In a distant future, on a distant planet, a group of people are contained inside a large,
warehouse-sized dome building. Inside, there is nothing. Covering the curved wall, however,
is a set of screens. On which, a series of digital images and videos are projected at all times.
The individuals inside are prisoners. More precisely, they are the children of prisoners.
Many years ago, after they had ventured out too far into the unknown regions of the cosmos
and entangled themselves with another species far exceeding their intellectual weight class,
their parents had been captured. And after being determined as a “potentially infective
malignant risk,” they were imprisoned in complete isolation, quarantined from ever
making contact with the outside world again. As part of the protocol for such a process,
the infants on board were separated from their parents onto a different planet.
Now, having been inside this building essentially since birth for reasons and a back story they
would not even understand, these infants, now turned adults, know only the images and videos
selected and projected by their captors onto the screens; to them, the building structure contains
everything there is, and the digital renderings are the true forms of things; they are reality.
The visuals are played to the prisoners for ethical reasons. Based on strict statutes
and guidelines regarding interactions and imprisonment of intergalactic species, the
captors are required by their own law to, one, not kill any well-intending lower conscious beings,
and two, provide all isolated infantile prisoners, of any species and any being,
forms of perceptual simulation. The prisoners are also fed and hydrated through an automated
misting delivery mechanism that periodically and densely fills the structure with various
nutrient and water molecules, which are then absorbed by the prisoners’
skin. The floor is also made of a particular technology that absorbs and cleans all waste.
It has been many, many years, and the prisoners remain contained inside the building structure.
At some point, some many years ago, they began considering and asking questions about what they
saw on the screen wall, trying to master their knowledge of the world around them,
creating language and naming the images and scenes, taking great pride in their individual
efforts and abilities to analyze and understand it. Some of the prisoners have found themselves
especially well versed at intellectualizing and naming the digital renderings, some even producing
theories and concepts to explain the nature of it all. Overtime, some of these theories have since
turned into dogmas that the rest of the prisoners believe to be fixed and unquestionably true.
One individual in particular, named Cato, is one of the more curious and intelligent prisoners.
He is responsible for a huge portion of the language the prisoners have created, and he has
been heavily involved in developing theories and knowledge that the prisoners now hold to be true.
While on one of his regular walks around the internal perimeter, as he often does,
he looks closeup at the screen wall, moving around and laying on the ground to get a different angle,
putting his nose nearly right up on the screen’s surface, examining and questioning it. While doing
this, on this particular day, he notices something unusual he’s never seen before.
A slight crack on the ground. Like all things in existence, no matter how well built, the building
structure is beginning to decay, and Cato observes the very ground of reality crack beneath him.
Having never seen anything like it before, Cato is completely dumbfounded. Initially,
his mind plays tricks on him and prevents him from really perceiving it’s jagged, dimensional nature,
and he only processes a two-D version of it. After looking more closely at it, however, he touches it
and feels the texture of the raised pieces against the divots. Eventually, he pushes on it; it cracks
further. He pushes on it again, this time harder; it cracks even further. Soon, Cato finds himself
with a small hole in front of him. He stares into it. After much internal debate, compelled by his
high level of curiosity and desire for knowledge, he enters and begins to dig and dig and dig.
After great exertion, fear, and discomfort, he emerges into the world beyond the structure.
Immediately, he becomes so disoriented, his mind goes into a shock-like state.
As time passes, though, his shock slowly turns into disbelief,
and then into revelation. He sees a world of three-dimensionality made of layers and
elevation and cracks and holes and all the rest. He sees objects with a physical, touchable,
moveable nature. He sees the sun and feels its warmth. He sees a tree and climbs upon it.
He sees animals and life forms that move and interact with him as he encounters them.
He sees water and submerges into it, feeling its wetness. He sees things that he had previously
only known on the screen wall. He quite suddenly realizes everything he has known since birth,
the two-dimensional single display rendering of a unified reality, everything he had ever
talked about and called true, was now revealing itself to merely be a surface representation.
The source, the truth, Cato realizes, is out here. After exploring for a little while,
Cato returns to the building structure, compelled to share what he has discovered. He climbs back
down into the hole and reenters the building. He approaches the group collected in the
center and informs them of what he has experienced and seen.
“We are living a lie,” he says, “There is a whole world beyond this world, the real world.
There are different things. You can touch them, pick them up, move them. There are different…”
Cato doesn’t know the words to describe the new external textures,
so he tries making hand signals to represent slimy and wet and spikey and so forth.
“Some things you can even go inside,” he continues, “I floated in something,
climbed something else. There’s a whole surface above us out there with things floating around.
One made me feel different. It hurt to look at, but it was so beautiful.”
Cato doesn’t know the word or concept for warm,
so he makes a body motion that looks like he’s melting.
“I swear to you all, I have seen the truth. I have seen the source
and nature of things as they really are.” All the other prisoners believe Cato has gone mad.
With no experience of the world beyond the building structure, comprehending beyond
it without the framework or terms is like trying to scientifically explain color to someone who’s
never seen any. To understand a complete truth, one must not merely possess the knowledge of it,
but also the experience of it. Quickly, another intellectually
considerate prisoner, named Lex, grabs Cato and pulls him to the side.
“What’s wrong with you?” Lex says, “You’re freaking me out right now,
and you’re freaking everyone else out.” “It’s true. I can show you.” Cato replies.
He escapes Lex’s grip and returns to the group, “I can show you all. It’s right over here.” He points
to the hole in the distance of the building. “You’ve gone insane. Wherever you went,
whatever’s going on with you, we don’t want anything to do with it,” one prisoner yells out.
Cato gestures and moves towards the hole anyway. Most of the prisoners ignore him.
Some, however, follow him. Once at the hole, like Cato did, they
struggle to comprehend what they are seeing. Their eyes and minds play tricks on them, rationalizing
the hole as anything other than a hole. However, as they reach their hand out and experience
the depth of it and the feeling of the cracking texture, some begin to take Cato more seriously.
Now having seen it for themselves, these individuals enter the hole with Cato
and exit the building structure, emerging into the world beyond.
Like Cato was, they are immediately shocked by the sensory overload.
As they adjust, though, they begin to process and feel everything. They see the sun and feel
its warmth. They move rocks, touch plants. They feel texture. They see dimension.
“You were right!” another prisoner exclaims to Cato, in awe.
After a little exploring, the whole group returns to the building structure to tell
the other prisoners that Cato was right, that they have seen the truth.
After attempting to explain, the other prisoners who have remained inside become increasingly
concerned and hostile, believing that Cato has now somehow brainwashed the others.
Simultaneously, Cato and the others, knowing they know the real truth and that the others are
ignorant to it, feel they must defend it. After some arguing back and forth,
a fight breaks out, fists swinging, legs kicking, voices screaming.
The prisoners who remained inside are not only comfortable in their ignorance
but are also deeply upset by the attempt to point it out. Part of ignorance, after all, is
the refusal to admit it—the succumbing to the pain of potential wrongness with denial and resistance.
Cato steps in and stops the whole debacle. “Enough,” he says, “If you do not want the truth,
then so be it. I, for one, want to live in the truth—the world of things as they really
are. I am leaving for the final time to live in that world. I have shown those
who would like to see, and for anyone who would like to join me now, you may do so.”
About half of those who left with him originally, leave with him again. The rest stays.
Cato and the group that goes with him go on to live, explore,
discuss, and redefine reality in the world beyond the structure,
eventually going on to reproduce and begin an entirely new population of their species.
Cato becomes a leader of sorts as they name new objects, new motions, new phenomena;
they come up with new terms and theories to fill in the gaps between their experience of reality
and their comprehension of it. They form, primarily led by Cato, new dogmatic belief
systems. The group feels an increasingly superior grasp of knowledge over those who remained inside
the building structure. They call themselves the enlightened ones, the truth knowers.
Back inside the building, one of the prisoners has continued to second guess her choice to stay
ever since the group divided. She frequently goes over to the hole when no one is looking,
and stares into it. The group, if they ever catch her, quickly scolds and stops her. Today however,
compelled by her growing curiosity, she finally enters the hole and leaves the building
structure. Once outside, she goes a slightly different direction than Cato and the others.
Simultaneously, at a remote monitoring station about one light year away, an alarm goes off. A
security guard on shift at the station, monitoring hundreds of thousands of jails across the galaxy
cluster, waves his hand at a holographic screen. Another screen appears revealing
the prisoner leaving the building, as well as Cato and the rest of the prisoners outside.
The guard taps at a holographic button to the right of him and waits a moment.
“Hello,” a voice answers. “A group from Prison C_a53
have exited Layer 1, and they appear to have settled into Layer 2 now,” the guard says.
“Noted. Thank you,” the voice replies. On the holographic screen in front of the
security guard, below text that reads, “Jail C_a53,” a check box next to text that reads,
“Layer 1,” fills in with an “X”. Below it is a list that goes on to read, “Layer 2,” “Layer 3,”
“Layer 4,” all the way down to “Layer 1,000.” The captor species are not concerned.
They know that as long as the prisoners believe they have escaped, they will remain imprisoned.