The "Virtual World"

"Realistic things and facts are always interesting but when life holds so much mystery slight fiction may really turn things around!"

Anyways back to my normal stuff...lets open the "destined tabs" of my browser: Google+ , Facebook, institute's mail etc.

Oh the wonderful web and the marvelous networking it offers ! Best way to explore the world...to extend our circles...to know people around the world and exchange random views....

The virtual world really fascinates me! You come to know about so many great and passionate people, philosophers...

It happened once, I viewed profile of a really awesome personality named Stephen Mathews (he +1'd  my G+ post and added me to his circles, so I was curious)..

After  loading of the entire page, a hazy and dim cover pic appeared, I was not able to figure out what it actually was, and the profile pic was also a bit "too" interesting, precisely a diffused smoky image which looked like a photographic negative of a man's face on a black background. Anyways, the person appeared to me a really artistic one...

I continued viewing his profile, it was written "Passionate writer"...mentioned hobbies were travelling, writing and meeting new people! Graduated from "University of Sylvania"!

Seems too good to me! Such philosophers with artistic bend of mind always tend to inspire me!

One by one I went through the posts he shared, too much depth in one such person, I sensed that the person was really mature and had gone through several experiences of life! A feeling of inspiration and regards along with a tinge of fascination popped into me for this person....

And ah what was that! ... the funky ringtone of my mobile broke down the eerie silence in the room!

A friend of mine was calling me for dinner...

I signed out and the rest of the day went just like that, since then I was mostly preoccupied with some or the other important work and rarely had chance to open any of the social networking sites, and even if I did that was mostly for work-purposes.

Days passed by, my friends and I were working on a really exciting project of image processing for quite a few days as a part of international-competition  , though chances of us getting selected were rare but we were engrossed in making the project a success, our hopes were high.

It was just yet another dining time when my friend ran to me, told us  something which  followed by bursts of laughter and excitement..."Yes, we made it", we were selected and were called to give presentation in a foreign university. After some time when the excitement settled down a bit, I read the selection-mail, it was written in the end "University of Sylvania is waiting for you!"....I was happy but then I reread the name "University of Sylvania" and it stroke a nerve in my head, taking me back to the day when I viewed the profile of Stephen Mathews, he was living around there only. A feeble hope of meeting him sparked in my eye.

Soon the day of our presentation arrived. After a few "rush-rush" hours of packing and taking the flight, we finally stepped into the University...it was beautiful! We were really excited and somewhat dumbstruck by its awesome beauty too.

Thanks to God, our presentation went really nice, people genuinely liked it.

There were lots of talented people around there, among them some University students became our good friends, we asked them to guide us through their magnificent campus.

Beautiful, historic, antique architecture! Such a pleasure to eyes! We finally stepped into the wide entrance hall, there were large wooden boards hung around with the names of passed-out scholars written in glittering gold. I just gave a glance but one name sought my attention and for a moment I was fixed then and there with my eyes glued to that one name "Stephen Mathews"...my curiosity level was getting out of bounds which finally busted out in form of a loud question "He is a great lad, do you know him?". He in-turn replied, who doesn't? Very famous person he was, a genius, a philosopher , a great personality! I was literally nodding my head in agreement. "Have you met him?" I was really looking forward if by any chance I could meet this person. He replied gravely "No! I wanted to but he died 4 years ago!"

For a second I thought my ears have made a mistake! I reassured by repeating "He died!?!!" and he nodded his head.

I was dumbstruck!  Now if this person has died who the hell is posting on my G+ account? I was feeling as if I was experiencing deja vu. A strange feeling was running across my spine. Whose posts did I re-share? Who is posting about his experiences in the university, sharing his upcoming projects?

For the sake of convincing myself I was now trying to opt for all crude realistic alternatives, might be his account is hacked! Or it might be possible that someone else with a same profile existed....but then that was next to impossible, in no case can the profiles, behavior and thoughts of any two persons match totally!

All these questions were hovering over my mind, all six senses were engaged in finding out the truth!

Nobody in my friends had the person added on their accounts, even he had very few people added to his circles....all these observations were now making me afraid, how is this possible?

Can a dead person have an "active" account? Is internet accessible to the "other" world also? Is the "virtual world" something that binds the two worlds(this life and afterlife worlds) together....we really don't have any proof of whether a person having a brilliant profile or the one with whom you just played poker with actually exists or not! Who knows? Net is accessible to all genre of people then do dead people also have an active id on net?

I was afraid and didn't realize when we reached back to our place. After the normal goodbye talks I walked through the echoing corridor and stepped into my silent room.

I opened up my G+ account, there were few pending messages...one was from Stephen Mathews, wiith shaking fingers I clicked to open it, it read "Did you like my university?" My soul froze ,I was left in awe!