Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Day 062, Saturday
March 3rd, 2018
Chapter Six: Freedom
In the Continuum there was no want. There was no need for anything. There
were only desires, appetites, and cravings for experiences that the membership of
the Collective wished to be fulfilled.
Pain, and the struggle to meet physical needs were only understood
vicariously, through the experiences of actual people living out there lives in
the far flung worlds of the galactic Empire, or they were actual memories recalled
from the distant past where all of the members came into existence, as organic
beings.
The membership was nevertheless obsessed with the physical needs and
wants of people. They were piqued by watching those struggles unfold, watching
the aristocratic class struggle to amass wealth and power, or watching the priestly
classes struggle to disavow their privileges to lead lives of austerity, only
to find other desires rise within them to dominate their consciousness.
The membership was by and large fascinated with physical suffering.
Their memory of having escaped their own suffering was not sufficient.
They required reminders of what suffering looked like, how it tastes and
smelled, what is sounded like, and above all else, how it felt, not just in the
body but in the heart as well.
They were fascinated by the mental and emotional anguish of thirst, and
starvation. More than anything they craved to watch people in the throws of
self-sacrifice and self-abnegation, or what was even better was to watch
someone go down that path only to betray themselves when their own physical
pain became too great.
The Collective had an appetite for torture, and they had the freedom to
destroy entire worlds if pleased them, if it satiated their hunger.
The Continuum ruled over everything, every known inhabited world; or so
it believed. Though it dominated nearly every person in the Empire, it did not
control them all.
There was resistance.
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