When the dark stranger came to the village Word, he opened the door to worlds beyond anything they could have dreamed of. Three children were born in the Village of Word, on the same eve, at the same time, with their fates intertwined. The old man they called The Hand wrote on their bodies a story and a prophecy. One to become a hero. One to become a queen. One to become a god. And, the fate of kingdoms came crawling to their door.

An introductory history of the ?virtual body, ? eVolve explores the boundaries between a series of cultural artifacts, all of which evidence the historical moment when a technology necessary for what we now call ?virtual reality? came into being in order to better understand the human fascination with, and desire for, virtuality. The discussion of simulation technologies includes visual art, cartography, narrative, drama, games and spontaneous play as simulations, miniature war games, role-playing games, computer games, virtual cinema, the internet MOOs and MUDs, massively multiplayer online communities MMOs, and, finally, artificial intelligence, the Anthropic Cosmological Principles, and Omega Point Theory. The subject matter is highly interdisciplinary and draws widely upon theoretical discussions from both the arts, humanities, and the sciences