Devs: A Box Within A Box

He finished Episode 7 of ‘Devs’ and sat there in a daze. The mouse ran frantically on its wheel between his ears. Stewart had forced him to question his entire existence with just seven words. 

The engine of the story in ‘Devs’ is a massive quantum supercomputer. It’s so powerful that it’s able to map out every particle of matter in the known universe. Using the principles of determinism it’s able to see forward and backward in time, to every corner of space, everything, all the way up and all the way down. It’s omniscient. Deus.  

In Episode 7 Stewart gave his team a demonstration of the system in action. He projected forward one second into the future and showed them audio and video of themselves. He summarized the unsettling performance with a few haunting words.

“The box contains us. The box contains everything. And inside the box, there’s another box. Ad infinitum; ad nauseam. Uh oh.”

And inside the box, there’s another box.

He was no stranger to most of the big ideas that formed the bones of this show. He’d seen ‘The Matrix’. He’d read about Simulation Theory. He was familiar with the multiverse. Quantum mechanics. Determinism versus free will. He’d heard all these notes before. But then Stewart surprised him by playing a new chord.  

Within the all-seeing computer (also known as ‘the box’) was a complete and accurate simulation of our entire universe. It held all of space and time. It contained everything. Therefore, it would also contain ‘the box’. A box within a box.

Since the box within the simulation would be as complete and accurate as the rest of the universe, it would be fully functional. It would also contain a flawless simulation of the universe, including another box. And within that box would be another box. And another, and another. Like a Russian nesting doll. An infinite tunnel of mirrors. Turtles all the way down. 

Simulation Theory argues that someday our technology will become so advanced that we’ll be able to produce a simulation that’s indistinguishable from reality. And if that’s inevitably going to happen, then statistically speaking, it’s almost guaranteed to have already happened and we’re existing within one of those simulations. We aren’t living in base reality. We’re in a box. 

What he hadn’t heard discussed before is the logical extension of that theory. If the simulation is indistinguishable from reality, then wouldn’t the technology of the inhabitants inevitably progress to the point where they would create a simulation of their own? And within that simulation the inhabitants would advance until they create their own simulation. The universes would spontaneously stack layer upon layer, “Ad infinitum; ad nauseam. Uh oh.”  

People are glitching over the thought that we might exist within a simulation rather than base reality. But that’s asking the wrong question. Reality isn’t a house. It’s a skyscraper. It’s a dark tower with an endless spiral staircase. The real question is which floor we’re on.  

He remembered playing a video game called 'Grand Theft Auto V'. In it he controlled a character that goes into an arcade where it plays a video game. A game within a game. A box within a box. And that was twelve years ago. Now we have digital entities that can pass the Turing test. We have quantum computers with over a thousand qubits. How convincing will our simulations be in a decade? Or a century? How long before our video game characters are aware that they exist within an artificial simulation? 

Then he had a disturbing thought. Is somebody writing me right now? Am I writing this, or is somebody writing me writing this? Am I the author, or the subject, or both? Which turtle am I?     

His head was spinning from the implications. There was only one way to untangle his thoughts. He got up from his couch, walked over to his desk, and turned on his computer. Then he logged into his website and began to write.


- Shane's Lobos
15 September 2025