The Valley

The Simulation

“There weren’t always dragons in the valley,” said the old man. All the kids gave him a puzzled look.

“There weren’t?” they said in unison.

“Oh no, they are actually fairly recent,” the old man said, enjoying the attention. All the kids were so confused.

“Don’t listen to the old fool, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said Zack. The kids looked at him but were way too interested in what the old man had to say to care. “Will you tell us more sir?” said one of the kids.

“Oh yes, but first, have you heard of ‘The Simulation’?” the old man inquired.

Zack butted in, “Don’t fill the kids’ minds with that crazy nonsense!” The old man glared at him and brushed him off.

“I haven’t ever heard of ‘The Simulation’,” one kid said.

“Me neither,” they all agreed.

“Well, you must know about the simulation before I tell you how the dragons came to be.” All the children looked at him as if they were all saying, “Go on, tell us some more.”

“Once upon a time, there was a very powerful man named Apollo.”

One of the kids interrupted him, “How powerful was he?”

The old man said, “He was so powerful that his name, Apollo, means destroyer.” All the kids were amazed.

The old man continued, “He hand-selected some of the strongest and wisest people on the planet. He wanted to see how five of the strongest men, five of the wisest men, five of the fiercest women, and five of the wisest women would survive together in a world with no one else. So he created the simulation. But after these people went missing, many started to look for them, but they were never found. That is because Apollo was not just brawn, but he was also brains. All of the people he selected were deep underground in pods that put them all into a dream-like state, but they were all in the same dream. They could control everything that they did. They didn’t know that they were in a simulation. They had no idea where they were, and they had no memory of where they had come from.”

“Wow!” the kids exclaimed.

“Do you guys seriously believe this crazy fool?!” Zack was beginning to get angry which confused the old man because he was just telling a story.

The old man scoffed and continued his story. “Their instincts kicked in and they all started to work together to survive. They found out pretty quickly that heat would be a problem. They were very close to a desert, but they were in a nice green valley, kind of like the one we live in. They were lucky though. Like our valley, there was a beautiful, clear river that ran straight through the valley. In a couple of months the people had built an entire civilization. They had houses and tools, and they had even managed to tame some horses around the area. Apollo, who had been watching their progress from outside the simulation, was so amazed by how far they had come in such a short amount of time. Apollo had decided that his experiment was a success. But he didn’t want to return the people to their homes just yet. He wanted to make it harder on them just to see what would happen. He made hostile creatures and added them to the simulation. The creatures he added were completely made up so the survivors had no way of knowing how to kill them. The first night they attacked the village three women were killed. This was devastating considering they had never lost anyone in the simulation. The creatures continued the attacks and continued to pick off the survivors until only seven survivors were left. It was three of the men that were wise, two of the strong men, and two of the fierce women. Apollo realized that they would all die if the creatures continued to attack, but he didn’t care he kept making them attack.”

“Why would he do that?!” one of the kids shouted angrily.

“No one knows,” said the old man. But, after a few more nights of the attacks, no more survivors died. Apollo was pleased so he made the creature a little less powerful so he wouldn’t lose all of his “test subjects” to their injuries. But the very next day something very interesting happened in the real world. Do you want to know what happened?”

“Of course! Please tell us,” the kids cried out.

“Well, an earthquake shook right around the people, and one of the components on the sleeping pods they were all in shook loose, and one of the extremely wise men, Daniel, woke up. His sleeping pod malfunctioned and he opened his eyes for the first time in months. He was so confused there was a man in front of him that he had never seen, little did he know this was Apollo. Apollo turned around and stared, horrified at the fact that Daniel was awake. Apollo immediately checked the machine and noticed what was broken; he fixed it and sent Daniel back into the simulation as fast as he had awoken. Daniel was the most confused he had ever been in his life. He looked around and realized he was right back where he started in the village they created. He went to tell the others what had happened and they thought he was crazy, but they listened to him. Over the next few days, they were more skeptical about everything, and they began to notice a few weird things about their ‘World’. Every now and then, when looking at the sky they noticed cracks and small holes in it. When they looked at the holes, they could see the outside world that Daniel had been talking about. It confused them all, but they began to understand that they could escape.”

“How does this have anything to do with dragons in the valley?” a kid asked.

“Yeah, what about the dragons?” another kid said.

“I’m getting there,” said the old man, “Trust me. You have to know this first. Let me continue. They tried to do everything to crash the system. They thought that if they did something that was so power-demanding by the machine they could crash it. After many attempts, they finally managed to crash the system. It took them almost a year’s worth of attempts to finally crash it, but one day they set off hundreds of bombs they had created at the same time. A huge crack ran down the sky like a lightning strike. They all woke up simultaneously and saw Apollo standing right in front of them with his back turned.

‘You will never leave this place’ said Apollo.

Daniel spotted a ladder, which he assumed led to the surface, and he made a dash for it. All the others followed him as they didn’t want to stay with this crazy man.

‘I will kill you all! You’ve made a grave mistake!’ Apollo called after them, as he grabbed a massive sword off of a rack.

Apollo chased them up the ladder. When they got to the top they found themselves in a valley, this valley.”

“Really?! What happened?!” the kids shouted, needing answers.

“Yes, this very valley, they ran out into the middle of the valley not knowing what to do now. Apollo, in his fury, slammed his sword into the ground with all his might. The Earth cracked open all the way to its core. All the way to Hell, and up from the pits of Hell came dragons setting blaze to all the survivors and Apollo. No one knows if any of them survived or not.”

“Wait so that’s it? Nothing else all that for them all to die? That’s not a very good story,” said one of the kids.

“It's not a story, it's the truth. That is why there are dragons in the valley, we learned to live around the dragons.”

“But how do you know all of this?” a little boy asked.

“He doesn’t. He made it all up, and he is just telling you lies!” said Zack.

“Do you really want to know how I know this? Well, let me tell you my story.”