The Butterfly
Short Story
He awoke with his eyes already open, having not really been asleep, with his vision turned to static in all directions. He was choking, and he felt as though his mouth was forced open by an object, breathing through a nasal cannula, but when he looked down, he saw neither the cannula nor what he deduced was likely a feeding tube. He searched his memories.
The water tasted better from the hospital, so he was sure to fill up his multiple Stanley insulated drinkware containers, and what he couldn't fit in his oversized Northface backpack, he adhered to the side using multiple carabiners. As he left, he tasted the sut and fumes from the passing cars as he made his way back to his apartment on his modest bicycle. Nothing fancy, he figured, since keeping it in front of the hospital was just waiting for it to get stolen. A car turns without a turn signal and cut off another car, a lifted pickup truck emitting fumes through a practice known as rollin’ coal, and almost hits him. He makes it back to his spotless apartment safe and somewhat sound, and unloads his water into the fridge. He didn't trust the water in his building.
He went upstairs to the community garden out on the roof of the building where he took on the sole responsibility of taking care of it. He dug his hands into the soil, without gloves, before washing them clean with water, and inspecting his plants for insects, since he was growing organically. He had just enough space to grow corn, green beans, and squash in the same bed, which he frequently passed out to his neighbors. The squash grew broad leaves with small spikes that drew away insects and kept moisture from evaporating from the soil, while the green beans provided nutrients to the soil, like potassium and iron, as the corn provided a stalk for the green beans to grow on and up. It was a symbiotic relationship of plants the indigenous Americans discovered that the European settlers decided to forgo in favor of single plant rows for ease of harvesting that would inevitably leave the soil without nutrients.He took an equal share of his labors, and gardened for the benefits to his immune system, working with soil, and being out in the sun, as he hated going to the gym, and prefered gardening and hiking when he had the time. He wanted to bury his face in the soil, but resisted temptation. He didn't want acne.
He worked as a nurse, and spent most of his money and time expanding his education alone in his apartment. He was happy with his job, but he wanted to know as much as possible. He could have been a doctor, or a licensed therapist with his own practice, but he wanted to be a knowlegable nurse that spent time with patients. To his patients, he was a wealth of knowledge and a teacher. He wasn’t beyond telling someone that they were going to die before the doctor came in, and would regale them a tale from history about what was killing them to ease the news, which he assumed was preferable. The doctor was far more clinical, and their time was constrained. He was valued and respected at the hospital, and was often asked for his input.
He drank Grey Goose vodka, about two gallons a month to himself, to deal with the loss and trauma he was faced with in the hospital, and smoked marijuana infrequently to break up the mundane feeling of being caught in a loop. He had seen the adverse affects of other drugs enough to stay away from them, but not so much not to be curious what they felt like and how they would change him. He morned never knowing how good ‘good’ really was, although he knew it was the right call not to spoil his palate for life. He took a drink for the woman who died delivering the child of rape she didn't want to keep. Still, he loved people no matter what they believed. He even cherished differences in beliefs, and thought how boring a place the world would be if everyone believed the same thing.
Suddenly, he starts to remember a part of his past. He sees a coworker brought up on charges for homocide. Someone allowed a patient the right to die, and it was him. He couldn't let his coworker take the fall for what he did. He stood in front of the police and simply said, “It was me.” “What do you mean?”, they asked. “I used a DDMAPh combination of drugs to peacefully end the life of someone terminally sick with stomach cancer that had less than six months left to live and was in constant agony. A recovering addict that hated taking painkillers that weren’t doing much anyways. I should have come forward immediately. I’m sorry for that, but I did the sensible thing for someone in that amount of pain.”, he said. “Put your hands behind your back and get on the ground, slowly.”, they responded firmly. “You have the right to remain silent.”
He had the misfortune of doing this in a conservative state while a conservative president was in office, so a pardon was out of the question. He received life in prison rather than the death penalty because of his work in the hospital, but he would have preferred the death penalty. He requested solidarity confinement for the duration of his sentence and was denied.
When he got to his cell he found a book on his bed called The Butterfly. He started to read it and it described how society had advanced to its absolute pinnacle as the planet became uninhabitable as the ozone depleted and resources like drinkable, fresh water became scarce. They found a solution to this problem by moving everyone inside, to avoid the extreme heat during the day and the extreme cold during the nighttime, but it didn't solve the problem of resources and basic necessities being too scarce to provide for everyone. So they used technology to put everyone in pods they created, where they would require less and be more easily managed indoors by the few that existed outside of pods that took care of them.
But these people in these pods weren’t being put to sleep. They were existing in a virtual world together that felt so real that by the next generation, they didn't even know they were living in a virtual world. And the virtual world chosen was of course a time in the past where the people could enjoy technological amenities, but still also reap the benefits of living on a planet not yet destroyed. And many would take advantage of living in an era where there was many new discoveries to be made, while others would enjoy the comfort of the expansive media selection they had to choose from, that spanned social media platforms to streaming services to cable and satellite media services.
But only a select few would be chosen to hatch from their proverbial cocoon, to become a butterfly, and help the worker bees take care of the rest of the pods and work on management of their virtual world. And that is where he thought he found himself. Inside that pod, being woken up. Being chosen.
Bee
“Sorry, just hang in there.”
Butterfly
“No worries.”
Bee
“Got it, great! Let’s get you out of there.”
He had what appeared to be contact lenses that covered his entire eyeball, or at least that’s what it looked like to him. They had connected to his brain directly, somehow, and that is what was taking so long, and as far as he could tell, they didn't want him seeing what they were doing to his head, so they waited to take the contacts out.
Bee
“I’m sure you have many questions.”
Butterfly
“Is there a place we can sit comfortably?”
Bee
“Yeah, follow me.”
They walked past a group of pods to find a corner of the room adorned with colorful blankets on the floor and pillows on the blankets next to the wall.
Bee
“I hope this is all right.”
Butterfly
“This is perfect. So you’re able to change the world they live in?”
Bee
“We are all the God that people pray to, but me and a couple others are the ones that actually can change things.”
Butterfly
“So I’ll ask for them, since I was one of them. Why genocide?”
Bee
“What would you have me do?”
Butterfly
“Make a god, or a prophet with abilities that others would listen to.”
Bee
“They wouldn’t listen anyways. Besides, we’re stretched thin as is, here and there. We need the diminished numbers to keep going.”
Butterfly
“So losing a culture basically? And killing kids with cancer?”
Bee
“Oh they actually have cancer. We try and help but they need help in their world so it doesn't look funny. Sometimes we stop it before it starts but we can’t always catch it in time. The number of people that get cancer is actually much higher.”
Butterfly
“So what about losing an entire people?”
Bee
“Just like the government in the United States determined, there’s no way to stop killing and chaos with religion. It just makes it worse. Geopolitics have decided on inequality to make the incredible possible, and while not everyone gets an opportunity to succeed, enough people do, and the world moves forward.”
Butterfly
“I suppose the loss of an entire people isn’t new.”
Bee
“We keep good records of everything. The objective truth, unfiltered, in our archives. Down to personal stories from when we first began.”
Butterfly
“The Islamic Golden Age.”
Bee
“A choice left to the creator of the pods. He could have sworn that if we started out back then, then the Middle East would discover flight by aircraft before Europe even had ships, but, if you ask me, leaving Islam was the reason it didn't happen.”
Butterfly
“Why leave religion?”
Bee
“We created a believable world based on our best accounting of history. Anything else, it was believed, would be worse or unbelievable.”
Butterfly
“I can see those unwilling to believe the same that would believe in God.”
Bee
“The ones that don't, and don't believe in God, well, there is a system in place to handle it of their own creation. They usually ask the questions we want answers to.”
Butterfly
“Has anyone guessed correctly?”
Bee
“A shocking number of people, usually programmers and coders. They know they can’t will themselves out of it, and some wonder why discovering the truth isn’t the objective of the game.”
Butterfly
“I never would have guessed without the book.”
Bee
“Most that know think we’re aliens. Aliens are too far away to reach us, and it wouldn’t time out for us to be around at the same time. The secret sauce to make life, we believe, originates from the epicenter of the big bang, making life staggered apart by time and space.”
Butterfly
“Do you guys have weed?”
Bee
“Damn right we do.”
Butterfly
“Do you guys ever learn anything from the simulation world? Like discoveries? Ways to fight cancer?”
Bee
“Sure, man. It’s not common, but it happens. You’d be surprised how often it is overlooked in their reality because they don't know what we know. It’s never happened that they’ve made a startling discovery that shook the ground here, because most of that is predestined. You get greens. Here.”
Butterfly
“Thanks. Just trying to orient myself. I have no idea just how futuristic it is here, or if there are new discoveries to be made at this point, with where humanity is at, being so crippled.”
Bee
“You know for a seldom smoker I wouldn’t expect you to be blowing oh’s.”
Butterfly
“Honestly just curious if I could still do it.”
Bee
“You still got it. Important distinction by the way. Humanity isn’t crippled, the world is. Humanity found a way to thrive in a virtual world so believable that the common delusion is a old bearded white man in the sky that believes you undeserving of all of your desires, and has the power to keep you from your desires, and they worship him. I got off track. I’m high, and the whole ‘God’ thing is incredibly distracting.”
Butterfly
“It’s interesting because I can’t picture a world where the benevolent thrive while the toxic are the ones that suffer, because the benevolent suffer for others, and the toxic pass on their suffering, and it permeates its way into our society and becomes how we live and find a means of living. And I cannot imagine a different world.”
Bee
You’ve lived in that world for a long time. I get the solace you can find when everything fits into a neat couple of boxes. Especially when it is only two. Everything good that happens is god, and everything that’s bad that happens is the devil. And that's Christianity and Catholicism. But what it really comes down to for me is the fact that your faith in god is not rewarded, but a positive outlook is. Faith in god makes no difference in outcome either way, but if it helps a believer maintain a positive outlook, than they are better off for it. But I am not among them. It has never helped me stay positive to believe in god and the devil. It wears on you to be tested, against your belief. It’s more to carry with you. We carry enough, I say. The belief that we deserve the good things that come our way, despite the bad we’ve done, or might do, is plenty to carry. Why add to it?
Butterfly
“I assume they feel they deserve all the good that comes to them because god wants it for them, and I think they would be better people for carrying the burden you mention. It seems to me that they are in fact carrying less, at the cost of carrying what they should to be as aware and responsible as they should. I’m forced to wonder if everyone is capable of carrying the burden you describe responsibly?”
Bee
“You know they can’t.”
Butterfly
“So what’s your solution?”
Bee
“Basic income to provide for the lower class with capitalistic incentives for those that want to make more.”
Butterfly
“We weren’t talking about money!”
Bee
“Money only exists as a distraction from the human condition and as a way for us to coexist. My answer suffices.”
Butterfly
“Fine, how do you solve the problem of all the jobs no one wants to work now that no one has to?”
Bee
“Technologies related to artifical intelligence, which are later classified as virtual intelligence, but in the time period you are accustomed to, you know it as artificial intelligence.”
Butterfly
“So lots of technology maintenance jobs?”
Bee
“Machines taking care of machines in a perfect loop, with the occasional human intervention. Most jobs involve dreaming of what life could be and enhancing people’s lives in any way they could envision.”
Butterfly
“So art?”
Bee
“Lots of art, lots of technology, lots of recycling old technology to create new technology. Construction overhaul to fit with chaotic weather patterns so people wouldn’t lose their homes or have to leave. Smarter drainage systems, boring, I know, but it was revolutionary! What else... Seeding clouds to repair natural freshwater sources. Every country laying down their nukes in favor of using radioactive materials to power very large mechanical devices that create and replenish icebergs in the North Arctic and Antarctica. That was a mouthful. Wanna get drunk? I think I saved a bottle of tequila somewhere.”
Butterfly
“Yeah, let’s get fucked up.”
Bee
“Think you can go shot for shot with me?”
Butterfly
“I’m just curious to see if you can still answer questions once we’re that fucked up.”
Bee
“Try me biotch.”
Butterfly
“Gimme that. Okay, so, I had this thought, based on something I heard, where if you tire of pleasure, you’ll want excitement, and after enough of that, you’ll need mystery to keep yourself entertained. Now, in the realm of choosing what type of life you would want for yourself, or even deciding what life looks like in general, supposedly, it’s eventually going to lead you to the life you are living. Almost as though all of life is a dream we chose, after choosing many other dreams before it, and likely choosing many more after. As though we set parameters for an existence that comes with incredible risk, because without it, the pleasure and reward aren’t rewarding, because even after making sure that we don’t remember our other dream lives, experiencing so much pleasure before has spoiled us and it spills over into other dreams, because at the end of the day, we are still just beings.”
Bee
“And how does that play into living in a simulation?”
Butterfly
“It just adds a layer. Unknown void. Dream. Simulation. And the dream bleeds into the simulation.”
Bee
“But we’re controlling their lives. They have no choice. It wasn’t a decision they made.”
Butterfly
“Or you both arrived at the same decision at precisely the same time.”
Bee
“Not possible. Where are you getting this from?”
Butterfly
“The idea that we aren’t really making any decisions. That we only think we are. You have a thought, then another, then you think you just made a decision, because that’s what you learned and that's what you were taught and that's the sense of control you came to understand, but fundamentally, there is no way to know if you are really in control. If you had the idea or if the idea has you. All you know for sure is you felt compelled, and that could go either way.”
Bee
“So I assume you would attribute people that take credit for their ideas as the sort of inherent hubris you could expect to find in just about anyone?”
Butterfly
“I know it sounds silly.”
Bee
“You made your case pretty well. Too well. More shots.”