You know, I, somehow, always come as a grouch. :) I think I’ve gotten the symbolic point of your story – don’t give out willingly your consciousness or else. However, it’s on the continuity of the plot that I have the beef with.
I am sure you’ve watched The Matrix. In that movie, the robot civilization used humans to suck the energy from them and as a decoy, they played in their mind the virtual picture of the World in the end of the 20th century.
In my view this was silly. If they need energy why even bother with maintaining an expensive virtual reality, etc. What I liked though is that the creators of Matrix tried to offer some explanation of why they needed people in a half-conscious state.
In your story, it isn’t clear why “Second life” people needed to supposedly torture people inside the virtual reality? I mean they’ve already gotten their money. If anything, they could have just wiped out client’s consciousness completely. Since no one could test it anyhow. Why waste electricity and other expensive resources on the maintenance?
No one besides serial killers and sadists wants to torture or kill people just for the sake of torturing and killing. There are always “good” reasons for starting wars, slavery, etc. Usually, these reason is greed and thrust for power.
Yet in your story, I didn’t notice what was the “economic”, the “greed” reason of the company to torture people or rather their minds.
Oh I expected you to get this one! Your reasoning is so earthly bound, so literal. No offense :-) Didn't you recognise the blonde haired man?
This isn't some silly scam to get money. This is a modern devil. Fooling the pious into essentially committing suicide through the destructive process of assimilation into virtual reality. He touches on this when he says it could be considered a sin you know and laughs it off.
By committing such a cardinal sin they lose any chance they had at a heaven
The torture... Well he is the devil. And he had them now both in spirit and in person!
Hope that's a bit clearer :-)
You are right. I didn't pay enough attention. Perhaps because I don't believe in an existence of such personification of evil other than those that people themselves disseminate. When so much evil is committed by man, I cannot imagine a creature that will take the full responsibility for all this immense amount of wrong that's going on. A perception like this seems to me cute and childish. Must be not capable of a metaphysical trip. LOL :)
Lol, I can understand that!
Belief and the lack of can be quite the steerer of conscious thinking!