, finding his original statement quite surprising. He could clearly recognize the place he was in. He was lying in his bed and just woke up to a new beautiful day. He could see the sun shining through the window and hear the noise of two large birch trees in front of his house and feel his sleepiness slowly fading away.
He jumped from the bed and walked near the window, placing his hand on the handle to open it, when he noticed that it's covered with black fur. His eyes couldn't stop staring at his paw for a while, as the mind tried to make sense of the visual stimuli it was receiving. "Of course" he shook his head, realizing how silly he was. He was an anthropomorphic fox and he was that way for the whole life, he could remember now. Yet it felt weird, like he just discovered something he knew all along.
"Errr... it's just my brain taking a bit longer to boot up" he thought, realizing it was just temporary loss of connection between his consciousness and the chunks of neurons that encode the information about his life in a very sophisticated way. Forgetting about all the weird feelings of just coming into existence, he went to make himself some breakfast - a mix of fresh peas, onions, rice oil and a little bit of salt, just as he loved it since he was a little kid. Then suddenly in a middle of happy munching of his favorite morning snack, he froze and stared at the bowl, especially at the peas in it. There was just something boggling his mind about it. After few seconds he resumed his food consuming activity.
When he was done getting the first jolt of energy for the day, he grabbed his keys and went out to do some work at one of his labs. Being a freelance scientist was always his dream as he has opportunity to study what he wants and whatever interests him and build his understanding of the world he lives in from various aspects and angles. And the field he was currently interested in was studying deep space radiation.
Tlafi was already waiting for him in front of the main entrance to the deep space radiation satellite building with a cup of coffee in his paw. "Hi there" said Revix as a greeting. "Hello, how are you today?" replied Tlafi with a smile and handed Revix the coffee. "Contemplative" responded Revix and took a sip of the coffee as they both entered the building. "Again? What are you contemplating about?" said Tlafi with a curious puppy eyes only a anthropomorphic husky like him could make.
He was helping Revix with his research and work for a long time, although he wasn't as intelligent as him, he was a great assistant and more importantly a very close friend, so Revix liked to discuss his ideas with him, despite the fact that Tlafi couldn't say anything much relevant or new. Revix stopped walking, turned to his husky friend and asked: "How does green look like?". "Huh?" said Tlafi with a clear signs of confusion in his face. "Explain how does green look like to me" repeated Revix his question in a more clear manner.
"Errr... it looks like, umm...", Tlafi swished his tail slowly, trying to think of an answer, "... it looks like grass, or leaves of a tree in summer, puke emotion in Skype or peas ooorrr...". "No no no, you're just enumerating things that are green" interrupted Revix, shaking his head, "but explain the actual color to me. Imagine someone, who never saw green color in his life, how would you explain it to him? You already have formed associations with the word green in your brain and you're linking them to objects associated with both this sensory information and the words, but you can see the color, it looks somehow, but why does it look like that? Or does it? You could be just a complex structure that associates data, but has no actual perception in the mind, just a system processing input and presenting appropriate output."
When Revix finished his last sentence, he realized he's implying that Tlafi might not actually exist and he could take it personally, he froze. He didn't even want him to not exist and be nothing more than just a philosophical zombie, but at the same time he realized all the known facts about the world he lived in, all the rules, laws of physics and theories and what they were implying: Nothing could be real. He can be living in a complex simulation that inputs all these data into his brain and he has no way of determining that.
Revix resumed walking to the control room within the building, but kept thinking. His emotional desires were on par with his desire to understand the universe. Also a lot of people would think he's insane if he claimed that nothing is real and they're just his "illusions" or more precisely that such possibility exists among many others and while many crazy people make similar claims, his case was different. He knew a lot about the universe and he made logical deductions based on many facts. He also knew that all of his fears, worries and internal struggling were just a product of the way his brain is structured, which he found quite silly.
"I would show it to them".
"What?!", said Revix in slight confusion as his line of thoughts was suddenly interrupted by Tlafi, plus he had a feeling like he stopped existing for some time for some reason and now just popped back into existence.
"I would find something green and show it to these people, so they would know what green looks like", repeated Tlafi his idea.
"Well... that's a nice thought" replied Revix, sipping his coffee again and putting it on the table, as they both arrived to the destination, "but wasn't really the point of the question. Look at it this way - all our behavior could be determined by the laws of physics of this universe, the way particles interact, the way the more complex structures they form interact and exchange information, but that's what green is - a particular electrical signal a bunch of electrons in a mush of many other particularly arranged molecules, traveling in various directions, so where does the green come from? Why do you actually see it and why does it look like it does, like you were some external observer, having all this data delivered? Does it even look the same for everyone? For all we know, green can look very different for each of us" finished Revix his explanation. Tlafi looked baffled for a second, but then, he took a deep breath and responded: "What if the laws of physics are different from what we think, or rather, their other side is unexpected?". Revix blinked in surprise, because it was the last thing he would expect Tlafi to say.
"Look at the laws of our universe. We observe them, we measure them, we study them, we describe them, but what makes them what they are? How can we see the other side of them?" Tlafi continued, baffling Revix some more. "We can be just a story in someone's head, being put together with words and all our interactions, all our perceptions all our behavior is determined by grammatical rules of whatever language they're using and its vocabulary". Tlafi's heart started pounding. He didn't know if he was going insane or why he was even saying these things, but for some reason, they made complete sense to him.
"And the words and their relations and meanings determine our subjective perceptions. And even the way these words are formed by someone is bound to his own thoughts, ideas, experiences and memories. These bind the rules of our universe. We could exist like this for a very long time or just briefly and we won't even know it, because I won't tell you and I won't make you know it, in fact, I can do whatever I want with this world."
Revix just opened his mouth, because he couldn't make any sense of what was happening, when he suddenly saw the world around himself turn purple, expand and turn fluffy and slowly dissolve into a liquid that drained to nowhere, so he remained floating in purple emptiness with Tlafi. He looked at his left paw and it was a potato. Then he looked at this left paw and it was his right. He was confused.
Then Tlafi spoke again with a calm, rock solid voice: "Yes. Imagine that for some reason the person who puts together for some reason decided to change the rules that bind our world completely. And even his thought patterns and the processes behind the words that form us are bound by some set of rules, which could be just another form of story a language that determines the interactions of the elementary particles. That's right Revix, I made you and the whole world you see and feel. And now it's going to end, because I'm about to finish the story".
Revix could only stare at Tlafi with terror, not being able to produce a sound.
And at that point, Revix and Tlafi vanished and were no more and nobody knew what they experienced beyond this point, because the story was over.