An ordinary ordinary day, the glaring sun pouring down, the serene wind blazing by, a bow rose upon the crest...

Splash!

"MONKEY! DON'T DILLY DALLY! Hurry up and tighten those slack sails!"

"Screech....keeech keech keech!"

"DAMN PARROT! If you dare open your mouth, I am going to shove a monkey down your throat!"

"cackle...*gulp."

And the bow rose upon the serene crest.

CRACCCCCKKKLEEE!! THUNDEEERRRRR!!! WHOOOoooooo~!

Half the sky revolted. Raka sighed.

'Such a unique situation can only occur in this sea!'

Half the sky was deep black like night, thunderclouds moving like waves while the other half, as if trying to fight back, was as bright and calm as day.

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"What separates reality and virtual reality?" A female voice asked as a pair of eyes scanned across the classroom finding many pairs. "Many books and movies and novels have come out with the concept of being trapped in virtual reality. For now, let's assume that this is possible. Then in those books and movies, the main character would be trying to break out of the virtual reality world in search of reality. A common theme and one which is quite popular among people. Who knows maybe in the near or far future it may even become possible! Sounds scary, right? Or maybe some of you actually hope for this to happen.. to live your life in the virtual world? Be heroes, gladiators or powerful women?"

Dr. Rita Talvar, one of the professors at Bangalore University, was taking this week's guest lecture for Swamy's class. Her speciality was Human interaction with Virtual Machines and as per normal schedule, Raka would have encountered her lecture during the third year. But now, she was sharing her thoughts as the guest lecturer today.

"Actually, the reason for research in human - virtual interaction stems a lot from such ideas. Not to entrap but to empower. For example, psychiatrists often use suggestive mechanisms to treat patients. How is it any different from simulating those situations in virtual reality? Or how about robotic control in surgeries via video/audio? Link it to the virtual world, and you can do the procedure like you are there yourself.

And why be limited to just these? How about exploring space? Send a probe out into the depths of space and link it to a virtual world and you can see space like you are actually a space traveller. Wouldn't it be far better than looking at Mars on TV?"

"Um..don't they have space reality games out in the market? Don't those let people feel like they are in Mars or the Moon?" Some one interrupted at this point. Everyone looked over to see the girl who had spoken. She currently had her hand raised as she asked. Maybe she realized, embarrassingly, that raising her hand should have preceded the question, but she slowly lowered her hand.

"You are right." Dr. Talvar answered. "There are several games out there which have such virtual worlds. Most of them have taken map data from these planetary bodies and used them to make the games. But you forget, that they cannot show the reality very much. After all, you don't really have bikes on the Moon neither a couple thousand other players! Haha.." Everyone smiled a little.

"However, to someone who has seen the actual thing, he won't find it real. NASA, ISRO and others, nowadays, do use virtual reality to train new astronauts. However, this program has been changed for the people who have actually travelled to the Moon and Mars. They have reduced the virtual reality training of these astronauts. Can someone guess why?" Dr. Talvar asked.

Swamy shook his head and looked around him to find eyes as confused as his. Today's virtual reality should make it possible to train the astronauts in real-like environments in virtual worlds. Finally someone took a leap and said, "Isn't it because they don't find it real?"

"That's what I said! But why do you think they don't find it real? After all, some of you might have played space related games? How real did it feel? Even if you have not been to the Moon or Mars, did it feel like you were not there?" Dr Talvar said smilingly.

This time more people shook their heads.

"No one? Well, I don't really expect you to understand why just yet. It is easy to say something is not real, but harder to explain why it is not real. Those returning astronauts found themselves in a similar situation without being able to explain why! Which actually became a very good research topic across universities and still is. The true answer for this question is not known, but many schools of thought have said that this might be because of perfection. Powerful devices perfectly capture detailed data down to the nanometre, which is then used in mapping the surface, which is then used to create the virtual worlds. But an astronaut on the Moon will never in his lifetime look or feel this perfection."

"Nature is by its very nature, imperfect. Rules have exceptions, crossovers have mutations, cells have cancers...skins have blemishes! Now we run into some truly ironical situations. If we wish to simulate a human in the virtual world, or create what you guys call an NPC, by taking a million measurements of the human body, and perfectly inputting everything, you would hope that it would look as real as possible. On the other hand, if we make mistakes along the way or only use a thousand measurements, you would think it should NOT look real? Why? Obviously because we have not perfectly captured the human being and as such there are mistakes you can observe...." Dr. Talvar paused.

"Unfortunately, in the reality index, which is simply how much a person thinks something is real, we will find that both of the NPCs would have close results. Truly ironical isn't it? Haha..." Dr. Talvar laughed. "In 2017, a researcher from Kazakhstan, made a significant discovery. Human beings look at the blemishes for perfection and perfection for the blemishes."

Swamy and everyone else was dumbfounded, including the author. 'What does that even mean?'

Looking at the even more confused gazes, Dr. Talvar laughed and said, "thankfully you won't have to deal with this question till the third year, by which time you would have more understanding of virtual reality. But it is still food for thought. Let me put it this way. There are no perfect things in the world. When we find something beautiful or delicious or smelly, we are actually not looking, smelling, or tasting everything. We are doing what we call putting priorities in the incoming data. So a thinner chin might look beautiful to you but to someone else it won't. There is a reason why we say, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, after all. In fact, it applies to everything. An apple would be an apple anywhere, yet some may say its sweet, or slightly sweet, or slightly sour. Do you see the big picture?" Dr. Talvar stalled.

"When we look at things, smell it, taste it, we actually prioritize some information, and ignore some. And this perception will vary for everyone. When you walk and your feet pass a small depression on the road, so small that ideally you wouldn't even notice it usually, but when its filled up you realize that somehow the bit of road feels different. On the other hand that depression was always there so how come you didn't realize it usually?! It is because you are prioritizing information received in your brain. Giving weight to individual data. Do you realize the hole? If you do, how deep is it? Was the lunch spicy? Even if it was, did it have less or more salt? The problem with making things look real, has actually less to do with how perfectly we gather data or display the world, but rather in how we define reality in the first place. What is real to one will also be real to others BUT the reason it is real would change among everyone of us. Which is why the things in novels, where many players get trapped in virtual reality worlds without recognizing whether the world is real or virtual, is still impossible. Hahaha..."

Dr. Talvar ended her lecture on a lighter note. That said, Swamy could imagine some of the things she said. But as he thought more about it, he felt his brain would burst. It was like an equation with a million variables with indefinite ranges and also could change over time. He sighed and gave up. 'No wonder why situations like those in the movies and novels never happened.'

"Lunch!" Rajan exclaimed as the professor took her leave which removed all the blurriness away from people's minds.

Lunch as usual was a very light affair, often and usually involving various discussions about virtual reality games, in Swamy's case, Long Island. And as usual, people tended to ask him several questions. But unfortunately,

"I don't know. So far I have only been able to trigger two quests, both F rank. I don't know much about dwarves yet, nor have I seen those weapon forges or legendary weapons." Swamy sighed.

"That sucks. It's getting harder to earn money nowadays...wonder what day will I have enough to sail away..AAAH!," Rajan cried.

"Actually that is a bit depressing. We still haven't joined a guild and we don't have money to pay for travel. I am sick of the starter islands already..." Sneha sighed.

"We have it a bit better. Our guild has almost managed enough money to buy a boat. Hopefully we will sail by the end of this month." Himali said.

"AAAhhh!" Rajan cried some more.

And Swamy sat down pondering, not about the game, which he could not do anything about, but rather about the lecture. It was not like he understood nothing of it. While thinking about things, he remembered an old cult classic called the Matrix which came out when his dad was a kid.

'Would such a situation be possible?' A machine manipulating the minds of several humans in order to trap them in the virtual world. 'What did it say? If reality is what you touch or feel, then it is simply the electrical signals interpreted by your brain...'

On initial thoughts, Swamy thought why not. But on further thinking, and based on the previous lecture he got more confused. 'Perception is how the brain interprets these electrical signals right? So it should be possible to fool everyone. But can it be so simple? Is there no difference in the way electrical signals are transmitted to the brain? Are the electrical signals the same for everybody? Then again, isn't playing a virtual reality game the same as many people being linked to the same world like that movie?'

The world might have advanced to the artificial intelligence domain, yet fully understanding the most advanced A.I., our brain, was still far far away. There was no answer to his ponderings. 'We still don't know how memories are stored, what can I expect!' Swamy shook his head as he sighed.

"You don't want the ice-cream Swamy? Oh ok then." And just like that he missed out on an ice-cream.

'Like hell not!' Swamy stood up and got himself an ice-cream.

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While the real world was becoming profound and interesting, the virtual world was becoming the opposite, very simple.

Raka was simply bored. He sighed. 'How did this ever happen!'

For a real world week, Raka had been following the same routine. Reading in the library, eating, practicing magic, eating, stepping out to kill some foxes, eating, meeting a few NPCs and finally logging out. Apart from the old lady of the food shop, he could only trigger a quest from the old man at the armored shop. And that too was something of an errand.

Fetch water for Old Man Oarsian

Oarsian's shop has a plumbing problem and his shop has ran out of drinking water. Take a bucket to the common tap and supply it.

Difficulty level: F

Reward: Intimacy increases with Old Man Oarsian.

And that too was five days ago. Since then, nothing!

Raka sighed again. 'For all my troubles, isn't this too hard? What are my fame points even doing!' Even he realized that at this point, he was simply grumbling. But wonder he may as many times, he could not figure out why this was happening.

'I can only think of two things.' Raka concluded. 'One, maybe it is hard for a human to gain intimacy in dwarf lands. Second, maybe it is because Hya'cinth is a starter village...city.'

If the former were true, he would probably face this problem everywhere he went for there were only four known human islands. He might as well endure his boredom for a couple of weeks like this....which may give fruit. Or be fruitless.

On the other hand, if it was the latter reason, he could only move away from this place. 'In some things, the latter feels more reasonable.' If a human had this much difficulty getting quests in other regions, there would be no point to move away from human lands. On the other hand, it made perfect sense that an experienced player would have trouble getting quests in a starter village.

For a very simple reason. To keep it real.

'After all, Oarsian couldn't give a hundred quests to fetch water, could he? It's not like the plumbing will never get repaired, ever!'

This was the thing which separated Long Island from other virtual reality games. In other games, when players did quests, the game changed. Same thing happened on Long Island. However, even without the players, this game was alive. If no one received a quest to repair plumbing, Oarsian would still get his plumbing fixed! '...or fetch the water...'

'It could be said that unlike other games, quests were not a game feature as such, but rather any request when generated could become a quest if assigned to a player.' Raka nodded as if agreeing with himself. 'On the other hand, if it was not assigned to a player but to another npc, it would simply be a request.'

'Stay...do not stay....stay...do not stay....' A flower withered as such.

'Where to go...I don't know...where to go....Ga'cinth...the capital...' And another flower turned to dust.

Who knew so much damage a single person can cause to the environment. Maybe not much, but to certain many petalled friends, it mattered, as none of them would ever be able to receive praises for their beauty again.

If such decisions could be made easily, he would already have caught a transport and headed out. Raka stared at the blue sky and sighed.

'Give up...let's just focus on what I can do right now.' And he closed his eyes once again entering his colorful world. 'Has the clarity increased a bit...or is it still increasing in range?' Raka could not say. Perception was such a difficult thing. So, while sitting in one of the alleyways where the traffic was low, he stared at the colorful walls of the houses around him and a few large colorful plants, which he had now managed to detect, he finally came to understand something.

'Ah...so that's it!' Perhaps, it was not as profound as an eureka moment but sometimes the simple things amaze us so. 'What you can perceive is supposedly magic, then what you see and detect, everything you see, should be magic.' An obvious statement but with many repercussions. For example, the walls of the houses around him, were built by non-magical, cheap materials. Bricks, mud, some sort of cement, and stone. All of them were cheap and classified as non magical materials in the game.

'But I can perceive them. Why? Isn't it obvious...' Before today, Raka had never ever considered this question. He had thought it was so, without thinking why. And today he just realized that it was because everything in this world was magic. 'Correction, it contained magic.' It was like the air had magic, the water had magic therefore, everything had magic.

So why were they classified as magical and non magical in this virtual world. 'Because of relativity.' Raka nodded in his head. It was like atmospheric pressure. We, as humans, live under enormous pressure. Ofcourse, we don't realize it as such and only when we dive deep or fly up high do we feel the change in pressure. But someone coming from space would probably be crushed under such pressure.

'Similarly, everything has magic in this world. The only difference is whether it is at a level where one can perceive it as magic, or not. Guess this is how the NPCs of this world regard magic. What can be detected as magic was magic and everything else was simply stone...' As such, it was classified as magical and non magical materials.

'Hmm...that explains why I cannot simply see past the walls when I perceive magic. It also means that only magic has the capability to stop magic perception. Though, considering that everything has magic, it probably is meaningless to say this at this point. Still I can add these in my reports to the college,' Raka thought.

'And now what should I do..?' Raka sighed. Grinding was an aspect of the game which was necessary and yet many people would find it frustrating. On the other hand, purposeless grinding was even more frustrating.

Unfortunately, neither worked in this game. Practicing magic for hours did not really increase his magic ability. Similarly Peeking for hours did not really increase his peeking ability. What remained was something called irony.

'Seriously why can't they sleep with the lights on?' Raka sighed. Filled up with so much hot air when Raka had made a grand plan to combine communication and peek mirrors, he eventually found another name for dark sadistic irony.

Raka did not really Peek in the day time. There was no point to it. No one would be in their homes. In the night, however, contrary to his many expectations, he found that there was no point to Peeking either. Why? 'Simply because I can't see in the dark.' Oh, he could use magic and light up the other side, but wasn't that just putting the cart before the horse and alarming the other party. 'Kinda defeats the point of Peeking!'

Only two ladies had actually kept their mirrors in the bedroom and both of them liked to sleep with the lights off. Peeking might be many things, but it did not grant the ability to see in the dark. 'Sheesh, atleast light up a lamp, would ya!' Raka sighed.

'Will praying help in such a situation? O Dear Goddess..' Just then...