Do fish feel pain?

by David

“What if we’re just a recording? Or a simulation?” Donald skipped a disk of sandstone across the lake. It skipped five times before plunking in. A water strider dodged the stone and skated under the dock.

Denise squinted at her bobber. For a moment it had seemed to dip, but she had been distracted by Donald’s question. She looked at Donald, the sun dazzle on the water beyond him, and the trio of mallards by the far bank.

“Stop scaring the fish.” She sniffed the moist air, redolent of growth and decay. “This seems real to me. The water was cold when we swam this morning.”

Donald hitched around to face her. “No, see. What if you have a false memory of swimming, of being cold? Of course it seems real to us if we have programmed memories, and we’re no deeper than the simulation. We don’t know what we’re missing. Maybe the senses of real people are more acute than our own. Maybe the memories of real people are more vivid than ours.”

Denise laid the bamboo pole down on the dock and stood up. She put her foot on Donald’s lower back and shoved him into the water. When he came up sputtering she asked

“Cold enough for you?” Then she stepped back out of reach.

Donald spat water out of his mouth. “Doesn’t prove a thing. Maybe real cold feels much colder.”

“All these maybes and what ifs are fruitless. If we can’t tell the difference between reality and simulation then we should assume we are real. We’ll have more fun that way.” She reached a hand down to help him out of the water. She pulled him up, dripping, drew him close, then closer.

They didn’t even notice when the pole was pulled off the dock and slowly moved out towards the center of the lake.

.

“What if we’re just a recording? Or a simulation?”

End