It read:

“Welcome to The Parallel. Once you enter The Parallel you can never return.

Your less simple lifestyle and overtly complex ideals are all gone. We did not burn them, though we considered it. Instead, we have kept them, and they shall be used for torture purposes to remind you of the decision you made.

Do not try to escape The Parallel. Those who make desperate attempts to escape will ultimately fall victim to torment, to a thousand brutal images of the old life.

Welcome to The Parallel, we’re so glad you decided to visit. You have now left your old lives far behind.

Your morals you put to rest, your stress and strife you slaughtered. Your guilt, your anxiety, your hopes and dreams, your ability to love, and need to be loved, your fear; they are all now non-existent. All you will know now is infinite pleasure, a lifetime of indulgence and decades upon decades of decadence. Your ever wish is our command, your every sense catered for. You’ll taste, feel, see anything and everything that pleases you.

During the application process, we took a look inside your brain. We know just how you feel, how you think. We know your inner-most desires, your thoughts and wishes. Wish for nothing no more, for here in The Parallel, you shall have it all.

Yes, we have taken your dreams, and we have locked them away, You shall dream no longer. There is nothing left to achieve, nothing left to accomplish.  There is nothing left to hope for, no reason to work towards anything. Think not of the future. There is no future, there is no hope.  From now on, there is only pleasure. There is only The Parallel.”

I looked at her, and she looked at me. We’d made the decision to come here, and now there was no turning back. We’d been enticed by The Parallel and become victims of our own greed. We’d spent our lives dreaming of infinite pleasures, of beautiful surroundings and beautiful people, of good foods and good wines, and now we had it all. But they’d taken away our emotions, the very key to our identities as human beings. Now, we would no longer know that we loved the things we were being offered, we would simply accept them, living the life that many people on the Other Side dreamed of without realising our good fortune.

We should never have come. There was nothing wrong with dreaming.

But it was too late, and here we were, in The Parallel.

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