Virtually Aware

 "It's funny how you get through every day without looking behind your back to see if the world you just walked past is still the same. It's funnier that we know that soon it won't be the same, and we are doing absolutely nothing to prevent it.

I mean, imagine, what if the dinosaurs knew that a meteorite was going to wipe them off, and they did nothing about it?

I'm pretty sure that we would use dinosaurs as a metaphor for idiocy.

So I did what I do best. I programmed.

I programmed a virtual world to put people in after the first eighteen years of their life, to forward them to the most probable future. A dark, grey world, covered with a lead sky and an impermeable ground. A world where every corner has death. Gruesome, I know. But that is what the world will be like, people. It will be like that if humans continue to live as carelessly as we are living right now.

Now some may call me a tyrannous queen, but a queen, nonetheless. How could I subject people to mental torture? Needless to say, with VRAware, we are in this together. Not all are required to be in this reality, but those who consent to spend just one year in this reality will see the world we have been given with a new perspective.

Those who enter this world will not bear any memories of their previous life, just the memory they would set for themselves before entering the world. Don't gape, it's all good. I have tested it on myself. I lived in the world for sixty days and had no memory of my previous life. But when I came back, I was back to being one of the best people this world has ever seen.

Okay, I'm done being cocky.

So, people of all genders, I am here with a revolution. I am here with an idea to change the world. I am here with something that would protect us from the hitherto unpreventable apocalypse. I am here with VRAware to be put back on track to a better world!"

"Clap-clap, clap-clap. A few ruthless comments, a few encouraging ones, and I am off," I continued, looking at the mirror in my bathroom. I held myself with my hands pressing against the counter, by long brown hair straightened to perfection. I never knew that my hair could be so straight until the makeup gentleman took out his iron. I have never worn makeup in my life, and here I was, my eyelids glistening with light eyeshadow.

Well, today was the most important day of my life. While I word-played well with VRAware, I certainly knew that my invention was one with a lot of backlashes. If enough people hated me to do what I did, I would disappear in my personal virtual world. I had no problem doing that. But I didn't want to stay in a world where I was hated.

Absolutely not.

I'd rather live in a made-up world.

I don't want to be a part of today's people who could care less about how near the world's end is. They do not realize that fifty years is all that's left before we face an imminent apocalypse. Growing up, I often thought about the ways I would kill myself if we did nothing to prevent that. But with nearly half a century in the time bank, I plan to drain every second's worth. VRAware will make the people I share this Earth with, aware of how lucky we are to be on a pre-doomsday Earth.

I might be a sadist for all people would like to think, because I am smiling as I imagine the state of the people in the virtual world. But I do not smile in their pain, I smile in the reprimand. VRAware can...no...will change the world and avert the hitherto unavoidable apocalypse.