Tele-experience. Experience it all. Allow yourself to fully embrace the story. Put yourself in the action-

“Ya and teach the children that violence is normal.”

-thrilling in every way. Or join a detective and try to find the evidence before they do-

“Teaching them to hide the evidence of what they did.”

–Visit anywhere in the world. African safaris, the battlegrounds of ancient wars, or the scene of the perfect crime. Experience it all at your local tele-theater coming soon.

The next morning there was a riot in front of what would soon be the new tele-theater. All of them, there to do whatever it takes to stop the tele-theater from being built. When they were done they went home to their children. Telling them that they should go outside. It is good for them. That technology is harmful. 

The new tele-theater grew with the people’s distrust. The claims escalated. 

“What’s so great about them anyway?”

“They’re just a big waste of time.”

“They’ll rot your brains”

“You know, all of those mass murderers learned it from those tele-thingies”

***

John came home from school. He went upstairs. Laid down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. He didn’t know what to do. He had no friends. Everyone just seemed to avoid him at all costs. John felt a hatred boil up from his gut. He clenched his fists. He half hoped that his nails would dig into his palms. Suddenly he stopped. He didn’t want to look like he had tried to hurt himself. Everyone at his school was hypersensitive to any sign that anyone was hurting themselves. There had been so many violent crimes lately. The school has been starting to watch very closely for and signs leading up to violence. Kids then would go missing. Probably carted off to a correction center. 

No one knows where this fabled correction center is. Most people just assumed it was far away or at least far enough away that the inmates couldn’t hurt anyone else anymore. Everyone was terrified of this place. John laid there for a few more minutes thinking about this place. It didn’t sound that bad. Maybe in the masses of the friendless, he’d be able to find someone willing to give him a chance. 

Deciding that he needed to find something to do, John got up from his bed and started heading downstairs to watch the 3D tv. Halfway down the stairs, he felt that anger he had felt in his bedroom grow again. Someone was already watching the 3D tv. He was just about to storm off back to his room when he heard, Tele-experience. Experience it all. Allow yourself to fully embrace the story. Put yourself in the action-

The feeling of anger was now being replaced with excited wonderment. When the commercial ended with opening today, John got an idea. He should go experience one of them. He raced out of the door. It only took him five minutes to get to the new tele-theater. There were people sitting outside of the tele-theater when John got there trying to impede the potential customers. He was in such a rush that he hardly noticed the anti-tele-theater signs they were holding. John just rushed inside and purchased tickets to a tele-safari experience.

John was sitting in the tele-theater waiting for the showing to start. He was starting to get both excited and nervous. The image of the people outside started to float to the top of his mind. Just as he started getting worried about the signs everything went black. John felt like his eyes had just shut themselves of their own accord and refused to open again. John’s heart raced and he felt his breath becoming sharp with fear. Suddenly with a rush of color, he felt his eyes open just as automatically as they had closed. As the rest of his senses were catching up with his eyes he was piecing the world of his mind together. It looked like the camera was in the African wildlife park. No, he was in an African Wildlife park.

All of a sudden he felt his legs start walking him forward. This too felt out of his control but unlike his eyes, John felt a little more comfortable with his legs doing this. Then he felt his neck turn and he was distracted by the sight of a zebra running by him. When the zebra was just about to be even with him, John heard a voice in his head start sharing facts about zebras. 

After finishing the list of facts about the zebra the voice said, “You may now pet the zebra.”

John felt his hand raise. He was petting the zebra; he could feel the zebra’s muscles underneath the soft fur. Then the zebra galloped away. Again and again, a new animal would come up next to John. A voice in his head would list off some fun facts about the animal. John got to pet the animal then the animal would run away into the sunset. The next thing John knew his eyes had closed of their own accord again. This made John realize that he had not blinked the entire time that he was looking at the animals. The voice said, “Thanks for coming with me in this exploration of African wildlife.”

John’s eyes opened and he was sitting in the tele-theater. It took him a couple of seconds to realize that he actually needed to tell his legs to stand up and that they were not going to stand themselves up. It was only on the walk home that he realized that he had never actually gotten out of the chair during the tele-experience and that is why he never felt tired during the showing. 

John only thought about the tele-experience that night. He couldn’t believe how cool it was. He also couldn’t figure out why there were people outside of the tele-theater. As far a John could tell there was nothing wrong with the tele-experience.

John woke up the next morning dreading going to school. He felt like he could not stand another day of being an outcast. Sometimes John just wished that he could make people feel the way he feels on a daily basis. He wanted them to feel lonely. He wanted them to feel alone. He wanted them to feel like they will always be alone. As John got to his first class of the day he felt the anger in his gut boiling over. Before he knew it the class had ended and he found that he had absorbed absolutely nothing through his anger.

When John got home all he could think about was escaping the world he was living in to a new one dreamed up in the tele-theater. Hardly staying long enough to drop off his school bag, John was out the door and on his way to the tele-theater again. People were still outside the tele-theater. This time, however, the people were not only holding signs but also shouting at anyone who was unfortunate enough to be in front of them. 

When John got close enough for them to notice him he heard a flurry of insinuations about tele-experiences.

“Only monsters watch tele-indoctrinations.”

“You might only be an outcast now but soon the world will see you as what you truly are, a monster.”

“The only effect on the world the tele-monstrosities will have is the evil they will spawn”

“You should be locked up just for thinking about watching”

John just ignored the people. He was used to it at this point. To him, those people were no different than everyone at school. John had learned by now that everyone will always oppose him no matter what he did. So he just kept walking. He purchased his ticket while still hearing the calls of the people outside. He just kept walking. John made his way to the tele-experience seat. This time instead of the wildlife tele-experience John had bought a ticket to watch the new age of warfare.

Again John felt his eyes close themselves. And again John felt panicked by this. This feeling of panic however did not last long as the first time. By the time that his eyes had opened again John’s panic was replaced by excitement. He was ready to experience the wonders of a world displaced in time and location from his current one. 

When his eyes opened, John was startled. He was floating face down hundreds of feet in the air. It took him a couple of seconds to realize that he was not falling. Once this was clear John started looking around. He was surprised to find, unlike last time John was able to control where he went. Looking around he saw that there were two prodigious groups of people standing apart from each other. John decided that he wanted to take a closer look at these people.

When John got close to the first group he was shocked. Their faces were all contorted into an ugly, hateful shape. They were also holding strange long silver knives. John also noticed that they were all frozen in place. Floating over to the other group, John had just enough time to recognize that they were almost exactly the same when he heard a voice in his head again. The voice explained, “You are witnessing the start of what a battle used to look like. Two nations would line up on either side of a field. Eventually, one side would start to charge at the other. This would make the other side charge as well.” Suddenly John felt himself being pulled up as the two sides sprang into action. The voice continued, “The warriors were armed with those long knives that you see called swords. They would cut and stab each other until one side either were all dead or fled from the battlefield.”

When the voice was done John felt his eyes quickly close then reopen. He was floating in a similar place as last time but now instead of the ancient people of swords he saw people holding the infamous predecessors of modern-day weapons. The voice continued, “These people you see in front of you are really not that different from the previous people. They shoot instead of stab but they kill either way.”

John’s eyes closed again. This time when John’s eyes opened the people he saw in front of him seemed to be made out of wires. After a few seconds, the people seemed to regain a normal look. The voice then exclaimed triumphantly, “Now in the modern era there is no need for more murder than we already have. Whenever there is a war now it is fought within a tele-experience. The soldiers will be able to fight as they would have in the real world but they will know that they are not in the real world. They will be able to fight without having to question their morals. They can fight just like they would have in the previous era of warfare while knowing when they die they will just wake up in the real world able to go back to being a normal person.” 

John was amazed by this innovation in how wars were fought. After the tele-experience was done John sat in his chair for a while ruminating on this new take on violence. From all the stories he had heard from school he had just thought that there was no way to prevent violence from happening once it had started. That when something was done virtually that it will happen for real too. This tele-experience had shown him that it is possible to leave violence behind in a virtual world. 

John rose from the chair and left. He walked how elated by this new disconnect that he had found between virtual and real. He walked home thinking about what he wanted to see the next day. He was nervous before. Worried that if he didn’t watch something rooted in reality that he would leave a changed man. He feared this no more. 

When John got home he found his parents waiting for him. They pulled him aside and started berating him. They repeated the stories told in school. That he would change for the worse. That he needed to be happy with the world as it was. That virtual worlds cause pain and suffering in the real world. That soon John would cause pain and suffering in the real world. John felt the all too familiar anger boiling up from his gut again. He stormed off into his room where he stayed for the rest of the night planning to spend his next Saturday at the tele-experience.

When the next Saturday came by John got to the tele-theater early enough to beat the normal protesters. He decided to watch the new action movie where you get to live out being a super spy out on a dangerous adventure. 

After John’s body had finished fighting off the last group of bad guys and he was told that his mission was successful, John’s eyes opened and he jumped up with his heart still beating from the adrenaline of the tele-experience. While walking to the door he noticed that the protesters were back in larger numbers than ever. They were also trying their best to prevent anyone from getting into the tele-theater and shouting at them incessantly. Suddenly the bad guys that he was just watching his body fight flashed across his mind. John approached the door and he ran out of it.  He ran and he kept running and running until he was in his bedroom knowing that he would not be bothered anymore.