“Real Life” is episode five of season one of Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams and is based on the short story Exhibit Piece.
This episode opens with a woman, Sarah, sitting in a restaurant. Someone is talking to her but she seems to have trouble focusing. Or eating. She, and the man she is with, are police officers. They are working on a case, a massacre of cops committed by some violent killers. She is continually reliving the massacre, as she was there at the time.
In order to get Sarah off this, her partner offers her something, an electronic device, a vacation of a type. Not just a virtual holiday; this thing has you live another life as another person. A vacation from her life, time spent as someone else, based on her thoughts and feelings.
Next thing seen is a man, George, in a darkened and not very nice looking area of town, being helped up by a friend. George is bleeding from his head. Both are armed, but they get surrounded by a group of men who have more weapons.
Mario, the leader of the men that captured them is not a very nice person, and wants to cut of George’s finger and feed it to him. By the sounds of it, George didn’t do something he was asked to do. However, both George and his friend are more capable than they look. George and his friend, Chris, get into a car, which is far more primitive than the one Sarah got into (as in modern, not futuristic), and George is confused as to how to operate it.
George runs a company called Avacom, a company he founded himself, and he’s very wealthy. So why was he in a bad part of town looking for a criminal? Chris suggests that George take a vacation, one you can go on without leaving the house. Using a prototype device that George has designed. A far more primitive version of the device that Sarah used. When George puts on the device, Sarah wakes up.
Sarah and her partner get some information about the men they are looking for. The lead takes them to the same place that George was. The men are meeting someone who says that the people he represents wants them to a bigger, and far more violent, job.
When Sarah falls unconscious or uses the device, she wakes up as George. When George puts the headset on, he wakes up as Sarah. Is George imagining the future using the VR device, or is Sarah remembering parts of George’s life in the past using her own VR device? Or is something even stranger going on? There are commonalities between both worlds, including the fact that both George and Sarah ware married to the same woman. Which is making things confusing. Sarah in particular is starting to lose her grasp on reality, as she has stronger memories of George’s life, but he starts remembering Sarah’s memories too and his grasp on reality slips.