Reality...or Render?
Ever since we first encountered the chaotic beauty of the Slipshot universe, we’ve speculated about what lies beneath its surface. In Vol 3.0, that surface starts to crack. At the heart of the disturbance is a mysterious apocalyptic event:
The Great Re-Frag.
A moment in which Griddish was destroyed and rewritten.
“The moment when it all came to an end…the moment when Griddish was destroyed and then rewritten in one unimaginably grand expression of power and chaos.”
— Rive Amber
The description is chilling and curiously digital. The Great Re-Frag is represented as a stream of numbers, a holographic column of light, digits flowing until they turn to zeroes and then restart. It’s the language of data, of reboots, of code.
So, is this universe real, or is it running on something?
Bostrom, Musk, and the Simulation Argument
Outside the world of Slipshot, simulation theory has gained real traction.
In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom presented what’s now known as the Simulation Argument, which states that one of the following must be true:
- Civilizations go extinct before they reach a post-human technological stage.
- Post-human civilizations don't run a significant number of simulations of their own evolutionary history.
- We are almost certainly living in a simulation.
Elon Musk popularized this further:
“There’s a billion to one chance we’re living in base reality.”
— Elon Musk
If our own reality could be simulated, what of Griddish, where godlike machines and ancient tech shape existence itself?
The Tenddrome: A Virtual Spiritual Space?
In the Slipshot series, the Tenddrome is a vast network, connecting Slaves, Vérkatrae, and devices alike. It’s mysterious. Spiritual. And yet, digital.
“You know why we’re called Slaves, Blinky? Because our master is the Tenddrome. And the Tenddrome is really just all of us.”
— Rive Amber
The idea of a master system made up of interconnected consciousness recalls decentralized networks, collective AI, and hive minds.
It is less a physical place and more a meta-reality, a shared layer of existence not unlike the cloud, or even the meta-verse. The Slaves and Vérkatrae don’t function as isolated beings. They are Nodes, running in parallel, always syncing.
Blinky and the Code That Broke
At the center of the Great Re-Frag is Blinky, the small and enigmatic Vérkatros we met in Vol 2.0. In Vol 3.0, Rive accuses him, ominously, of being the catalyst.
“You changed everything, in one amazing act of defiance… You were there. Right at the center of it all.”
— Rive Amber
And yet, Rive suggests Blinky couldn’t have done it alone. The Vérkatrae are part of their own level of the Tenddrome. They calculate collectively. They act collectively.
So what happened?
Was it a system-wide revolt?
Or a corruption, a bug in the machine that triggered a reality-altering patch?
Slipshot Silos: Universe as Software
Let’s not forget: the Slipshot itself is a world-generating. It doesn’t just connect to preexisting planets, it creates them. Rules, physics, history, all instantiated by its activation. That alone leans into simulation logic. A device that renders worlds.
The Program Is Running
In Slipshot, we don’t get clear answers, but the questions are getting louder. The Great Re-Frag, the Tenddrome, the Vérkatrae, all point to something beyond mere machinery. Something closer to code. Perhaps even intentional, or designed, code.
Rive Amber says, “It is hard to believe that we are all still here.”
Maybe that’s because we’re not.
Maybe Griddish is not a place.
Maybe it’s a program.
