Paradise Found

From Ape to Ape in One Million Years and Four Days

by Frank Adams

Los Angeles July 5, 2014 This World Banner—It has long been a favorite fetish of philosophers that man, when he became man, descended from a state of bliss into hell. Perhaps the most eloquent as well as the most well-known illustration of this attitude is the story of man’s descent from Paradise, the Garden of Eden, by the acquisition of knowledge of good and evil. Through the acquisition of his rational faculty, his power of reason, man became a filthy beast, outcast among the creations of God. He was doomed to doubts, worries, anxieties, thought. No longer could he walk up to a bush or a tree, open his mouth and “let the good Lord provide”—he must work.

Long have social planners, most notably the 19th century German social philosopher Karl Marx, tried to automate life so that, perhaps not “the Lord,” but at least someone would provide men with that lost paradise of early childhood and animalhood. For centuries, men have been plagued by a feeling of gut-wrenching anxiety over their unfortunate state. Now they need do so no longer. Man the provider has achieved the means of returning man to a “state of nature”—he has paved the road to paradise with the very evil that haunts him: his mind.

A local computer simulations firm announced Monday what they called the “Paradise Pill”—a highly advanced head-mounted computer that locks onto the brain of an individual, permanently paralyzing its higher functions. As of Monday, the Pill, as it has become known, came with one of three built-in programs: the Dog option, the Cat option and the Sex Slave option.

It has turned out that the first two options, the Dog and the Cat, are as useless, or perhaps as useful, as a knife in the belly. This week has shown that man, no matter what his fancies, simply cannot survive as an animal. He hasn’t got the strength, the digestion, not even the bark or meow. Perhaps anticipating this, the Pill also came in a more human version, the Sex Slave—after all, we humans like having dogs and cats around, but when the dogs and cats are human beings who have opted to renege their human status, they somehow lose their appeal.

This other model, the Sex Slave, has been notably more successful—this animal found plenty of owners until the owners also opted for the Pill. The whole point of buying a Pill, however, had been to enter a state of animal bliss, to be “smiled upon by God,” but the men of angst hit upon a new anxiety: how could they know what it was like to be a Sex Slave? They formed a Society for Paradise Assured to pressure the government into looking after their grievance.

The government set up a rush committee Tuesday to have the Pills looked into. They have reported that the computer firm actually had the technology to make the Pills reversible, and they quickly had a law passed which granted the committee the power to force this change in the Pills.

Yesterday, Wednesday, it was discovered that the computer firm had ceased to exist, that neither owners nor staff were to be found. That afternoon, the committee passed a ban on the sale of the Pills, until such time as the product could be approved.

Last night the committee found that they hadn’t a chance of stopping the distribution of the Pills. There were hidden warehouses around the country, supplying anyone and everyone with free Pills.

Today the government capitulated, realizing that they had lost all their support. During the span of a week, the nation’s newspapers and TV shows had made a 180° turn, and are now demanding a return to the Constitution—a total revision of all laws in the light of the individual’s right to his own life. Even the Society for Paradise Assured had stopped their activities, being worried that the supply of Pills would run out, and getting theirs while they lasted.

At last there has come along a Pill to abort all the diseased philosophers in history.

Copyright © 1993-2003 by This World Productions
(Any similarity to actual existents is purely coincidental.)