HoloPlanet

I combined two prompts this week.  Studio 30+ gave us the words planet and loathe.  Write at the Merge gave us this quote

“Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.”

~ Salman Rushdie

and this picture

Image courtesy of Unsplash.

Here is my response:

“You mean I can do all of this with my mind here?”

“Yes.  This planet creates what you imagine.  It will keep filling up empty space until none is left.”

“What happens then?”

“Then it resets.  Starts over.  But you need to be careful here.”

“Why?”

“Because you can interact with your creations.  You are not simply an outside observer.  When you start exploring what you created, you are bound to continue until you reach the end of your creation.”

“Why is that so bad?”

“Come with me.”

I followed him down a path in between two separate worlds.  My utility suit felt a little sticky and, in all honesty, I was itching to create a nice beach where I could take it off and relax in the warm sun.

We stopped in front of a third world.  It was tenement complex bigger than any I had ever seen back on Old Earth.  Lights were on in the windows.  I even thought I could smell a variety of dinners wafting their aromas down alleys and across the empty boundary line to my scent deprived nose.

“I still don’t get it.”

“Where does this end?  Do you see it?  How many apartments do you think are in this world?  How many scenes to play out in each apartment?”

“I don’t know for sure, but from what I can see there’d be a lot of apartments to check out.”

“Too many.  The student who built this world detested authority.  He wouldn’t accept my rules and expectations for him no matter how hard I tried.”

“I would loathe it too, if I didn’t know how much was at stake with this project.”

“He’d forgotten that.  He was stuck in the creation, figuratively.  Now he is literally.”

I turned to my trainer, my jaw dangling in the fictitious breeze.

“Yes.  That is correct,” my trainer interpreted the look on my face, “He is stuck in there until he has explored every tenement building, every apartment, every scene.  That is the one rule here.  You must finish what you start.”

No wonder my trainer was a legend.  He’d been out here for fifteen years training in new graduates where the passing rate was only about twenty five percent and the consequence for failure was all too often death.

For the first time I really understood what I was facing.  And I was terrified.

Any concrit you have is most welcome.  Be sure to click on the images below to see other great responses to these two prompts.