Who's Behind the Mirror?
Olivia was slowly losing touch with reality. The virtual world and real world were blending together. She often couldn't tell whether she was dreaming or in her "Casita", a virtual world made for her. Only waking up or unplugging brought her back to reality. But she often wondered why she needed to come back to a reality that she didn't seem to fit in. She wondered how she could change her real world circumstances to bring them closer to the world that had been built for her online.
She reached into her bed and pulled out an e-paper and began scanning through articles about her. While she may have felt disconnected and neglected, but she was incredibly important. She was the first orphan to trial the new "Homecoming" program, which placed orphans in the care of virtual, artificially created guardians. As surrogacy and cloning became commonplace, adoption rates dwindled, and millions of orphans around the world sat in orphanages with little hope of finding a family. Homecoming promised a solution to all that, and Olivia was selected, against her will, to be the first to trail this program. Her dreams were mapped, and her ideal Casita was created, along with her virtual parents, school and friends. An entirely artificial world to escape the horrors of the real one. The press followed her every move, and she had clippings of articles and videos that chronicled her entire journey, though she still stayed in the same cramped little room in the same orphanage.
Outside she saw a handful of protestors standing in a light drizzle. Their numbers had dwindled in the months since the program had started, and the rain had driven away all but the most ardent protestors, who now huddled under a tarp to keep dry and warm. It never rained in her casita, and she wished she could invite them there. The program was ostensibly a "success, as she was happy and had everything she could've have dreamed of, but somehow something felt off about the whole thing. She couldn't tell the media, the techs or patron at the orphanage. Everyone had too much riding on this project being a success. Millions of these units were being rolled off the shelves, even as testing continued. Not just to orphanages, but to customers wanting to build the world of their dreams and escape their reality.
As she looked through the clippings she found an interesting quote : "A family is like a rudder, and we can't send our children out to sea without a rudder". She hadn't read this article before; it had only been published a couple of hours ago. But she knew she had heard the same quote before. And she thought she knew where.
She plugged into the device hanging around her neck, lay back in her bed, closed her eyes, and entered the "world of her dreams". Since she had the test beta , she knew how to access certain tools that weren't available in the commercial version. She walked up to a camera, types a few lines of code, and then had access to all her "memories". She scanned back the past few weeks, looking for that quote. "Out to sea without a rudder". She eventually found it. The headmaster at her virtual school had uttered it at the welcoming ceremony for the next batch. Technically the first batch, as she was the only real person there. Something about the headmaster seemed off, much like the rest of the world. While many of her teachers and classmates spoke in vague, generic, in-human sentences, this seemed almost too emotional for the software.
She followed the headmaster through his journey in her Casita. And then she saw it. At some point, he entered his home, and disappeared. It seemed impossible. She was the only one who disappeared from this world. In fact, the world paused when she wasn't in it. She entered his virtual home to see if she could find out more. It wasn't like other homes here, it was disorganized, things were out of place. And on a table she found the smoking gun. A list of people from her Casita. But labelled as "humans". That's what felt off about this world. This whole thing was supposed to be a figment of her imagination. Her dreams manifested as a virtual realm. But it included a number of things that she could never have dreamt of, and couldn't understand why they existed in her dreams. From cars to corporations, these weren't things that made sense to her, and yet, they seemed part of her Casita.
She realized it wasn't just hers, but manipulated by investors and viewed by voyeurs from all around the world. She had always wondered why this corporation would just give away such technology to a bunch of orphans. No one is that charitable, especially when billions of dollars of profit are involved. But now she realized, the goal wasn't to give her the life she could never afford. The goal was to sell her dreams and ideas to anyone willing to pay for it. And being the first, she was sure that many would line up to say they peered into someone else's casita, lived a part of someone else's dreams. She wasn't the beta test for a better future, she was the beta test for a privacy invasion.
She took screenshots, of the list, the quote, and the headmaster's mysterious disappearance; before she unplugged. She then wrote down, "This world is not as it seems. Here's who's behind the mirror" on a piece of e-paper. She then folded it up into an airplane, opened her window and watched as it landed at the feet of a protestor outside.