Jor-el

I voted for Jor-el.

He promised access for all to Jump technology.

Previously a privilege jealously guarded by the elite.

Our planet, Zelica, was dying. Resources diminishing, dwindling birth rate, ageing population.

Our Sun was involuting. Becoming a black hole.

Jump enabled pancellular disintegration, with reassembly at a distant time/space location.

Many of our elite had already “jumped ship.”

Where were they now? Jor-el did not claim to know, but promised all the chance to find out.

This was social rebalancing. The politics of equality. 

Jor-el, like most of us, was a prole. But he was a chance taker, a ground breaker.

Controversy dogged his past. Rumours of corruption, deception.

But in these desperate times he was the only politician promising salvation. An alternative future.

I took my place in the polling booth.

The scanner read my brain waves. Jor-el flashed on the screen. I pressed the "confirm" button.

*

It was a landslide victory for Jor-el.

Who in their right mind would have voted for a continuation of inevitable, erosive extinction?

Now it was time for transit. Time to seek renaissance  in a new time/space dimension.

The long lines of aspirant travellers edged closer to the Transit Tunnels.

I held my wife, Laxa, tightly by the hand. She was excited, apprehensive.

Inside Tunnel 26 we were separated into male and female groups by the surly assistants.

Perhaps they resented the likelihood that they would be the last to jump.

I started to protest but was roughly silenced.

As I entered my transit booth, with five others, I could hear Laxa wailing and sobbing loudly.

We were strapped into uncomfortable chairs. My anxiety levels were spiralling.

The lights shut off and a hideous mechanical shrieking assailed my eardrums.

A sense of pressure, building remorselessly, made me feel my skull was being crushed.

I passed out.

*

When I came to, I realised I was one of a large group of Zelican males on a pickup truck.

We were all wearing wrist shackles and ankle fetters. Except the alien keeping watch.

He was tall and thin, wearing a black uniform and carrying some kind of weapon.

“What’s happening? Where are we going?” I blurted out. Could he even speak our language?

The alien laughed.

      “The scrawny ones will work in the plutonium mines. Those with more flesh on their bones will

feed the appetites of our voracious nobles. They say Zelican men have the tastiest meat in the

Universe.” He guffawed noisily.

We had been lied to, betrayed. My stomach turned over. Some of the others roared or cursed.

    “And our women?”

He chuckled lewdly.

      “Our nobles have other appetites. Zelican women are prized for their beauty and their skill in

love making. They will quickly learn to satisfy all demands placed upon them.”

As I was processing this information a limousine overtook the truck. In the back seat I could clearly

see a richly dressed alien sharing a drink with…yes, Jor-el!

I started to vomit.

.