While you were reading these first eight words,
you were transported into your own future.
You now find yourself lying down; you're in a
strange place, nothing looks familiar.
You are dying.
You've now been pulled into your future body,
and are about to experience your own death.
Your life force begins to drain.
Your body feels very heavy, you feel deeply tired.
Now consciousness begins to fade, and you are terrified.
You want to escape, but you cannot move.
Your lungs relax as they empty for the last time.
All is fading.
...There is nothing. Not black, not white, not solid,
not space, not time. Did you just get here or were
you somewhere else, ... or? Your mind is not truly
here, fading in and out...
Where am I ? ... Am I dead?
You are not physical. You are floating.
"Five more years."
The words, not heard, not felt, not spoken, were simply there.
Is that me?
"Do you want five more years?"
Hallucinating...all right... Yes, yes I want five more years.
...Nothing...
"What would you do with them?"
I don't know. I would live.
You have no sense of time. It seems like forever and
it seems like now, both at once...
Where are you?... Don't leave me...
"You must choose. What would you do with them?"
I don't know! I can't think! How could I know?
What is the answer? I want them. I want five more years!
"Choose now. Last chance."
I would spend every second watching television commercials.
...............................
By the time you've lived 60 years, you'll have given
5 solid years of your life to watching tv commercials.
5 years, 24 hours a day, robbed from you by people who
constantly interrupted you with manipulative messages
because they wanted your money. Five years stolen by
people who had no right to steal your time from you.
Because they are greedy. They've stolen years from
every person in the country. They've stolen hundreds of
millions of human years, sucked them out of the reach
of human possibility.
Drained them. Wasted them. Destroyed them.
What might have been accomplished by us in three hundred
million human life years? With just one stolen year from
every life in the country. What could have been, if these
years were not systematically stolen?
Your own five years, what could you have accomplished?
You could have gotten a doctorate degree.
You could have learned 5 more languages, and would speak six all together.
You could have traveled and seen the places you always wanted to see.
You could have become an expert at something that fascinated you.
You could have met the love of your life and experienced profound joy.
You might have solved a problem, and changed the whole world forever.
Instead you watched 5 solid years of television commercials.
...............................
"The decision is made. Five more years are granted."
Wait please...
"You will return now".
Wait! Can I change my choice?
"That is the question. Can you?"
You are now returned to the present time. You are back
to what you were when you first began to read these words,
except for the addition of one thing: knowledge. Knowledge
of your own future passing, knowledge of the Time Criminals,
and the vastness of their crime; and the answer to the last
question you asked.
What will your answer be?
