I was writing in my office when I heard a melody that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I knew the melody well, because I had recently created it, and yet it was coming from the television in the next room.
Puzzled, I walked into the next room to find my roommate watching an episode of the Netflix show 'Black Mirror', called 'San Junipero'.
The release date of Season 3 of the Black Mirror, which contained the San Junipero episode, was October 20, 2016, but I created the melody weeks earlier as background music to a podcast episode for a story I wrote (the file saved to my computer shows a creation date of October 2, 2016).
Not only was the melody nearly identical to the one I created, but the esoteric subject matter of the Black Mirror episode was strikingly similar to the story I was writing.
The San Junipero episode is about a consciousness preservation technology, which allows users to upload their consciousness into a cloud, in order to interact in a digital world called 'San Junipero'.
My story, which I call 'Instance 81', is about the imminent tech singularity, which tells the story of a futuristic revolution over the issue of digital consciousness.
Both stories orbit around the central idea of digital consciousness, and for both stories, the authors chose a nearly identical lead-in melody.
Interesting coincidence, right?
Background & Analysis:
There comes a point, after you've consumed every notable piece of science fiction in existence, that you begin to formulate a map or gestalt of the shape and dimensions of the genre of "science fiction" as a whole. You become aware of the dominant themes of science fiction, such that you can create a linear, chronological model of the genre from it's inception to the meta-moment.
Having this level of intimacy with the body of science fiction allows one to understand where the boundary lines and untraversed territories are. That is, once you can visualize, measure, and quantify the whole of a body of literature, it becomes trivial to understand what needs to be written in order for it to be considered new or novel from the existing whole.
From this vantage point, if you are imaginative enough, you stand a good chance of creating something completely new or novel.
What I knew in 2016, is that mainstream science fiction was barreling forward into the territory of consciousness and the nature of reality. Whereas, previously, popular science fiction inhabited the tangible part of reality known as "materialism".
I knew this because prominent figures like Ray Kurzweil had been on the record speculating about the coming technological singularity in his books: 'The Age of Intelligent Machines' (1990) and 'The Age of Spiritual Machines' (1999).
Subsequent Netflix releases like Altered Carbon, Love Death & Robots, and The Midnight Gospel confirmed my assumption. They were sign posts confirming that I was on the right path. But the most glaring signpost came in the form of the melody, which I described above.
I had been working on 'Instance 81' for a few months. I was fresh out of law school, jobless, and inspired by the book 'The Martian' - I figured (and perhaps I was a bit delusional) that if an accountant (Andy Weir) could write a mainstream science fiction book, which got adapted to the big-screen, starring Matt Damon, well then maybe I could too.
Just as I built a good head of steam, the Matrix intervened and found me my first gig as a lawyer. Saddled with student loan debt, I jumped at the chance. This put on pause my dream of becoming the next Andy Weir.
Eight years later and I'm still chipping away at 'Instance 81' (in truth, it's been long periods of neglect punctuated by random moments of inspiration).
More coincidences or synchronicities related to my book would occur in the years to follow, but the most memorable was the melody.
Notably, nothing of what I had written was inspired by Carl Jung. I had not yet studied concepts like, the collective unconscious, active imagination, individuation, or most prescient here, synchronicity.
I always considered the extreme coincidence of the 2016 Black Mirror melody as just that, a coincidence. I thought that maybe the San Junipero sound engineer stumbled upon the same app as I did, or maybe the app I used had some connection to his work, which would explain my pre-use of the melody. But the mystery of the similarity in themes between my story and San Junipero remains.
Synchronicity Checkpoint!
I think a good idea to post synchronicities as data points.
Someday soon, Ai might be able to aggregate and constellate the data points, which may generate a gestalt (or map) unlocking deeper insights into the nature of reality.
So, if you have cool (and honest) synchronicities to report, I'm open to the idea of creating a constellation portal. Would be cool to get a flood into my inbox so I can publish daily.
Email PortoAtheras@Gmail.com.