Virtual

Lately, he had become obsessed with the idea that what he thought of as “Real Life” was actually a simulation. That every experience was actually an artificially-created input into a Virtual Reality. He didn’t really believe that he was living in the Matrix, but he felt that, as an exercise in logical thinking, it should be possible to disprove the proposition. After wrestling with the problem for several weeks (assuming that elapsed time had any meaning), he came to the conclusion that, if life was a simulation, then every past experience was tainted and useless as a way of evaluating the reality of any new experience. It was impossible to prove or disprove the simulation theory.

At the same age, his father had had a similar experience whilst pondering the existence of God.