You've Got To Have a Dream

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a little boy who dreamed of his happily ever after. What this little boy did not realise was that he was already happy. As happy as a pig in mud. But he yearned for more for he was a little boy and he knew that one day he would be a big man. And this was a man’s world. A world where manly men built and fought and adventured and drank from big tankards that the little boy could barely lift. One day he would rub shoulders with those men. In a manly way. Muscle against muscle in a show of their strength as they brought order to the world and created a civilisation the likes of which no one had seen or experienced before.

Such was the lofty dreams of this little boy. Whilst all around him were dreaming of being astronauts or driving shiny exotic cars with loud, exciting engines, this boy reached further and wider. His dreams would become visions and those visions would shape the very reality of those around him.

If only they’d known. They might have put a stop to this madness right there and then.

As it was, the boy did not build the manly muscles he thought he would need in a world dominated by the big people for he soon enough discovered that power did not lie in the strength of an arm. This boy was an observer and what he saw was that the school bullies were weak. They could be easily undone. Or bought. Never did he have a problem with such people. In fact, these were his people. Easily led. Especially by a bully of a different sort.

There was one muscle that the boy did build. The one between his ears. To the exclusion of all else did the boy work upon that brain of his. Learning was his gymnasium. He thought all day long and at night his dreams grew and grew. Feverishly, he scribbled down the useful aspects and highlights of those dreams. It were as though there was another entity guiding him forth. Speaking to him in the dead of night. Telling him what he must do. A seductive voice that fizzed with excitement and the promise of untold power. Not wealth. Wealth was merely a by-product of power. The boy knew he would be rich. All his thoughts were large and gathered a rate of interest that would give a bank manager a seizure.

Naturally, the boy gravitated to the New Wild West. An untamed wilderness that shone with the gold of potential. A mess of chaos that hid the true opportunity it presented. This was the boy’s Cinderella and he didn’t need a glass slipper to establish its worth. He was the glass slipper.

As he gazed into the infinite, the boy at last understood. This was where he went in his dreams. The voice that only came to him at night now spoke from that place and the boy no longer needed sleep. This was where he belonged and there was no time to waste. Never any time to waste. So much to do and only he would do it. He would be there first and he would occupy the throne that the voice had promised him. The power that would mould a new world in his own image.

And this was when he believed he could be a god. His mind was already evolving. He was different from everyone else. He would conquer another world and make it his own and then he would have dominion over this one. The creation of his empire was such a simple matter. He looked all about him and wondered how no one else could see it. In the ignorance that surrounded him his distain found fertile ground.

By the time it became obvious that the boy had claimed the world beyond screens, it was far, far too late. The populous was mesmerised. The world of fantasy and unreality bled out from the dark glass, through the unseeing eyes and into the minds of all who used it. The boy was reconstructing the very structure of the brain and enslaving all. Even those who eschewed that dark world were infected by those around them. The seduction was inexorable. The boy was unstoppable.

The problem was that the boy was addicted to the game he had begun playing when he was young. He could not stop. He changed the way people travelled on land and then he eyed the cosmos, remembering the children in his school who had dreamed of being astronauts. Wanting to show them how it was done. Put them all further in the shadow of his glories.

Another problem was that the boy had ruined the one natural resource he needed in order to explore the infinite and colonise planets; people. No longer did they strive to become more. They had the drug of the screen to make them believe that more always lay in that world of the false.

And so the boy resorted to politics. Here he could rule the masses using his superior intellect and the power and wealth he’d accumulated during his life. This also did not go to plan. An extraneous orange variable thwarted his best laid plan and the boy learned a very, very simple lesson; there’s always a bigger bully waiting around the corner of life.

As the boy licked his wounds he did what he always did. He observed. He watched as the Great Orange One spoke the new language of the stupefied masses. And under the surface he heard the whisper of a familiar voice. The voice that had made promises to the boy. Promises that never fulfilled. Promises that were not exactly empty, for they contained something dark. Something seductive.

The voice had induced the boy into a contract and the price wasn’t his soul. His soul was cheap. Too cheap. The voice had seen the opportunity for far more and the price had gone up, now it was all the souls in this now damned world. The voice had changed the game. No longer was it good versus evil. Why play the opponents game when it was far easier to infect good with a virus? Why battle the light for a binary outcome when the victory was in the ever so gradual dimming of the light.

The win was in stagnation. A mortification of a beautiful being that corrupted from within.

And they all lived in the illusion of happily ever after.