Pleasure Cruise

--Who Wants To Know The Truth?--
A short-story outline
Post 352

This story is based on a dream that I actually had last night, Dec 17, 2016.

This is a first-person narrative about a single, ex-reporter on the world’s largest tropical cruise ship. He doesn’t usually “do such things” but he won this trip as a promotional, and circumstances lost him his job at a convenient time to make use of it, so here he is, on a pleasure cruise with people he doesn’t normally associate with, among activities that don’t normally appeal to him. He is not your typical party animal bent on indulging his animal pleasures as a way of life.
The majority on this cruise are middle-class young people who seem to try to live beyond their means, although being single with good-paying jobs in an affluent culture; it’s almost hard to do. Among this majority our former reporter also finds the retired, and families with young children. It’s a ship that accurately reflects modern American society.

We follow our ex-reporter for a few days as he wanders the grand luxury of the ship discovering its great variety of time-wasting activities and meeting people of all professions and characters, including the ships staff and officers. The decadent luxury is very appealing, and most of the people are quite nice, everyday-people, that are just looking for a good time in a meaningless existence that is carefully designed to pamper their self-indulgent pleasures, or help others do the same. He soon discovers that he can actually like most of the people he meets and easily finds “friends” among them to make his indulging cruise more enjoyable than walking alone or among strangers. He even stumbles into the moderate beginnings of a possible love interest.
But as time goes on and he gets to know them better he begins to notice people making bad choices and using strings of illogical thoughts that cause him to question their very thought processes. He begins to watch with a new curiosity of disconnected observation as his reporter instincts kick in. He wonders to himself why they would all act in such self-destructive ways that cause not only themselves but others such pain. “How can they not see the obvious results before they come to pass? Everyone knows that with uninhibited pleasures come uninhibited sorrows.” Yet on this boat they seem to imagine as suspended the law of cause-and-effect. In fact they imagine the suspension of many such natural laws.

In his exploration and observation, among other activities, he finds an entertainer on board named Benn Gleck who always has a large attendance at his repeating stand-up monologue about how the growing chaotic contention among shipmates is bringing us all the sorrows of a less enjoyable cruise. He recommends that; “we all just take a chill pill and learn to get along. It’s not that big o’ ship when it comes right down to it, and there are more than enough various activities to keep us all happy in whatever means we choose, if we don’t judge others for choosing something other than what we like.”
Our reporter thinks to himself: “As I struggle to wake my fellow passengers from their determined insanity of a meaningless existence, which the very nature of the party-boat promotes as “Life,” I sort of agree with Mr. Gleck in theory, yet somehow I also disagree in principle. I see the value of his sleepy point-of-view to reduce the spirits of contention and depression in an aimless environment designed for meaningless and purposeless pleasure, but it’s apparent that he doesn’t see the awake concerns at all: that there is more to this voyage than trouble-free debauchery; either depressed or happy, alone or communally. Regardless of the environment, the laws of nature tell us that debauchery is always self-destructive, and this boat must one day dock at it’s destination where a man’s wife or a woman’s husband will be waiting for an explanation.”

Our reporter discovers another similar entertainer across the hall on the same deck who is a young blond-bombshell called “Jack.” She sings and dances and shotguns a non-stop dialogue as she does it. The self-glorifying substance of her dialogue would be instantly rejected and her show closed for both contention and lack of interest if she didn’t have such sex appeal, but her youth and beauty draws them in, and her unexpected quick-wit for a beauty keeps them mesmerized as she performs. The basic nature of her show seems somehow similar to Gleck’s….but not. She is more willing to openly mock the most foolish passengers in their daily foolishness, but the purpose, as with Gleck’s show, is just to entertain; it’s not meant to actually hurt anyone. And so they come, savoring the stinging salt on her very pink tongue.
Of course on lower decks there are also the alt-Right shows like Dimtrain and I-slam using hate as their chosen theme to entertain in the same way. There are Religious Magicians that play games in your mind, and Genetic Magicians that play games there too. There are alt-Liberated shows that take great pleasure in all things wicked by promoting “Christian tolerance through social Hedonism,” and those who talk about burning the ship to the water with the intent of repurposing the wet ashes to rebuild it into something better. Clearly not a well thought out plan. The consistent value in all of their diverse shows that got them billing on this ship of entertainment is that they entertain, and in so doing keep all their passengers thinking they are “happy” on the cruise as if it will never end.
Our reporter’s beautiful romantic interest-- who really enjoys the sauce to the state of perpetual drunken stupor in her chosen club-- allows him to persuade her to stick with him for a good portion of our story, and seems to begin to see the reality of the ship’s pathetic worldview perspective. Her new alertness brings out her wonderful and intelligent personality as she slowly dries out and we begin to see in her the potential that he sees. But eventually she looses interest in his prudish mentality and reluctantly goes back to her dance club saying; “I’m sorry, I really like you, but what’s the use?”

The story develops into an actual catastrophe of bad choices, both personal stories among his new friends and social stories among larger groups, and eventually by the similar choices of the new crew, the ship itself strikes a reef, rolls over and everyone on board is lost at sea, because, while the captain and crew keep reassuring folks that everything is under control until it is too late to save any, there are others who take the law into their own hands as it were and work the life-boats without knowledge, making them all broken on the decks below or uselessly tangled in their lines.

Then after seeing all these things, I heard a voice say; “Who wants to know the truth?”
I replied loudly and determedly; “I do, show me!”
Then I awoke, right at the beginning of the dream.

The story changed from reality to a vision early on in the cruise, which, by already being on board under way, cannot be avoided. Now our reporter goes about observing the same events again, but with graphic foreknowledge of every bad choice they make and the chain-of-reaction effects that he knows will play out. He passionately tries to stop them, to reason with them at length, to distract them from their doing, to draw her away from her club, but all to no avail. It’s as if their history is already written and cannot be altered. The people on the ship now appear to him as sleepwalkers; mechanically acting but not thinking, actors in a play that have rehearsed scripts in which they take pride in following to the letter with all the practiced passions, yet with no personal contemplations as to what they are performing.
The closer to the final disaster they come the more alarmed and concerned our reporter gets, but this time, in the desperate actions of his alarm, having replaced the original Captain with a well-spoken popular passenger, the ship’s new authority begin to view him as a threat, maybe even a terrorist. The ship turns into a struggle of disagreement between two democratic opinions of the right course, and in the arguing and bad choices of impassioned chaos the ship once again strikes the reef, but this time apparently because of the struggle itself being the bad choice of distraction. The young reporter realizes too late that he is no different than the others on the ship. All the actions of his foreknowledge efforts and good-will are just another bad choice. He is just another character in the tragic play.

Then I heard the voice just as before; “Who wants to know the truth?”
I startled awake from a sleep that I was so sure was a wakness after a dream, suddenly aware that my reality after the dream was only a deeper dream itself. So this time I replied humbly and fearfully; “I do! please show me.”
Then I awoke, right at the beginning of the vision, again on the pleasure cruise underway.

And I finally understood the truth.
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While more detail may help the reader come to the answer sooner, you now have all the information you need to figure out "the truth" in the context of this allegory.
What have you come up with?
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