Be Ready for Reality…

 by Indie Stone

The book ‘Ready Player One’ plunges the reader deep inside the boots of Wade Watts, a deprived teenager living in the slums of 2045. Piled up on rows of caravans called “The Stacks”, the boy and his aunt struggle for money, food and happiness. Their Earth is steadily degrading, with energy running monumentally low and extreme weather events wiping out crops, the people on the planet do not see hope for their future. Among the deep, dark, disaster that enfolds around a declining world, a new saviour is born: The OASIS.

Spanning through a multitude of different planets, sectors, universes and real-world recreations, the ‘Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation’ allows the user to be transported to each of these wonderful places. With a pair of goggles, haptic gloves and an internet connection, it looks better than real life - in all possible ways. Nonetheless, the world outside needs to be acknowledged, too, so when it is time to eat, sleep or work, peeling off the goggles reveals a dark, grimy muddy puddle of a world: the real world.

However, this form of dystopia seems too close to home; we do indeed have the issues stated in this form of 2045: the price of our energy is gastronomically high, and the weather a whirlwind of extremes, from heatwaves in winter, to intense rain showers on a sunny summer’s day. Because of the ever-popular gaming industry, state-of-the-art Virtual Reality setups with 360 degree running platforms and motion capture technology are starting to take the stage. Maybe within a few more years, weather will continue to become wilder, energy will pursue its quest for non-existence, and a simulation of a desirable, dream world will be our salvation - a knight in shining armour rescuing us from a collapsing tower that is Earth. 

We need to open our eyes and look at what is around us - a fictional world represented in a young adult’s novel is slowly emerging into a reality. If a virtual simulation of the world is being used as a rescuer to people's normal lives, and they’d rather be in that than on Earth at all, then we are all in trouble. Most importantly, we cannot be responsible for guiding our future in a way that means being immersed in an online playground is fun. It’s twisted and wrong. So let us act now, before it’s too late to turn back because we all know that it won’t be virtual reality; it will be reality.