Introduction:

  Truth is the quality of aligning with objectivity.

  Are dreams objective? Are memories objective? Because they diverge from what's tangible, does that make them false? Do they inherently contain elements of fabrication?

  For the prisoners who've spent most of their lives in a cave, those dark, oppressive shadows flickering before their eyes[1]—weren't they, to them, the truest of realities?

  Imagine living an entire lifetime in a 30-second virtual world. You've loved, hated, tasted glory, and harbored regrets. Then I wake you, declaring it all a falsehood. Could you accept such a verdict?

  Be it dreams in reality or a life within a virtual realm, the memories they etch into your mind undeniably shape you. They become shadows in your heart.

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  Yet reality and virtuality stand in opposition. Though you yearn to embrace those false memories—the tangled emotions you once possessed—they can only endure within the confines of the virtual.

  And the most genuine of those feelings? They rot silently at the bottom of your heart, weathered by time into a product of contradiction.

  So who imprisons us? Who did we grant permission to? How can we let someone else define the boundary between truth and illusion?

  It's us. We've shackled ourselves. We're the ones who convince ourselves: That was false; this is real.

  We are our own captives.

  Absurd, yet inescapable.

  [1] From Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Plato imagined a group of prisoners confined in a cave since birth, able to see only shadows cast on the wall—shadows they mistook for the entirety of reality. They couldn't directly perceive the true world, understanding it solely through those projections. When one is freed and discovers the outside, returning to enlighten the others, he faces doubt, even hostility.