When Thomas Wolfe wrote "you can't go home again," he clearly hadn't tried to do it in virtual reality--because right now, my body is sitting in an office in midtown Manhattan, but my brain is back in my childhood bedroom in Ohio. There's a robot that responds to voice commands; a toy model of Castle Grayskull from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe; Transformers strewn around, in ridiculous positions. If the couch wasn't a slightly different kind of 1980s tacky from my own, I'd swear I had indeed proven Wolfe wrong. This homecoming came courtesy of Miyubi, the latest VR experience from Felix & Paul Studios. It's a live-action piece about a boy who gets a toy robot named Miyubi for his birthday in 1982--except you're the robot.

A young boy named Dennis has just received the birthday present of his dreams. It's you -- a Japanese robot that can repeat words, although for the most part you just watch silently. That's the premise of Felix & Paul Studios' 40-minute-long VR comedic feature for Funny Or Die called Miyubi, which launches in the Oculus store today. Through events happening to a family over the course of a year, it tells a bleak story of the futility of trying to outrace obsolescence. The harrowing message hits especially hard because of how effectively the show's creators used the medium, forcing you to witness times changing around you.

Standing in a pink desert landscape, I looked down and realized I'd become a robot, with skinny metal legs and pincers for hands. Without warning or explanation, my hands became cannons and began firing projectiles, which, on further inspection, I saw were small metallic cats. In the sky, a giant cat appeared; it shook an infant's bottle, and stars came out. Earlier that same day, I spent time as a black woman, in a neurocosmetology salon of the future. According to the staff, I needed both hair-styling and a neurological upgrade; namely, "transcranial extensions designed to make the brain's synapses more excitable and primed to increase neuroplasticity."