THE TOY BALL by Thomas Lipschultz 11/19/97 God, it's great being the ruler of the world, thought George. Everything he could ever want, all within his grasp. "Give me a pork chop right now," he said to his chef. And within ten minutes, he had a pork chop. "Give me a diamond right now, about the size of this room. Leave it outside the palace," he said to his jeweler. And within an hour, he had a diamond the size of his throne room. Yes, being King of the World seriously kicks butt. Man, this is the life, thought Sean. I make the laws around here. Everyone obeys me unquestioningly. I've never been happier! The world's my plaything. I can have any woman I want anytime I want to. If someone breaks the law, I can punish 'em or let 'em go. Heck, I could go on a murderous rampage and kill President freakin' Clinton and nobody'd care... I mean, heck, I'm his superior, I control his life anyway, I might as well end it, that stupid-ass hillbilly. Yesiree, being the ruler of the known world is DEFINITELY the life for me. Dude, this rocks, thought Evan. This whole place is mine. I can hire beautiful naked women to do all my psych homework for me, then I can force my professor to give me an A or I'll blow his head off. I mean, heck, I already got 'em to fill the Grand Canyon up to the top with water so I can go swimming in style. And hell, I can get free ice-cream from Dairy Queen. That's SWEET! Whew, I wouldn't want it any other way. This here's the high life, baby! Creator's Log, day 26. This random thought-sampling seems to show that the whole world is happier this way. I see I've finally found the perfect governmental system: make everyone the ruler of their own virtual world, identical to Earth in every way except that they have complete control over it and all of its residents. Keep their bodies in stasis the whole time, injecting a set amount of nutritional supplement into their bodies three times per day. It's a pain to keep changing the feeders, but it seems to have worked well. No one wants to wake up from their stasis, which shows that a definite scientific achievement has been made. But my theory was indeed INcorrect: one cannot please all of the people all of the time, for I am not pleased. Although I am truly the ruler of the REAL world, since its whole population is dependent upon me to keep them alive, my job requires 24- hour surveillance of the lab's systems else a possible destruction of humanity. I am displeased by this result, and merely wish to attain my old life again... but alas, it is gone forever. Happiness is an individual task that must be compromised by each individual in order to attain world peace. Yet not everyone is willing to compromise it. I've come close to finding Utopia... but instead, I've discovered Hell. -- End transmission.