Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

On the second day of the third week of classes for the first term of the new school year, I started with Chapter Two of the textbook in my Mathematical Methods class, Equations and Inequalities.

As always, I specifically delimited our discussion to only equations of one variable in one degree, so that they will have an idea how easy they should be finding the topic.

This was also the meeting when I told the students about forming groups and submitting large plastic envelopes per group for keeping their requirements until such time as midterms or the week before finals when they would want (or I would want them to) compute for their own class standing.

Warding off any questions about when I’d return their papers, I announced that it would be on the third meeting for the week.

In the Science Fiction Literature class in the afternoon, we discussed “The Matrix” and “Animatrix” – not necessarily in that order.

It wasn’t until Ross was called to recite and he talked about what made the story science fiction, which was, of course, the virtual reality and the “evolution” of the machines shown, that I spoke up and told them about a similar story that pre-dated the movie, but may not be considered as science fiction.

What I didn’t expect was that one of the students, taken in by my general description of either movie as “people trapped in a world they believe to be real and where they are essentially free, but when it is in fact a prison and they are being exploited” also fits another movie from the same period, “The Truman Show”. In fact, its similarities with “Dark City” go so far as the main protagonist going to the “edge” of the city.

Of course I went on to describe one of the possible “what if’s” of the film that bring it into the category of science fiction: computer graphics and artificial intelligence made to input and interact directly with people’s brains instead of needing to use keyboards and screens, discovering how to decipher the signals that directly influence the senses and the brain, and becoming indistinguishable from what’s real.

Everything else - the malicious purpose for the deception, the special abilities acquired by those “enlightened” to how the “world” really “works”, and the fight for their freedom - are all standard story elements that are not necessarily science fiction but date back to classic well-loved movies such as “Spartacus” and dozens of comic books out there.

I wanted to give special attention to the parts of the “Animatrix” that explored further possibilities, such as “if we are in a world made by a machine, what if there’s a data error?” in “Beyond”.

I wasn’t surprised that the discussion started to veer a little towards religion, especially with the allegorical aspects of the plot, as well as other students also wanting to question the “robots made in man’s image” aspect of people wanting to be more God-like, but Rae and I told them that we would have more chances to go deeper into that in other movies we will watch.

That caps off session 618. For now, class dismissed.