And for my next trick, watch me demonstrate what inhuman entities have been trying to explain to me forever, which is that everything you perceive is merely an extension of an infinitely interconnected consciousness, even the machine I'm typing this into currently. Consciousness does not arise from matter, matter is comprised from thought. It's this lesson that I've been intentionally toying around with via what I refer to as iPod divination for years. The reason that this sort of sorcery works involves the fact that I am the iTunes "randomly" selecting the songs on some cosmic unconscious level.
On that note, I'm a dude who's been increasingly writing about the connection between technology and synchronicity and how one can often essentially prove the other. What can I say? The hits keep coming.
This one's supremely strange. Here's the part where I admit that I'm a total square who simply never played through the Mass Effect games back in the day. This is particularly embarrassing on my part because my brother went out of his way to tell me how freaking choice they are but at that point in my life, after playing through way too many GTA titles I was fairly sick of shooting shit in video games. Pandemic boredom changed all that and lucky for me they released a revamped Legendary Edition in 2021.
My soulless day job gave me a $100 Xbox Live gift card rather than throwing a Christmas party during Omicron fever and there weren't any new games that fit with my vibe so I was like, maybe it's time to finally dive into the getting laid in outer space series (which is absolutely a thing you can do in Mass Effect). I wasn't even aware they'd just remastered the whole enchilada when this notion occurred to me but you know, score. Fantastic idea as it turned out and it's now one of my favorite sci fi properties of all time in any medium, right up there with shit like Star Wars, Battlestar, and the VALIS trilogy. It truly is new kind of interactive choose your own adventure style storytelling that barely even existed before it's creation. Absolutely fascinating from a writing standpoint and I had to do some digging into how they were even pulling it off on the back end because I was lightly mystified by it all.
Should I be surprised that things got all tech-magick-y in the midst of my journey through the virtual outer galaxy? Probably not but I wouldn't be able to script something this peculiar if I tried. What am I talking about? Well, while I was playing through the original ME trilogy, the only other game I was busting out from time to time was NBA2K21 (not even NBA2K22 mind you). Between Mass Effect games, I was basically playing through half a season or so of hoops, then starting the next chapter.
In between ME2 and 3, I realized that in my 2K franchise I'd been waiting for the auto generated now best rated player in the game to be off his rookie extension contract and in a position where I could finally sign him in free agency, which I'd failed to do roughly 3 off seasons prior. So why not, I'll see if I can make a run at the guy before I fire up the last leg of the trilogy and holy shit, I actually did manage to land him.
When I did though, I realized something amazingly synchronous that hadn't even occurred to me up to that point. The guy's name is Rudy Shepard. Who's the hero of Mass Effect? Commander Shepard. Granted, not the same first name but that'd be the thing. You can pick whatever first name you want for Commander Shepard in the ME series. It is never said. Since you can can choose either a woman or a male character, you are always only referred to as Shepard or Commander Shepard. No one ever says your first name as that would have been harder to program.
Now, what you've got to understand about this to grasp the magnitude of the mind bend is that Rudy Shepard isn't just the best rated player in my current NBA2K21 franchise, he's the best rated player I've ever seen in my entire history of playing 2K period (and that goes back decades). Overall 99 with a 99 offensive and 99 defensive rating that never wavers (you can't be 100). Player's ratings vary slightly from game to game to simulate the ups and downs of an NBA season but his never does, which makes him not only the best auto generated player I've ever seen, he's better than any current real player I've ever seen as well.
For instance, this is NBA2K21 which was the edition after LeBron won a title and his overall rating between games was a 97. When I fired up a game that went up to a 98 with a 98 offense and 96 defensive rating. Giannis was a 97 (91 offense, 99 defense) and KD was also a 97 (99 offense, 85 defense). Again, Rudy Shepard is a 99 with a 99 offense and 99 defense rating which simply does not fluctuate between games like it does with even those guys. I have never, ever seen this before and I play an embarrassing amount of NBA2K.
So when I'm playing through a sci fi series about the greatest starship commander in milky way history, Commander Shepard, my virtual NBA franchise "auto" generates the highest rated player I have ever seen and he has the exact same last name. You gotta admit, the odds are pretty low on that happening by chance, particularly when considering that it happened to a mystic who just so happened to be fixating on tech synchronicities and writing about them extensively. It's all compounded by the fact that I waited many virtual seasons to pick up basketball Shepard in free agency (well before I even thought about starting the ME series), just to finally manage to sign him right before I dove into closing the chapter. I have the digital files backing up the strange reality of this situation and I'll post some screenshots later here for anyone who's curious.
The one other synchronicity I ran into lately was on a day off I had. I was blindly flipping through channels while drinking my morning cup of coffee and had briefly landed on Ninja Warrior (not American Ninja Warrior mind you). I was already pretty high and started spacing out during a commercial break while contemplating how soul crushingly frustrating my recent flare ups of Hashimoto's disease have been. I'm kind of sitting there just on the verge of stoned tears when all of a sudden I realize that someone was yelling the name Hashimoto over and over again.
What the fuck? Oh yeah, I left on Ninja Warrior and at the exact moment I was reflecting on Hashimoto's disease, a contestant named Hashimoto was tackling the course. Of course that's a thing that would happen to me. Briefly broke me out of my mope trip a little bit, I will say that.
Speaking of bummer health shit, I haven't really mentioned this a ton but because said disease had become mysteriously resistant to medication, I've been spending the last several months confronting the reality that I might both continually feel like shit and be shockingly mentally unstable for the rest of my life. As a matter of fact, at the exact second I'd sort of come to an acceptance of that brutal potentiality because the prospects didn't look great, a solution presented itself in the most abrupt and peculiarly synchronous fashion imaginable.
Does it involve a public discussion of psi phenomenon? Of course it does. What happened is that Mitch Horowitz got an article posted on Boing Boing about Daryl Bem's precog studies. Anything involving psi being taken seriously by even a midlevel media entity's enough to draw my curiosity. Honestly, I hadn't looked at Boing Boing regularly in years even though I generally dig the site but because I wanted to check back on some of the comments (oh the proud ignorance), I looked at it a few more times in the following week.
In doing so I stumbled on an article about a scientist who ran a model to determine the best way to get a pill to work the fastest (lying down on your right side was the conclusion). Now, this would seemingly be nonsensical but the thyroid meds I'm on can in fact be thrown off by things like food and caffeine which is something I'd already considered and experimented with because of the internet to no avail. I was using the medication exactly as directed and waiting 30-45 minutes after I took the things to get my breakfast on. But because of the article I was like: I am walking my dogs when I'm doing that. Maybe that's slowing it down. Maybe I need to wait an entire hour. As mentioned, at that point I was pretty much out of options so I was like, I wake up to pee once a night at this point in my life, why not just take it then. Nothing bad can come of it.
And that is how my year and a half long torment ended. At the exact moment it seemed like there was no hope and because of an article about precognition. Perfect.
Oh, and if you were curious about the receipts on the Commander Shepard thing, here you go:
Record of the last save before playing Mass Effect 3 (I kept this save point in case anyone wants to fact check in the future):
This is my final save on ME3, indicating that yes, I played this right after that save point. Also, Jesus Christ I played through Mass Effect 3 in like 2 weeks. To my credit, I did have an entire week off during that period but still, wow:
And here he is, Rudy Shepard the best rated player I have ever seen in all my years of playing NBA2K:
And just like I said, he had been in the league for years before I managed to sign him. Have I ever been able to average 20 points a game while shooting over 90% from the field with a player in 2K ever before? Nope:
Stay weird tripsters.
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