Berkeley's Illusions

By Violetlight

Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, but I wish I did. That pleasure goes to Square Enix. I do own Lana and Jake, as they are from my original "Lana" series. If you want to read more about them, just check out my page on fictionpress. com. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my fic!

This is a story about a little girl named Lana. She was a bright, spirited girl, with a big imagination, but sometimes, adults would think it was a little too big. Not just adults either. Lana had a brother, Jake, who was in high school, and sometimes, she thought, he acted weird. Like right now. Jake was supposed to be working on his biology homework while their parents were on a rare, well-deserved night out together, but instead, he had hooked up his Nintendo Game Cube (which he was supposed to be grounded from) and Game Boy Player.

"Jake, whatcha doing?" Lana asked.

"Nothing Kiddo, just…um…checking the wires on this thing. Yeah, that's it."

"Didn't Mom tell you to do your homework?"

"It's Friday! I have all weekend to do it!"

"But Jake…"

"Tell, you what. If you don't tell Mom or Dad, I'll take you to the park tomorrow."

"Okay, but let me watch your game too."

"It's a deal, Kiddo. Ah! Found it!" Jake pulled out a tiny, little black Game Boy Advance game and plugged it into the Player.

"Hey, isn't that the game you got for your birthday, and haven't put down since?" Lana asked.

"Yeah, it's really cool. It's called "Final Fantasy Tactics Advance". It's probably a little too complicated for a little kid like you, but you can watch, and we'll play Mario Party 4 together afterwards."

"Can I play as the Princess?"

"Sure."

"So what's this game about?"

"Well, for starters, this is me." Jake pointed to the blond-haired boy on screen who was talking to something Jake called a "moogle", a white teddy bear with little red bat wings on its back and a red pom pom on its head. "I'm supposed to be part of a clan, which is a group of characters who work together to do jobs, go on missions, get in fights and other fun stuff. I can level up my clan members and change their jobs and equipment and stuff."

"So you can play dress-up with them?"

"It's not dress-up! It's strategy!"

Lana watched her brother play for an hour, fascinated by the fantasy world portrayed in the game, with people, moogles, and other characters all working together. There were the lizard-like Bangaa, the Viera, rabbit-women warriors, and Lana's favourite, the cute, cuddly blue furred magicians called Nu Mou. Afterwards, Lana and Jake played a round of Mario Party, then it was time for Lana to go to bed.

"Okay, what story do you want tonight?" Jake asked. "Cinderella? Sleeping Beauty? Snow White?"

"Jake, could you tell me a story about one of your Nu Mou in Final Fantasy?"

"Um…okay. If you want. Which one?"

"Hm…um…how about your Illusionist? What was his name…oh yeah! Berkeley!"

"Okay. Once upon a time there was an Illusionist named Berkeley. He was a very smart Nu Mou, who loved his job."

"What was his job?"

"Well, an Illusionist casts powerful magic spells that make people think they're seeing a solar flare, or a storm, or a blizzard. They form illusions, making the world look the way they want it to look."

"That must be hard."

"Well, I guess it is. Berkeley, however, didn't think it was hard at all, since he believed not only the Illusionist spells were illusions, but that the whole world was an illusion! He was so convinced that all of reality was just a figment of his imagination, that he made a challenge to everyone in Ivalice."

"Where?"

"Ivalice, The magic land where he lived. Anyway, he said that if anyone could prove to him that the world wasn't an illusion, he would give them a million gold coins! That's a lot of money."

"Wow. So who won the prize?"

"Nobody. Even though no one really believes Berkeley, nobody can prove that he's wrong either, so Berkeley's money is still sitting there, waiting to be claimed."

"Is that it?"

"Is what it?"

"Is that the whole story?"

"Hey, I'm a gamer, not a writer! I tried my best, Kiddo." Jake complained.

"Sorry Jake. It was a really nice story, really."

"Thanks Kiddo. Now go to sleep before Mom and Dad get home."

"'Kay. G'night Big Brother." Lana sighed, as she driffed off to sleep. "I wonder…is the world really just a dream…?"

Lana opened her eyes. Where was she? Not in bed, that was for sure. Sunlight filtered in soft beams through a round, dusty, old-fashioned looking window, gathering around her in a soft yellow circle. She looked around. She appeared to be a study or workshop of some kind, with a long, wooden staff propped up in one corner, walls lined with (rather messy) bookshelves, and a plain wooden desk with a globe showing unfamiliar continents on one side and beakers and test tubes arranged the other, with a scattering of papers and an old-fashioned ink pot with a feathered quail pen sticking out of it in the middle.

"Where am I?" Lana asked herself. "Is this all a dream?"

"A very good question, young lady. Ah, found them." The papers on the desk shifted as someone came out from under the desk.

Lana blinked. Smiling at her was a light-blue furred creature with long, floppy ears. It was standing in a hunched state, arranging its glasses on its snout in front of gentle looking eyes. It was a Nu Mou! One of the same magic-wielding stuffed animals from Jake's game!

"Now then, child. You had a question about the world?"

"Um…who are you, and how did I get here?" Lana asked.

"Very good, very good questions, little girl. I am the great Illusionist, Berkeley. How you got here, well, you are, like all things, an illusion, so it doesn't really matter."

"Wait, you're saying I'm just an illusion."

"That you are, and so am I and this desk and chair and everything else in this world."

"But why do you think that?"

"Well, you see, I'm an Illusionist. That's my job. I make things appear using my magic, but they aren't really there. Now, what if this whole world was nothing but somebody casting a spell, nothing but a figment in somebody's consciousness, the Great Illusionist, if you will, and that everybody and everything exists just because he, she, it, whatever thinks that it does."

"That doesn't make any sense. I see you standing here, I hear you talking. I feel the sunlight on my face and smell the dust in the air. Are you saying that none of this is real?" Lana asked.

"Nothing! None of it!" Berkeley explained. "You sound a lot like Locke, a former clanmate of mine, that dirty little thief. Anyway, he thinks the way you do, that if we see and hear and touch and smell something, then it must be there. He, and many others, think that just because you get "sense perceptions" of different things, that they have to be there. That's what science is based on – the assumption that these material objects do exist. But, without our minds, without us thinking about these ideas, we wouldn't "know" they were there, would we?"

"I…I guess not."

"So, you can conclude that what we do have are ideas, images in our consciousness, and a mind, which has the ideas. And this is all we know."

"But doesn't it make sense that these things must exist? Otherwise, where do we get the ideas for them?"

"Ah, another good question. But think about this: have you ever seen a dragon, for example."

"Sure! One of my best friends is a dragon."

"Okay, bad example." Berkeley said, surprised. "Okay then, what if you had never seen a "real" dragon. How would you know what it looked like?"

"Well, I guess I would imagine it."

"Exactly! We can imagine things – create our own images in our minds that we nor anyone else has ever seen, therefore, why can't we be a creation of somebody else's imagination? Maybe all we do, all we say and think, only occurs because someone imagines that we act that way. This is my Immaterial Hypothesis, that there are no material objects, that the world is simply images in our consciousness put there by a great, powerful, omnipotent Illusionist!" Berkeley jumped up and down with excitement! "I've been trying to figure out this world for years and now, finally, it makes sense!"

"But Mr. Berkeley, aren't you forgetting something?"

"Hm…the Great Illusionist creates our minds and all images in our minds…nope I don't think so."

"Then Mr. Berkeley, who created the Illusionist? Who put the images in his mind of us?"

"Well…um…that's a very good question…what was your name again?"

"Lana."

"Well Lana, I'm going to have to think about that one. Who created the Great Illusionist…maybe an even greater Illusionist? Hm..."

"Mr. Berkeley, I think you're going around in circles."

"Maybe so. It's like that Bangaa-and-the-Egg question. What came first You know, that's not exactly proof that my theory is wrong, but I don't have proof that it's right either. Here." Berkeley gave Lana a simple leather necklace with a small clear jewel hanging from it. "This is a Knowledge Jewel – a good luck charm of mine. It's supposed to make you smarter, but I don't think it's working for me any more. You can have it."

"Thank you Mr. Berkeley. I hope you figure out the world soon!"

"You're welcome, and I hope I do too."

"Lana, Lana, wakey wakey, rise and shine!"

"Wha…oh, hi Mommy. Did you and Daddy have fun yesterday?"

"Yes we did, and thanks for making sure that brother of yours got all his homework done. Now wake up. I'm making French Toast."

"I'll be right there Mommy!" Lana's mother left her room. Lana sat up in bed, yawned, and looked around. Had her talk with Mr. Berkeley all been just a dream? Was anything real, or it all a dream? Lana didn't know. What she did know was that the smell of French toast drifting up from the kitchen smelled really good. She hopped out of bed and ran downstairs, not noticing something sparkling from the carpet.

"What is a dream, what is reality? Will we ever know? Does it matter? Hm…I'll have to think about that one…"

The End

Author's Notes:

Berkeley, in real life, was a Anglican Bishop and Philosopher who thought that the world was an illusion put into our consciousness by God. This may seem far-fetched, so the English Philsophical Society has put away a cash reward (now numbering in the millions of pounds!) for anyone who can prove without any doubt that Berkeley was wrong. To do that, you pretty much well have to prove that God doesnt exist, and since nobodys had the guts to try that yet, the prize remains unclaimed, slowly collecting interest. I wonder if Stephen Hawking knows about this? After all, he did say " mathematically speaking, there is no room for God in the Universe."

I choose the topic of Berkeley's Immaterial Hypothesis because it strikes me as one of the greatest questions of Philosophy, what is real and what isn't? I don't personally agree with the real Berkeley's religious standpoint on the view, and I like Lana, I think the biggest problem with it is the question, "then who imagined God?". I can't, however, prove that Berkeley was wrong.

The fact that always works according to the known laws of nature, that they don't change on a whim is convincing enough to me that the material world does exist, but I still can't prove anything. Can you really prove anything in metaphysics?

It's a very puzzling question.

Another note: Locke, the "dirty little thief" refers to John Locke, a British Philosopher who believed almost the complete opposite to Berkeleys theories. He thought the world was totally composed of material objects, and that we gain knowledge about these things through our sense organs.

Also, Locke refers to Locke Cole, a thief (Locke: TREASURE HUNTER!) in Final Fantasy 6.