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August 04, 2005
Volume 5, Issue 4
Today's theme is "vacation", since SOME of us actually get one this year...
Laurence - Feel free to complain until you're blue in the face, chump
Back in the Twenty-First Century, "complete" vacation packages would leave out things like drinks and meals. That $999 tour of Europe ended up costing several thousand dollars when you factored in those items, despite their appearing on all the brochures.
These days, vacationers are still ignorant of what's missing in these kind of heavily discounted tour packages.
Sure, you can assume that gravity may not be present if you're in a spinless hull. But woe be to the traveler who goes to sleep in their cabin and misses the alarm signalling the end of the complimentary ten minutes of oxygen.
Stacy: It's Over
Their battle carried them down to the beach. Another beautiful sunset wasted.
He called her a whore. She called him weak. He spat in her face, she slapped him across his.
Overhead the sea birds turned, catching the evening insects. In the sea, hunters hunted.
He eyed the surf speculatively. She spat out one last insult and he punched her hard in the face. Her nose spurted blood and she slumped, unconscious.
He heaved her limp body far out into the surf, smiled appreciatively at the immediate roil of red water.
Yes, a vacation was what their relationship needed.
Ted: The End of an Era
She looked through the windshield at the City of Angels. The moon, just rising, was a sliver in the sky. The radio was playing "Moondance," her favorite. She stepped out of the car and walked over to the ledge.
This vacation had been wonderful. Warm days and nights drinking on the beach, friends in the hills, lovers in the valley.
She knew that the world was waiting for her return, had been waiting for ages now. But it was time to get back to work.
As she jumped from the cliff, she unfurled her wings and screamed.
Lilith was reborn.
From the Comments: Copygodd
Thanks to Mindco’s neural wormhole technology, timeshare vacationers no longer shared condos; instead, they shared minds.
Pick a mind, any mind, from any time in the past, and Mindco could insert your consciousness there for a week; you’d feel what that person felt, experience what they experienced.
Of course, as you were just hitching a ride, so to speak, you couldn’t influence the actions of your vacation host; you could only observe. But the feelings were as real as if you’d experienced them for yourself.
What they hadn’t counted on, however, was the host’s ability to hitch a ride back.