You look at the window, and your eyes track a rivulet of rain water making its way down the window pane. Outside, the sky is overcast and the rumble of thunder, distant yet distinct, triggers neurons to fire in the recesses of your brain.

You sit on your couch… alone, your hand reflexively caresses the cup of hot chocolate, the warmth of the cup sending another trigger, activating memories that are slowly fading…

Memories of how the two of you used to sit at home on days like these, the scent of her hair mingling with the scent of the wet earth outside, making you take a deep breath. Yet, she is not here and this is not the same window or the same couch…

Nostalgia? not quite. Somehow nostalgia doesn’t quite adequately describe this mix of yearning, and memories that are flooding you, while your mind paints virtual imagery of a time and place that cannot exist, in your present.

But, the Portuguese have captured all of this beautifully, in a single word: “Saudade”

Reversing the absence of Presence.

What if there were a way of teleporting you? Of making your saudade… real, on-demand?

You reach out and wear a Virtual Reality headset. You look around, and a smile forms on your lips. You are there! The place is exactly as you remember it from 2 years ago. A thunderclap – and your reflexes take over, making you turn your gaze from the dimly lit corridor in the home, toward the window.

Only, the sun is now streaming through, highlighting her hair. You take a deep breath – your senses adjust. You’ve just mixed your reality with reality from a forgotten timeline.

Storytelling in VR:

In Dirrogate* the VR film, the two main characters are in a long distance relationship. They use “Wizers” (visors with A.I) to rendezvous at different locations in the world. Haptics encode and transmit their touch – their “feel streams”. While this would sound like science fiction about 5 years ago, it’s already becoming reality and will likely be the de-facto way LDRs would work for people separated by geography and time.

A few interesting questions come to mind:

For people in LDRs – Army wives, the first inter-planetary settlers, or families living away from each other… would new “memories” be made in Virtual Reality?

Would a Virtual location that loved ones log into, become “real”?

Most importantly, would they experience “saudades” – would it make them yearn to ‘be’ in that Virtual space more than the real-world place and time they are in now? If this happens, the Portuguese might have to re-invent the word, perhaps re-christening it “Saud-ality”?

Dirrogate has a twist: One of the partners in the LDR is not in the real world – anymore. While this perhaps borders on the taboo, it won’t be science fiction for long, if a few brilliant minds reach their goal, backed by heavyweights in VR and AI, very soon.

* Dirrogate is a Stereoscopic VR short film created in the Graphic Novel format and is one of the few stereoscopic VR experiences hosted on the official Oculus Video landing page for the GearVR. It is also trending and the Curator’s pick on Samsung’s MilkVR platform. The VR experience can be seen for free on Vrideo: http://www.vrideo.com/watch/Zndcocm or downloaded at a higher rez in stereo 360 at https://www.gum.co/dirrogate