THE ( VIRTUALLY ) REAL LIFE

My companions and I are in some kind of a building and strange, inexplicable things begin to happen. Every time we open a door to some room, the room and the things in it have changed. People try to explore the building and find that it has an impossible structure. They enter the top floor, go into a room and suddenly find themselves in a room on the ground floor.

 

Then someone screams out: “Don't you see what is happening! None of this is real! This is all Virtual Reality! Someone is running this game and we are all its involuntary, unwitting participants. So we can do anything, break all of society’s taboos, take any risks, shoot one another, because it is all a fake game.”

 

At once I devise a way of putting this remarkable claim to the test. I speed off in my car and start driving along train tracks that ascend to a great height before they end abruptly in mid-air. My car goes for a graceful flight through the air, spinning and turning, soaring up on the warm air currents, then gradually descending, rising again higher and higher, then stopping and hovering in midair.

 

Finally, I get tired of flying and crash land on top of a high-rise building. “I wonder if I have sustained any injuries?” I think to myself. “If this really is a virtual world then I should be just fine!”

 

It then occurs to me that the fact that my life has been virtual reality all along would certainly explain a lot of things. I always thought that this world and my life in it never made any sense – things were just too absurd and incoherent. Horrible, unthinkably terrifying events like massacres, famine, persecutions, injustices that would never happen in the real world kept occurring, time after time after time.

Now I could see why certain things kept getting lost and disappearing in my life, why my life never worked out right, why something always got in its way and ruined its forward progress.

 

Now I could comprehend why I could never fit in anywhere and always felt at odds with the whole world, for this wasn’t an authentic environment, but an artifice of someone else’s mind, a degenerate, corrupt copy of the real reality.

 

Yes, this wasn’t the universe that the Absolute Being created, according to His flawlessly sublime and ideal specifications, but rather a creation of some devious, impious, immoral human being. And so it contained within its make-up all the faults, deficiencies and imperfections that every human construction possesses, as well as being coloured by the particularly nasty character of the cad running this Virtual Reality game.

 

It was also obvious that this contemptible creature held, for some reason or another, an intensely bitter grudge against me in particular. He obviously meted out the worst of his cruel tricks on me, judging by how my life has been just one senseless absurdity after another. 

 

“What kind of person am I really like outside of this game?” I wonder to myself. “What is my life really like in the real world? Who is the wise guy that’s created this diabolically evil game? What’s he got against me? Wait till I find my way out of this virtual world and get my hands on him! I’ll make him pay for all that he’s done to my life!”

 

And just then, an even more devastating thought strikes me: “What if I am the evil genius who created and is operating this game? What if it is I who inflicted all this misery, pain, suffering onto myself and the whole world? But why would I do that? Why would I torment myself so?”

Reviews

[Lynx]

Very creative, ingenious idea. I mean seriously, it has been known by most people, we are destroying our own lives, making everything so difficult for ourselves, but never has it really been written down on paper in this way. Very awesome piece, congrats.

[Rain]

If heard this many times, the thought we are just someone's dream, or nightmare. Actually, scientists are looking for proof of identical worlds...a kind of bubble theory, where our universe is in a bubble and outside the bubble are trillions of other universes in their own bubble. Worlds where we live identical lives, but with all these variations. They think that the slightest change in these other worlds, and perhaps the holocaust didn't happen...that Mid-East relations are good, but other wars that take place in these alternative worlds, didn't happen in ours. Which means there are perhaps billions of other you's who dream and think totally different. Fascinating,huh? Rain..

[Celtic Cat]

EXCELLENT. I love this, expecially the ending. It's a great piece.... so in tune with reality.... explaining away the madness that should never have been allowed to spew forth. I absolutely love that you realize it could be you who created it... such an ingenious ending. Absolutely wonderful read.

[Siddartha Beth Pierce]

Intriquing concepts once again...what if you are the constructor of such a thing...perhaps it is so as we are our own worst critics we may make the world around us a rough and tough construction as well. The oblivious nature of the creator of such a world is quite frightening really. One would hope we had more control over our lives but alas that is not so very often. Much to contemplate here. Thank you.
Light,
Siddartha

[ElJays Nicholas]

This is exactly how most people are feeling, like pawns in some great spiritual conquest. So, we create belief systems and deities to explain what happens to us in this world. If there is a massive earthquake, then the gods must be angry. And, we acquire a dual mentality, of good vs. evil, of "us" vs. "them", because it is the only way the human mind can accept the tragedies incurred. If we are locked into a specific way of thinking, with no awareness beyond what we see, then it is easy to blame God, or to create something like the demiurge to compensate for our lack of understanding.

But, when we are able to expand our awareness, to see beyond what we think is reality, then an entirely different kind of scene unfolds. We know that we are creators as well as the created, and nothing can come against us when we know who we truly are. Good work, my friend.........

[Wildfleour]

A very interest premise and bone-chilling. Are we the puppets or the puppeteers? What is reallity?

This reminds me of a scene in a movie where the Gods were moving humans around a chess board.

[Krishna]

In fact of late I've been thinking a lot how all life is our fiction and in a sense, we even spend a portion of our time 'online' and are thus 'everywhere at once and nowhere in particular'. It does put a different spin on space and time, if one day we live in virtual reality, what difference will it make eh?

I like the whole feel of what you have written here, it could be the start of some kind of a cyber-novel.

I think paradigm of the matrix did pop culture some good, preparing us and reminding us who impressionable we are to the zeitgeist and collective influences we generally take for granted.

I myself would like to take more courses in sociology, as all this intrigues me a great deal, I've also read a lot of science fiction and I find it stimulates me. Cognitive psychology would also have a great deal to say on the topic, although I'm not quite sure what - it being midnight here.

I shall post more about the content later, but this is what first came to mind....thanks for sharing Boris.

[Sara]

"Why would I torment myself so?"

this is very thought provoking, and metaphorical...certainly we all torture oursleves in some way by our habits or faults.
again, really great.
-sara :-)

[Joseph - Michael]

That was a really interesting concept you've written here. And it's really true as well. I must say that I'm quite impressed on how you described things like that

Other than that, it's all great here...

[Dice Rosenthal]

Now I could comprehend why I could never fit in anywhere and always felt at odds with the whole world, for this wasn�t an authentic environment, but an artifice of someone else�s mind, a degenerate, corrupt copy of the real reality."

Those lines are what i would qualify as emo lol. But maybe not the rest, since it feels a bit Sci Fi to me. Not that I dont like it, or think it isn't good, since it is. Great job.