lunes, 14 de marzo de 2016

Sci-Fi short story: The Movie

The Movie
By Victor Hernandez


“What the fuck?”

“Language, sir.”

“Language? Where the FUCK am I?”

“You’re in the afterlife.”

“Whaaa… as in ‘Heaven’?”

“Yes.”

“Me. In fucking Heaven. Me.”

“Yes.”

“And you must be… Saint... Peter?”

“You can call me that if it makes you feel comfortable.”

“Comfortable? Are you fucking kidding me? I. AM. IN. FUCKING. HEAVEN. I didn’t even think I was going to end up here!”

“Well, you certainly weren’t on the list. Your life was filled with pretty unpalatable acts.”

“Hey, it’s a free country. I can do whatever I want!”

“Well, technically yes. You were endowed with free will and the laws of your country of origin, a United States of America? can only punish you if they find you guilty in a court of law. So as long as you don’t get caught, well, I suppose you could technically could do whatever you wanted.”

“WHOOOO! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”

“But that didn’t mean it was okay for you to be a bully, or to be a bad person to other people. We take that kind of behavior quite seriously here.”

“It’s darwinism, man. Survival of the fittest.”

“Uhm… Darwin didn’t mean it like that. His theory of evolution meant that the species that were better adapted to their environment, not the strongest, were the ones that survived. Otherwise the dinosaurs would still rule the Earth.”

“Whoa! So God supports evolution? The religious crowd is full of shit?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Ha Ha! In your FACE, Preacher Tomkins!”

“Ah, Harold Tomkins, your town’s preacher. You know, having sex with his daughter was fine, but then having sex with his wife was not well received here.”

“Best MILF booty ever, man! And the guy was a prick anyway.”

“Yeah... but then you got the daughter and the wife pregnant and you moved out of town, leaving them to deal with the problem by themselves.”

“They should’ve been on the pill, man! Not my fault.”

“They would’ve if they would not have been intoxicated with the heroine and the ecstasy pills you provided for them.”

“What was I supposed to do? A guy’s gotta make a living. Besides, I gave them a discount for the meth too.”

“Right… well, about that; That meth lab you had in your mother’s basement was found by the police when Tomkins denounced you to the authorities, but the one who went to jail was your mother because it was in her property.”

“Bitch deserved it. Always getting on my case about dropping out of high school. The cunt wanted me to enlist in the fucking Army. Can you fucking believe it?”

“Uhm… actually yes. Look, all of that was not taken lightly here. Neither was the stealing of elementary school children’s lunches, nor the stealing of motor vehicles, nor the hijacking of private residences to steal their personal items and then leaving spreaded canine feces on the living room’s couches as a calling card, nor was the selling of crack cocaine to underage high school girls in exchange for oral sex, nor was the armed robbery to convenience stores, nor was…”

“Okay, okay, I get it. But I didn’t get caught, right? YOLO!”

“Actually that’s why you got cancer.”

“What?”

“We gave you cancer.”

“You fuckin KIDDING ME?? You gave me fucking lung cancer??”

“Well, technically yes, because we were the ones who sent the person who gave you cigarettes in the first place. But also technically no, because the one who didn’t quit was you. I think the word you used was also ‘YOLO.’”

“I’LL KILL YOU! I’ll fucking cut your balls and feed them to yo momma!”

“Not likely. We’re immortal. And omnipotent. But anyway, that’s why you were not on the list.”

“Motherfucker… but I WILL be in Heaven, right? I mean, here I am.”

“Yes. That is correct. You used to be in the list for Hell but that changed.”

“Wait… is this a trick? Are you going to punish me more?”

“No.”

“No? I… But I was an asshole. You said it yourself.”

“Yeah… technically, yes. But then the doctors told you you only had a month to live and you made that final request.”

“What? The movie?”

“Yes.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“When you were seven years old you followed some of your classmates to the premiere of Return of the Jedi because you wanted to bully them. Your plan was to drop ice-cold soda inside the back of their shirts during the movie. Instead, you became enthralled with the film and came back to see it again the following weekend. Then, the following year, you begged your parents to rent you the VHS versions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. You liked them so much you lied to your parents and told them the tapes had been stolen, so they had to pay the video store for the copies that you ended up watching in secret.”

“Oh, those movies were so sweet, man…”

“Then in 1997 you sneaked into the theater for the first showing of the Special Edition of Star Wars Episode IV. You also sneaked in to see the Special Editions of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.”

“They were cool. Aside from Greedo shooting first and that awful ‘Jedi Rocks’ scene, the changes George Lucas made were fine. Actually, even ‘Jedi Rocks’ can be forgiven because of the hot Asian Twi’lek.”

“Two years later, in 1999, you traded some cocaine for tickets for the midnight premiere of Star Wars Episode I. Three years later, in 2002, you traded ecstasy pills for tickets for the midnight premiere of Episode II. And in 2005 you actually paid full ticket price in advance for the midnight premiere of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith on IMAX.”

“Totally worth it. The battle over Coruscant with the battle drums and the light saber duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan are gold. Even with the corny dialog.”

“Then you stole your neighbor’s cable so you could see The Clone Wars. That is, until you figured out how to download pirate copies. And when Star Wars Rebels came out, you actually seeded the torrents so other people could download it as well.”

“Yeah, I guess Dave Filoni was George Lucas’s Padawan from The Clone Wars and he did a pretty good job with the series without George.”

“You see, throughout those times in your life related to Star Wars, you showed for a brief few moments that you too could be a human being. When anything related to Star Wars was on, you didn’t think anymore about bullying people, or doing mischief. Nothing too terrible anyway. You let the child in you be himself and, for a couple of hours at least, you actually showed you could have hope.”

“Ha… Well, you know…”

“But then you got cancer and the doctors told you about the possibility of dying in a month. So you requested Disney to show you Star Wars The Force Awakens before it came out on theaters as a last dying wish.”

“Well, I heard that other guy who was also about to die requested it and Disney accepted, so I thought why not?”

“Correct. But when Disney showed up at the hospital with their lawyers and the copy of the movie, you actually got depressed. The more you saw the movie, the worse you got.”

“How could I not? It was TERRIBLE. It was a total ripoff of the original Star Wars but with a chick and a plot that made no sense whatsoever. I mean, Han Solo not knowing how powerful Chewbacca’s crossbow was after they’ve been hanging around for decades? AND he saw Chewie shooting an Imperial speeder bike with his crossbow in mid air when they were on Endor in Return of the Jedi. Gimme a fucking break! And don’t get me started on that lame Starkiller Base and R2-D2 miraculously waking up with the other piece of the map. Why do you fucking need a map to get to Luke if he could find Bespin just by using The Force in The Empire Strikes Back AND he could call Leia through The Force? Ohhh, and that GOD AWFUL Kylo Ren. That little bitch was far, far worse than Darth Vader’s ‘noooo!’ from Revenge of the Sith BUT FOR ALMOST THREE FUCKING HOURS! He made Han Solo’s death totally meaningless and stupid. Who the FUCK wrote that garbage? Disney executives? It makes the Holiday Special watchable! FUCK! But the worst part is that new chick who had all of the powers of a Jedi without a single day of training. Without training, even Anakin Skywalker, the most powerful Jedi ever couldn’t do anything other than be a good pilot. And Luke had to go through YEARS of training with TWO Jedi masters and he couldn’t control The Force. But this chick can have Force visions, use a light saber, do Jedi mind tricks, and beat a guy who was trained by Luke Skywalker himself just because Anakin’s old lightsaber ‘talked’ to her even though that lightsaber was just a fucking prop that Anakin lost in Episode II and then had to replace anyway. SHIT!”

“Yes, we noticed. And we also noticed that even though the chemotherapy would have maybe saved you, you just lost your willingness to live after watching that movie. Your body just plain gave up. And so you ended up here.”

“But why?”

“We think that watching that movie is more than enough punishment for anyone. Including you. Even with all of your mischief. It is just too much pain for any real Star Wars fan to have to go through that.”

“So what happened to the other guy who saw the movie before dying?”

“Oh, we compensated him by granting him another wish; hanging out for a day with Alec Guinness dressed up as Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Ooh! I want to hang out with Peter Cushing dressed up like Tarkin! Do I get another wish too?”

“No.”
--
AUTHOR'S NOTE: No, I did not like The Force Awakens. AT ALL. I'm a life-long Star Wars fan and I'm deeply offended by the GARBAGE Disney and Jar-Jar Abrams peddled to millions of people as a "Star Wars sequel." I also have a suspicion that Disney bought reviews and silenced critics for the movie so people would think it's great when it isn't. It SUCKS. No reviewer in his right mind could give rave reviews to it. At least not without disrespecting George Lucas's original vision for Star Wars. So if the guy in the story was a complete asshole and a thug, but he died watching The Force Awakens, that's more than enough punishment even for him and he has earned the right to go to heaven.

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