Virtual Eternity (the Serialized Novel) Episode 9 - The Secret Flagship Product: Playing Magic Theater

This is Episode 9 of the serialized version of the novel, Virtual Eternity: An Epic 90s Retro Florida Techo-Pro-Life Love Story and Conversion Journey. These 52 episodes are presented here free for you every Friday. You can buy the paperback version from Mike Church’s Crusade Channel Store (at a lower price than Amazon!).

Or you can start reading at the Table of Contents: here

The Secret Flagship Product: Playing Magic Theater

On Saturday morning, at my apartment, I plugged power and data into the company desktop computer, since my own lacked the capability. The computer that displayed the Magic Theater software contained a set of the most miniature chips any mind could yet conceive. Each chip contained tens of millions of microscopic gates to transfer and impede the flow of electrons. The computer also held a set of circuits and magnets to store the signals. The electrons caused voltages, which the chips, circuits, and magnets read as either high or low. Combinations of these signals instructed devices to produce images. The number and arrangement of these devices formed the most powerful machine that had ever been set on an individual’s desk or entertainment center. The computer and its electrons matched almost biologically, as if the process was designed by God, as if the chip was a plant cell using the electrons in a photosynthesis. The number of instructions and amount of data it could manage at any one time were nearly twenty times greater than the next most recent system. This harmony titillated the computer industry, which awaited the financial windfalls. It expected the replacement of television networks, the individuation of entertainment, the expansion of the current of information, and long-distance electronic interactive relationships.

I lacked excitement for this pioneering endeavor. Vincula paid me for having such an enthusiasm, so guilt occasionally struck me. Also, I knew society would one day surpass me. If I hesitated, it would cast me away as an outsider, a reactionary old man seeking simpler times and heckling people’s technology as its parade marched by.

But now, I would lead the procession. I could discover the secrets of Phase 3. I scanned my smart card and attached myself to the system. After I downloaded the proper files, I placed my torso in the vest, my hands in the wiry gloves, and my head in the helmet. Immediately the system roused itself. Voltages poured through the circuits, gates, and magnets.

A carnival-like shopping mall surrounded me. It seemed like I had just entered from an outside: A light streamed in from behind me. Using my hand to direct my perspective, I moved along the corridor past shoppers. It was indistinguishable from the outside world. I moved to take off the helmet to compare the two realities, but then an orange marquee lit up above the mall anchor store:

Den of Lions

Not for Everybody

(Do Not Enter)

I approached the store. Apparently it was closed. I looked through a metal roll-down cage. Several teenage girls vacuumed the carpet, a common sight in malls. The room was otherwise empty. I continued through the mall. The rest of the stores were open. The

sign of the next store read:

Dinosaur Exterminator

I had not heard of this game. In the store, dinosaurs romped and died, and the scene repeated. This obviously was some storefront representation of the game inside. I moved on. Over other stores hung bright marquees:

Cameraperson in Hades

All That Glitters Is Not News

Battle of New York

(The Guggenheim Siege)

View from Below:

Life as a Slithering Snake

Art in the Twenty-Second Century

Be Famous for Fifteen Nanoseconds

Urban Planner 3495 A.D.

Teenage Love

The Minimum Age Allowed by Law

(Not Available in States Whose Legislatures Have Met)

I knew nothing about these games. Maybe my memory failed me like it did during some four-day drunk. This strange new existence fluffed my head like one of those binges. More likely, they were experimental games. I pushed to enter that last store, which was full of skinny, leather-clad, long-legged girls, but then the next sign illuminated bright green:

Extermination Control Camp

Equal Opportunity Genocide

The representation showed a female official in military garb holding court for a diverse set of thin refugees. I projected my hand through the storefront portal.

The people disappeared from the room. The official leaped up and thudded over in her high boots.

“Colonel, you’re here. Excellent. I believe you should see this.” She was stout and tall. Her voice sounded deep from cigarettes. “Out here. You will notice that quite a melee ensued last night.” The woman pointed through a dirty window to the gray outside.

I opened the long shoulder’s-width window. Five or six stories below, thousands of brown-shirted people stood in circles and marched in mud in a prison camp. “What is it?” I asked.

“Only your downfall, sir. See the slashed northern wall? Last night an escape was perpetrated. When the Secretary-General arrives today, you will of course be court-martialed for incompetence. That’s life imprisonment. Do you have any plans to remedy this situation?” She seemed calm.

“Incompetence? For one escape?”

“Of course. The Secretary-General warned you after a similar uprising last fall. Will you take measures, sir?”

“Have they searched for this escapee?”

“Yes. The search team is still deployed. But, Colonel, I doubt that the Secretary-General cares whether you catch your prisoner. The state of the compound is deplorable. The students have been rejecting your lessons in increasing numbers. News from the war leaks in through your fences. Our armies are losing the war, and your students suspect this. We’ve had to squelch six revolts this fiscal year. Even if you re-capture that hatemonger who escaped, he’s given them more hope and less reason to accept our ideals. That is, after all, the purpose of this university.”

I stared out at the throngs of people. One student ran through the yard, crisscrossing the lines. I yelled. The student slipped in the muck. A guard promptly shot him in the head six times.

“Are you not amazed, Colonel? They have pride in dying for their war. Will you take measures, sir?”

What war? Don’t ask such an obvious question. If I was to maintain my authority with this hard woman, I must avoid appearing to be a novice.

“Do you actually think we’re losing the war? What’s the latest intelligence on the enemy’s status?”

“As of last night, sir, the zealots have stalled in the Appalachians. They have dominated the ground because of their violent and mean-spirited tactics, but we hold key areas. We have completely shut down their air offensive. We lost our Norfolk unit yesterday in an insurrection by racist partisans. Then our missile decimated their entire city. Did you hear it last night?”

“A nuclear weapon? Yes.” I was disappointed to have missed it.

“The flash and mushroom cloud were visible to the students, too. Many knew what it was, because of the leaks.”

“The Secretary-General will decide on my position today?”

She nodded.

I studied the rows of people. Several filed in and out of gray tents. Others dug or filled holes or sowed rows in the mud for planting. Nothing was sprouting in the mire. Across the yard, buses with more students emptied. Some marched into a building with a large active chimney. No one walked out the other side.

“Gas chambers.”

“Of course, you mean the furnace, sir. It continues to function well since the conversion to fire. I am always astonished how those who refuse to learn our ideals march in for us. Few prolonged executions have occurred of late. The savings from our old gas chambers are better than predicted. We no longer need to carry the bloated hatemonger corpses to the fire. The productivity engineers proved their genius.”

Another student bolted from the lines and attempted to climb the fence. The guards only gathered to observe how the razor wire sliced off her limbs before she died.

“They’re very resistant. The Secretary-General will not be pleased. I’ll go down there.”

I turned away and passed through the door of the room, down many stairs, and outside into the winter. Students plodded in lines or huddled in overcrowded tents. Some wrapped themselves in brown burlap. Some were shoeless or naked. They were almost blue from the cold. Black-uniformed guards cracked long whips in the biting air against their blue backs. The students were women and men, young and old, of all types of races. They were arranged in their sets according to an even distribution of skin colors.

As I sloshed by, a bluish man stared at me and spat in my face. A woman laughed, until a guard’s whip left a cleft of blood from her shoulders to her lower back.

“Colonel,” my attendant said, “I believe it is time you took measures,” but I was already striking the spitter with a club. With one more stroke, his skull split in two.

I stood over him in disbelief at my rage. A shot rang out, and I turned to watch another man fall to the ground at my feet. My assistant had shot the man in the back. He clutched a makeshift puncturing tool in his fist. He groaned with lingering life. In view of all, I produced an ax and cropped the man’s head off his shoulders.

“This has gone far enough!” I ran to my building. When I got to the base of the stairs, I spun back to my assistant. “Captain, may I see the courses being taught?”

“Oh yes. It is unusual for a Colonel to visit the learning tents. But I welcome this. We are very proud of our lessons. Follow me.” We traversed the plain, stepping over groaning bodies with shredded skin.

“In the past, we have gotten nearly as many to recant their ideas of hatred and elitism as we have sent to the furnaces,” she said. “Some of the graduates have even become part of the press corps. Some have become instructors here and at other camps. As you know, sir, the universities are said to be the linchpin of our war, especially since our armies are suffering setbacks on the battlefield against the religious nuts. In the end, we may leave them nothing but insurrectionists to rule. That is, of course, if they ever overtake us.”

Snapping whips, shrieking students, and the humming furnace and its smoke surrounded us. As we walked, the students returned my glares. One completely nude student carrying a bag of dirt on his head attempted to spit at me. His mouth failed to produce any moisture, prolonging his life.

We entered the gray classroom tent and stood behind the students on their rows of benches. Apparently, this was an introductory lesson for new students, since most of them still wore their street clothes. A few were naked and scarred. A spectacled, goat-bearded, middle-aged man continued his lesson.

“The basis of this contention is the spirit of community involvement, or, if you will, the village, which is necessary for the survival of the race, since humans are social beings by nature. And because of rogue individualist elements, which derive from our slavery-based agricultural past, there must be a one-world government that encourages the development of community participation, and the intake of the new safe-and-effective vaccines that our society requires for its health, as well as sensitivity to all people, especially those of ancestral origins that have been disadvantaged under previous industrial governments. One program in this government that fosters this--”

“Bastard,” a denim-clad man in the last row mumbled.

As several guards approached him, his animosity swelled. Spewing denunciations, he threw off several of them. An outburst of this magnitude during the Secretary-General’s visit would surely result in my court-martial. I could not bear prison.

My pleasure in inserting my dagger between the shoulder blades of the rebel, who was damning the instructor to hell, puzzled me. But pondering such emotions is difficult when one is lifting a dead man into the air by the shaft of a knife. Several students rose from their seats. Guards drew their guns. I flung the splitting carcass on a row of gasping students.

“You all have been warned about extremist verbal outbursts,” the genteel goat-bearded man said. “Such abuse as I have just now suffered, as I explained in the previous hour’s lesson, has no difference from physical abuse. It is a pity you did not learn that. You will now march in line to Building D.” At this, several of the students cried out. Some collapsed. The entire room rumbled into chaos. I directed a guard to exemplify several dissenters. He shot four in the face.

Apparently, Building D was the furnace.

The students plodded out of the tent into the mire as another set marched in. I followed the condemned into the rainy, brown day. They circled the compound in their final stroll. This will demonstrate my power to the others. Order must reign when the Secretary-General gets here. I hurried up the stairs to the public address microphone in my overlooking room.

“Attention, students!” I shouted into the wires. “Notice the newest group to arrive. They march now on the outskirts of the compound. Look at them, for they are doomed. One of them transgressed our rules for classroom learning. Now every one of them will join the rest of the unteachable in line for elimination. Remember that your fates rest with the other individuals in your group. You must learn to nurture and trust the others in your community.”

Suddenly, a muddy topless woman screeched and ran in circles in the middle of the compound. A black-uniformed guard promptly beat her into the earth.

“You there!” I yelled. “Guard! Good job. Wait! Don’t kill her. Bring her here.”

She still flailed as blood spouted out of her in an arch. The guard towed her in front of the window. Before he stabilized her, I fired my crossbow. The arrow sailed above her. When several students laughed, I shot my pistol into a group of them. One bullet pierced three students successively. I poised my crossbow again. The arrow punctured the chest of the heroic guard. Before the students could overcome their horror to cheer, my third arrow fluttered into the eye of the bare-chested woman.

“I will have order in this compound! All students will consider the lessons favorably. You will march and work without strife. Guard! You there! Open the gate!”

The furnace line passed directly in front of the compound’s main entrance. The wire gate provided a last glimpse at freedom before incineration. To open it tempted the dying.

“Sir, what is the meaning of this?” my assistant exclaimed. “They will run!”

“Captain, if you question my actions again, you will strip and join the other students at Building D!”

“Forgive me, Colonel, but do you not think that the students will run rather than continue into the furnaces? They cannot--”

I flew down the stairs to the mucky yard. I dashed to the front gate as it began to open. Several students darted from the line. My bow whirred. My arrows penetrated them in reprehensible places. I was astonished by the hilarity with which I enjoyed this display. I gathered several giggling guards and their bows. Then I climbed a platform nearby. Desperate prisoners continued to dash toward freedom until our invading arrows seized all their lives.

For several hours the guards and I struck down dozens of students. After witnessing the tortures, most now preferred to die in the flames. I laughed at them. I had achieved my goal: to summon order of such magnitude that they feared my reprisal more than they feared death.

Later, my assistant reported that recantings increased threefold in the last half-day. Even the goat-bearded pedagogue could enlighten his pupils without the verbal mistreatment that had so hurt his self-esteem.

“Sir, the Secretary-General arrives!” my assistant yelled. Down the mud road past the open gate, a black limousine approached. Small sky-blue flags flapped from its front hood. The guards straightened their uniforms and stood at attention. I stepped down from my scaffold into the ooze.

A small bald man climbed from the car.

“Secretary-General, welcome to our university.”

“Colonel, you have greatly displeased me. Why does your gate remain open? Do you forget that an escape happened? Follow me to your office.”

We trudged through the mud and up the stairs.

In the room above the prison, I pleaded for recognition. “You must notice, sir, that they do not run through the gate.”

The Secretary-General opened the tall, thin window and watched the phenomenon.

I waved a paper in front of him. “These data show that recantings have increased since the escape. We cannot move them out of the camp to the next level quickly enough.”

“Yes, yes.” The Secretary-General seemed troubled by this change. For a long time, he stared out the window at the well-behaved students.

“This is very impressive,” he said. “You have shown great leadership in revitalizing order with an obviously inferior teaching staff and a rebellious set of students. We are losing good commanders in this bloody war, and I have now selected you to replace our fallen General in the Cumberland Gap campaign. You will leave at once.”

A shout erupted outside. I bolted to the window next to the Secretary- General. The entire student body rushed at the open gate. The guards massacred hundreds with their automatic rounds, but dozens ran naked through the surrounding defoliated hills. An explosion lit the field, followed by a resounding boom. The fireball rose to the skies, warming everyone in the room. Someone had triggered the device in the panic.

“This is an outrage!” the Secretary-General said. “We’re all exposed to the radiation! They’re escaping!”

Blackened students and guards lay dead in the shadow of the rising fire. The rest ran up the hills and down the brown road.

“Colonel!” the Secretary-General said. “They’re getting away! You must detonate the main bomb!”

“What?”

“Do it! It’ll be declared an enemy attack! No one must live to report this escape! Only you know the code. Now!”

I ran to a console and typed four numbers, which displayed on red light-emitting diodes. I pressed a button labeled “Arm,” then ducked as I pounded “Destruct.”

The entire world went white.

Next week: Episode 10 - The Breakup and Makeup: Retaining Sanity and Lana

Copyright © 2022 Christopher Rogers.

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