Real Virtualities

REAL VIRTUALITIES

Maria Pellegrini

Virrealismo Publishing

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

By the Same Author

Introduction

Club Imero

The Permanent Exhibition

Brief Notes on Virrealism

Virtual Vortices

Siei and the Future

Senses, Sensations and Hypersenses

Stories of the Past

The Arachnids and the Dark Tides

Evolving Systems

The Contract

The Accident

The Adventure

Into the Virtual Abyss

Hypersenses of the Space?

The Hourglass Game

Possibilities

The Linear Dislocations

Ura

At The Albadai

Parallel Realities

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Real Virtualities

Maria Pellegrini

Front Cover :Abstract Shapes

© Rui Dias Aidos Dreamstime.com

Original Title: Virtualità Reali

Translation by: Virrealismo Publishing

© VIRREALISMO PUBLISHING

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-0-9567741-6-3

eBook First English Edition April 2011

A very special thanks to David.

virrealismo.com

By the Same Author

Fiction

TALES FROM THE MOTHER GALAXY - A collection of five short stories:

The War of the Plutonidians

Zetana the Disconnected

Borrowed Brains

Planets Under Glass

Tuméng

ACCIDENTAL WARRIOR

CHANGE OF STATE FIRST PHASE

Non Fiction

Robotics And Virtuality - How The Future Will Be Transformed By Robotics And Virtual Reality

Introduction

The catastrophic Dark Tides had destroyed all who remained on the surface of the planet Earth.  But the great, open minded Arachnids had rebelled against the normal, short sighted thinking and understood what was coming so saving as much knowledge as they could they sought refuge in the depths of the Earth to escape extinction until at last new civilisations could emerge.

People of Future Earth discover the Past, play with the Present and invent the Future.  The concept of work has changed, in fact everything has changed.  The long centuries of underground captivity had taught humans to exist without the slavery of possession, in a virtual world where objects and spaces had one, none and a hundred thousand forms.  It is the era of Virrealism.

While carrying out a project to create a new virtual game, Siei and Dari find themselves inside the game itself.  But ist is not real no virtual, it is simply a fantastic architectural labyrinth, a jewel of logical perfection.  On learning of this, the General Commission, organized sorties of real and virtual exploration.  After months of searching a realization grows of the possibility that the virtual game could have accidentally allowed Siei and Dari to enter in to a hitherto unknown, secret game.  The tension increases.

When finally the third level of this strange virtual-game is conquered, everything becomes clear and the game is over.  But it is only the end of a new beginning since the games should never end because then all would become an absolute silence and a large tedium, do you remember? To block the mechanisms of the game means to destroy the meaning of everything.

A climactic conclusion, reality it self will never be the same again.

IL N’Y A D’AILLEURS AUCUNE INCOMPATIBILITÉ ENTRE L’EXACT ET LE POÉTIQUE.

LE NOMBRE EST DANS L’ART COMME DANS LA SCIENCE.

L’ALGÈBRE EST DANS L’ASTRONOMIE, ET L’ASTRONOMIE TOUCHE À LA POÉSIE;

L’ALGÈBRE EST DANS LA MUSIQUE, ET LA MUSIQUE TOUCHE À LA POÉSIE.

L’ESPRIT DE L’HOMME A TROIS CLEFS QUI OUVRENT TOUT:

LE CHIFFRE, LA LETTRE, LA NOTE.

SAVOIR, PENSER, RÊVER. TOUT EST LÀ.

Victor Hugo, 1840

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There is no incompatibility between the exact and the poetic. Number is in art as well as in science.  Algebra is in astronomy and astronomy is akin to poetry.  Algebra is in music and music is akin to poetry. The spirit of man has three keys which open everything Numbers, Letters, Notes. To know, to think, to dream. That’s all. Victor Hugo, 1840

Club Imero

Siei's personal maximum time allowance for a project was six months and the current project which was still not quite finished had taken almost that length of time.  Really it should have been four months plus one to test, but things had become a bit complicated so it had taken longer.

In Future Earth the work concept had changed compared to the old societies.  In fact everything had changed.  Here and there, as one would expect, there were always individuals who still had not managed to get over the ancient barriers, who felt the desperate need to repeat their actions and were ruled by habit.  They had a sad existence, trapped in the ritual daily routines of short and monolithic lives, unable to break free.  They were at the same time masters and slaves of their own existence, cogs lost and no longer functional in those new societies that did not need machines anymore.

Ideas, games, passions.  To know, to think, to dream… indeed.  The past at some point had understood this but then something was missing… to tell the truth, the past was still not ready.  But today in Siei's time, everyone could create, invent, investigate.  To be authors and executors of their own ideas or even to plan them in a group.  Any sort of thought could take shape.  But as in a game and above all for the pure pleasure of it.

Yes, just like in a game and so people were growing up.  An ancient key that had not been used much.  Sometimes perhaps, only by a few and with discretion or jealousy or fear.  Fear of opening forbidden doors and then being discovered, being judged, perhaps mocked or worse executed, but certainly almost always, almost always misunderstood.  And yet they amused themselves, oh yes, and then they left their inheritance to all; wonderful toys and ingenious new games.

Just like in a game.  The pleasure of inventing something new or of repeating the world and its things.  And then the fictions!  The impossible journeys on the swing that makes you fly, where the time between an ascent and a descent multiplies or disappears, it does not follow rules.  The power of creating realities that do not exist, to be able to feel yourself inside them … and then to convince others too that they do exist.  To pretend to be animals that chase each other to reach dreams' destinations, or corners of courtyards that move and between the cries and the laughter they intertwined with each other.  To repeat The History of men, to invent one of the heroes, to imitate the gods when they create worlds in the vortex of their minds … and then cast them into oblivion.

Nevertheless to request or to design projects of long duration (long games) was generally inadvisable, it was possible to get bored.  Like dedicating yourself to more than one project at a time (multiple games) that was not forbidden of course, but considered risky.  The truth was that if you did it, then it was very possible to lose the sense of life and certainly the pleasure of existence - it was here perhaps where so many geniuses had missed out.  Besides it was considered antisocial for an individual to become responsible for the possible contribution of many.  Luckily the addiction to long or multiple contracts was not such a common trend, another hang up perhaps that a few had not yet overcome.  This barrier to happiness could probably be attributed (it had been suggested) to a mild genetic malformation  that prevented the individual becoming easily free of old burdens and so it was possible just to feel sorry for those who were suffering from it.  It was quite well known in fact that hyperactivity was the effect of a type of cerebral asthma that sprang from the fear of silence; in short a kind of defence that generated a sense of security.  It was difficult for some people (fortunately only a few) to feel themselves alone even just for an instant, to taste the sensation of their own existence just for a moment or simply give their essence to a friend, a son, a lover… in other words any other being.

After stumbling once or twice upon such asthmatics, Siei had left the playing field with a shake of the head and an amused smile.

Sorry, but long contracts, or even worse multiple ones, are definitely not my style. - said Siei walking away with a wave of the hand above the head without turning, while at the same time thinking with characteristic glacial calm, ‘Yes, and it's certainly the least pleasant way of frying my brain’.  In fact Siei knew much more enjoyable ways of doing that!

It was usual in the new societies to rest between one contract and the next.  Life, although more complex in certain respects, had been simplified and its demands had changed.  The people of Future Earth had found a new way of living the reality and had learnt, at great cost, a profound respect for Nature.  A new equilibrium had been reached.

The planet was still licking its wounds after the disastrous events of the past so the colonies of those who had survived had been established in the islands of ancient and new archipelagos so as not to disturb the convalescence.  Here the virtual realities multiplied space and created the environment.  Progress had not been stopped (on the contrary!) and it continued to provide for human existence without having again to upset the balance between available resources and necessity.

Siei sometimes stopped in Café and other types of virtual clubs.  These were called virtual cubes, in which a night out anywhere in space or time could be programmed.  The superior sensitivity of the people of Future Earth was causing a very profound emotional involvement that allowed the players to be immersed in virtuality and to feel themselves actors rather than spectators, sometimes even protagonists.

The project on which Siei had been working for some months had begun one evening at the Club Imero  together with Dari, Siei's inseparable techno-arm, the one who dealt with the most technical part of the contracts that they often carried out together.

At the Imero, which was in fact one of these cubes, there were always big halls full of people, mostly virtual bodies but also a lot of real ones.  Here and there, scattered between the columns of that unreal environment there were round tables, thrones, sofas and armchairs.  And down there, the DJ, having scrambled up onto his high altar.  Happy groups of dancing bodies.  A beautiful atmosphere all around.  Half empty glasses, smiles emerging from warm bodies wrapped in adherent clothes.  Gestures of harmony and wild tribal dances breaking out in the smoke of false ancestral fires.  Beautiful people exchanging emotions.  They went upstairs.

Now they were just above the DJ.  They observed his hands running wildly from one disc to another, and between the fractions of instants that separate the movements, he is able to synthesise, to distort, to amplify… The music is strong, it drags memory down into the womb where the rhythm of the heart is synchronised and where you abandon yourself between the membranes of life.

Great technician of sound, but where could they have found him? - asks Dari highly impressed.

Yes, he is good - Siei answered - but to capture the mind like this he must have had great charisma too.

True, true, - nodded Dari- also of course we know... the advantage of chemical stimuli!- and then added,

Just think if he were here today what he would be able to do…

Yep… - agreed Siei swinging over the balustrade and starting to follow the games of the laser lights, but then suddenly turning asked, Dari what's on your programme for the next few months?

Take it easy Siei… what are you thinking?  This time I'm telling you I want an easy contract, no problems and no mental vertigo!

No, no I promise you, this will be a really amusing game.

Sure, like all the other times… - Dari muttered quietly.

Noooo... - interrupted Siei who then whispered gently caressing the empty space around - look, listen, feel... Can't you feel what they are feeling … can't you?

Well, we take the most boring existing musical instrument such as…

The nauticoro? - interrupted Dari giggling.

Exactly, the nauticoro said Siei who with a jump was on the board of the balustrade, continuing to talk with the excited look of the visionary, which Dari sadly knew too well.

We build around it a virtual envelope that is able to synchronise shape, movement, colour and sound in such a way as to recreate in the mind the sensations that surround us here… and then we experiment them with the hypersenses.  There you go, easy... - and smiling between arched eyebrows of cunning innocence said - as you have suggested yourself really.

There followed a moment of resigned hesitation.

Right, OK... got it - Dari grumbled squeezing the amused eyes - but look, I give you no more than three months…

Four, plus a month for testing. - negotiated Siei.

The agreement erupted between them, at the end of the day it was only a game.  Hands were gripped and they plunged into the ecstatic sweat of happy bodies!

The Permanent Exhibition

The next day Siei and Dari got together to finalise the new project and later they fixed to meet up the following morning at the Permanent Exhibition.

They