Candide 2517: The Storyline (a Futuristic Version of Voltaires Classic Novel)

Candide 2517: The Storyline (a Futuristic Version of Voltaire’s Classic Novel)

On the planet of Westphalia, in the kingdom of the most noble Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, lives the Baron, one of the most powerful lords; the Lady Baroness, who weighs 350 pounds; Cunégonde, the 17-year-old daughter who is fresh, comely, plump, and desirable; the Baron’s son who is young and in every respect worthy of the father from which he sprang; and Candide, the illegitimate nephew of a baron.

The children are under the tutelage of the scholar Pangloss, who teaches “metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology,” or that this world is “the best of all possible worlds.”

Candide falls in love with the Baron’s young daughter, Cunégonde. The Baron catches the two embraced and expels Candide from his terrestrial paradise.

The snow falls in great flakes and through the blizzard, Candide (almost frozen to death) crawls 100 miles in waist-high snow to the next town, called Wald-berghoff-trarbkdikdorff.

On his own for the first time, Candide meets two soldiers who offer him food and warmth. They draft him into the army of the Bulgars and fly him to their planet. Candide is given a small scout ship, which he accidentally launches into the atmosphere and crash lands.

Candide is court-martialed as a defector and sentenced to death or to run the gauntlet, a maze of torturous mechanical devices, and be chased by the whole regiment. After running through the maze and receiving a few bumps and bruises, Candide begs to be killed. Blindfolded and in front of a firing squad, Candide kneels down just as the Bulgarian Majesty, receiving information about Candide’s crime, decides to pardon him.

The next day, the king of Planet Bulgaria orders the army to prepare their ships for an intergalactic battle with the king of Planet Abares.

Over 20,000 Bulgarian space battle cruisers, destroyers, and gunners attack Planet Abares, which was already on alert and had many space vessels prepared for the invasion. (The player may twitch through this battle, play the Bulgarian or Abares King and command the battle, or skip the battle as Candide did.)

After witnessing a horrific battle, Candide manages to escape and travels to Planet Holland. On Planet Holland, a kindly merchant named James takes Candide in. One day Candide runs into a deformed beggar who is “covered with scabs, his eyes sunk in his head, the end of his nose eaten off, his mouth drawn on one side, his teeth as black as a cloak, snuffling and coughing most violently, and every time he attempted to spit out dropped a tooth.” This deformed beggar turns out to be Master Pangloss.

Pangloss explains that Cunégonde and her family have all been brutally murdered by the Bulgar army after they battled the Abares. Cunégonde’s body was ripped open by Bulgarian soldiers after raping her. They knocked the Baron, her father, on the head for attempting to defend her, and the Baroness was cut in pieces. Their son was killed in the same manner as his sister. As for the castle, they have not left a single stone. Pacquette, the pretty wench who waited on the noble Baroness, was exiled earlier after laying with Pangloss. Pacquette was infected and became a carrier of a sex disease that violently killed off 20 billion people. Pangloss explains that he has contracted the deadly sex disease known as the “Phallic Plague.” Nonetheless, he maintains his optimistic outlook. James takes Pangloss in as well.

The merchant makes Pangloss his bookkeeper. After two months, James has some mercantile affairs on Planet Lisbon and takes the two philosophers with him on the transportation ship.

The three travel to Planet Lisbon together, but before they arrive their ship runs into a meteor storm and James is cast into space by a brutish flight attendant. Candide, trying to help his benefactor, is prevented by the philosopher Pangloss, who demonstrates to him that the flight to Planet Lisbon has been made on purpose for the merchant’s death.

The meteor damage to the ship forces a crash landing where the whole crew perishes, except Pangloss, Candide, and the brutish flight attendant. As they walk toward the capital city of Planet Lisbon, the earth trembles under their feet, and the purple sea swallows up the land, causing 30 million inhabitants of all three sexes, young and old, to die beneath the ruins and waters. Candide and Pangloss wander the city in search of food and supplies since theirs were destroyed in the crash and explosion of their meteor-damaged ship.

The masses of survivors begin to follow the Grand Reverend, who believes that burning a few people alive over a slow fire with a great ceremony is an infallible prevention of earthquakes and floods. Pangloss is soon hanged as a heretic, and Candide is flogged for listening with approval to Pangloss’s philosophy. Others are burned. The same day there is another earthquake and flood.

After his beating, an old woman accosts and dresses Candide’s wounds. After a night’s rest, breakfast, and another day’s recuperation, the old woman escorts feeble Candide into the country about a mile from her room. Candide sits on a magnificent sofa as the old woman leaves. The old woman soon returns supporting, with great difficulty, a young lady, who appears scarcely able to stand. Cunégonde faints upon the sofa.

Cunégonde explains that though the Bulgars killed the rest of her family, she was merely raped and captured by a captain. In three months, having gambled away all his money and having grown tired of her, the captain sold her to a Jew named Don Issachar. After the Grand Reverend saw her in church, he forced the Jew to share her with him as a jointly owned sex slave.

To intimidate Don Issachar, the Grand Reverend invited Cunégonde to the ceremony, giving her a very good seat where she saw Master Pangloss hanged and Candide flogged. Cunégonde ordered the old woman to acquire and restore Candide to health.

The two childhood lovers, Cunégonde and Candide, embrace each other passionately just as Senor Don Issachar unexpectedly enters the dwelling. The Senor draws a sword as Candide, finding a knife, lunges at him and kills the Israelite dead on the floor.

As Candide begins to move the dead body, knife in hand, the Grand Reverend suddenly enters the dwelling and sees the evidence before him. Candide lunges forward and puts another dead on the floor.

Candide, Cunégonde, and the old woman ride three Andalusian horses to the little town of Avacena, in the midst of the mountains of Sierra Morena, and enter an inn. The sell their fine horses to a Benedictine friar for transport fares to Planet Buenos Ayres.

On board the ship bound for Planet Buenos Ayres, the old woman relates her own story. She was born the daughter of Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina but has suffered numerous misfortunes that include rape, enslavement, and cannibalism.

Candide and Cunégonde plan to marry and he gives her a promissory locket to seal the engagement.

As they arrive on Planet Buenos Ayres, the governor, Don Fernando d’Ibaraa y Figueora y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza, the greatest noblemen on the planet with an exceedingly fine mustache, proposes to Cunégonde.

In their flight from Planet Lisbon to Buenos Ayres, Cunégonde’s money and jewels are stolen, including some well-known items known to be the property of the Grand Reverend. The Franciscan who stole them is captured and immediately hanged. Word soon spreads throughout the galaxy that the stolen jewels of the Grand Reverend were discovered on Planet Buenos Ayres. The dozens of intergalactic bounty hunters searching for the Grand Reverend’s murderer head toward the planet.

The old woman convinces Cunégonde to marry Don Fernando for her own financial welfare and safety.

Candide and his newly acquired valet named Cacambo flee to a neighboring planet colonized by people who rebelled against Planet Lisbon and relocated to their own planet. After landing, Candide and Cacambo are captured by soldiers. After Candide claims to be from the planet of Westphalia and not Planet Lisbon, he is brought before the High Commander. Candide and Cacambo are escorted by horses through acres of a vast garden and animal habitat over plush, orange hills and bridges that cross green rivers to finally arrive at a beautiful pavilion adorned with a colonnade of green marble.

The High Commander turns out to be the reportedly “dead” brother of the beautiful Cunégonde and the true son of the Baron. After discussing that the Baron’s son had survived the inflicted wounds and rose up in ranks to rule this planet, he learns of Candide’s promise to marry his sister. As Candide is far beneath her status, this makes the High Commander angry. The High Commander strikes him across the face with the flat side of his sword. Candide in an instant draws his rapier and plunges it up to the hilt in the High Commander’s body.

After laying the High Commander behind the shrubs, Cacambo removes the Baron’s clothes and puts them on Candide, gives him the dead man’s three-cornered cap, and makes him mount on horseback. Once back where they landed their ship earlier, they escape to a neighboring planet.

Upon landing, they see two large, green monsters attacking voluptuous blonde-haired women. Candide figures that saving two beautiful women from this vicious attack would make up in some small way for all of his recent killings. Candide strikes down the monsters, who happen to be the mates of the two women. This act was a ritual, an erotic lovemaking session that Candide mistook for violence. Fifty naked Oreillons (cannibals) capture Candide and Cacambo and invite them to be dinner. Somehow Cacambo convinces them to let them go.

They leave, heading for Planet Cayenne, but a meteor shower forces them to land on an uncharted planet with steep terrain and active volcanoes. After carefully piloting the ship through the erupting volcanoes, they safely land. Upon finding a canoe on this desolate planet, they paddle up the yellow river until they see purple children playing catch with round yellow, red, and green things, which upon careful examination are large pieces of gold, rubies, and emeralds.

After collecting several fine gems, Candide and Cacambo, hungry, enter a restaurant where the waitstaff are dressed in clothes made of gold. Upon finishing their fine meal of soup, they offer to pay with the gems. The owner of the establishment, laughing with his staff, exclaims that they are not accustomed to charging and the joke is that they offered to pay with the common pebbles found scattered throughout the town and roadways. An old local townsman tells them that the inaccessible rocks and precipices and volcanoes had secured them from the rapacious fury of the people of other planets who have an unaccountable fondness for the pebbles and dirt of their land.

Candide and Cacambo get into the coach, the six swift pack sheep fly, and in less than a quarter of an hour, they arrive at the King’s palace. At the entrance is a portal 220 feet high and 100 wide where 20 beautiful young virgins in waiting receive Candide and Cacambo on their alighting from the coach, conduct them to the bath, and clothe them in robes woven of the down of hummingbirds.

They spend a whole month in this hospitable place until they plan to return to their own world with only a dozen of the El Dorado sheep loaded with the pebbles of this country to be as rich as any monarch on their planet.

The mountains of El Dorado on all sides are over 10,000 feet high and perfectly perpendicular. The king gives orders to his engineers to make a lifting machine to hoist these two extraordinary men out of the kingdom. In 15 days the 3,000 good machinists finish it and Candide and Cacambo are high above El Dorado and ready to journey back to their ship.

After traveling about 100 days, they have only two sheep left of the original 202 they brought with them from El Dorado. They finally reach their ship and pack the gems and remaining food and water supply. Candide decides to travel to Planet Surinam where he plans to send Cacambo to Planet Buenos Ayres with instructions to use part of the fortune to purchase Cunégonde from Don Fernando and then meet him on Planet Venice.

As they land on Planet Surinam, the ship transporting them is in need of major repairs. Being so rich with gems of El Dorado, Candide abandons the ship for someone else to claim and repair. Cacambo leaves on a freighter headed for Buenos Ayres.

Candide continues some days longer at Surinam, waiting for any captain to carry him and his two remaining sheep to Planet Venice. A space pirate named Mynheer Vanderdendur, who pilots a large vessel, comes and offers his service first for a decent sum of money and then repeatedly for double the previous sum. Naïve and newly rich Candide pays the sum each time and upon departure finds his valuable sheep, prepaid moneys, and Vanderdendur’s ship already launched.

Upon lodging an official complaint with the Planet’s magistrate, Candide gets fined 10,000 credits for his petulance and ordered to pay 10,000 more credits for the fees of the court. Frustrated, Candide sails in the opposite direction from Planet Venice to Planet Bordeaux. An old philosopher, Martin, is specially chosen to be Candide’s traveling companion to Planet Bordeaux since he is a scholar—a pessimistic scholar at least.

On the trip to Bordeaux, a military patrol ship wanting to perform a routine boarding is ignored, and the patrol ship fires upon and destroys the ship piloted by Vanderdendur. Candide takes this as proof that there is justice in the world, but Martin staunchly disagrees.

Candide stays no longer on Planet Bordeaux than is necessary to dispose of a few of the pebbles he brought from El Dorado. Candide’s disorder becomes very serious, and during his rest a little spruce Abbey of Perigord comes to visit him.

When Candide feels better, the Abbey takes Candide to the planet’s gigantic and elaborate casino where Candide falls in love with the actress and entertainer Miss Clarion. Throughout each night he gambles and afterwards waits for her to come by and chat with him. (Here is where the player would play intergalactic games of chance as he watches the extremely sexy and entertaining Miss Clairon. The player has to win the big jackpot to earn the favors of Miss Clairon from a kiss to getting into her private suite in the Casino.)

Upon winning a night with Miss Clairon, she, having cast her eye on two very large diamonds that are on Candide’s finger, praises them in so earnest a manner that they are in an instant transferred from his finger to hers.

The next day after feeling a little guilty about cheating on Cunégonde, Candide receives a love transmission from Cunégonde. Eager to get to Planet Venice, Candide boards a transport to Planet Portsmouth. When they arrive, a revolt breaks out among the masses and Candide bargains with the vessel’s skipper to transport him directly to Planet Venice.

After two days in Portsmouth, the skipper takes Candide and Martin to Planet Venice, passing Planet Lisbon along the way at which Candide trembles. Upon their arrival at Planet Venice, Candide goes in search of Cacambo at every inn and coffeehouse and among all the ladies of pleasure.

Candide perceives a young Theatin friar, Friar Giroflee, in the Piazza San Marco, with a girl under his arm and invites them to join him. The girl is Paquette, the chambermaid-turned-prostitute who gave Pangloss his deadly sex disease. Paquette tells Candide that a priest, her confessor, easily seduced her, giving her the deadly sex disease and obliging her to leave the castle some time after the Baron had kicked Candide out.

Candide and his friend Martin travel down the watery streets by gondola and arrive at the palace of the noble Pococurante where two pretty girls, neatly dressed, bring them chocolates. Candide walks into a large gallery, where he is struck with the sight of a fine collection of paintings and a library of rare books. After a fabulous dinner, Pococurante orders a concert.

Days turn into weeks at the palace and Candide and Martin enjoy being spoiled and pampered by virgins and soon-to-be ex-virgins, as no news of Cacambo’s arrival comes from the messengers.

One evening Candide and his attendant Martin go into their inn and sit down to have supper with some foreigners. A dark servant approaches the unsuspecting Candide, who realizes the man is Cacambo. Cacambo tells him that Cunégonde is on Planet Constantinople. The foreigners had come to spend the Carnival in Planet Venice and were in fact six dethroned Kings: Achmet III the Grand Sultan, Ivan the Emperor of all the Russians, Charles Edward the King of England, two Kings of Poland, and Theodore the elected King of Corsica.

Aboard a king’s ship, Candide and Martin head for Planet Constantinople in search of Cunégonde and the old woman. On a fuel stop on a moon of Planet Bosphorus, Candide pays a high ransom for Cacambo’s freedom.

There are two slaves among the ship’s crew who seem very ill and to whose bare backs the master of the vessel frequently applies the electronic lash. Candide looks at these two slaves more attentively than at any of the rest, and their features, though greatly disfigured, appear to him to bear a strong resemblance to those of Pangloss and the unhappy Baron High Commander, Miss Cunégonde’s brother. He is correct and buys their freedom immediately.

The Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh says that after Candide’s attack, he was attacked and carried off by a party of Spanish troops, who clapped him in prison on Planet Buenos Ayres. Master Pangloss claims that it rained extremely hard when they were to burn him. Since it became impossible to light the fire, they hung him because they could do no better. The executioner knew how to burn people very well, but as for hanging, he was a novice at it. A surgeon purchased his body, carried it home, and prepared to dissect it when he awoke.

Candide, the Baron, Pangloss, Martin, and Cacambo arrive on Planet Constantinople at the house of the Transylvanian prince on the shores of the Propontis. There they see Miss Cunégonde and the old woman, who are hanging some tablecloths on a line to dry. The fair Cunégonde is all sunburned, with bleary eyes, a withered neck, wrinkled face and arms, all covered with a red scarf. Candide advances toward her out of good manners. She embraces Candide and her brother. They embrace the old woman, and Candide ransoms them both.

Cunégonde, not knowing that she has grown ugly, as no one has informed her of it, reminds Candide of his promise and that she still wears his locket in so peremptory a manner that the simple lad dares not refuse her; he then informs the Baron that he is going to marry his sister.

The Baron becomes furious again so Martin decides to throw the Baron into the sea. Cacambo concludes that the Baron must be delivered in chains back to the Turkish captain and sent to the galleys.

Candide and the six dethroned kings raise an armada and travel to the planet of Westphalia to reclaim the throne and castle rightfully belonging to Cunégonde and her heirs. (Another huge battle between the Bulgarians and Candide’s forces. All of the Bulgarians on Planet Westphalia must be destroyed.)

Upon winning the battle and establishing territories for the six dethroned kings, Candide marries his mistress Cunégonde. Their children are taught the philosophies of Master Pangloss—that this world is “the best of all possible worlds.”

Living in the rebuilt palace with their own wing is the philosopher Martin, the prudent Cacambo, and the old woman.

One day two old acquaintances, Pacquette and Brother Giroflee, arrive and are in the utmost distress. The couple had parted, been reconciled, quarreled again, been thrown into prison, had made their escape, and at last Brother Giroflee had turned atheist. Candide hires them as servants, and Pacquette continues to follow her trade; but she gets little or nothing for it.

Candide spends his days with Cacambo and finds the pleasures of cultivating his gardens.

Candide 2517 contains the essential elements that players enjoy and desire in a game. Candide 2517 has adventure, lost treasures and planets, intergalactic fighting in “twitch” and strategy modes, and numerous paths to journey to get to the final victory. Thanks to Voltaire, Candide 2517 has a rich and colorful storyline with exciting and interesting characters. The psuedo-license of Candide and the Land of El Dorado as seen in the hit Disney film The Road to El Dorado will attract the mass market.

On September 11, 2001, America was shocked out of its blind optimism by the attacks. Voltaire and Candide is more in the public eye because of these terror attacks. Voltaire’s Candide asks audiences to question why the world is like it is and makes people think how we can make it a better place for everyone.