Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury

EARTH (A GIFT SHOP) Charles Yu

Come to Earth! Yes, that Earth. A lot of people think we’re closed during construction, but we are not! We’re still open for business.

Admittedly, it’s a little confusing.

First, we were Earth: The Planet. Then life formed, and that was a great and good time.

And then, for a little while, we were Earth: A Bunch of Civilizations!

Until the fossil fuels ran out and all of the nation-states collapsed and a lucky few escaped Earth and went out in search of new worlds to colonize.

Then, for what seemed like forever, we were Earth: Not Much Going On Here Anymore.

And that lasted for a long time. Followed by another pretty long time. Which was then followed by a really long time.

Then, after a while, humans, having semi-successfully established colonies on other planets, started to come back to Earth on vacation. Parents brought their kids, teachers brought their classes on field trips, retirees came in groups of twenty or thirty. They wanted to see where their ancestors had come from. But there was nothing here. Kids and parents and teachers left, disappointed. That’s it? they would say, or some would even say, It was okay I guess, but I thought there would be more.

So, being an enterprising species and all, some of us got together and reinvented ourselves as Earth: The Museum, which we thought was a great idea.

We pooled our resources and assembled what we could find. To be sure, there was not a whole lot of good stuff left after the collapse of Earth: A Bunch of Civilizations! One of us had a recording of Maria Callas singing the Violetta aria in La Traviata. We all thought it sounded very pretty, so we had that playing in a room in the museum. And I think maybe we had a television playing episodes of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The main attraction of the museum was the painting we had by some guy of some flowers. No one could remember the name of the guy or the painting, or even the flowers, but we were all pretty sure it was an important painting at some point in the history of paintings and also the history of people, so we put that in the biggest room in the center of everything.

But parents and teachers, being humans (and especially being descendants of the same humans who messed everything up in the first place) thought the whole museum was quite boring, or even very boring, and they would say as much, even while we were still within earshot, and we could hear them saying that to each other, about how bored they were. That hurt to hear, but more than that what was hurtful was that no one was coming to Earth anymore, now that it was a small and somewhat eclectic museum. And who could blame them? After the collapse of civilization, school just has never been the same. By the time kids are done with their five years of mandatory schooling, they are eight or even nine years old and more than ready to join the leisure force as full-time professional consumers. Humans who went elsewhere have carried on that tradition from their days on Earth. They are ready to have their credit accounts opened, for their spending to be tracked, to get started in their lifelong loyalty rewards programs. Especially those humans who are rich enough to be tourists coming back here to Earth.

Eventually one of us realized that the most popular part of the museum was the escalator ride. Although you would think interstellar travel would have sort of raised the bar on what was needed to impress people, there was just something about moving diagonally that seemed to amuse the tourists, both kids and adults, and then one of us finally woke up and said, well, why not give them what they want?

So we did some research, in the few books we had left, and on the computer, and the research confirmed our hypothesis: Humans love rides.

So Earth: The Museum was shuttered for several years while we reinvented ourselves and developed merchandise and attractions, all of the things we were naturally good at, and after another good long while, we finally were able to reopen as Earth: The Theme Park and Gift Shop, which did okay but it was not too long before we realized the theme park part of it was expensive to operate and kind of a hassle, really, as our engineering was not so good and we kept making people sick or, in a few cases, really misjudging g-forces, and word got out among the travel agencies that Earth: The Theme Park and Gift Shop was not so fun and actually quite dangerous, so we really had no choice but to drop the theme park part and that is how we became Earth: The Gift Shop.

Which was all anyone ever wanted anyway. To get a souvenir to take home.

We do have some great souvenirs.

Our top-selling items for the month of October:

1. History: The Poster! A 36" x 24" color poster showing all of the major phases of human history. From the Age Before Tools, through the short-lived but exciting Age of Tools, to the (yawn) Age of Learning, and into our current age, the Age After the Age of Learning.

2. War: The Soundtrack. A three-minute musical interpretation of the experience of war, with solos for guitar and drums. Comes in an instrumental version (for karaoke lovers).

3. Art: The Poster! Beautiful painting of a nature scene. Very realistic-looking, almost like a photograph. Twenty percent off if purchased with History: The Poster!

4. God, the Oneness: A Mystical 3-D Journey. 22-minute DVD. Never-before-seen footage. Comes with special glasses for viewing.

5. Science: The Video Game. All the science you ever need to bother with! Almost nothing to learn. So easy you really don’t have to pay attention. For ages three to ninety-three.

6. Summer in a Bottle. Sure, no one can go outside on Earth anymore because it’s 170 degrees Fahrenheit, but who needs outside when they have laboratory-synthesized Summer in a Bottle? Now comes in two odors: “Mist of Nostalgia” or “Lemony Fresh.”

7. Happiness: A Skin Lotion. At last you can be content and moisturized, at the same time. From the makers of Adventure: A Body Spray.

Other strong sellers for the month include Psychologically Comforting Teddy Bear and Shakespeare: The Fortune Cookie. All of the items above also come in ring tones, T-shirts, cups, and key chains.

And coming for the holidays, get ready for the latest installment of Earth’s greatest artistic work of the last century: Hero Story: A Hero’s Redemption (and Sweet Revenge), a computer-generated script based on all the key points of the archetypal story arc that we humans are.

Which brings us back to our original point. What was our original point? Oh yeah, Earth: The Gift Shop is still here. Not just here, but doing great! Okay, maybe not great, but okay, we’re okay. We would be better if you came by and shopped here. Which is why we sent you this audio catalog, which we hope you are reading (otherwise we are talking to ourselves). Earth: The Gift Shop: The Brochure. Some people have said the name, Earth: The Gift Shop, is a bit confusing because it makes it seem like this is the official gift shop of some other attraction here on Earth, when really the attraction is the gift shop itself. So we are considering changing our name to Earth (A Gift Shop), which sounds less official but is probably more accurate. Although if we are going down that road, it should be pointed out that the most accurate name would be Earth = A Gift Shop, or even Earth = Merchandise, since basically, if we are being honest with ourselves, we are a theme park without the park part, which is to say we are basically just a theme, whatever that means, although Earth, an Empty Theme Park would be an even worse name than Earth = A Gift Shop, so for now we’re just going to stick with what we’ve got, until something better comes along.

So, again, we say: Come to Earth! We get millions of visitors a year, from near and far. Some of you come by accident. No shame in that! We don’t care if you are just stopping to refuel, or if you lost your way, or even if you just want to rest for a moment and eat a sandwich and drink a cold bottle of beer. We still have beer! Of course, we prefer if you come here intentionally. Many of you do. Many of you read about this place in a guidebook, and some of you even go out of your way and take a detour from your travels to swing by the gift shop. Maybe you are coming because you just want to look, or to say you were here. Maybe you are coming to have a story to tell when you get back. Maybe you just want to be able to say: I went home. Even if it isn’t home, was never your home, is not anyone’s home anymore, maybe you just want to say, I touched the ground there, breathed the air, looked at the moon the way people must have done nine or ten or a hundred thousand years ago. So you can say to your friends, if only for a moment or two: I was a human on Earth. Even if all I did was shop there.