When I see myself in the videogame it's amazing how realistic I

Host: The locker room was empty now, its metal benches glistening faintly under the cold fluorescent lights. A soccer ball rested by the door, still damp from the rain-soaked match outside. The air smelled of grass, sweat, and the faint echo of cheering that still hung in the walls.

Beyond the concrete corridor, the stadium lights were fading, one by one, as if the world itself was powering down after a long dream.

Jack sat on the bench, his elbows on his knees, scrolling through a tablet. His reflection glowed in the screen, haunted by something between pride and estrangement.

Jeeny leaned against the locker, her hair damp, her jacket half-zipped, watching him with that soft suspicion she always reserved for the modern miracles that left her uneasy.

Jeeny: “You’ve been staring at that screen for ten minutes. What are you looking at?”

Jack: “Myself.”

Jeeny: “You’re kidding.”

Jack: “No. It’s the new football sim — the one with the hyper-scan motion tech. They got every freckle, every crease, even the way I run. When I see myself in it... it’s like watching a ghost I didn’t know I’d become.”

Host: The tablet’s glow reflected on his face, painting him in a digital light — pale, perfect, and inhumanly calm. In the corner of the screen, his avatar dribbled, passed, scored, all with mechanical elegance, flawless, untouchable.

Jeeny: “Claudio Reyna said something like that once — that when he saw himself in the game, it was like looking in a mirror. The attention to detail, he said, was incredible.”

Jack: “Yeah, but a mirror still shows the real thing. This? This shows the version of me I’ll never live up to. No mistakes, no fatigue, no fear. Just a loop of perfection.”

Jeeny: “So what’s wrong with that? It’s art, Jack. Representation. They’ve captured you.”

Jack: “Captured? You mean copied. The difference matters.”

Host: The rain beat softly against the windows, the sound mixing with the faint hum of electronics. The room glowed with a strange stillness, like a museum after hours — humans gone, images remaining.

Jeeny: “You’re too afraid of what technology can do. It’s not a replacement; it’s a record. Think of it — your movements, your instincts, preserved forever. Isn’t that a kind of immortality?”

Jack: “Immortality’s overrated. Especially when it’s just pixels pretending to be pulse. What’s authentic about that?”

Jeeny: “Maybe authenticity isn’t just flesh and flaw anymore. Maybe it’s what we choose to recognize in what’s reflected. When Reyna said it was like a mirror, he didn’t mean vanity — he meant validation. That the years, the discipline, the spirit — all of it — could be seen.”

Jack: “Or simulated.”

Jeeny: “Does that diminish it?”

Host: A pause. The screen light flickered, the avatar on the tablet now frozen mid-stride, eyes fixed forward, forever chasing a goal that would never end.

Jack stared, his expression tightening, as though seeing his own ambition trapped behind glass.

Jack: “When I played, I was alive — mud, bruises, noise. I could feel the weight of every moment. This version of me — he’s just code. He doesn’t breathe, doesn’t doubt. He’s the illusion of everything I used to be, stripped of the heart that made it real.”

Jeeny: “But that’s what all art does — it extracts, it distills. A painting isn’t the painter, but it holds their soul. Maybe this game version of you — that digital Jack — is your portrait. Your movement as memory.”

Jack: “A portrait made by a machine, not a soul. There’s a difference, Jeeny. A brushstroke carries intention. This? It carries data.”

Host: The word data lingered — cold, sterile, exact. But Jeeny smiled, that slow, knowing smile that rose from a place of faith deeper than reason.

Jeeny: “You forget, Jack — the data came from you. Every movement it knows, every angle it recreates — you gave it life. You’re not erased by it. You’re echoed.”

Jack: “An echo fades, Jeeny.”

Jeeny: “Not if it keeps moving. Not if it inspires someone who sees it.”

Host: The locker room lights dimmed, automatically, on their timer, casting long shadows. The tablet screen was now the only light, its reflection splitting both their faces — half real, half digital.

Jeeny stepped closer, looking at the avatar.

Jeeny: “You see that look in his eyes? That’s not just programming. That’s the sum of every training day, every loss, every goal. Maybe the mirror doesn’t lie — maybe it’s showing you what the world saw in you all along.”

Jack: “And what’s that?”

Jeeny: “A man who believed in something enough to build it into his body.”

Host: The rain had stopped. The silence now felt sacred, as if the stadium, empty as it was, still remembered the roar. Jack set the tablet down and stood, his reflection in the dark glass now merging with the still image of his digital twin.

Jack: “You know, when I was young, I used to dream about being in those games. To see myself there, to be immortalized like the legends. But now that I’m in it... it feels like I’ve been flattened. Like I’ve been turned into a memory before I’ve even died.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s the price of being remembered — the world turns you into a symbol before you’ve finished being human.”

Jack: “Then maybe I’d rather stay human.”

Jeeny: “But maybe the game isn’t replacing you, Jack. Maybe it’s honoring you — the way music honors silence, by filling it with echo.”

Host: The lights flicked again, and the room fell into half-darkness. Jack’s face, lit by the soft blue glow of the tablet, shifted — no longer defensive, but curious, even moved.

Jack: “You really think there’s honor in pixels?”

Jeeny: “I think there’s truth in anything that remembers us.”

Jack: “Even if it’s artificial?”

Jeeny: “Especially then. Because it means we’ve taught the artificial how to feel.”

Host: The tablet screen dimmed, fading to black, leaving only their reflections. Two figures, one flesh, one memory, standing side by side — both alive, in their own ways.

Jack smiled, quietly, his hand brushing over the cold glass.

Jack: “You know... maybe Reyna was right. It is like a mirror. Not because it shows me as I am, but because it shows what I wanted to be.”

Jeeny: “And that’s what makes it real — the dream, not the pixels.”

Host: The camera would have pulled back, rising through the empty locker room, the tablet now glowing faintly on the bench, a small window into a different kind of immortality.

Outside, the stadium lights flickered off one by one, until only the moonlight remained, silver and soft, reflecting off the wet field like a mirror of the sky.

And in that mirror, as in the game, everything real — the passion, the effort, the human spark — still shone,
because even in the code, the soul had found a way to stay.