Stories and story-worlds guided by the hands of their creators. Or something else. "They call this entity the Simulacrum and its collection of worlds the Simulacra. The Simulacrum doesn’t just copy the world, it adjusts it, adds things to the world, deletes other things. But its most terrifying power is its ability to alter meaning: to change what people care about or find interesting or the very relationships people have to things, to other people, to themselves."