God and the Rides
I, Shelly, said to Amos, “We live in a nightmare amusement park World, here on Moon Miranda!” He replied, “How did we ever come to this?” I said, “In my case, I was lured by the potential thrills of continuous action.” He said, “Me, too. And it’s a new World, so there were no ratings to go by.” I said, “There must be some way we can escape!” He said, “As you know, escape is forbidden. We are stuck here with endless nightmare rides. Each ride becomes more horrific every day. And thousands have killed themselves or died of a heart attack on the rides…”
But finally, the UW (United Worlds) stepped in and temporarily shut down the rides. Most people were overjoyed and felt emancipated. And we had an election in which I was voted in for President and Amos for Vice President. And we promised the people thrills, that were sane.
And we built Paradise rides in which people met Heavenly figures like saints. And God that we had created, granted wishes using MRT (Mind Reading Technology); many peoples’ first instinct was to worship God. But God told them to do good deeds and try and please him.
The God we had created was a Superhuman, based on a combination of our best people including Amos and I, and was a great artistic genius. And he made some exciting rides in which good triumphed over evil, the actors replayed the same scenes over and over.
But even though it was a good World, evil existed. And on the rides, we showed how evil people had their brains operated on, to make them good. Replaying it again and again.
And the rides showed people loving one another in orgies and one could get in the minds of loving people, passively, and feel sublime. It was truly a World of love.
And the rides replayed the famous recent battles on Earth between evil tyrants and democrats. But in some battles the tyrants triumphed. And on the rides, not everything was Heavenly. Some were still nightmares based on negative reality. And the people of Miranda seemed to enjoy all the rides.
When not on the rides, the people mostly loved one another and feasted and drank and took panacea drugs.
And the rides introduced new culture, like fashion with many accoutrements and new art of the future, displaying futuristic looking cities and futuristic looking genius people and they took the panacea drugs while on the rides.
Each ride lasted 10 minutes, and many of the people here spent a lot of time creating the rides.
But some wanted to make movies and be like other colonies. But our God told them that this colony featured the best art as rides, and were mostly short, graphic films and the would-be film makers would just have to adapt to that. Of course, now, people were free to leave this World if they so wished. But most great artists felt it was an exciting milieu.
And many tourists came here, looking for excitement, and generated much needed income for the colony. And new immigrants bought real estate on Miranda and bought a lifetime pass for all the rides. Currently the population here is 24,000 souls, every one of them fully human. AI was banned from our World. Some tourists wondered how we could create such interesting Worlds without AI, but we told them it was easy, just to make short, graphic films for the rides.
Also, our God had a weekly message for the people. Typically, exhorting people to enjoy life to the max, and love one another. And God said, to be dark and mysterious was OK, but it was not allowed to break the hearts of others. Heartbreakers were reprimanded. However, many people here were exceedingly good looking and broken hearts were par for the course.
But people here wanted their thrills. And we gave them to them.
Tom is from Canada. Tom has published novels, novellas, short stories, poetry and flash in 48 publications. Website: https://tomballbooks.com. Online Journal Website (he is senior editor/co-founder): https://fleasonthedog.com. E-mail: tomball33@yahoo.com.Facebook: tomball33@gmail.com