Virtual reality headsets are nothing new,
at least not in the human imagination. Back in the 1960s, Auschwitz survivor
Primo Levi - one of the 20th century's most important writers - published 'Retirement
Package,' a short story that foresaw the use of a helmet connected to a machine
called a Total Recorder (or Torec). This allowed humans to live inside any pre-recorded
event and experience the sensation of, say, scoring a goal for AC Milan.
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| "Yay! I scored for AC Milan!" |
The narrator is being shown the Torec and
its tapes by a friend, Simpson, who has just received the machine as a
'retirement gift' from his company, NATCA, where he's been a long-serving
salesman. The Torec is not yet on the market and Simpson is just the company's willing
guinea pig, but using his sales skills he persuades the sceptical narrator, who
is not a football fan, to put on the helmet and place himself in the shoes of a Milan player called Rasmussen.
The narrator complies and describes "an
intense odour of overturned earth. I was sweating and my ankle hurt slightly."
He also feels "nimble and ready, like a loaded spring". Running with
the ball, he passes to a team-mate on his right and, amid "the rising roar
of the
