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| - You'd think that it being All Just a Dream would let you do lots of cool and risky things, since it's not real anyway, and you therefore can't get hurt. Not so. There's an old wives' tale which claims that if you die in a dream, you die for real. It's not exactly clear how anyone could have determined this, since the only witness would be unable to confirm it. Yet it persists, and a lot of people believe it. This tends to apply to video game levels that are All Just a Dream or a virtual reality simulation as a function of gameplay: If your character dies, it's still a Game Over.
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| abstract
| - You'd think that it being All Just a Dream would let you do lots of cool and risky things, since it's not real anyway, and you therefore can't get hurt. Not so. There's an old wives' tale which claims that if you die in a dream, you die for real. It's not exactly clear how anyone could have determined this, since the only witness would be unable to confirm it. Yet it persists, and a lot of people believe it. So, if you're in a dream, hallucination, or VR simulation, death can be plenty lethal. By extension, if you're a hacker in a high-tech futuristic world where Cyberspace is a realistic simulation, intrusion countermeasures can kill you dead. To be fair, certain depictions of Cyberspace require users to electronically link their brains to the network, which would provide a relatively obvious threat to incautious intruders. However, even hackers who operate in worlds without such dangers may be vulnerable to seizure-inducing graphics. Let us be very clear: there is no obvious or immediately compelling reason that dying in a dream or hallucination would actually kill you, unless you are really gullible and you live in a world where the placebo effect is much more powerful than it is in real life. Obviously, magic spells can do as they like, but the only reason that you would be actually harmed by dying in a VR simulation would be if the VR simulator was intentionally and specifically designed to murder the operator. This makes sense if it's part of a Death Trap (insofar as a death trap ever makes sense), but usually this is some commercial, publicly available system, often meant for playing games. Often Cyberspace ICE (intruder countermeasure electronics) is said to work by channeling lethal voltages into the brain of the invading hacker, but any techhead with an ounce of sense would put at least a fuse or circuit breaker, not to mention a voltage regulator, on any line connected directly to his brain. Authors who put a little more thought into the matter who don't come up with some variant of the motif of harmful sensation imply some kind of malicious out-of-band signal which triggers a nasty (usually fatal) seizure in its victims or blows up their computer. Presumably most users do not know about such things, given their willingness to use an interface that could turn them into a vegetable or corpse at a moment's notice. As an extension, perhaps to justify this trope, such systems often propose that the user's mind actually is inside the machine, having been literally downloaded out of his physical brain. Thus, destroying the machine would leave the user with a blank brain -- but destroying the physical body might leave the mind intact to have a go at possessing someone else. An increasingly common justification of this trope is Synchronization; directly wiring your brain to the machine gives you Technopathic Power At a Price of a potentially fried brain. Most Cyberpunk games -- such as Shadowrun -- use this justification, and lampshade it with safer but far-less effective interfaces which people with wires in their heads can destroy with ease. This tends to apply to video game levels that are All Just a Dream or a virtual reality simulation as a function of gameplay: If your character dies, it's still a Game Over. When you are Talking in Your Dreams with someone else and they go to kill you -- this may come into play. This may also come into play if, in a dream, a character dies, and that character dies in real life, however, this would be an overlap with Clap Your Hands If You Believe and I'm Not Afraid of You. The Master of Illusion might use this principle to make their illusions harm victims, like making Cold Flames actually burn. Frequently pops up in a Holodeck Malfunction. See also Self-Inflicted Hell. When your mind actually changes the physical world, it's Clap Your Hands If You Believe. If a computer generated or magical illusion changes the physical world, it's Hard Light. When you're trapped in a virtual world, and have to win or die, its Win to Exit. Compare Puff of Logic, Magic Feather. Examples of Your Mind Makes It Real include:
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