Discount Interstellar, Inc.

We get more of you there for less!

The sound of rain pattering on the aluminum roof; wait, what? Did they program it to rain today? What time is it…what time is it…what…my watch, my watch. 9:23am. Okay, maybe it dries before I wander up and down Cross Street looking for the D.I. Office.

You know the D.I. Office? The one with the giant satellite on top of the roof? You haven’t seen it? It’s enormous but like one of those old-school satellites. A half-dome, silly-looking contraption. You could afford better.

Well of course you could! You are a great person and you can read. You know, I was waiting in line behind several people at the booth in the Off-World Living Convention (the one held at the hotel that doesn’t include a continental breakfast…Hamton, Horton, Huston, something like that), and lo and behold, I have to read the brochure to half the people in the line.

Lord, how can it be that I’m in the same predicament as they are? What did I do wrong in this life?

Yes, I’m sure you wouldn’t know about such things, but not all of us are as rich as you are, silly. Not all of us can read AND afford direct travel to Paradision. Some of us have to go to conventions and sign up and pay a month’s salary for just a chance to be beamed to Paradision.

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I signed the paperwork. I really did it. Richard, did you know that Discount Interstellar is a heritage company that has lineage back to something called Spirit Airlines? I thought that was particularly interesting! But about the rest of the paperwork…well it all seemed boilerplate; the whole ‘we don’t guarantee success and blah blah blah.’ Yes, of course, there are no guarantees. They got to grind you down molecularly inside that tube, you know. And once you are ground down, well you get beamed across the universe in laser arrays, I think. And maybe one of those laser arrays gets some sort of cosmic interference or whatever they call it and not all of you makes it there…mentally, if you catch my drift?

Well, mostly it’s still a manageable situation. They apparently send an unmanned satellite containing the real files that are you (suppose it’s something like yourname.exe, or more like a .dll file) that can then confirm the missing parts, but I mean that takes thousands of years. By then they might as well not even do it, because you’ve learned to live without those memories or motor functions or whatever.

There was some fine print on the contract, now that I think about it. Let me flip through it again and find that part. One sec.

Ah, yes. ‘You are guaranteed at least 30 years of life as a soloist or 100 years in the choir.’ Well now isn’t that so strange, because the salesperson did not at all ask if I could sing! I suppose that means I’ll spend more time in the choir, most likely. I much prefer such a thing, you know? Not out in front of everyone…no, I’m not one of those showy types.

Now, let’s see. Sure am glad the rain program ended cause I’m up and down Cross Street. You know, I’m really surprised by just how hard it is to see a satellite on top of a building. All the buildings in the city rise well above the toxic clouds, I mean of course they’ve got to in order to be able to beam anything to space. And this mask I have to wear outside in the wasteland, I can’t even remember the last time I had it serviced or properly cleaned. I’m just a mess, I am.

Well sure enough there it is. They have a sign over the door that’s a little covered in smut…is that the word? Actually, I’m wrong. It’s moving so I pull out my blaster and shoot the mutated creature. It falls dead to the ground in one shot. I’ve really gotten good at this…Oh I wish you really knew about these things. It’s too easy, your life. You’ve never had a moment of suffering, have you?

I really don’t see what you see in me, but I suppose that’s the way love works, right? You saw something in me I didn’t see in myself. All those messages, those long nights, that desire to just be together and try and see what happens and

Well crying in my mask sure isn’t going to help things, so I stop myself. I stop myself. No, I really, stop myself. There, it stops. I enter the office.

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Barely an office. Lord, it’s just an enormous waiting area like some airport terminal from eras begone. I pay the fee at a barking robot kiosk and it spits out a sticker with a number and there’s a giant floating screen that I am to watch. If my number pops up on that screen, then I’m selected. I wait and I wait. Numbers pop up on the screen and they’re never mine. And I just start to think, dear Richard, I just start to think Lord, it’s not meant to be. It’s not meant to be.

They’re trying to come between us Richard. The whole universe is trying to come between us. Well I’m just at the lowest point of my life, I am. Tears start welling up as I think about having to message you and tell you what happened and that— Thank the Lord my number comes up.

My number came up!

The next hour is a blur. Swiftly they take us ‘selects’ into our pods to be molecularly broken down and uploaded into the mainframe that will beam us to our waiting body. Bodies, I mean. Just everything is a blur, I can’t even explain it, Richard. Okay, into the pod now.

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Richard? I’m like, where am I?
This…well the outside…it looks like how I imagine Paradision must look; the sky is gorgeous and clear and the suns and the water, my god. I’m looking through the eyes, but I can’t blink them. And…my body is moving, but I’m not telling it what to do. Wait, Richard, I see you. There you are. I try to speak but, you speak first.

‘Welcome! I’m glad to see you all made it. I have the paperwork of reception here for you to sign.’

Well, Richard, my eyes look through the paperwork you hand me and it, it’s confusing. It says that there’s something like 48 people inside this single body? That that’s what the choir is? That there’s only one soloist, one person in charge of the body and that the rest of us just have to watch? Richard, do you even know I am in here?

The soloist complains with our voice to Richard. Richard sighs, ‘These bodies aren’t easy to build and they’re very expensive. The ticket prices you all paid, you didn’t expect to individually have a body, did you? Surely not.’

Well, 100 years of this. I watch first as the dumb soloist controlling our body signs the paperwork and puts the pen in his pocket. Then I watch you, Richard, waving goodbye. And I realize, you chose me, didn’t you? And maybe you chose them too. And this was all some sort of…some sort of betrayal…or….

But well, when you’re like me, you don’t come expecting much. You exist for a brief time and you try to leave something behind but…

Things never work out the way you expect. But then again I suppose we never really were ever in control, were we Richard? Our bodies, our minds, our knowledge. Someone forms them, packages them, and serves them to us and we gladly accept the plating for the ease of life, don’t we, Richard? And you may have your own body to walk and to stroll and to travel down already paved and prepared avenues. Your own body, but you’re trapped too, Richard, aren’t you?

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But oh my. It sure is pretty here! And none of it programmed, but naturally occurring! The beaches, those seas of emerald green and sands of bleach white. The waterfalls from the mountain streams into natural lakes. Swimming in the lagos and whistling as the life flows slow and uncontrolled. There’s some sweet release in this and I was always adaptable to accepting my plights. So I’ll keep quiet and enjoy as much as I can, just watching life as it passes me by. And sometimes I’m angry, but with no outlet for my anger, I just let it burn and sizzle down to a spark. For, really, I can’t do nothin but experience now Richard. Just experience without control. And for that, I blame you and I thank you, all in equal measure.