The Story Of

Located on a plateau, surrounded by a jungle of strange vegetation and animals, stands a building, .

A ‘hotel’, offering people of all creeds, colours and sexes the realization of their impossible dreams, people united only in search of the ultimate experience.

stands for initiation, identity, idealism, integration, illumination, immortality, infinity…

The building is controlled by a sphere hovering overhead, within which is stored all information on the emotions, sentiments and sensations of all the people in the various rooms.

From all over the world people are attracted to this centre. The bait is the possibility of experiences way beyond normal existence… they are offered the fulfillment of all their dreams, all their hopes, all their secret ambitions and desires. And they flock in, the disappointed, those who have realized that any hope of development and personal fulfillment in the outside world is forever gone, that their futures are as barren as their boring presents.

The only price is the same as the reward: ~ life itself. For if, after careful screening, the applicant is allowed to take part in the various ‘games’ on the different floors ~ after he has continued through his own idealized situations he will die. This has been, until this story starts, irrevocable.

However, there is a key ~ a key which so far has not been found ~ a possibility of escape.

After he has entered the building, the searcher can only go up. He must rise through sensations of ever increasing magnitude, artificial situations of greater and greater challenge. Some, despite the delicately beneficial maneuvering of the omniscient sphere, which can slightly aid when difficulties become too great, surpass the abilities of the individual. However, he MUST rise, conquering all obstacles, learning his own final limits, and he can never turn back. He sets his own pace for the ascent, it may take years for the completion of the course, but there is only one direction for him.

All the while, his progress, his feelings, everything he does and is, is monitored by the overhead globe ~ each despair, when the problems seem insurmountable, each stage of triumph over a victory, his pains, his lusts, his pleasures, his ecstasies, are recorded, electronically sorted, and the best sensations transmitted for the most popular entertainment for the rest of the world. And, seven times each year, the winners of the floors, those who have successfully completed the course, are pushed out onto the diving board by the attendants, to plunge in a few minutes the distance it has taken years to mount.

The ground onto which the bodies fall is transparent, and reduces every body instantly to its component atoms. Below, stretching deep beneath the earth, is another, similar building, like a reflection of the one towering above. There, the reconstituted diver will experience the inverse of the previous conditions.

Somewhere, sometime in the building a man and a woman meet and fall in love, deeply, truly, completely. Sometimes they go through the games and tests together, sometimes they are separated, sometimes during the games they are paired with each other, sometimes they compete with each other ~ but always they are in love, and they are determined that their final sacrifice shall be together. So they rise and approach the top.

The days of sacrifice the payment of the ultimate price, life, are always popular. People gather to watch their favorite heroes, whose developments have been recorded and electronically relayed for so long, to take the final step… the end of illusion. But on this particular day all the world waits for the final episode in the love story they have been witnessing for so long, as never before have two people together reached the top. The pair link hands and walk over the crowds, along a narrow plank. Every touch of apprehension, all their mutual adoration and
deep feeling of love for each other, is amplified and relayed to the attentive millions. At the very end of the diving board, they look once at each other and take the final step.

And the crowd watches in awe, as the two figures, already dwarfed by the distance, rise from the end of the board
and, carried by their love, vanish into the skies.

Original story by Patrick Moraz