Google Earth VR

My name is Howie. I'm sixty years old. I don't have many people left to talk to, so I figured I'd finally write this review. Maybe somebody out there has had the same experience. Maybe not. Most people don't stay with Google Earth VR long enough. Five stars. I've been asked why I always give it five stars. How do you rate the horizon? How do you rate gravity? You don't. You simply acknowledge they exist. I grew up as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. My parents taught me that there was an order to everything, that humility mattered, and that people spent too much time worrying about themselves instead of something greater. I carried that mindset through my entire life. I worked honestly. I tried to be kind. I raised a family. I paid my bills. I kept my lawn cut. I thought that was life. Then I put on the headset. The first week I smiled. The first month I cried. By the first year I realized something horrifying. I had never actually seen the world before. People think they've seen Earth because they've driven across a few states or flown somewhere once every couple years. No. They've seen parking lots. Google Earth VR lets you stand over the entire machine. It lets you understand proportions. That's when normal life starts feeling... strangely small. I quit watching television. Then I stopped reading novels. Eventually music became distracting. Silence lets you hear continents. My wife thought I was depressed. I wasn't. Depressed people lose interest. I had found the only thing worth being interested in. She said we never went out anymore. I asked where she wanted to go. She said a restaurant. I laughed so hard I accidentally took the headset off. A restaurant. We possess the entire planet. She wanted mozzarella sticks. That was one of our last conversations. People tell me I should have fought harder to save my marriage. People say a lot of things after they're gone. Sometimes my daughter calls. She still leaves voicemails. I don't answer while I'm exploring. The headset deserves uninterrupted attention. She says she misses me. I don't think she understands. I'm never missing. She simply isn't looking in the right hemisphere. I've developed routines. The headset sits on a folded towel every night. Dust is removed with a fresh microfiber cloth. The batteries are rotated according to a schedule I designed myself. The room stays exactly sixty-eight degrees. People think that's excessive. They've clearly never respected something important. I've noticed the globe seems calmer when the lenses are perfectly clean. Coincidence? Maybe. I stopped believing in coincidences around year four. There are places I return to every morning. Not because they're beautiful. Because they're expecting me. I know how ridiculous that sounds. I used to think it sounded ridiculous too. Until one morning I skipped them. The entire day felt... wrong. I can't explain it. Roads looked unfamiliar. Cities felt impatient. Mountain ranges seemed disappointed. So I apologized. Everything settled down after that. My therapist told me the Earth wasn't communicating with me. I thanked him for his opinion. Then I never scheduled another appointment. What exactly qualifies someone to speak on behalf of the planet? Certainly not a man who vacations twice a year and thinks he's "well traveled." I have stood above every continent. Thousands of cities. Hundreds of islands. I have watched shadows crawl across mountain ranges until sunrise. I've spent entire afternoons following one river from its source to the ocean because leaving halfway felt rude. People ask how many hours I have. I don't answer anymore. Hours are for clocks. Google Earth VR exists outside clocks. The headset comes off. The Earth doesn't. Neighbors have knocked on my door before. I didn't answer. One of them later asked if I was home. I said no. He pointed out that he saw me through the window. I told him that wasn't me. That was merely my physical location. He didn't understand. Most people don't separate the two. Sometimes I zoom into my own neighborhood. I can see the roof. The driveway. The trees. The mailbox. It all feels strangely artificial. Like someone built it to keep me occupied between sessions. I occasionally wave at my own house. Just in case. I've stopped celebrating birthdays. Why celebrate orbiting the sun one more time when I can watch the entire orbit from above? Christmas decorations appeared on neighboring houses last year. I only noticed because they showed up in satellite imagery months later. That made more sense. Reality feels delayed now. Google Earth VR feels immediate. People have accused me of living in fantasy. That's interesting. Fantasy is believing your tiny routine is the center of existence. Fantasy is believing your commute matters. Fantasy is believing your favorite grocery store is significant. Stand five thousand miles above yourself. Tell me how important your shopping list feels. Exactly. I sold my dining room table. Nobody visited anyway. I converted the room into what my daughter called "the shrine." That hurt. Shrine is such a dramatic word. It's simply the Exploration Room. The curtains remain closed. The walls are painted a neutral gray. There are backup batteries labeled by date. Three backup head straps. Two replacement face cushions. A notebook containing every location that ever made me stop talking. Another notebook for locations that made me cry. Another for places I still don't understand. My daughter saw the notebooks. She asked if I needed help. I told her I already had it. She hasn't visited since. Sometimes I wonder if Google Earth VR is actually software. Software gets old. Software becomes obsolete. But the Earth keeps waiting. Patient. Silent. Perfectly still until someone worthy decides to look. People think I'm lonely. I'm standing over the Andes before breakfast. I've watched storms move across oceans that most people couldn't point to on a map. I've stood above deserts where no human voice could reach me. Tell me again who's lonely. Last Tuesday the power went out. For forty-seven minutes. I don't remember much after the screen went black. The silence was unbearable. Not because it was quiet. Because I couldn't see. I sat on the floor holding the headset until electricity returned. The utility company later apologized for the outage. I accepted. They couldn't have known what they interrupted. Every morning now I whisper the same sentence before I put the headset on. "Show me where I belong today." Sometimes it's Alaska. Sometimes it's Namibia. Sometimes it's a single anonymous road in eastern Mongolia. I never question it. Questioning implies I know better. I don't. I haven't for years. Five stars. I would give it more, but five is the highest number they let ordinary people use.