Copper Mirrors & Quantum Cards: Poker, Buddhism & the Simulated Universe

Science Fiction Author D. Colin Palmer invites you into a copper‑rimmed home poker room—bronze mirroring from Dollarama set into the tabletop, edges burnished to catch a small domestic dawn—on the eve of an October tournament at a Native Canadian (First Nations) casino in his province, a top‑notch room with excellent food and dealers who move like clockwork. This long‑form monologue braids quantum mechanics and theoretical physics with Buddhist philosophy to ask whether reality is a simulated copy of a perfect point of origin that endlessly cascades into ever‑so‑slightly warped iterations—an infinite hall of mirrors where we act in unison with the source while struggling with the paradox of free will and determinism. Along the way: śūnyatā (emptiness) and dharmakāya (ground of being), pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination), and Indra’s Net refract through the felt; entanglement echoes in table dynamics; karma becomes a probability distribution shaped by intention; and a single chip pushed across that copper edge feels like one bright facet of a boundless lattice. Come for the cards, stay for the cosmology: a grounded, personal reflection on craft, casinos, and the shimmering code we call a life.