The War Bringeth: Two Short Stories - Speculative Fiction Modern Parables

When there are no more governments, other than on paper, one Corporation will rule and solve all povertey and warfare. The solution enabled people to stay "jacked in" and code 24/7, loving the opportunity.***If the Matrix had a prequel, this would be it.***Excerpt:We were called to war. And all volunteers. Not for god or country but for our corporation. The global one. The one we were all warned against.
It came in the back door that had built into our culture. The China-Russia pact had founded it, and gradually its handouts and bribes co-opted all the governments until it was just the U. S. and a handful of holdouts that weren't on board. Until they were. Our job was simple. We coded. All day, all night. Jacked in and plugged in with all the nutrients we needed to keep us going. All volunteer. Dopamine rushes on intervals for meeting quotas.
Adrenaline when needed and appropriate. And it was all good. We had all the pleasures we could want. Plenty of pay and bonuses. The trick, that the "Corp" as we called it, was that we were all losers until we were winners. In our pods, jacked in, we had access to about everything we could want. As long as we did what we were asked, then we could get anything we wanted. Anything. The only thing that didn't really work out was being unplugged.
The horror stories we found out were very, very bad. Coders had come back after "vacations" and didn't want to talk about them. You could tell by reading their endocrine levels. They came back exhausted, in shock, and their production nowhere near what it should be to compete in the Games. That was all there was. The Corp and the Games. All else was secondary. Our job was simply to do the coding, create the new world we wanted to see, everyone wanted to see.
And let the old world rot because that was all it was good for. No one in here wanted the "real world." It was only filled with horrors. All our friends and family were online, And the ones that worked outside had troubles. Sad. We were inside and happy. Because the whole world was Corp. It controlled everything. Literally. All the power, all the food production, all the entertainment and news. Sure, people could say and do whatever they wanted.
But if they wanted to talk to someone else, they had to go through the Corp. If they wanted a better job, they had to do through the Corp. More pay, better living, all Corp. In the old days, it went by many names. And they eventually bought out each other, or had the principles on the boards of the others, and they all were jacked into each other's lives so much, it became obvious that they couldn't work without cooperating with the rest.
And sooner or later, the Board ran everything. It wasn't a CEO here and a CEO there, it was a few people who made the top decisions, and the sub-boards they controlled would then get their marching orders, They then sent their marching orders downstream to other boards and everything got done. If you didn't produce, you missed the pay raises, the bonuses, the promotions, the perks. We saw this every day.
The Code shows everything. Our view is the "matrix" as it used to be called. We don't need our eyes or our bodies as everything is cared for. The Game is to build a new world. Because the old one is rotting out from under us... Bonus Short Story: Peace: Forever War - A disaster left Jerusalem underwater. And protecting it  was a perfect way to test an impregnable defense shield... Get Your Copy Now!