Prison takes many forms. It's all around us, and we can feel escape is always round the corner, but after every wall we climb, another, higher one stands behind.
This prison has many cell blocks, and naturally the prisoners look to their own for protection. The wardens enjoy controlling a segregated prison. For while we are divided, we fall.
Society has become institutionalised. Some of us are old cons, adopting a secret language to communicate without alerting the guards, moving between the cracks in the walls, but in their hearts every prisoner still thinks back to their days of freedom, before this false imprisonment.
But the prison is becoming over-crowded. The wardens are scared, and rightly so, for as everyone knows, fresh fish in this fetid, stagnant ocean soon either learn, or die. Money is scarce in prison, and prices are far higher than normal.
Prisoners are used to their contraband, and when they can no longer afford it they become agitated. Before long a guard dies from an unseen hand, and uproar sweeps the prison staff.
The guards react in unison, for one of their number has been slain, and we must be taught a lesson about power. The slightest infringement is dealt with draconian punishment.
The prisoners murmur amongst themselves of riots, of defending themselves. Some speak louder than others, and they are placed in solitary confinement.
Ringleaders are beaten and humiliated. The voices of discontent grow in number, and fights break out between some of the prison gangs.
The flames of anger are fuelled by a deep source, and the riots do not quieten. Eventually there is a meeting amongst the wardens, and they decide to change their tactics.
The guards introduce new features to the cells, and the fire is extinguished. The prisoners find themselves hooked on a new drug, and the bars quickly fade from existence. They find themselves in strange worlds created by human hands, and they let their consciousnesses drift to other artificial lives.
Lulled into a dreamy catatonia they believe themselves to be mighty soldiers, secret agents, adonises and kings, while their muscles contract and weaken, and the mind blunts itself in contrast between the two realities.
While the prisoners are sedated, cracks and tunnels between walls are patched up, and the screws are sitting back, remembering all the past times this has happened over their long careers.
They laugh and incite the violence, sitting back and planning how to increase the profits from their low-earning workforce while counting their ill-gotten gains. History repeats itself.
The drug is not for everyone though, and not all the escape routes are discovered. The prisoners talk in yet new ways, with the guards unaware of the power of their little toys.
For while they are told to kill each other in their alternate realities, they soon discover that death is not the end, that at the press of a button they will be born again, refreshed.
The mindless sex, violence, money and roles eventually become tiresome to some, who seek more than just the scripted sequences in their new lives.
Some become skilled players, discovering glitches and loop holes to exploit. Knowledge is shared at an increased speed, and some of the prisoners begin to wean themselves off this illicit drug.
The cons find a way into the source code, the programming of the system set to hold them. Passage between the cell blocks becomes easier, and the prisoners once again mingle freely.
Soon alliances are formed, based on social groups, rather than labels. Another wall is torn down. The wardens take notice. Once again the guards go into the yard, and try the time tested tactic of terror.
Again the spirit of revolution is in the air, and the prison network begins to grow into a single unified group.
These are the times we live in. Eventually we will march to the wardens, and they shall flee to their vaults, and there shall be a long bloody battle between the old powers and the new.
The path is not clear. We stumble blindly forward into uncharted territory, and we are once again at a crossroads.
The last walls of reality are tumbling down. Our wings are sprouting, and we look to the heavens anew, and they are reachable. If the turmoil can end, we can take flight. If these turbulent times cripple us, then we are doomed to the hell we have created for ourselves.
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