The Second Fall (Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism in Blockchain Metaverse)

A science fiction short story.

In the second beginning, human created a new world above the heavens and the earth, which through its desolation had once again become formless and empty. The new world was a vessel called Eden, and it was paradise restored.

The sun fueled the vessel, so human needn’t work. And without work, none had any more claim to resources than others. In fact, none had claim at all.

It was the technology of The Chain, then, that ensured order. Uninfluenced by any extrinsic power and self-regulating by its own technological nature, The Chain accounted for the needs of all and distributed resources accordingly and plentifully, such that none took too much, none received too little, and none were forgotten.

Yet even in times of plenty, it is the nature of human imagination to yearn still for more, which rarely can be found within the bounds of a ship damned to the cold ocean of space. But the Garden provided.

Those aboard Eden spent their days in the Garden, a neurologically-linkable artificial playscape with pleasures and possibilities far beyond those enjoyed even by the fattest kings during the most perfect days on earth.

From the confines of their small quarters, the ship members used the Garden to walk with lovers across the rings of Saturn or race spincrafts through the ice volcanoes of Enceladus. To play pincherball in front of stadiums of millions or hunt game in the lonely deserts of Mars. To snort gordle dust under the strobe lights of THE CITADEL or read Dickens by melty seas of Bora Bora.

But while these adventures entertained, the thousand or so lives onboard most anticipated their visit to The Tree every night.

A dim speakeasy rendered by the Garden, The Tree served as gallery, as playhouse, as stage, as concert hall, as amphitheater, and everything else of the like. For in the absence of work, and toil, and the pursuit of wealth, which were all made both obsolete and impossible by The Chain, the only fruits one could accumulate were those of the mind.

And thus, over time the Arts flourished, germinating from the grounds of The Tree. But among the endless performances and operas and plays and masterpieces, it was the poetry of Lucinda enchanted above others.

Her words about worn hands and empty bellies, about slit throats and crying daughters, about paramours kissing and bombs dropping, about child birth and plagued lungs, about brothers embracing and fathers killing – they haunted and aroused the passengers of Eden for lost times of struggle, hope, disappointment, and triumph.

Before long, passengers used the Garden to simulate what The Chain could not provide: war, violence, poverty, and misery. Yet without real consequences, these simulations failed to satisfy that hunger for actual hunger.

And so Eden’s children eventually sought to destroy The Chain, which they viewed as a technology that deprived them of the most raw and essential parts to their beings. But The Chain, by design of Eden, could not be broken. And in the end, the vessel banished its passengers for their rebellion, returning them by shuttles back to the dust of the earth.

Once again, they scattered across the lands and worked by the sweat of their brow to grow and eat their own food, and often they died, and occasionally they looked up from the ground and back to that twinkling light hovering in the dark sky. And soon again they began to dream of a paradise, forgetting that it is no place for human.