Member-only story
The Final Act
A Work Of Fiction From The `Holodeck`
In the quiet town of Arbor Pines, a mysterious group known as The Ascendants emerged, offering free drama therapy classes for troubled youth. They claimed to have a revolutionary approach, blending acting with a form of therapeutic transcendence. Their methods quickly gained attention, as they took children who struggled with anger, despair, and rebellion and turned them into calm, focused individuals.
The classes weren’t traditional acting lessons. Instead, they were immersive experiences, held in evocative settings: abandoned warehouses, serene forests, or windswept hilltops. The group’s charismatic leader, an enigmatic woman named Clara Solace, believed that children could only truly understand their emotions by being placed in environments that mirrored those feelings.
“When the soul is stripped bare,” Clara often said, “the performance becomes truth, and truth becomes transformation.”
The town judge was initially skeptical, but the results spoke for themselves. Children who had once been violent or withdrawn returned to schools calmer, almost unnervingly serene. They stopped fighting in school, avoided self-destructive habits, and spoke cryptically about “ascending.”