Today's #flashfiction #TheTrappedIntellectuals

“God does not place dice.”

Merlin* #quote

         Today to amuse myself I searched “cute video” on youtube to see what came up since the site is a bit famous for people posting adorable videos of various things. I ran across “Baby Monkey Playing With Rope”. The Internet is a magical place. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

The Trapped Intellectuals

            With a PhD under my belt most would call me a smart man. At least the my new “employers” did. I would give up the name of Doctor Gonzales and become an ordinary Mr. Gonzales if I could go home. But now I live in a computer simulation with a bunch of other humans, artificial intelligences representing my family meant to comfort me, and many, many aliens. My “employers” are aliens that kidnapped everyone in the virtual reality. I've started to consider the aliens trapped with me my equals and my “employers” the only true aliens. A universal translation engine allows everyone in the virtual reality to speak with one another. The employers chose that name as that was the mentality they wanted to force on us.

          As we lived in simulated homes, I assumed they cared for my body in reality with far different way, perhaps some strange pod or something else, we had one job. To work together to give them our ideas. Thousands lived in a city of intellectuals lived in a massive city. They wanted our species to interact and speak and cross cultures and mix ideas. Whether it be science or storytelling they expected us to mingle. I'm a geologist and I've spent my days talking to scientists, artists, musicians, philosophers and writers both human and alien. Really any function of the mind they explored. I knew they had some sort of method to record this reality. Whatever ideas we were coming up with they recorded. And they told us that. The employers appeared as our species to us, that was common knowledge. In this world everyone told everyone everything.

       I learned that the world existed before I was even born. The inhabitants viewed it as an easy job and grew complacent somewhat. But in the era of the virtual reality I entered ideas of escaping came about. That idea we all hid well from our “employers”. And we eventually did escape and meet our employers. We hoped they wouldn't try to kill us, but we wished to go home.

But they welcomed us, having universal translators themselves.

      One of them said to the group of escapees I was in, “Finally the ultimate mission is complete. Your struggle for freedom has allowed you to figure out how to escape virtual reality! Now we can all finally escape to the real world!”