Concept

Hanging in dark, empty space, a spherical segment of reality is shown, centered on a human and extending 100 yards in all directions. Beyond that, nothing. A crystal ball in the void: air, human, earth.

The human opens its eyes, and registers that it is standing on a street corner.

Over the next several minutes, we observe the human observing its own vision. Every time the human notes something, a small, brightly-colored dot of light glows suddenly in the relevant space — like a pin.

The human begins to walk. The earth slides by, like a 3D side-scroller, new scenery entering our vision as old sets slide out of view, opposite.

The pins do not vanish, though. They collect, just outside the VR looking glass, hovering where their place left them. Some of them have grown connected to others, thin lines of light pulled between them.

As new worlds appear, echoes of each pin are visible, like each pin is leaking its color into reality.

When the time is right, the pin falls through and reprises its role in a new way. The human sees what it saw the first time. It blinks. That pin will appear again.

Unused pins are lost. On some playthroughs we lose sight of the human: it is lost to a shifting sea of colored lights.

This is more or less how reality works.