Scott Summers took a brief moment to smile a little, more to himself than for the benefit of his students. He wondered if they had any idea how great he felt to be back in front of a classroom again. Of course, he preferred to believe they were focused on the topic at hand.

"Reality is perception," Scott announced. "Right? But what is perception? According to Descartes, our sensory perception is unreliable. He saw reality as only what could be deducted through reason."

Kitty cocked her head to the side, raising her pen in the air. Scott nodded towards her.

"But how can you reason anything if you can't trust your senses?" she asked. "How could he know there's even an external world to begin with?"

Scott gave her an appreciative look. "He faced that same question from an opposing philosopher once. He explained that he receives his sensory perceptions involuntarily. Obviously, right? I mean, if they were only coming from his mind, he could just will them to go away and leave him alone with his thoughts. But because they were coming from somewhere else, that proved to him the existence of an external reality. Of course, that doesn't prove much about that reality. I mean, I can't use involuntary sensory input or my powers of deduction to prove that all of you have functioning minds. For all I know, you're a bunch of zombies."

A chuckle washed over the assembled students. Scott grinned as he continued. "But now that you've read Berkeley, you've seen another extreme. He felt that knowledge about the empirical world can only come from direct, firsthand perception." He tapped his ruby quartz shades. "By that logic, as far as I'm concerned, everything in existence is shaded red. And to take that even further, the last three months never happened."

This example seemed to particularly catch the students' attention. Pleased, he sat down on the edge of his desk and folded his arms. "I mean, I wasn't around to see it. When I woke up, that time was already gone. The reverse is also true – you have no reason to believe I was actually alive in a hospital somewhere for those three months, because you didn't see it. Maybe I really was dead. Hell, maybe I'm the one who's a zombie."

There was another laugh from the class. "And why not?" he continued. "There's no way to perceive death or the possibility of an afterlife, right? How do you know if there's an afterlife or not? On an even more basic level, how do you know someone's mind isn't still alive when you pronounce their body dead? You can't go into their minds and check, right?"

"Mutants can," Bobby interjected. He hadn't raised his hand, but Scott didn't mind. He just nodded enthusiastically in response.

"Exactly," Scott told him. "That's the point. The philosophical landscape is entirely different now from when Descartes and Berkeley were alive. If they were around today, Descartes wouldn't even trust his mind anymore, because someone could also be entering it and directing his thoughts. Berkeley would have no way to tell real sensory perceptions apart from an illusion. Now more than ever, reality is the perception of the individual, defined only by what you make of it. In a world where the laws of physics are routinely broken and minds can be manipulated, even the notion of life and death becomes meaningless. For me, the last three months didn't happen. For you, I was dead. When malevolent organizations like the Brotherhood try to warp the future to their will, what are they really doing? They're trying to put boundaries on their reality. To put ground rules on a world where the standard rules no longer apply."

Standing up again, he saw that the room had gotten serious as the students took these ideas in. "Of course," he said pointedly, "There are far less destructive ways to ground one's self. But it's up to each of you to decide whether you're going to respond to this uncertainty by attacking the world around you in a violent rage or redefining your existence in a healthier fashion."

"Scott?"

The voice startled Cyclops, jolting him out of his monologue. Looking towards the entrance to the classroom, he saw Logan holding the door open and leaning into the room.

"Is something up?" Scott asked.

Logan nodded. "Storm wants to see you," he explained. "All of us, actually. Says it's important."

Scott furrowed his brow. "Now? Is it serious?"

The other man shrugged. "I just know it has to do with a phone call she just got from Muir Island." He paused for a moment, smirking. "Frankly, she seems downright happy about it."

Scott raised his eyebrows and nodded once, silently. "Okay then. I'll be there in a second." Logan took that as his cue to exit.

Turning back towards his students, he saw that they were already sneaking their books into their bags, preparing to escape the room.

He laughed softly. "Okay, yes, we're going to have to cut this one short," he told them. "But I want you to consider what we've talked about. How do you make peace with yourself if your reality is in a constant state of flux? Obviously, there's no solid answer… "

As he made his way towards the door, he turned back to the room and grinned once more. "However, I certainly have some suggestions."

The End