The Fireworks of the Gods

 

In the year 2009 there existed, in a geo-synchronous orbit approximately 325 miles over New York City, an incredible space station, which housed an exclusive hotel. It was one of the greatest private undertakings in history and when one sees the list of international corporations involved the scale of the investment becomes apparent. Nearly every major energy company participated, all the leaders in the information processing field, the aerospace and transportation industry and a host of other smaller companies, and even at that the governments of Brazil, Russia and the USA had to provide a considerable amount of funding. A shuttle flight carried guests to the ship on July 29, 2009 amongst tremendous fanfare. It was a marvelous testament to the creative energy of capitalism and the species. The hotel could house some 36 guests. All rooms were suites for two with a base fee (regardless of whether one brought a companion) of $1,447,357.50. There was some dispute as to what the fifty cents covered.

The station was designed very much like a huge doughnut with four passageways to a structure in the center of the configuration. Along the exterior corridors artificial gravity was created by the spin of the station. In the central deck there were zero gravity Rooms where guests could experience weightless entertainment or enter private chambers for games of a more intimate nature. Included in the extraordinary price were all expenses. Great care was taken to be sure the cuisine and the selection of wines and liquors were of the finest quality obtainable. All suites were elaborately decorated and the interior of the hotel was designed with the ultimate in architectural and physiological comforts, given the unusual limits and, in some cases, singular freedoms a revolving space station presents.

The first Holiday In Space, as it was labeled, was a rugged affair. Between the technicians and the management consultants just about everything that could go wrong (short of the ship floating off into space or running out of oxygen), did. Such circumstances, combined with the peevish nature of the guests, made for a volume of complaints ringing through the ship at a level never before obtained by mankind. The inconvenienced repeatedly got the names of Chefs and Housekeeping Directors, but it was to no avail; nobody was checking out. On that first trip the multimillionaires turned, unwittingly, into a very refined breed of guinea pig.

Upon the occasion of the second Holiday, on December 21st of the same year, many of the problems experienced on the previous excursion had been corrected. The next collection of visitors spent much less time asking to see the boss and much more of their time marveling at the exquisite beauty of the space station and outer space. While public voyages on space shuttles were a somewhat common occurrence, the Space Hotel had the mystique of history-in-the-making as well as the cultural panache of exclusivity; a quality the rich enjoyed immensely. As any merchant well knows, the value of a gem is only marginally a product of aesthetic beauty; it's the rarity that determines the price. Perhaps the guests would get every bit of their money's worth. It was more difficult to gauge than mere precious stones.

As the crowd boarded the vessel, clumsily bouncing their way to their suites, they could feel not only the disequilibria and exhilaration of artificial gravity, but they experienced an ethereal sensation of escape from earthly bounds, a giddiness of immortality. This was their Mount Olympus, and they were the Gods. In their omnipotence, however, they knew nothing about an asteroid spinning through the Asteroid Belt at 7,000 miles an hour.

Back on earth, civilization had made tremendous strides in the most recent decade. Politically, the means and ideologies of warfare had dis-integrated to the point of near extinction. Technology had made the wonders of communication accessible to almost everyone who was interested. Magnetic trains made transportation available to a similar population and the benefits of international health societies made famine and epidemic disease a terrible memory. The corporations fought the wars of 2009 over the marketplace.

The generals of these new nation-states sipped two hundred year old Cognac and dipped gold knives into Russian caviar far above the reach of their subjects. As the year came to a close they swapped tales of pioneering and perseverance and unbounded greed. They spilled Dom Perignon on their Spartan silk jackets. An old couple trying to dance tripped on a chair and fell to the carpet, to the applause of the assemblage. They gathered at the viewer and looked down on their planet and counted down the decade.

In New York City, in light snowfall, the people looked back on a decade of resolve and inspiration and they filled up Times Square until there was hardly room to dance. They heard speeches from three generations of New Yorkers and they looked up to the sky at the pyrotechnics and toasted their good fortune as the midnight fell and the band struck up Auld Lang Syne. It was easy to mistake the vaporizing of diamonds in the atmosphere for more fireworks.