A/N Eh, I'm so bad at these. None of the concepts herein are mine – so far nothing here belong to anyone else either, but there you go. This isn't exactly a Matrix-fic for this part, just my own random musings and ramblings (I ramble a lot, let me tell you), but will become more so later on.
The class shuffled restlessly as Cassie walked slowly to the front. She was small and skinny, with a pale ordinary face and unremarkable grey eyes. Her brown hair was pulled back into a tight bun, making her face look stark and unadorned, clear of makeup. Her complexion was not softened any by the unrelieved black of her clothes – an oversized black wool overcoat concealed everything of her body but her chunky black boots.
A mocking comment made her turn her head slightly, but her eyes did not flicker and her face remained peacefully blank. The boy who made the comment shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It was generally thought that Cassie was a bit strange in the head. Somebody had made a joke soon after she came to the school about clock towers and sniper rifles. She had given him a blank look until he backed slowly away. People were wary of her.
She reached the front of the class and turned to face them. "I'm going to talk about reality," she said to the teacher, who nodded apathetically. She squared her shoulders, paused, then threw a ball at the boy who had made the snide comment just before. Surprised, he caught it – she hadn't really thrown it very hard, and he played baseball.
"How did you catch that?" she asked calmly.
"You threw it!" He sounded offended.
"How did you know?" she asked, apparently unruffled.
"I saw you," he said, sounding puzzled.
"Did you see me?" she asked a girl at the back of the class.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Wasn't looking," replied the girl laconically.
"Did I throw the ball?"
The girl frowned. "I think so."
"How would you know? Did you see it happen?"
"No but… you did. Didn't you?"
"Never mind. That was an illustration of my first point – the reality is subjective." Her face and voice were calm and smooth, revealing nothing. It could have been a machine talking for all she gave away. "Allan saw me throw the ball – it was real to him. As a reaction to that reality, he caught it. Rebecca didn't see me throw the ball. She has only been told about it and seen the aftereffects – Allan holding the ball. It wasn't real to her, only something she had been told about. Their reality is different."
She paused and looked around the class. Even the teacher was looking mildly interested. "So, if reality is subjective, what keeps it in line? Why doesn't everyone see things differently from one another? Is there actually an absolute reality that all realities must bow to?
In other words, did I actually throw the ball?"
"Yes," said a boy about halfway back the room.
"How do you know?" she shot back.
"I saw you," he said defensively.
"Maybe you just dreamed it. Maybe your memory is faulty. Maybe it wasn't real."
"They all saw it too," he protested. Heads bobbed in support.
"Maybe none of them are real. Maybe I'm not real. Maybe we're all just a figment of your imagination."
"I am not!" His girlfriend. Several people laughed at that.
"Maybe he's just a figment of your imagination, then. Maybe we're all figments of each others' imagination."
"How is that possible?"
She sighed. "If none of us are here, but we all think we're here, and we all think everybody else is as well – that's how."
"But that isn't possible," said the teacher. "So many minds would fragment, and create their own realities. People would go crazy."
"True," conceded Cassie, "Unless of course the reality we all think we perceive is being controlled by an outside force."
"Like god, or something?"
Cassie frowned slightly. "Not exactly. Think of it this way. You've all heard of virtual reality, right?" Nods. "What if a virtual reality program could be so completely flawless that you couldn't tell the difference between it and reality?"
"That's not possible. We'd be able to tell." The class was leaning forward, interested, getting involved. The teacher looked almost startled at this level of class participation from someone who wasn't really all that popular.
"Yes, you would. But what if you'd never known anything else? How would you be able to tell what was more real than the only thing you had ever known?"
"So… If we'd always been in virtual reality, we wouldn't know that it was virtual reality? We'd just think it was real?"
"You'd have no reason to suspect otherwise. If all you'd ever known was virtual, that would be all that was real to you."
"It'd have to be a good virtual reality program," said Allan thoughtfully.
"Flawless," assured Cassie
"And it'd have to be pretty damn big," he continued.
"Huge," she replied encouragingly.
"It's not possible," he said flatly. "Sophistication like that doesn't exist."
Cassie sighed again. "That isn't the point. The point is, if you've never known reality, how would you be able to tell that what you're experiencing isn't real?"
Puzzled looks all around. "We'd just… know, wouldn't we?"
"Maybe," she said calmly, "Maybe not. The point is that we all receive different information from the same source – be it our surroundings, or a virtual reality computer program. Thus, we all perceive reality differently." She looked at the teacher. "That's all."
The teacher nodded as she walked back to her seat. There were no more mocking comments this time.
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