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in real life. Or in the case of the robot training, it shifts to whatever video lens I want, giving me the chance to see in four directions, one direction at a time.”
    â€œGo on,” Rawling said.
    â€œSounds come in like real sounds. Because I’m wearing a wired jacket and gloves, the arms and hands I see in my surround-sight picture move wherever I move my own arms and hands.”
    â€œGood,” he said.
    â€œGood? I’ll bet any five-year-old Earth kid knows this stuff. What about this secr—?”
    â€œWill you agree with me that the virtual-reality helmet and jacket are just extensions of your brain?”
    He must have seen my puzzled look. He pointed at the telescope. “Just like this is an extension of your brain. You can’t actually be on a moon of Jupiter, but the telescope lets your eyes go there, and your eyes show the moon to your brain.”
    â€œThat’s different,” I said. “A moon of Jupiter is real. Virtual reality is just a computer program.”
    â€œYour brain doesn’t know the difference. Not unless you tell your brain with your thoughts.”
    â€œRawling,” I said, “if you’re trying to confuse me, it’s working.”
    â€œStick with me,” he said. “This is important. Does your brain see?”
    I thought about it. “No. My eyes see.”
    â€œYou got it. Your eyes deliver information to your brain. When you look through the telescope, your optic nerves take the image and fire it into your brain. Your brain translates the information. But your brain doesn’t see. It relies on the extensions of the brain. Your eyes. Your telescope. Or the extension of virtual reality.”
    I was beginning to understand.
    â€œYour brain doesn’t see anything,” Rawling said. “It doesn’t hear anything. It doesn’t smell anything. It doesn’t taste anything. It doesn’t feel anything. Your brain is this incredible jumble of stuff packed into your skull that translates the information delivered to it by nerve endings. Some nerve endings are attached to the back of your eyes. Or to your ear canals. To sensors in your nose or on your tongue. To nerve endings in your skin and bones.”
    â€œIn other words,” I said, “you’re telling me the body is like a virtual-reality suit wrapped around the brain.”
    â€œExactly!” He smiled. “After all, it’s like God designed an amazing 24-hour-a-day virtual-reality suit that moves on two legs, has two arms to pick things up, can feed and repair itself, and is equipped to give information through all five senses. Except instead of taking you through virtual reality, a made-up world, your body takes you through the real world.”
    â€œI never thought of it that way,” I said. “But I’ll agree with you. Now will you finally tell me the secret?”
    â€œSoon,” Rawling said. “But give me one more minute.”
    â€œOne minute.”
    â€œIt takes time for the brain to learn how to handle all the information delivered by the body,” he said, excitedly falling into the teacher role. “For proof, all you need to do is watch a baby as it grows. Babies are clumsy and don’t know how to work their bodies. Or how to understand the sights and sounds that their eyes and ears deliver to their new brains. But slowly, their brains figure out what information is being delivered, and babies begin to understand the world around them through the nerves of their eyes and ears and nose and tongue and skin.”
    â€œI know. I know,” I said. “For my first two years in controlling a virtual-reality robot in the computer program, you always laughed and said that except for smelly diapers, I was just like a newborn baby.”
    â€œBecause you were,” Rawling said in a serious tone. “Your brain was learning to translate new information. Only this new information