Page 79 - Matter: The Other Name for Illusion

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The subject of the movie The 13th Floor is this: The two lead characters in the film have created a virtual world by using
computers. In the virtual world, they are animating the year 1937, although in the real world they are living in the year
2000.

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The person connected to this computer program lies in a bed where information and details about his identity in the
virtual world of 1937 are loaded into his brain. For example, a character called named Douglas Hall, who is a rich and
successful CEO of a computer company, gets the information of a bank treasurer called John Ferguson living in 1937
loaded to his brain.

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All of a sudden this person finds himself in the year 1937. All the cars, buildings, clothes belong to that year. What
surprises him is that both of the lives appear perfectly real. He can feel the wetness of the water and the wind and
experience fear and excitement in both of these lives.

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Later on, that person realizes that what he has been living through was no more than a computer program, and that he
actually confronted only an illusion of the cars, buildings and even his friends, which he thought to be real. In reality,
he is living in a much later year than 2000 and he is watching all of his life through a simulator. What the movie
attempts to illustrate is that it is hard to differentiate life which is supposed to be real from imagination.