As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions — sights, sounds, textures, tastes — are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Yet, when we stop and think about it — or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion — we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, however. Is space and time in which we think we operate just our VR headset, an interface that we can reverse engineer? What would it feel like to see reality as it is truly is? So far, it seems unimaginable, but at least we can imagine this “reality headset” melting and dripping away. Inspired by the work of Donald Hoffman, an American cognitive psychologist, Professor of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, and popular science author. The project emerged from my work on another series, called "Plastic Souls", so the characters look similar.