{"id":100043519,"date":"2026-03-05T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/?p=100043519"},"modified":"2026-03-05T22:30:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T22:30:23","slug":"two-tickets-to-purgatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/?p=100043519","title":{"rendered":"Two Tickets to Purgatory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cHere comes the sun, doo, doo, doo, doo.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat gets funnier every time you say it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can\u2019t imagine being without verbal irony. Is it still <\/em>verbal irony if you\u2019re telepathic?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. Being non-corporeal for the past two billion years has taken the edge off my ability to imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen let\u2019s do it! Everything we are is the result of the inevitable swallowing of the Earth by the sun. We need to plan the biggest party ever!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA party for two? With what? There\u2019s nothing here except a regolith.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe imagine! An overstocked bar, beautiful men and women, conversations that solve the problems of the world, loud music. We could get a top-selling band with a sexy sultry-voiced singer.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBe real.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBe REAL? What\u2019s the point of that? We\u2019re energy. We\u2019re whatever we think we are.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI prefer the truth. We know what\u2019s going to happen to Earth. And who cares anyway? Everything\u2019s dead. The question is, what\u2019s going to happen to us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why you can\u2019t just relax. We\u2019re here. It\u2019s calm. Stop torturing yourself. The truth is, we will never know why, after converting to energy, we seeped outside the ship that would have taken us away from here.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot again. That\u2019s not what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t torture yourself. At least the sun becoming a red giant might end our travails. Barring an accident, those poor entities that escaped in the ship may last as long as there is a universe, or longer.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt least they\u2019re moving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt one-fiftieth the speed of light? That\u2019s like running in place. They have the rest of eternity to rue their mistake. Our former compatriots don\u2019t even have the substance to alter their course into a star.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust once I would like the luxury of a question being answered, instead of just hanging in the air like a regret.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere hasn\u2019t been air here since I don\u2019t know when.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know what I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou want an answer? Ask me any question you want.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s only one question I\u2019m interested in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLook, I\u2019m not unsympathetic. I do miss corporeal life. You could hitch a ride. Go somewhere. And I miss other species. Animals, insects. They used to say cockroaches would last forever.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were off by 500 thousand years\u2026 and counting. But who\u2019s counting?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnly if you want to drive yourself crazy. And even then, it wouldn\u2019t work. That\u2019s another escape we lost with the conversion.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho would have guessed that immortality gives you eternal life but takes away its meaning?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIronic, isn\u2019t it, and there\u2019s that word again. When existence was temporary, we invented afterlife. When existence is eternal, we have to invent significance.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWait a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s easy for me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIs it my imagination or is the Earth losing shape?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t pay attention to physical things as much as I should. There\u2019s only so much you can do with petrified basaltic lava and craters. Also, it\u2019s hard to notice changes when there\u2019s no sound. But now that you mention it, everything\u2019s burning up! This could be it! If I don\u2019t get a chance later, let me just say it\u2019s been a pleasure knowing you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour statement is a gross simplification. Surely, you haven\u2019t felt pleasure all this time. It would make you the Don Juan of energy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaybe I\u2019m just trying to put \u2018something\u2019 into words, to encapsulate. It would be such an achievement. It\u2019s a good thing we can\u2019t feel heat. Scientists estimated that when the sun became a red giant, the temperature would reach a billion degrees Celsius. Of course, that prediction was made a long time ago. When you get down to it, we\u2019ve never really known anything about the interior of the sun. It\u2019s like the interior of the brain, when we had brains. The last frontier.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the end of darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isn\u2019t it interesting how with darkness you lose data, yet it liberates you from reality? The mind supplies new worlds. I wouldn\u2019t have thought it possible, but without darkness, it\u2019s as if we\u2019ll lose another dimension.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not what I meant. We\u2019re no longer in the dark about what will happen to us when the sun\u2019s rays vaporize the Earth. It\u2019s happening now, and we\u2019re still here!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we are. A teachable moment. The next step is the sun will become a white dwarf. Then what? Does it eventually disintegrate?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs everything does, eventually, except us. And if there\u2019s one preposition I hate, it\u2019s \u2018except.\u2019 I\u2019m not crazy about the pronoun \u2018us,\u2019 either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy\u2019s that?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know why.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHumor me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll I do is humor you! The sun entering its red giant stage has brought everything into the light! We\u2019re here forever! It\u2019s the punchline that keeps punching! I don\u2019t know if time has any meaning in eternity, but if it does, it\u2019s time to face facts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve warned you about repeating yourself.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRepeatedly! Our existence is<\/em> repetition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, you\u2019re going to confess again?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSure. It\u2019s good for the soul I don\u2019t have. Fact one: We were one of the last groups to leave the Earth. When it was time to transform into energy, I was nervous about losing physical pleasure forever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho wouldn\u2019t be?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, but I really didn\u2019t want to change. I knew we had to\u2014even then conditions on Earth were killing us–but I thought I\u2019d go for one last walk, see things through my eyes, touch things with my fingers. Because who would I be once I lost those things?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow you know.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was my last chance to have a party. So I had some drinks and took some pills. And I ODed and went into a coma. When I came to, the ship had already left.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey looked for you, but no one was used to being energy. It was hard to function, at first.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy choice was to remain in my body and die a horrible death, or convert. The travelers left the conversion machines. They didn\u2019t need them anymore. But the machines converted only one way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s enough.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, shut up. Fact two: for the past two billion years I\u2019ve been talking to myself<\/em>. This endless existence is like having an elephant sitting on you forever, like every moment trying to conceive of infinity and coming up with an ever-expanding nothing, like never having the closure of \u2018the end.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you feel better now?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo! I can\u2019t go on! I can\u2019t go on!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re wrong.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Richard Zwicker is a retired English teacher living in Vermont, USA, with his wife and beagle. His short stories have appeared at \u201cFission,\u201d \u201cDragon Gems,\u201d \u201cOn the Premises,\u201d and other markets. \u201cThe Sum of Its Parts,\u201d \u201cWalden Planet,\u201d and \u201cThe Reopened Cask\u201d are three book collections of his short fiction. His website \u201cRichard Zwicker, Writer\u201d is at https:\/\/rzwicker56.wixsite.com\/my-site-1<\/a>. In addition to reading and writing, he likes to play the piano, jog, and fight the good fight against what he used to call middle age.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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