Harsh Realm

The serial "Harsh Realm" is based on the story of a war game simulation developed by the Pentagon, a secret project for testing new developments in training military personnel. People to be part of this system are under the control of the army and kept with their heads and bodies wired up, in a designated area.

This Harsh Realm "game's" most stunning feature is that it recreates a totally realistic virtual environment where soldiers, enemies, weapons, social lives and all other details are indistinguishable from their counterparts in the real world. In this game, there are two types of people: the artificial or virtual characters, and the real players who can enter the game. Like their virtual environment, the virtual characters are indistinguishable from the real thing.

Another character in this TV serial is Omar Santiago, a deserter from the army who secretly manages to hack into the system and gains superiority in this virtual world. But because no one knows how he breaks into the system or where he is, they can't take action against him. Tom Hobbes, the hero, is told to eliminate Santiago and to prevent his evil plans for the world.

A colonel briefs Hobbes about Harsh Realm, informing him that this system was designed to teach war strategies on a virtual-reality war game platform and that his job is to defeat Santiago. In order to persuade the reluctant Hobbes, the colonel gives him a headset and has him watch an introductory video on the Harsh Realm simulator. This video explains that the Harsh Realm project relied on satellite maps, the 1990 census, and some other classified data to create the game's environment, imitating people's real lives. The introductory video is terminated suddenly, and Hobbes realizes that while watching this tape, he was integrated into the game.

Hobbes, now in the virtual world called Harsh Realm, meets a soldier by the name of Pinocchio, who, like himself, was inducted by the army. This virtual world is so realistic that, Tom is fooled throughout the film, to the extent that he ends up even endangering his own life helping and pursuing the game's virtual characters.

As we'll shortly explore in more detail, the quality and details of the images that take place in people's fantasies can fool them into believing these events are real.

Everyone is Interacting with the Images Shown on his Own Personal Screen or, in Other Words, His Own Soul

3-D films are made by projecting images shot by two cameras, from two different angles, onto one screen. In reality, the viewer is not regarding a 3-D image, but an effect created by a special technique. The viewer wears color filtered or polarized glasses. Each lens of the glasses captures one of the two images, and the viewer's brain recombines the two, creating a 3-D image.

The same is true in our real lives. All the images we see with our eyes are really two-dimensional, having only height and width. Because we have two eyes, similar to the two images we see when watching a 3-D film, we perceive the images as three-dimensional. This phenomenon explains why we're misled that the images on our personal "screens" are real. The depth, color, shadow and light of our three-dimensional visual images formed in our brain seem perfectly realistic. Their endless detail and continuous quality give us the impression of living a real life. However, our perceiving a three-dimensional picture does not prove that it has any counterpart in the external world.

The virtual world depicted in the serial "Harsh Realm", no matter how life-like it may be, is "seen" by players whose wired-up bodies are lying on their beds. All their realistic experiences are induced by artificial electrical impulses received by their brains. In each episode, the introductory scene recaps the subject of the series in this way:

A world exists exactly like ours. You live in this world, your family and your friends. No, you may not know it. I was sent to save you. It's just a game.

In his first few days of his adventure in the virtual world, Tom can't stop himself from thinking that the environment around him is not real, even though he knows it's not.

Tom Hobbes	:	Now, I know none of it is real and it is only a virtual world I'm in. I'm living day to day ... trying to make sense of all this, trying to stay strong trying my best just to stay alive.

Repeatedly, our hero remarks on his virtual environment's stunning resemblance to reality itself. The world he's now part of gives him such a strong sense of reality that he begins to pray that his experience is part of a game.

Tom Hobbes	:	We're on the run from Omar Santiago, a renegade soldier who hijacked the computer program that runs this world. It was Santiago the military sent me here to kill. Their fear of him is real and great, though I've yet to understand why all this is imaginary… They say this is a recreation of the real world down to every man, woman and child. Each of us is with a double here who can live or die in the virtual reality of the Harsh Realm… But only those plugged into the program know this and have any consciousness of the truth: that it's only a game. I pray that's all it is.

The scenes from this serial apply to our own lives, because we are watching the images projected onto our souls and interact only with them. We can never have direct experience of the world on the outside or experience the original thereof. This situation can be summed up in the following passage from our book Evolution Deceit:

The Human Body is Also an Interpretation of Perceptions

One reason for our difficulty in realizing matter's true nature is our mistaken belief about our own bodies. We look down, see ourselves, touch everything around it, and get the misinterpreted impression that we live in an "outside world."

In reality, our bodies are copies—images, like all our other perceptions of the external world. Therefore the body we interact with is not the original on the outside but its imagination forming inside our brain by the interpretation of our perceptions.

Below is one of the dialogues from the serial:

Tom Hobbes	:	I had orders to win the game.
Major Watters	:	It's no game, no getting out, no going home. I've got the same mission.
Tom Hobbes	:	Why don't they take Santiago out of the real world?
Pinocchio	:	They don't know where he is, where he comes in and out. He has hijacked the whole program ... If they kill you here, it's not any virtual character, but you. Your brain, your consciousness, your head and your mind will slide back into the real world.

Those playing the Harsh Realm game interact with virtual appearances, as in a computer game. Their real bodies are located somewhere else, and computers transmit the game's images to their brains.

The following page shows Inga Fossa, a member of the armed forces, being transferred to this virtual environment. She is stretched out on an armchair in a high-tech room, putting a special device on her head. Once her body is scanned in, she is then transferred into the simulation Subsequent photos show her inside the government building in the Harsh Realm game's city of Santiago.

The pictures below depict Pinocchio, one of the lead characters of the film, with facial injuries and his body tied up with cables. But inside the Harsh Realm game he has no such wounds. This example shows that by means of artificial signals, someone can perceive his appearance much differently from what it actually is.

On this subject, here are some excerpts from our books:

Those Who Believe that They Have Direct Experience of the External Originals of the Images in Their Brains Are Wrong

When someone sees a tree and thinks it is real, he is deluding himself. It's impossible for us to leave our brains, impossible to reach the real tree. As stated throughout this book, the person is interacting with a tree formed by the interpretation of electrical signals in his brain.

We can compare the assumption that we deal with physical reality itself, to our interaction with the visible images on a computer screen. Touch the keys on the keyboard, and you believe you are moving the cursor on the screen. In reality, the computer sends a data stream to the CPU (central processing unit). This data stream calculates the cursor's new location and refreshes the image on the screen accordingly. In older computers, there was a noticeable delay between typing a command and seeing it appear on the screen. Since then, computers have become much faster and can recalculate image changes in a fraction of a second. Now when you hit a key, the effect on the screen is almost simultaneous. We get the feeling that we are, indeed, moving the cursor.

Someone sleeping silently can see himself, in a dream, in the midst of a war, with bombs exploding all around. He can even experience all the tension, and panic of war, as if it were real.

Our everyday experiences are comparable. When we want to kick a stone, the will to move our foot is transmitted to the relevant muscles, and our shoe is moved to connect with the stone. The brain receives feedback from the body—in this instance, the hardness of the stone's impact and pain in the foot—and updates the perception. In reality there is a delay in our experiences, just as in the computer example. It takes approximately one fifth of a second for the brain to interpret the data sent by our senses but, not being aware of this delay, we assume that we are interacting directly with the physical reality.

If all we can ever know is limited to images forming in our minds, how can we know what the outside world is really like? Isn't everything we know about it just an assumption? Yes, and proving it so is impossible, because for those who imagine they have direct contact with the original of a physical world, the only evidence is the visions in their minds.

The position of those who believe they have direct experience of the original of matter is just as untenable as claiming that our experiences in virtual reality environment are authentic. Throughout the serial, Pinocchio points out to Hobbs that it's not logical to act as if their environment were real. In one episode, Tom encounters his fiancée's virtual counterpart and risks his life trying to protect her, even though she has no physical reality. Likewise, a virtual copy of his real-life dog is present in the game, and he endangers himself to keep the dog from harm.

In another scene from the film, he encounters a small child in an area designated—in the game—for warfare training. Feeling concern for the child, he tells him that it is very dangerous to be there, but the soldier with Tom tells him that the child is only a part of the computer game:

Tom Hobbes	:	(to the boy) What are you doing here? Go on home.
Eric Sommers	:	Don't get too fond of him.
Tom Hobbes	:	Why not?
Eric Sommers	:	Look, I've seen this played 100 times. That kid does not pass Day 28 once.
Tom Hobbes	:	He is here.
Eric Sommers	:	He's just a game piece. He is not like you and me. The sim (simulation) resets them so that they can come and die all over again.

Knowing he is in a virtual world, Tom is repeatedly reminded that the virtual characters he interacts with are part of the simulation. Yet he reacts to them, fooled by the environment's realism. When the war escalates, for instance, and they are seeking cover, he sees a child walking towards the enemy positions. He cannot contain himself and risks his life to save the child.

Pinocchio	:	What are you doing?
Eric Sommers	:	It's just a kid.
Pinocchio	:	You heard what Sommers said about this place. You can't change anything.
Tom Hobbes	:	I don't believe that.

In another scene, they are withdrawing from the enemy, when he sees the child coming under fire. He reaches out to the child, but its body disappears. As he had been warned, the child is shot dead as part of the game and won't be reintroduced to it until the game starts over anew.

These examples from the film are illustrative of people who can't accept that the world they're dealing with is a simulation in the brain. Obviously, the world we live in isn't comparable to a film, because it cannot be explained by computer games or technological developments. Allah created this world and everything it contains, animate or inanimate, and revealed the purpose for our Creation in the Qur'an:

[I only created] man to worship Me. (Surat adh-Dhariyat: 56)

For this reason, we have an obligation to obey Allah's commandments and to worship Him.

Many fool themselves by telling themselves, "I see with my eyes, I hear with my ears. Therefore, the world I'm in is real." In actuality, they're thinking those words in the silence of their brains. These technical realities are obvious truths that can be learned in high-school biology textbooks or in any book on human anatomy. All branches of medicine teach in great detail how vision and sensations originate in the brain.

Advancements in quantum physics, psychology, neurology, biology and medicine have shed much light on the technical aspects of this physical reality. At present, therefore, science accepts that we cannot reach the reality of matter. Anyone who claims to be interacting with the real world is ignoring these scientific facts. We have to accept them and live in awareness of our responsibilities to Allah in our lives, even though we live those lives only in our minds. Following are some passages from our books on this subject:

Even though Allah causes us to live in this world of perceptions, He also links the world to all its many causes and effects. When we are hungry, for instance, we eat something. We do not say, "It is all an illusion, so it does not matter," for if we fail to eat, we grow weak and eventually die.

...I have only been ordered to worship Allah and not to associate anything with Him. I summon to Him, and to Him I will return.(Surat ar-Rad: 36)

Allah can remove these causes and effects whenever He wishes, for whoever He wishes, by whatever means He wishes. We can never know when or why He may do this. However, the most important truth is that Allah charges us with abiding by the whole of the Qur'an, and we continue to live in the world of causality in order to abide by its Divine commandments.

Watching a Film, Knowing its Beginning and its End

In an earlier chapter, we pointed out that time is relative, not fixed, dependent on the viewer's perception. Knowing this is very important in comprehending the question of destiny, which represents Allah's Creation of everything—past or future—in one moment. This means that everything in the Presence of Allah, from the Creation of the universe to the Judgment Day, has been lived and is already finished.

A great many people cannot comprehend how Allah can know things that have not yet happened and how it can be that in Allah's Presence, everything past and future has already occurred. They also fail to understand the reality of destiny. In reality, past events are the past only from our perspective, because we live within the boundaries of time that Allah has created, and cannot know anything unless it is introduced to our memory. Allah, on the other hand, is unfettered by time and space, because, after all, it is He Who has created them from nothing. For this reason, past, present, and future are all the same to Allah.

The fact is, everything, past or future, has already been created in the Presence of Allah and preserved. The very important truth is that every human being has surrendered unconditionally to his destiny. Just as no one can change his past, he cannot change his future, because both his past and future have already been lived. All his future is fixed: where, when and what he will eat; what he will talk about and with whom; how much money he will earn, what illnesses he will endure; and finally, the circumstances of his death— all these events are fixed. He cannot change any of it, because this has all been lived in Allah's Presence, with His knowledge. Except the knowledge thereof has not been granted to the memory of the person himself.

Therefore, those who are saddened by what they encounter, grow angry, shout and scream, worry about the future, or become overly ambitious, do so in vain. The future they worry about has already been lived. Whatever they may do, they have no means of changing it.

One episode of "Harsh Realm" can help us understand this. In this episode, set in the Second World War, the leading characters walk in the woods but, because of fault in the computer program, suddenly find themselves in a constantly recurring war game simulation.

Tom Hobbes	:	What the hell is that? Software glitch?

In this part of the game, the Ardennes offensive of World War II is simulated. German and American advance units are dug in either side of a bridge and are engaged in month long battle between them.

Tom Hobbes	:	That bridge out there. I've seen the battle review of the Ardennes campaign, Second World War. There is a siege in Hotten, Belgium between two small advance units, the German and the American armies, lasted over a month. I swear, this is the same bridge.
Pinocchio	:	It's a combat sim.
Tom Hobbes	:	What?
Pinocchio	:	Virtual combat simulation. When they started beta testing in Harsh Realm, they downloaded battle scenarios: Pork Chop Hill, Picket's Charge.
Tom Hobbes	:	So, it's another game.
Pinocchio	:	It's a battlefield trainer, what Harsh Realm was originally designed for.
Tom Hobbes	:	What is it still doing here?
Pinocchio	:	Who knows? Probably oversight. Some pencil neck in the real world probably forgot to "delete."

The serial's heroes find themselves in a different time. Just as they are about to be shot by a German soldier, a unit of American soldiers rescues them. But being from a different era, their speech makes the American soldiers suspect them to be spies and take them as prisoners of war.

In the opening scenes, a soldier named Eric Sommers—who also exists in the real world—draws attention by his cool stance despite the explosions all around him. Because this is a repeating war training simulation, everything occurs as programmed. Aware of this, he lies on the ground and begins a countdown. When he gets to three, a hand grenade lands next to him. He picks it up, throws it back out again, then continues to drink his tea. In short, everything develops as part of the program. Because it repeats itself, with everything occurring in the same way time after time, Eric keeps his cool even under fire.

Eric Sommers	:	Three… two...one. (He throws the grenade outside, then takes a glass of tea) Grenade.

It is predetermined and destined where which leaf will fall in autumn and what flower will blossom in spring.

It is predetermined that the gardener waters a rose, that its first flower blossoms, that the owner picks it and places it in a basket—even before it is even planted. All this is known and lived already in the Presence of Allah.

Like Hobbes and Pinocchio, Eric Sommers was made part of the game in the real world when he was connected to the computer. Therefore, the soldier also knows that the time and place they live in has no reality. But he was unable to find a way out of this part of the game. He tells Tom and Pinocchio that in this battle field of four square kilometers, everything always occurs as it is programmed to. For example, the siege always lasts 34 days, the counterattack 28 days; and how and when the brigade's soldiers die is also known.

These parts of the serial constitute an analogy that can help explain fate. If we compare our life to a video tape, we are watching it, but without the means of fast-forwarding or rewinding it. No matter how often we watch this tape, we cannot change even its smallest detail. The parts that appear to be changed by us are in reality also predetermined parts of the film.

It is Allah Who has determined this film in every detail, creating and sustaining it with the feel of reality. He sees and knows the entire filmstrip in the same instant. Just as we can see the beginning, middle, and end of a ruler as a single whole, Allah has encompassed the time we are subjected to, from the beginning to the end, as one moment. People, on the other hand, live out only what they are meant to when the time has come and witness the destiny Allah has created for them. This is so for the destinies of all of the people on Earth.

Aches and Pains, Too, Are the Interpretation of Perceptions in Your Brain

The guards of a concentration camp capture Tom Hobbes. He is imprisoned there and made to work in the timber yard. In the virtual environment, he meets his mother's copy. Finding out that she suffers from terminal cancer, he forgets that what he sees here is a virtual reality and tries to help her.

Someone who falls asleep while fishing at the beach could, in his dream, see himself on a sinking ship and experience quite realistic fear and panic. While he was seated on his beach chair, his dream could make him believe, mistakenly, that he's in a material world.

The camp guards have wounded his friend Pinocchio. When Tom tells him his plans, the following conversation takes place:

Tom Hobbes	:	How are you feeling?
Pinocchio	:	If it ain't real, how come it hurt so much?
Tom Hobbes	:	We have to get out of here… It's more complicated than that.
Pinocchio	:	How's that?
Tom Hobbes	:	I found my mother. She's here.
Pinocchio	:	Your mother? Hobbes, I've met people here. People I know in the real world.
Tom Hobbes	:	It's her.
Pinocchio	:	No. It just looks like her. Everybody in the world has a copy here. That's how the whole thing is set up. But it is VC (virtual character) files not people.
Tom Hobbes	:	She recognized me. She knows who I am.
Pinocchio	:	She doesn't know. She is part of some game. She doesn't know what's happened to you. She thinks this is all real.
Tom Hobbes	:	She's in pain. How different is that from what you feel?

At a later point in the series, the heroes find themselves wounded and in pain, even though in reality they are lying on beds. They think their pains are real, though actually they have been artificially induced.

Our books also explain that people believe they are interacting with real matter because of their feeling fierce pain, aches, fear, and the like. In truth, this is a mistake. Human beings are never interacting with real matter. Some passages from our books on this subject read as follows: