Astrophobia

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

[Jonathan Crane, PhD, scans the Plane with bespectacled eyes in his very nice suit. To all appearances, the Plane has just won itself a new university professor]

Acrophobia would hardly be an irrational fear at present. Indeed, it would be very [takes a step] very [another step] practical. This is possibly one of the very few instances in a normal individual’s life where siderophobia might be considered rational as well. And so they would cease to be phobias.

Incongruous but coherent structure... far too lucid to be any breed of hallucination or dream. The idea of it being true space is out of the question, of course.

[picks up a discarded hat, examining it] The two most likely options are thus illusion or reality. I wonder which it is. [sets the hat down again and carries on his way]

Comments

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

[Watches him for a few long moments before deciding to get closer.]

Why can't it be both?

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

An illusion is, by definition, a distortion of the reality. It makes it a challenge for them to both be the same thing.

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

It could be an illusion for some people but reality for others.

Isn't a computer game an illusion for the people playing it, but reality for those in it?

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

I would think that all those in a game are playing it, though possibly that crisis just hasn't swept Gotham yet. There is certainly the idea that people's realities are not the same, of course, and that mental illness is simply a case where one person's reality is too greatly incongruous with the consensus reality to reconcile. All that is a worthy subject for debate.

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

Not if you get pulled into the game and stuck in it.

[Blink blink.] Are you a psychiatrist or something? You talk like one.

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I've never heard of any cases. But I wouldn't consider it impossible. Just very very unlikely.

I am, in fact. Good guess.

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

It's possible, and it's happened.

[Pause.] I thought so. You sound sort of like the one Sakuma-san found for me.

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

[he pauses, considering what Tsukasa said; then, gently] To you?

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

[Nod nod.]

Yeah. I was stuck in an online RPG called "The World" for six months.

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

Six months? I am sorry. But how could such a thing happen?

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

I'm still not really sure. I was attacked by something, and it linked me to an NPC of sorts there. I think that's why I couldn't leave - I had to wake her up first for me to wake up.

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

Has anything like that ever happened to anyone else? I suppose -- mm, it would depend on the technology used to interface with the game.

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

A headset and a keyboard and a controller. And... I'm not sure. It's sort of hard to tell, unless someone tells you directly.

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

So the illusion of the game was your reality for six months. No wonder you asked me what you did.

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

[Nods.]

But I'm awake now. Oh - and by the way, this isn't what I normally look like. This is what my character in the game looks like, but for some reason I show up as him here whether I'm in the game or not.

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

Have you considered speaking to those twins about it?

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

[Shrugs.]

I don't mind it. I can do magic like this. I can't do it in real life.

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

It must be empowering.

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

[Blink blink.]

I guess? It's fun, anyway. And if I get hurt I can heal myself.

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

Very literally empowering, I mean. Those are abilities you don't normally have. Though you may have become used to the over the sixth months of your time in the game.

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

True. But I mean... I guess I can't live in a fantasy world forever.

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

A long-standing debate in the psychiatric community that I wouldn't want to answer here.

How much does your psychiatrist know about your time in the game?

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

They don't believe me. They say it's not possible for that to happen, but there's other people in the real world who were there with me, and know what happened.

[handfulofstraw.livejournal.com]

And having been presented with the evidence of these people, your psychiatrist still doesn't believe you?

[pulls his glasses down a bit]

I suppose it is a very strange story. Given our current setting, however, it's very easy for me to believe.

[grasswavemaster.livejournal.com]

... Well. CC Corp doesn't seem to really want to let us talk about it. The admins won't let us show them the access logs from my account, and the psychologists started talking about something... what was it. "Folie à plusieurs"? [Tsukasa trips all over the pronunciation of this.]

And it didn't sound like that was good, so I shut up. And I looked it up and found out that it's not. SO.