Every life features moments that can change everything. There are some choices whose effects will reverberate throughout the rest of our lifetimes, coloring every subsequent experience and largely defining the kind of person that history will judge us to be.

And so it is that with great humility and great hope, I, Allen Adams, must once again declare myself eligible for the draft. Sorry – drafts.

That’s right – just like last time and the time before that, I refuse to have my tremendous gifts taken for granted and pigeonholed.

It has been four years since my last universal declaration for the assorted drafts (which was itself three years subsequent to the previous one). If anything, I’m even more prepared, having added that much more experiential seasoning to my already-considerable abilities. Sure, my joints ache when it rains and I get winded when I tie my shoes, but the trade-off – wisdom – more than makes up for it.

I’m ready.

ST. POMME DE TERRE – Things are once again getting interesting in the isolated hamlet of St. Pomme de Terre, courtesy of the town’s most famous resident.

That’s right – Bigfoot is back in the news.

The hirsute entrepreneur is shifting the focus of his business empire. While the gains made in the outerwear space remain robust – YetiFoot-Grayman’s footwear sales continue to dominate the marketplace – Bigfoot has found himself stagnating. Success is wonderful and all, but giant man-apes aren’t usually inclined to rest on their laurels.

Bigfoot sought to extend himself into a nontraditional space, to tackle an industry ripe for the kind of disruption that only a mythical seven-foot-tall beast can bring to the table.

Cryptocurrency.

BANGOR – My dog Stella is a good girl. The best girl, really.

And this isn’t just because she is an adorable little Carolina dog – although she is that. It isn’t because she’s friendly and loving and more than a little weird – although she is those things as well.

No, it’s because over the past few years, Stella has reached for the stars in ways that few (if any) non-animated dogs ever have. Over the course of the past handful (pawful?) of years, she has achieved greatness in a variety of seemingly unrelated fields. She has shined with a bright intellectual excellence that is unmatched by any of her fellow canines.

I’ve shared Stella’s accomplishments in these pages many times over the years. Granted, my initial efforts were disguised in an effort to maintain some degree of privacy – and besides, there are some stories that you know will prove difficult to believe even as you tell them – but I have still chronicled a number of her stellar doings in print and online.

I’ve decided that the time has finally come for me – us – to lay it all on the table. It is time for us to lay out the tremendous talents of this singular canine once and for all, for all the world to see.

It is time for me to officially introduce you to Bangor’s Renaissance dog.

We’ll start with the ongoing project with which you’re all likely the most familiar.

BANGOR – Another literary genius has sprung from the fertile creative soil of our region, with a debut author preparing to take the world of letters by storm. But she is not just any author – this writer is a respected competitive chess player and a groundbreaking app developer. She decided that her next conquest would be the written word.

She is also a dog.

Longtime readers might remember stories from years past when we covered this pooch’s bevy of canine accomplishments – her surprise aptitude for chess, her elegant and effective coding ability – but this latest installment in her adventures presents an opportunity not just to promote her excellence, but to issue a confession.

This dog is my dog. She has always been my dog.

ST. POMME DE TERRE – For a small town nestled away in amidst the forests and potato fields of northwestern Aroostook County, the hamlet of St. Pomme de Terre sure does see some big drama, usually driven by the massive hairiness and sharp business savvy of its most famous resident, Bigfoot.

The former selectman and current footwear entrepreneur has found himself in the spotlight once again, albeit reluctantly.

Bigfoot has retained counsel and filed suit against beloved indie production icons the Duplass Brothers, claiming that their upcoming docuseries – “Sasquatch,” a three-part series scheduled to drop on April 20 – is defamatory to him and his cryptid brethren. According to his lawyer, Bigfoot is seeking a cease and desist on the airing of the program, as well as punitive damages in the area of $100 million.

Are we living in a simulation?

It’s a question that has risen to prominence in certain technophilosophical circles in recent years, though in truth, the skeptical hypothesis regarding just how real reality is has been around for centuries; perhaps the most pop culturally present of those ancient arguments are things like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave or the “butterfly dream” from the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, though many other long-ago thinkers expressed similar ideas.

What it boils down to is the notion that everything about the universe we occupy, from the tiniest molecule to the most massive star, is a computer simulation. That includes us, by the way.

This current flavor of this theory springs largely from work in the early 2000s by the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, whose premise presupposes that future predictions regarding the massive increase of computing power are accurate and that at some point, said supercomputing capacity would be devoted to running simulations of civilization’s forebears. Assuming those simulations are sufficiently detailed and fine-tuned, the people in them will be conscious and sentient … and virtual.

Bostrom’s simulation argument – which he calls a trilemma – states that one of these three statements is almost certain to be true:

1.     The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (i.e. capable of developing these sort of immense simulations) is very close to zero.
2.     The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history, or variations thereof, is close to zero.
3.     The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation are very close to one.

Bostrom goes on to posit through anthropic reasoning that IF that third statement is true, then we are almost certainly living in a simulation.

There – that’s everything that five minutes on Wikipedia could teach me about simulation theory. You’re welcome.

But that’s not the whole story. In fact, we here in The Maine Edge’s Investigative Futurism Department have spent several hours digging into a different possibility with regard to our simulated world – a possibility that hits us where we live. You see, after much experimentation and deliberation, the IFD has come to an undeniable and paradigm-shattering conclusion.

We ARE in a simulation, but not one crafted by the powers that be in some far-flung future. No, the simulation in which we exist is not, one could argue, a simulation at all.

We’re characters in a story. Specifically, a Stephen King story.

ST. POMME DE TERRE – In what should come as no surprise to regular readers of these pages, the cryptid consortium in the small northern Maine hamlet of St. Pomme de Terre are back in the news.

The past couple of years have seen the merger of YetiFoot Industries with OG cryptid-fronted footwear company Greyman Galoshes really thrive, with the combined forces of Bigfoot, the Yeti and the Scottish giant ape-man Am Fear Liath Mor (AKA Greyman) cornering the market on high-end outdoor footwear.

While industry leaders like L.L. Bean and Patagonia can’t be thrilled with the ever-rising popularity of YetiFoot-Greyman, there’s not a single executive out there who won’t admit – however begrudgingly – that they’re actually quite fond of the YF-G leadership.

BREWER – Earlier this month, area residents watched as the U.S. Coast Guard cutters Thunder Bay and Shackle worked their way up and down the Penobscot River, carving through the ice in an effort to open up the river following a long winter.

According to official spokespeople, the annual operation is executed to help prevent inland flooding; the ice is broken up and allowed to flow downstream. It winds up in the ocean rather than city parking lots and basements when the spring thaw arrives in earnest.

But is that REALLY why they’re doing it?

SEDGWICK – Walter McCormick, 48, of Sedgwick, says a stop at a CVS pharmacy in Augusta in late January inspired him to finally put his affairs in order after the young clerk handed him a receipt of more than 18 feet in length.

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