Transcontinental Tennis, Anyone?
It's eleven o'clock on the evening of December 20, 2011. The obsequious attendant, blandly handsome in that ill-defined way brought on by too much cosmetic surgery, hands you the tennis racket, wishes you a good game, and withdraws. You make a note to yourself to try this again sometime; the cost is certainly worth it for the flattery value alone. It's much better than a simple videocall. You heft the racket; it feels real. The weight is right and you can even feel tiny ridges in the racket's handle. The muscles in your arm and shoulder bunch and flow with the slight effort as you swing it, limbering up. You can hear air whistling through the strings in the moving racket.A nod to your opponent---who smiles at your visual exploration of the court, the glade, the racket, and the ball---and the game begins. You feel the gentle breeze the attendant has told you will increase to cool you as you start to sweat. It is computer controlled. The birds in the trees surrounding the glade continue their warbling despite the gentle wop of the ball sailing back and forth. They too are computer controlled.
Only a few things are different from your usual game at the local tennis club in Chesham. Your eyes and skin tell you you're bathed in warm sunshine, yet you know it's night in England. Also, your ears aren't reporting the muted traffic noises you should be hearing. Even your nose may catch the scent of fresh cut grass and traces of windblown dust; yet you know you're indoors. The experience is real to you. Even so, your tennis racket, the ball you're now reflectively bouncing against the grass, the court, the net, the warm sunshine, the breeze, the birds, the trees, the glade---even the attendant---all are unreal.
Only your opponent is real. But she's currently visiting Vladivostok, ten time zones away, taking a break from the trade talks that morning to play a quick game with you back in England. The image you see of her, delayed less than a fifth of a second despite the great distance and enormous computations, is computer generated. Maybe she's no more real than the attendant.
Beyond the Looking Glass