"Do you think it matters?"
"Do I think what matters?"
"You know, whether it's real."
"What the fuck are you talking about? Whether what's real?"
"You know, everything. The Earth, the Sun, the Galaxy, the Universe. You and me. Do you think it matters whether it's real or not."
Jake took a moment to look up from the Playstation at his erstwhile brother, who was lounging in the window looking what one could only describe as wistfully out at the storm clouds that were rolling in from the east. "Of course it's real. I mean, here we are, right? Are you on something again?"
Nathan looked back at him levelly. "Not at the moment." He hopped down from his perch in the windowsill and strolled over to the couch, flopping lazily over the arm like a discarded doll. "But just because we're here doesn't mean here is real. We could be in a simulation."
Jake snorted, "What, like The Matrix?"
"I preferred The Thirteenth Floor, myself," replied Nathan, unfazed.
"What's that one about?"
"Oh, a simulation within a simulation. Users and super-users."
"Like Tron meets Inception?" Jake conjectured.
"You are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream. Yet if hope has flown away in a night, or in a day, in a vision, or in none, is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."
"Shakespeare?"
"Poe."
"Take things as they are," countered Jake.
"Ghandi?"
"Bruce Lee."
