Down at the far end of the development division, were endless looking corridors that were lined with rooms containing huge Dream Machines. A medical doctor and a radiologist occupied one of the rooms. They were observing a patient who was coming back to consciousness from out of her first dream-life. The patient was laid back on a table that was sliding out from the glowing tunnel of a Dream Machine. This medical apparatus was double the size of an MRI machine, and served as a mental portal to another world.
A code beeped and a bright neurologist walked into the room holding a clipboard and a pen. He took shorthand notes while listening to the doctors' analysis of the patient recently out of her first dream phase. The patient, Zia, was a college professor and an accomplished lecturer. Her whole life had been dedicated to educating the youth. The doctors had her on a medium level dream sequence, in which the dream-lives were not as nightmarish because her morality was already good.
Zia was fresh from out of her first experience. The doctors administered a post examination and the results showed that her reaction to the first dream-life was far above average. They determined that Zia only needed one more dream-life to reach moral excellence. Thereupon she would be ready for assimilation into The Collective.
After the standard twelve hour interim period required between dream phases, the doctors proceeded to administer the procedure to put her brain back into another dimension. The bed of the Dream Machine drew her body back into the dark hole as the glowing circular magnet began to rotate.
*******
On another planet in another galaxy
In 1982 in a small Persian Gulf state, where people died unjustly like summertime in the ghetto, a beautiful girl was born into a poor household. Her father was a hardworking journalist and her mother was a teacher. The way she was raised was strict as a preacher.
Zia was an only child who grew up fast, with loads of responsibility. She did what she had to do and handled herself well, until she was married off at fourteen to an older man who turned out to be abusive and patriarchal. She of course was miserable, and by age sixteen she ran away from his verbal and physical beatings, to a secret woman's shelter outside of her city.
This shelter served as a blessing not only as an escape, but it also introduced and gave her access to the Internet. Her mind started to bloom to the ideas and the ways of the rest of the world like a cherry blossom in the spring. The most impressionable revelation she discovered, was that most Muslim women in other countries across the world were treated well with respect. This fact was the polar opposite of what she had been accustomed to in her country.
The Internet to her was like a liquid library that quenched her thirst for knowledge. It opened her mind like a Christmas gift. She especially became fond of social media, and the concept of being able to instantly access people and ideas from all over the world.
It wasn't long before she started to garner a huge following because of her women's rights posts and viewpoints. Her online alias took on a life of its own and Zia eventually decided to make herself known in real life. She was well aware of the risks because she was in a part of the world where equal rights visionaries of her gender were forbidden.
The urge for Zia to continue her mission seemed to come from deep within. Bottom line was that she was seeking fair and equal treatment for Islamic women in her country. She was very intelligent and charismatic. She started to hold public speeches about the unfair conditions of her fellow women. Most women could easily relate to her, even women in countries who were not oppressed. By her mid-twenties she had tens of thousands of supporters in the Middle East, and hundreds of thousands of supporters online. Her message began to pollinate across religious and social barriers abroad.
Before long, her influence triggered a mental revolution for Muslim women in her country and surrounding countries. And because it inspired so many people, she accepted the responsibility bestowed upon her as a women's liberation leader. The result was that she stirred up a huge uprising for Islamic women in her region, but by the time it went worldwide she was apprehended by her country's government and incarcerated.
To all of her followers and supporters, it seemed as if she had just disappeared, until word got out that she was imprisoned. Outrage ensued, but ultimately there was nothing that could be done.
The first year of lockup for Zia was very lonely, frightening and depressing. She didn't know if she could successfully sustain her sanity. Over time, the anger she felt started to subside. She became one with herself and her situation, through meditation.
Throughout years of incarceration, her demeanor was one of unfaltering courage. She possessed an energy that defied her country's powerful attempts at crushing her spirit. The confinement she suffered was unjust and devastating, but what she sparked with her movement led to social emancipation & equality for women in the Muslim countries that were oppressed.
Change was basically inevitable. After twenty years of imprisonment, Zia was freed when the regime in her country finally toppled. Her release was celebrated worldwide. The character she exhibited was well distributed into the minds of the public. She was highly respected and viewed as a living martyr.
Within months she was asked by her fellow citizens to help reestablish her country's government. She graciously accepted, and joined the delegation of representatives as the President. Their society and economy was immediately uplifted and they flourished in peace.
After living most of her life in strife, it was finally twice as nice. From her middle age to her senior years she served as a pristine example of a person with character, honesty and humility. She was viewed as a hero to most because of her struggle for fairness. As the years progressed her accomplishments continued, earning her worldwide appreciation and admiration.
Zia was able to withstand all of the negativity she was bombarded with in her second dream-life, but Father Time ended up being the culprit that put her honorable humanitarianism to rest. A week before her eighty-first birthday she passed away from complications of liver failure. Her departure saddened the world and her spirit fertilized humanity. The legacy she left lived on.
4
Zia woke up to no interior or exterior pain in her body. Also she felt no anxiety or grogginess the way she did after her first dream-life. This time around she felt bright and breezy, although her pulse was high and she was momentarily unaware of her whereabouts.
She was coming out from inside of a Dream Machine. While looking up at the ceiling of the lab she quickly realized where she was, and that she had just completed another dream-life.
Each of the four doctors were ready and were holding steady, to their diagnostic prediction about the perfect prescription. They hypothesized that Zia's two dream phases would be sufficient for her to become ready for assimilation. The post procedural tests proved their presumptions to be positive. Her brain scans fit the goal of their game plan. She was reared to be another valuable addition into the consciousness of The Collective.
The neurologist updated Zia about her extraordinary progress, and gave her the details about the next and final step of the process. This good news served as her highest standard of achievement. Being accepted into The Collective was something she had long strived for. She was down for the cause and refused to pause in her endeavors. Now that her accomplishment was imminent, she was starting to feel as if she had finally made it in life.
The medical doctor explained to Zia that she would be allowed to go home for a forty eight hour time period in order to be with her family and prepare for the assimilation ceremony. Zia felt special and took her acceptance seriously. Not everyone was able to leave the headquarters before being acclimated. When she got home her main priority was to rest; but she ended up having to entertain family members and friends who were fascinated with the fact that she had finally 'made it'.
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To be a part of The Collective was almost everyone's spoken or unspoken desire. Most of the public was fixated on it. Some would even sell their soul if they could, in order to be a part of something that would make their normal life seem woefully dull in comparison.
Due to media manipulation and other social tactics, a majority of the worldwide society considered the possibility of being part of The Collective as a privilege. It was something that everyone sought after and mystified about. Most people looked at it as being on a superior level of existence, with endless benefits.
By the twenty-third century, scientists of the One World government had the inner workings of the brain mastered. Their Dream Machines created a powerful physical experience that was rich in detail and generated highly complex patterns in the mind that forced the brain to expel negativity and increase morality.
The 3D experience within this apparatus was so vivid that a patient had no idea that it wasn't real. Within a dream-life a predetermined destiny is already established, but the patient still has free will. A subject's progress towards assimilation is determined by whether or not the patient is able to conquer these dreams by positivity and integrity. Most patients had to go through multiple dream-life experiences in order to achieve success.
The One World government prepared people for assimilation into The Collective by altering their brain functions. Was this a questionable method of operation? It certainly was. But the overall intention of their efforts were commendable, and the results were dependable.
Although the process could be viewed as controversial, it proved to be a necessary method required for them to achieve their objective. Over time, the One World government brought peace and moral supremacy to Wuhn.
5
The world of Wuhn was well within wonderful. It was in the prime of its existence. It was a top-tier planet with a substantially superior society to match. The people's beautiful tricolor skin patterns were as complex and unique as their world was. Theirs was a world of paradise, but it was not completely perfect.
The main problem that existed for the One World government was a small but growing resistance group called The Entity, which served as a bacterium to the cause of The Collective. This nonviolent resistance group supported complete individuality and opposed conforming to the unified masses. They felt that peace could be achieved without everyone having to lose themselves to The Collective.
The Entity's goal was not to try and change the people who were already assimilated; that seemed impossible. Their goal was to try to prevent people from becoming, or even wanting to become part of The Collective. Their resistance existence was aimed at stopping what seemed to be an inevitable one-hundred percent world assimilation.
Members of The Entity were very intelligent but they could not compare to the vastly superior hive mind of The Collective. For decades the Entity resistance had been plotting on a way to disrupt the perfect cycle of assimilation used by the One World government. The Entity's focus and determination was important because it was just a matter of time before every last person in the world would be conjoined into one consciousness. At that point, their resistance would be pointless.
The Entity was a few thousand people strong and led by a courageous rebel named Troy. He was the great grandson of the former President of the Eastern Province. As a young child he witnessed his great grandfather's assassination. During his teenage years he discovered that the death was allegedly orchestrated at the hands of the then emerging One World government.
Troy became passionately opposed to The Collective and anyone who supported it. He and others who'd been negatively affected by the formation of The Collective, got together to establish The Entity. A few rogue scientists joined in on the cause and over the years, they created a game changing pill that affected the neurons in the neocortex of the brain.
This silver capsule, when taken before going into the Dream Machine, enables a person in a dream-life to be able to remember that it is not a real life. This drastically limits the effectiveness of the Dream Machine, because normally the subject believes that the dream is actually real.
This platinum pill seemed to be the real deal for the advancement of The Entity's cause; but soon it was brought to an abrupt pause. Shortly after the perfection of the pill, Troy was captured by the military of the One World government. This apprehension was huge for The Collective because they now had the leader of their only opposition.
They decided to immediately subject Troy to the Dream Machine sequences, so that he could be assimilated into The Collective as soon as possible and The Entity would implode without their leader. By the time his fellow members of The Entity became aware that he was missing, Troy was already in the process of being put into his first dream-life experience.
6
On a night when the rain drops were so constant that it sounded like an ongoing drumroll, a young heroin-addicted couple toiled in a dark room of an abandoned tenement in the slums of Detroit. It was the late 2020's in America, where the divide between the haves and have-nots was at an all-time high.
One half of the duo was a female who was eight months pregnant and in labor. The other was a male who was frantic and complaining, but he manned up and helped his girlfriend with her contractions.
The timing of the birth was terrible for them. It was after midnight, they had no transportation and the baby was coming early. And to make matters worse in his eyes, her water broke right as they were preparing to administer their fix.
Thanks to growing up glued to the TV watching medical sitcoms, he was able to guide his girlfriend through a painful delivery. A baby boy was born and he was named Troy. It was love at first sight and they vowed to clean themselves up and start a new life for the sake of this new life. However once the baby went to sleep they decided to finish up the last bit of heroin they had. They figured they'd have one final fix in celebration of the successful birth. Unfortunately, the amount of smack they had left was enough for four people. They shot it all up and unintentionally overdosed.
An hour later baby Troy woke up crying because he was cold and hungry. Ten minutes of nonstop crying caught the attention of a vagrant in a nearby building. The transient sought out the annoying noise and found the baby sitting in a filthy room amongst his dead parents. By dawn the baby was in the hospital under supervision of child care services.
This was the genesis of young Troy's long relationship with adversity. At twenty months old he was adopted by a relative of his deceased mother. Life was nice for him until he turned four. His foster mother married a man with more issues than a tabloid magazine. This man's most despicable issue was that he was an undercover pedophile. It didn't take long for him to get his slimy hands on young Troy.
Over a five year period, Troy was a prisoner without the jail bars. He wanted to be saved but he felt hopeless. His foster mother had no idea he was being sexually abused. When he finally told she refused to believe him. No one at school believed him either, until one day a teacher noticed blood on the rear of his pants and sent him to the school nurse.
When the truth came out, the man was sent to jail and Troy was sent back to foster care, which to him was much better because of the obvious. He was back in the system for two years before being adopted by a financially well off couple. Again things were great for him when he first moved in. He had a huge room of his own and all the toys a youngster could want.
His new situation was not bad until the foster mother started drinking heavily. The foster father was always gone on business trips and the mother thought he was having an affair. This drove her to alcohol and she started taking pills with her liquor. Whenever she did, she took her anger out on Troy by treating him worse than Mommie Dearest.
The beatings intensified over time. His mom had a Jekyll & Hyde personality and Troy constantly encountered the Hyde pa
rt of it. Most of his whippings were for no reason at all, with cords and switches. But once she started to beat him with punches, he could no longer take them in bunches.
He decided to run away and stole some money from her purse for assistance. Before he could escape from the house that night, she caught him and she fought him. Then accidentally, she purposely pushed him down a case of stairs. The brutal fall knocked him unconscious by the time he reached the bottom.
*******
Assimilation Lab
The doctor in the room was alerted when the alarm sounded. The rotation of the Dream Machine's large magnetic scanner came to a halt as the patient table slid out.
While lying on his back, Troy's eyes were wide open and he was trying to get up like he was terrified. The doctor immediately pushed a button that sedated Troy's body and made his eyes close. The other doctors rushed in and were able to successfully stabilize Troy before putting him back into the dream-life.
*******
A week after young Troy's fatal fall, he woke up in the children's hospital to no one but the nurse. His foster parents were no longer allowed around him. Actually they were no longer his foster parents because of the abuse. He was sent back into the child care system after he fully recovered and the hospital could no longer house him.
During the first week back at foster care, he ran away because he thought he'd end up with another abusive parent. His first few days on the streets were rough as sandpaper. He had to fend for himself by living in basements and going from shelter to shelter. He received a little help from people but it was always not enough.