Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for what I have.
Say Goodbye to Your Head (Draft 1)
It used to be a luxury, but as you know, technology makes many things accessible. After most of the ethical issues were resolved (with money), it was only a matter of time before the technical issues were resolved (also with money). It was quickly becoming commonplace to take a holiday from one’s own self.
It’s simple, really. First, you go to the travel agency and deal with the conniving travel agents, haggle and stop yourself from being repeatedly sweet-talked into “upgrades”. Then you chose a destination, called very nicely, a consciousness vacation. Back in the early days, when all of this was still quite contraband except for the filthy rich, it was called very crudely, a person. However, when it was all becoming accessible, the politicians were quite frightened of using that term. You can understand, of course, not just that politicians are easily frightened, but also that being able to take a vacation in another person is quite bewildering. So as this began to take off, the travel agencies combined forces and hired a linguistics expert in the area of calming phrases (once again with money) who coined the term ‘consciousness vacation’ during a hot steamy shower and made his fortune. After choosing your consciousness vacation, you stepped into an orange booth and pressed a button. Just like that, you would suddenly be someone else, with no memory of who you were before. And da duh duh, you would be them for a while. When your time was up, the private militia hired by the travel agencies (oh you know the story, with…) would hunt you down and bring you into an orange booth. There, you could choose what memories you would like to keep (by default you would forget being hunted by the men in orange uniforms and frightfully orange guns, unless of course, that was your kind of thing, then you would let yourself go on this one upgrade), press a few buttons, and poof there are you are, back in your life.
Now, not unlike the previous kinds of vacation, there were several genres of consciousness vacations. Eco-tourism, luxury, adventures, honeymoons, gastronomy, the list went on. However, the most expensive of them all, were the low-anxiety ones. Basically, the very anxious, and rich (the two go hand in hand) vacationers always chose the low-anxiety consciousness vacations. The most expensive of them all, was Sherwood Timple. Everyday, Sherwood rose in the morning to his coffee and butter toast. Then, he would proceed to his job, which was to feed the ducks and swans of the town with more toast (butter constipates them and make them very cross). After which he would receive his pay, which was just enough for his meals for the day. Sherwood then spent the rest of his day walking around and looking at trees and bushes, that sort of thing. At night, he returns to the cottage his mum left him, practices the harmonica for some time and goes to bed. For this, very rich people pay very very much. Unfortunately, Sherwood was quickly amassing his own fortune due to high demand. Travel agencies expect that in a while, Sherwood would decide to use his fortune and his anxiety level would consequentially rise. The filthy rich will be fine however; a whole new phenomenon of people trying to be as mundane as possible has arisen in response to this demand for low-anxiety consciousness vacations.
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
