Once upon a crime

One pitch a day: in August of 2011, I dedicate twenty minutes each day to writing an "elevator pitch" for a story or a game.

In the future, there are no more prisons. The criminally insane exist only as pure minds. The nickname of their virtual home is Hell, but it is a pleasant hell, a quasi-perfect replica of reality designed to prevent them from hurting other people. It is not an empty place; its inhabitants do coexist with projections of people from "Paradise" but they are, of course, unable to physically hurt them in the real world. Paradise is our world enhanced with augmented reality. Normal people carry augmented reality devices which enable them to interact safely with sex predators, religious wackos and criminal masterminds. People from Hell are allowed back into reality when their minds heal and they atone from their crimes. The less discrepancies between their version of reality and the actual reality, the quicker the get out. Some take a long time, but their rampages cause only illusory pain.
The hero is in Hell, but something is wrong with Paradise. Redemption seems to become impossible; Heaven's gate is closed. The inhabitants of Hell seem to forget they do live in a fake world, to believe they live in Paradise. The hero wants to investigate what happened in the real world, if there is such a thing...

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