Sample:
A team of hand picked astronauts is ready to make the first transfer over to a newly discovered planet via instant quantum teleport transmission. The planet is perfectly temperate, neither too hot or too cold, the astrophysists fabled 'Goldilocks Planet'. To drum up interest in the (fantastically dumbed down) global media a massive celebrity, Mercedes Hyatt, the perfect blonde blue-eyed idol of millions, is included.
Mercedes Hyatt has no real clue about anything other than shopping or pets but agrees to come along on the historic mission, on the condition that she can return instantly to earth via the teleport station whenever she feels like it.
All eleven astronauts plus Mercedes dematerialise together in a blaze of publicity, but only Mercedes Hyatt appears on the other side on the new planet. The malfunctioning teleport machine repeats this mistake every day at noon.
For 200 years.
__________________________________________
Grandma will know. There s no-one quite like grandma, thought Starchild.
Tuesday and Starchild picked their way through the outskirts of Beach colony, through the chittering stabbing undergrouth that rented the ruins out to the beginning of the Dunes.
Tuesday had taken to the perfect alien California forty light-years away but was still dodging responsibility. Perhaps it was the weather, which today was as uncooperative and depressing as the deadly fury they had left on their own world.
"Well, eventually you will have a Role like the rest of us. They say there is an opening in ..."
"I'm not having a job" Tuesday interjected immediately.
Starchild was offended at the suggestion and scratched her hairless scalp with irritation.
"They are not JOBS. None of us have JOBS. They are Roles"
"Well I'm not working"
"None of us work. But we have Roles"
"Ok"
"Ok" Tuesday flicked her still recognizably blonde Mercedes Hyatt bob defiantly.
"You would probably get to like having a role in the Salon"
"Why can't I have a role with you in the StarReaders?" Tuesday had already realized the interpreters of the night sky were blessed with one of the least manual occupations.
"You don't have the gift. StarReading is a gift possessed only by some of us"
Tuesday splurted out only slightly restrained laughter.
"Some of us have that special power" continued Starchild, rubbing her bald eyebrows "Some of us are special"
"I want my own place" declared Tuesday, "I want my own private sleeping place"
They didn't speak again until thy found Grandma digging into the side of a particularly large dune. Large rain drops thudded into the sand around them as the grey tide crashed into the foam nearby.
"Hello Mercedes. This is a nice surprise" said Grandma to both of them, using plurally the name forbidden in the rest of the colony
"Hello Grandma" They both hugged her. She smelled strongly of dying planet.
"What can I do for you on a horrible day like this?"
"We need to get to the Kite Farm. Past the Faceless."
"The Faceless are there darling. They have the Kite Farm. Do you mean The Flies? That’s what we used to call them"
"We thought there may be another route to it. A secret way. So we can sneak up on it."
"Its one of our last sources of power darling. Don't change it. We need that for heating"
"There is no heating in Beachtown grandma"
"Really? That is such a shame. We can't do anything at all with them anymore"
"Did you ever share anything with them?"
"What happened Grandma?"
"It is said, the first Mercedes Hyatt, the first of us to arrive here, she was the first one who took the walk to the sea. The second died quickly. The third died quickly. The fourth died quickly. The fifth died quick.."
Tuesday looked up at the rainclouds and cleared her throat with a deliberate rudeness quite familiar to the other two.
Grandma cleared her throat in return.
"After a while.. one day.. with one arriving every day.. they found ways to cope. To survive in numbers. Soon there was a group of them living here, increasing in numbers looking for an explanation, waiting to go home. They called that time The First Year"
"For a long time the world of us grew and grew with each trying to remember The First Life before here and hanging on every hope of a return home. But you know, we're not like..
Practical. We do our own thing."
"Grandma?" She had suddenly become quite emotional.
"We are not like police. Or church. Or social services. We are Mercedes Hyatt. It all fell apart.
When there was the entire colony and the AutoFarm for all of us, and hope that home was just back through the TeleTransport station.... when there was that.. but time passed.. and the first of us grew old and died before the others. And then the place grew old.
And it got crowded. And you know we don't like crowds. It got a little crazy. A little freaky"
"Things fall apart. You don't have to make it poetry Grandma. We can see it" Tuesdays impatience actually irritated her as well.
Grandma ignored her
"They were cast out. Gangs formed - like at school, remember with Heather Ezem? At school?" They looked away unwilling to acknowledge the memory.
"The War happened. Those who stayed here became less strict. Those who left went mad.. became The Flies.. or the Faceless. They destroyed it all. They. Not one side or another. Blind rage and horror. Horror begets horror. And sin. You know what Nanny used to say"
"Grandma..."
"Of course it was ruins long before these eyes saw it for the first time. .When I stepped out . When I was you"
She looked at Tuesdays youthful figure with hate
"When I was Mercedes Hyatt"
"Grandma, how do we get to the Kite Farm past The Flies?" Tuesday was still able to blank it out with thoughts of the escape home. "Nurse Subtraction says you saw the Kite Farm, operated it once"
"You don't child. Its on a hill. It's a kite farm. The Flies are always there. You'd have to fight them. And fighting is wrong. It just makes more fighting"
"She's talking like Nanny" observed Tuesday under her breath. To herself, but only to herself this time.
"What if we took you back Grandma? Back home? What it we got you rejuvenated? Made you young again?"
She looked at Tuesdays youth with contempt.
"Old isn't an ailment Mercedes. Old is a medal. Old is WINNING." The black depths in Grandmas eyes were now apparent to them both.
"To be old, to be the Survivor, you have to be prepared to play the game to win. That s what our first life prepared us with before we came hear. ME ME ME ME ME ME. To survive. To crawl to the top of the pit. You've seen the pit haven't you Tuesday? The real pit? The one they have outside the AutoFarm?"
Tuesday was genuinely shocked that Grandma had remembered her.
"That pit is the game we are all playing. Climbing out of that pit is what they all want to see at home..." she waved, indicating the invisible cameras she could see all around them. She wasn t alone.
"They built Mercedes Hyatt on Earth to be perfect. They sent us here to be the opposite. The one who lives long enough to achieve that, to be the opposite of perfect will win this game."
"So you think its a sim as well?"
"I have lived through 40 winters to win this game"
It took the sweet bald innocence of StarChild to see the flaw in Grandma s logic.
"But Grandma, if this is a Sim reality show, what if, instead of winning, you just go onto the next level? And what if it s just this world again - but harder?"
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