Radiance

Your Friend Pluto!

(Patriot Films, 1921)

[VISUAL DAMAGED, UNSUITABLE FOR VIEWING.]

VOICE-OVER

Welcome to the American sector!

Feast your eyes on glorious Pluto, her wild frontier, her high standard of living, her rugged, hardworking citizens, her purple mountains majesty! Ride the mighty buffalo! Marvel at the bustling industry of the great cities of Jizo and Ascalaphus! Climb the peaks of Mt. Orcus and Mt. Chernobog!

Congratulations! You have chosen to stake a claim on your corner of the bountiful Plutonian pampas and start a new life here on the Little Free World. Out here, the old empires fear to tread! On Pluto a man can make his own fate and no one will trouble him to get on his knees and kiss a crown.

A joint venture of Uncle Sam and the Iroquois League, Pluto and Charon are a wholly self-sufficient binary system—we gotta be! Our unbeatable location requires a special kind of soul: an enterprising, fearless, burly, bootstrap-pulling sort of man with a high tolerance for cold and work ethic to beat a Puritan senseless. We here on Pluto are delighted to welcome you into our family. We only take the best, and you have been specially chosen for one of our provisional citizenship programs, entitled to benefits and privileges that remain the envy of the nine worlds. Please refer to your complimentary deep-freeze rated pocket-size Constitutions for a full accounting of these rights—as well as inspiration, comfort, and the sense of profound well-being conferred by the presence of that most exceptional document.

No matter your nation of origin, you are now a part of the great American project—and if that doesn’t make you proud, I don’t know what will! In its short time on the interplanetary stage, Pluto has produced, abetted, or sheltered first-class poets like Miss Dickinson and Mr Frost, inventors such as Mr Tesla and Mr Marconi, titans of industry and politics with names as grand as Morgan, Rockefeller, and the great Emperor Norton II, as well as architects by the bushel who have put the streetscapes of Vienna and Venice to shame. Now you can stand tall among their number and make your mark on this miraculous planet.

Now that you and Pluto have made a proper acquaintance, you’ll find in your intake portfolio a region assignment, dependent on your skills and background, as well as where folks are needed most. Are you bound for the ivory waves of blossoms on Pluto Actual, or the lucrative mines of Charon? Or perhaps you’re headed for the fashionable districts and urban excitement of Styx, the Great Bridge! Homesteads are available in all three regions; assignments may be revisited every five years.

Whatever your destiny, Citizen, a life like no other awaits you!

Each new Plutonian citizen is furnished with sufficient materiel for the construction of a dwelling, a sturdy and reliable Bunyan Brand Heating System with a free backup generator, seeding for a fast-fertilizing infanta crop, two shotguns, and basic-model breathing masks for the whole family. The rest is up to you! The extraordinary properties of the unique infanta blossom mean that no soul on Pluto will go hungry—easy to grow and easy to harvest, each flower provides a complete nutritional profile, save for folate, riboflavin, Vitamin A, and iron. Our scientists are discovering new and useful qualities of this wonderful species day by day! Don’t eat them all at once!

Now, a day on Pluto comes out to a week back home, and a year lasts about two hundred and forty-eight Earth years, but lucky for you, good old corn-fed Frank McCoy, John Smoke Johnson, and the crew of the Red Jacket made worldfall smack in the middle of spring—a twenty-year span we call the Rose of May. We won’t see winter in our lifetimes, no sir. And now that summer is on the horizon, it’s a perfect time to put down roots. Summer on Pluto is a balmy life indeed—and there’s a whole lifetime of summer for your pleasure. The lagoons of Tawiskaron call to bathing beauties and fishermen alike; watching the magnificent Sunday Sunsets from the balconies of Mormo will take your breath away. Nowhere in the solar system is a world more blessed, more genteel, with a richer portion of God’s bounty. No more must man labour under the Union Jack or the Red Hammer, Vienna’s long arm, or Nanjing’s watchful gaze. In point of fact, the passage of the Sun between Earth and Pluto some years back means that those lace-cuffed dinosaurs aren’t watching much of anything but their afternoon tea. We won’t be getting word from the Old Worlds until round about the year 2112, so sit back, relax, pour yourself a whiskey and ice, and blow them a real nice kiss.

Please note that Proserpine and her environs are off-limits to all non-police personnel. The incident there is considered concluded by all involved, and no outbuildings or further items of interest remain. All relevant structures have been subsequently dismantled, recycled into building materials, and used in nearly every Plutonian city as a gesture of solidarity and collective mourning. We declare openly our hostility to treasure hunters, occultists, and other bandits who come to raid our sweet, peaceful land for purely imaginary secrets. There is no mystery; colonies fail. Seek that mother of the Plutonian experiment in the ironworks of Mormo, in the bricks of Niflheim, in the roof tiles of Elysium, in the spires of Tawiskaron and the cobblestones of Lamentation, in the great citadels and their deep foundations.

We are all Proserpine.

We ask that you respect the personal tragedy of that city’s loss as you would the widowhood of a dear grandmother—the lady would prefer not to discuss it, and it behoves us all to abide by her wishes.

Trespassers will be shot on sight.

Yes, we all pull together here on Pluto. Be a good neighbour and you’ll have good neighbours. Please report weekly to your local Depot for callowmilk and vitamin supplements, work assignments, and other sundry entertainments.

You can be anyone on Pluto. The possibilities are endless.