His musings were interrupted by an unexpected voice from outside, even frightened him a little. It was the same Bedouin, but with more colored clothes.
– I know everything you're going to say ahead of time. Or almost everything," he said, suddenly confident.
– What?" Ruthra said in a long voice.
– Your doubts are valid. Everyone would have those doubts. Believe me, you were chosen for a reason. Just think about it, if a person appeared here who was unfamiliar with your invention – the method of moving consciousness through space – then obviously the whole mission would be thwarted. The person would either be in constant disbelief, doubt, or fear, expecting a trick. Or he or she would consider us or himself to be crazy, at least insane.
– What are you talking about? And who are you, anyway?
– Everything you see is real.
– I can see it's real. What's the big deal?
– Think about it. If you were asleep, you wouldn't find this amazing and unreal, would you?
– What do you want? I don't understand. Are you a director? Actor? What's my role?
– Think of me as a psychologist testing actors for mental compatibility. I'm still asking you to answer my question.
– Which one?
– About the state in the dream.
– So?
– What is happening would not be amazing and unreal if you understood what was happening as a dream.
– This is crazy. How in a dream would I know I'm in a dream?
– Now, let's be clear. How did you expect to see the result of your experiment?
– If it didn't work out, it didn't work out. God be with you, goldfish. What's the point of all this drama?
– Now imagine how it turned out this time.
– How am I supposed to visualize if it didn't work out in real life?
– And how did you in real life, as you put it, have to realize whether it worked or not? Do you remember the moment you fell asleep? You said yourself that you would not have been aware in the dream that you were in a dream state.
– Okay.
– So imagine it like you're sleeping right now.
– Why?
– You did it. This is the real world.
– Ha.
– Oh, come on. If you invented a machine that would immerse a person in virtual reality, why shouldn't people subjected to such a procedure believe in the reality of virtual reality immersion? You invented the technology yourself. So why would you not believe in the reality of the implementation?
– Hm," Ruthra looked around, the same, or almost the same, surroundings. – We were moving consciousness within the confines of a laboratory, a planet, a space station at most, just like the quantum entanglement experiments.
– Agree, – continued the strange stranger, without giving him long to think, – the natives of America, seeing Columbus' brigade, really perceived it as the coming of aliens, gods in their view. They had no idea about other worlds, i.e. territories of the planet, they knew only their own. So now it seems to you that your stay here is something fantastic, but this is actually one of the territories of a huge planet called the Universe.
– Why all of a sudden. You're repeating my thoughts!
– Think about it.
– First of all, I've never talked to anyone here before, except for you, and I see the same environment as I did a few times before, and…" Ruthra was distracted from his thoughts by otherworldly noises.
When he noticed the anxious, fixed gaze of his interlocutor expressing fatal horror, he turned around.
