The Octopus

“Did you try Pluto yet?”1

“Pluto? Why would anyone want to choose Pluto? It such a drab and boring planet?”2

“I don’t know. To be different, I suppose. Go somewhere that didn’t have big crowds.”3

“The reason there are no crowds is because it is so incredibly dull. Now personally, I’m more interested in Saturn what with those rings and all. I hear they even have a way now to let you actually do something like, ah, sail through the rings. Anyway, you can’t do that on some silly little hunk of rock like Pluto.”4

“You can have the rings. It all screams of too many people to me.”5

“Oh you and your stupid fretting over crowds. That’s so silly. You can’t even see the other people because they are, um —”6

“Invisible?”7

“I guess.”8

“Well, they might be, but you still can sense they are there. It is enough distraction to keep me from being able to totally enjoy the experience. I don’t like the idea of feeling like I’m being watched.”9

“God, you are such a purest.”10

“I’m sorry, but I think I have a right too be. When I’m paying for it, I expect to get my money’s worth.”11

“I should have expected you to take something as fantastic as this in terms of experience and reduce it down to a price tag.”12

“What do you want from me? I mean we are talking the ideal in tourist options. It isn’t like they offer this for free. So I just prefer to make sure I get the most for my investment, especially for anything related to pleasure.”13

“I realize that. However, I would like to remind you that until recently space travel wasn’t even a possibility. Now that it is, I would have assumed you’d considered the cost unimportant for the services rendered.”14

“Which is exactly my point. How can you truly calculate the worth of pleasure without factoring in the value in terms of cost?”15

“Honestly, you’re impossible…”16

The two men continue their debate while strolling down the city street’s sidewalk. They are both in their mid-twenties and dressed in expensive suits befitting their affluence. 17

They make stop at the beginning of a concrete walkway that detours off to the left of the main sidewalk. Next to the walkway there is a sign shaped like a silver flying saucer. It has the words in gold on it that read, “Ultima Travels.” Somewhere behind the maze of tall green hedges that hide the main entrance one can see the top of the gold colored pyramid. In only a few months Ultima’s pyramid has become a symbol for space travel at an affordable price.18

The two men shuffle down the path as it cuts through the hedge labyrinth. Along the way, they are serenaded by a medley of familiar easy listening music piped through speakers buried in the branches. It is designed to relax the visitor and set a mood of calm before the potential customers reach the entrance.  That is one more creative touch of consideration by the management of Ultima.19

Both men only get half way towards the entrance before encountering a long line of other customers. This was not something they expected at two in the afternoon. The last time there had been no lines. There is another flying saucer shaped sign by the hedge indicating wait time at this point is one hour. Dejected by the crowds, they will come back another time. 20

Steve Felder watches the two men leave as he stands in the same line and leafs through Ultima Travels brochure. He could care less about how long the line is or even being here in the first place. The reason he’s visiting and willing to try the service is because his boss insisted. Like too many times in the past, his newspaper editor has the right to tell one of his reporters what story to research. There were other stories that were more interesting and promising to him, but he’ll tolerate the change. After all, he is getting paid. That makes any story worth checking out in his opinion since he long ago sold his passion for writing only what he wanted in return for steady paycheck.21

The brochure cover has a background like you were looking at the stars. It also has Ultima’s theme, “Travel beyond your mind.” He’s not sure why they would pick a purple Octopus for their logo, but maybe eventually he’ll find out.22

It was one of several questions he has about a place that claimed to have developed some special method to enable a person’s consciousness to be projected out into space. He had to admit that whoever managed to invent the technique was brilliant. Still, it seemed to him way too far fetched to actually be true. However, all the people he saw leaving from the door appeared to be chatting away about enjoying their trip. Soon he would affirm his skepticism or become a believer.23

When Steve reaches the door, a man standing to the right dressed in silver jumpsuit greets him. The man smiles and hands Steve a slip of paper and pencil. He tells Felder to fill it out and then follow the colored arrows on the floor matching the color of his choice he checked on the form.24

The paper is a checklist giving him the options about the current list of locations available to visit. Most are planets in the solar system. Under the “coming attractions” blurb at the bottom he notices they have future plans to offer trips to other solar systems. For the moment, Venus sounds appealing. So he marks the box next to the word Venus, which is green in color.25

Following the green arrows, he comes to a green door. The moment he is standing in front of it, the door opens automatically. Inside, two young Barbie look-alikes dressed like nurses take his paper. They offer him broad, fake smile before escorting him to a small chair located inside an egg shaped device. Helping to him sit down, they strap him in and attached the control devices to his body before telling him to close his eyes.26

Seconds later he feels lightheaded as if drunk. The next thing he senses is being sucked down a white tunnel. Afterwards, he finds himself standing in the middle of a large emerald marshland with a thick mantle of green mist in the air. It can’t be, but it is. He’s actually on Venus. His reporter’s mind immediately begins writing his article. Words such as incredible and fantastic beyond words stick in his brain.27

Back on earth at Ultima’s main office, a man in his thirties and dressed in a gray business sits in the main control room watching a panel of dials. He is alone when the door opens and in walks one of the management team, also dressed in the compulsory gray suit. Ambling up to where the man is sitting, the executive sips his coffee before asking, “How is the grid holding up?”28

“Fine.”29

“We launched two more rockets today with our probes. These are destined for another solar system. Thank goodness our golden child of a scientist who invented this system keeps getting these strokes of genius. His latest is a propulsion system is faster than anything imaginable. It has reduced the travel time to other solar system to a matter of weeks. I tell you the blessings just keep coming. Ever since he managed to fix the kinks in our system it works perfectly. We now have an operable network of transponders serving as links to other planets and soon they will include another solar system. I guess it is so appropriate from the way the network has spread that we accept his suggestion to use an Octopus as our logo. It is definitely growing like some giant Octopus stretching its tentacles out to reach the stars.”30

The man sitting at the control panel makes no comments. He knows all about how it works. For him, the executives never give the technical side of this system that much thought. Things like how anyone could honestly come up with a device that could project the conscious safely into space and then back again is something he just prefers not to worry about. Plus there are the complaints. The ones when some relative will come in to gripe about how a customer is acting totally weird after returning from one of their trips. He’s just getting paid to monitor dials. 31

Back on Venus, Steve is totally mesmerized by his what he is seeing. He had no idea he would FEEL so intensely. It actually includes sensations. Incredible. Simply incredible.32

Suddenly, he feels himself in the white tunnel again. This is too short. He’s visit can’t be over. Only when he comes out of the tunnel this time, he isn’t back in his body. Instead, he’s in a cavern of some kind and inside a cage. Steve can imagine this isn’t good news. In a few seconds, he will find out how bad and wished he hadn’t.33

In a laboratory on a distant planet, a being hovers over a series of lights that float in mid air. He touches a red flashing one to relocated Steve’s consciousness from the cage and to his final destination. “Another satisfied customer,” he thinks to himself.34

When the door to the laboratory opens, the being’s supervisor floats into the room. “How many today?” his telepathic question enters the mind of his subordinate.35

“The count of human consciousness that was collected for today is one thousand.”36

“Excellent, excellent. That means a thousand more of our race now have breathing space on their planet and will soon be enjoying the fruits from having possessed the human bodies.”37

“It isn’t amusing how these humans cling to that illusion that a superior race of beings would necessarily be good? Or if such a race invaded that they would only do so in a fleet of space ships?”38

“Ah well, these humans aren’t the first ones to have that illusion. You would have thought they would have learned the lesson that nature teaches about survival of the fittest. As we have learned, it isn’t goodness that breeds survival.”39

“How true, how true. Plus it is so glorious how easily they have been seduced by our telepathic delusions that they treated as creativity. I will credit our scientist with knowing how such silliness as crop circles and cattle mutilations, not to mention the illusion of alien abductions so readily corrupted their thinking. How often we all had a good laugh at their movie ideas about aliens. Those are so absurd they are down right pathetic.”40

“We did achieve a great diversion. And as with other races, once again we found a willing dupe among them to accept our mental implant. All the time he’s being treated as a genius for creating the device to allow human conscious to travel. I doubt they would be so ready to applaud his inspiration if they knew its real source or purpose.”41

“Yes. It was another glorious victory to help insure our race’s survival with our own planet dying from our abuse of its resources and environment.”42

“What is the estimate till we have sufficient numbers of our race in possession of their bodies that we will enable us to abandon this slow method of abduction? I’m so looking forward to when we can construct a device on their planet to speed up the relocation of all our race to their world and take over completely.”43

“It will follow the same schedule as it has when we have transferred planets in the past with other races. The whole process takes approximately seven years from start to finish. So that leaves about six and half left to go for complete occupation.  About half that to be able to convert to a new and faster transfer system.”44

“Ah, if all goes well then we will all be in our new home on that planet. Then we can leave the human conscious transferred to our old form to face extinction on our dying world. Our scientists estimate that we only have eight years before it becomes totally inhabitable.”45

The being monitoring the lights out wills a mug from the midst of lights so it enters his hands.  The mug has a shape resembling how his race appears. He lifts it as a toast. “Too our assured survival, my lord.”46

His leader likewise takes his mug that he was carrying and lifts it. “And to a future of hope. Perhaps this time we will learn from our past mistakes. Having to search for new life forms to victimize when we ruin a given planet is always a gamble.”47

They drink their toasts and then the leader turns to float out of the room again. The other being returns his mug to its floating location between the lights. He wonders how hard it will be to adjust to having only arms and legs instead of eight purple tentacles.48