It was an educational center where children could go to learn about anything and everything. A 3-dimensional, multi-media wiki of sorts, with meta-fractal properties. (i.e. everything could be zoomed into at any level, right down to the cellular structure, or maybe even the atomic) All was documented, including the 3d-wiki itself. Through it, one could learn the very essence of what makes life happen.

(Hell, maybe it was just A Theory of Power on mega-acid.)

But somewhere along the way, we kept getting distracted and lost, but in the very process of becoming so lost, we would pick up a crucial key to understanding the nature of being. It was like stopping to watch a movie. When the movie (i.e. life) was over, we would return to our prior state, but with some added piece of insight. The nonsensical suddenly fell into place.

But then, for a while, I kept getting so sick of all the mass media saturation that I wanted to shut it out, especially the corporate-controlled propaganda machine. My efforts failed, perhaps because the very essence of my reality (including the desire to autonomize) was, in every way, shaped by this media. I was this media.

Somewhere along the way, Pink Floyd kept running through my head.

"Wrong, do it again."

[ring ring]

As researchers previewing this new educational paradigm, we found ourselves on the cutting edge. In a sense, we were also children at heart (though still physically adults), as we explored the medium that could be used to transform the minds of the future. In a sense, we were living in what amounted to an advertisement.

But as we kept exploring the higher levels, we were troubled by what we found.

The insights yielded to us by the machine were indeed astonishing, but something about it was wrong. Broken. Betrayal.

Somewhere along the way, we found ourselves absorbed in a sappy romance. I think the setting was New Orleans. We were supposed to learn a lesson from it, and indeed we did.

But when I got back to the present reality, one of the characters from the film was riding in the cab next to me. (Still viewing myself from the third person.) She (resembling Julia Roberts, but could have been someone else) looked me deep in the eyes, and said, "What did you learn about me from that excursion?"

"That you are a deceiver." Then I thought, and added. "But you're also not real, so I do not fear you."

"Very good." (The camera drifted back, and out.) "But someone else is."

"The cab driver." I was in shock and disbelief. But I knew the truth of it. It was the driver. He was the one responsible for... for... for...

This meaningless meta-drama kept playing out at various levels. We zoomed out a level. Then went back in time, to visit the formation of ourselves as beings. Back to the evolutionary swamp, where single-celled organisms congregated in the eddies of a river beneath the broken dam.

"Is this what you want to go back to?"

The zoom narrowed to a microscopic level, where we could see the little things swishing about in the pool, some gobbling others up, groups combining to take on new forms, and some in a state of turmoil about an unknown future.

"All true growth is accompanied by existential crisis."

I could see that we, as humans, experience the same dilemma as the tiny cells, albeit on a different level and scale. The yin and the yang. The price of being alive is suffering.

Though there were yet many mysteries at the edge of consciousness, I had taken what I needed. I left the training realm behind.