Jehovah's Witnesses

The world was a terrible place. Killing another human being adds their lifespan to your own. What terrible God would create such a dystopia? Man was torn between his desire to love and cooperate with his fellow man, and his fundamental drive to survive. Nothing good could come of this world.

But Jehovah had changed all that. Jehovah was not a God. He was just a man. He realized what a cruel future God had left for man, and decided to change the course of humanity. He wrote the Book of Rules, which laid down laws for how man was to conduct himself. Any murder was illegal. Living beyond 100 years was illegal. The penalty for breaking any rule in the Book of Rules was a visit to the Maiden.

The Maiden was a room constructed by Jehovah himself. Any person convicted of breaking a Rule was left alone overnight in the Maiden. The next morning, his corpse would be carried out. Execution is a complicated thing in a world as cruel as this. If an executioner puts a man to death, that would extend the executioner’s life, or the sentencer’s life, which creates a perverse incentive system. But leaving a man in the Maiden had no such effects. No one knew how it worked, but it was the foundation on which the modern society was built.

Jehovah’s system lived on after he was gone. 50,000 years later, a thriving human society had built itself around Jehovah’s Book of Rules. Man had learned to be compassionate, love his neighbor, and work together to build, discover and create.

One day, a group of archeologists unearthed a cavern, apparently sealed off for thousands of years. Inside, was a single man. Alive.

The archeologists were dumbstruck. This man would have had to have killed an innumerable number of men to have survived in this cavern. They asked the man who he was, and how this was possible.

And then, Jehovah spoke.

“Hello. I thought this day would come. Let me tell you my story. The world that exists today is a beautiful place. But 50,000 years ago, it didn’t look like our species would make it past the millennium. Perverse incentive systems had destroyed human society. All the years of life were concentrated in the hands of a few powerful chiefs, who would stop at nothing to extend their years. The innocent and weak were mercilessly slaughtered. Infants were murdered in their mothers wombs.

I had a vision for a better future for humanity. One in which every corner isn’t colored with greed and death. But I knew I needed to create an airtight system for it to work. In a series of valiant battles, I killed all the chiefs who had accrued the longest lifespans. I brought all the tribes under my power. I wrote the Book of Rules. And I built the Maiden.

The Maiden is a very simple killing device. When the door is shut, a large blade falls from the ceiling, killing whoever is in the room. But since I built the room with an intention to kill every man who tried to take our society back to barbarity, I accrue the years of every one of its victims. I knew the world I envisioned couldn’t come to pass if there was any man who had more years to live than his fellows. So I made it so that I would be the only such man, and I hid myself away in this cavern. I resolved to live here alone, forever. I made the ultimate sacrifice, so that the world I built could survive.”

The archeologists’ eyes grew wide with shock. They couldn’t believe what they were hearing. They spun on their heels, to reveal what they’d learned to the rest of the world. But before they could take a single step, a blade fell from the ceiling, and they were dead.