The End Specialist. Drew Magary

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СКАЧАТЬ you presumably lose all your money and then spend the next thousand years trying to make it back. It’s incredible. After getting their shots, all new postmortals jump from the platform into the pool at the base of the fountain. Fully clothed, of course. I looked out to the pool and saw hordes of people frolicking in the water, all in soaking wet dresses, suits and tuxedoes, all drunk beyond comprehension. Baptized into the sweet life.

      On the way back to the check-in, I noticed a small exhibit called Ponce de León and The Fountain of Youth. It looked like a pointless waste of time, which intrigued me.

      “Hey, let’s go in that.”

      Scott wasn’t as enthused. “That? That’s for kiddies.”

      “We go in there, we finish our drinks, we get another round and head back to the line without anyone noticing. That line isn’t moving at all.”

      “Oh, all right.”

      So we went in to the exhibit, which was sparsely crowded due to the late hour and the fact that it was stupid. We walked through a dark corridor for about twenty yards, and then found ourselves in front of an enormous, scrolling diorama. A life-sized puppet of Ponce de León was sitting in an exact replica of King Ferdinand of Spain’s royal court. A voice-over narrated our journey as we watched the puppet hop onto a ship, sailing across a miniaturized version of the Atlantic Ocean (with real wind and water!).

      In the year 1513, King Ferdinand of Spain commissioned explorer Juan Ponce de León to sail across the seas and find the fabled fountain of youth. It was a dangerous journey, as Ponce de León and his men battled scurvy, hurricanes, and pirates!

      At this point, three pirate puppets popped up from the water and dueled with the Ponce de León puppet, who then cut off their heads. I drank to his victory. The Ponce de León puppet made landfall as we kept walking.

      Landing in an exotic new land we now call Florida, Ponce de León rewarded his men with newfound riches of gold, sugar cane, delicious citrus fruits, and beautiful Native American women!

      One of Ponce de León’s puppet crew then started making out with a buxom female Indian puppet. I should have been offended, but I was too busy being turned on. The Ponce de León puppet soon came upon a giant fountain, which disappeared down into the ground.

      Ponce de León’s quest for the elusive and mythical fountain proved fruitless, and the legendary explorer died while trying to find it.

      The Ponce de León puppet then shouted out, “Nooooo!” and keeled over.

      But now, Ponce de León’s dream has finally been realized!

      The Ponce de León puppet’s corpse was airlifted by his strings across a fake U.S. landscape to a miniature model of the hotel we were standing in.

      Here, at Daniel Benjamin’s Fountain of Youth Resort and Casino! Do all the things Ponce de León always dreamed of doing! Dine al fresco at Fukuku Oh! See Cirque de Soleil in our exclusive new show, Eternia! Or try your hand at Texas Hold ’Em! It’s all here, along with over five hundred board-certified geneticists ready to give you the cure for death! Only at Daniel Benjamin’s Fountain of Youth Resort and Casino! Eternal life has never been so luxurious! Right, Ponce?

      The Ponce de León puppet then sat up, looked at us, and said, “Sí”. We walked out.

      “I don’t think that presentation was historically accurate,” Scott said.

      “Well, sometimes you have to take dramatic license.”

      The rest of the weekend was spent in a drunken fog, each hour as pointlessly hazy as the last. For his cure ceremony, our friend chose the Velvet Dream chair, a throne nine feet high and made of a purple fabric that purported to be velvet but was almost certainly some kind of space-age, sweat-wicking polymer. It was a practical choice. If you’re going to be stabbed by three giant fire pokers, you’re gonna want to feel as relaxed as humanly possible. Afterwards, we visited the Spearmint Rhino IV club. Every girl inside had a long, lucrative career in front of her. I’m not terribly comfortable in these places, which I find reassuring in a way.

      Next to the casino floor at Fountain of Youth is a stadium-sized mall that exclusively houses shops selling cure-related merchandise. You can get your pick of commemorative t-shirts (I’M HOT…AND I’M STAYING THAT WAY was a popular choice), steel cookware with lifetime warranties, go-tox clinics for older postmortals, safes, laser vision correction, and thirty-year tattoos. There were no wedding parlors, and I didn’t see a single bachelor party the entire weekend. Just one cure party after another.

      On our last day, there was a bomb threat in our section of the hotel. They evacuated our rooms and made us wait outside on the Strip. It was the only time during our trip that I was reminded of 7/3/19, and it unnerved me. The manager assured us they dealt with these threats all the time, which only served to worry me more. As we waited along the Strip, I saw a group of men pass by the hotel on the opposite side of the street. They stopped, looked at the hotel, whispered some things to one another, and then kept walking. As they did, I saw one of them wave to the building, as if saying goodbye. I ran to alert a nearby officer, who seemed unconcerned. The men turned the corner. One of them saw me talking to the cop and smirked. He held up his hands and gave me the death symbol: a cupped left hand pressed against his straight right hand, forming a crude D.

      After that, I didn’t relax until we were in the plane heading back to LaGuardia. The flight was delayed for three hours due to traffic on the runway.

      Date Modified: 11/15/2029, 3:02PM

      A Day In The Life Of A Terra Troll

      After my experience outside of the Fountain of Youth, I came across this anonymous blog posting from someone who claimed to work at the resort.

      Contrary to what hotel officials say publicly, the FOY has been attacked by trolls on numerous occasions. These aren’t just simple bomb threats, designed to have us running around in circles. One troll sneaked into the fountain area, saw a fresh postmortal walking out of her cure ceremony and threw lye right in her eyes, blinding her. The entire time security personnel was wrangling him and making him eat pavement, he was giggling like a madman.

      It’s not the pro-death insurgents we fear while working here. We have tight enough security to make sure guns and bombs are kept out. It’s the trolls that are the big problem. Because they aren’t looking to kill people. They just want to ruin lives. If you stay here, you always have to keep your eyes out for them. Or else, boom! A handful of lye.

      —DanBenjaminsACheapskate

      I’m glad I read that after I finished my stay, or else I’d have fled from the hotel like a terrified schoolboy. Then there’s this profile of a troll that P.J. Matson wrote last month for New York. I needed to take a shower after reading it.

      UNDER THE TERRA TROLL BRIDGE

       By P.J. Matson

      XMN doesn’t like people.

      “I mostly keep to myself, because other people are just annoying.” He tells me this as we sit together in a burrito shop near his home in San Jose, California. The shop has a relatively sparse crowd this afternoon, but XMN’s mannerisms say to the outside observer that he feels anxious, even a bit claustrophobic. His eyes dart back and forth. He never once looks at our waitress while ordering. He scratches his face constantly, though he doesn’t appear to have any bites or scrapes that need relief.

      “When СКАЧАТЬ