It Doesn't Matter What Star It Is

It was the holiday office party at Heaven, Inc. and of its 112 attendees, David was the only one that was awake. His feet were up on the monitor table as he unscrewed his flask and took a pull. He held the flask out to the room of cots where his coworkers lay connected to wires and different sorts of tubes. “Anyone? Anyone? No? Huh. More for me, fuckos.” He cackled. The gummy gleam of his SECURITY badge winked light across the wall as he swung his arm back.

David grimaced at the card table that had been set up with snacks for him. A bag of Cheez Doodles, a bag of potato chips, red party cups, a shitty grocery store sheet cake with Happy Holidays Heaven, Inc. family dribbled clumsily in icing across it and a 2-liter bottle of ginger ale. “Ain’t we having fun,” he muttered, then turned back to the monitors, where the real party was happening.

The monitors showed a gaily festooned banquet hall, and in that hall, David’s coworkers were having the time of their lives. Presents were stacked beneath a Christmas tree that must have stood fifty feet high. A long table was heavy with every kind of treat imaginable, and it was all gorgeous. Sandwiches. Drinks. Ice cream. Lobster. A chocolate fountain cascaded down the sides of a three-tiered cake into a moat floating with ripe strawberries. Every food imaginable, none of it had calories, and it all tasted utterly delicious. Or so everyone said.

Alex Fontaine and that cute redhead from accounting were dancing to Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree. Mr. Gephart was grinning as he made the rounds in a stupidass Santa suit, shaking hands with everyone and chit-chatting. Little kids were whooping and shouting as they flew around the ceiling. In The Daydream, you could be and do anything. It was the company’s full-sensory VR product, and it was very successful. Tonight its employees were being allowed to use it to their hearts’ content as thanks for a year’s service. “Everyone but me,” David belched. “But it’s okay guys, I’ve got ginger ale. Don’t worry.”

The door opened behind him and David turned. It was Johnson. David wasn’t sure what Johnson did here, but they talked outside during cigarette breaks sometimes. “Hey man. Late to the big party?”

“Oh. Uh, yeah.” Johnson shuffled over. “How’re you doing?”

“Great!” David lifted the flask to show that he was doing great. “Just you and me tonight. The rest of these a-holes are playing make-believe.”

The other man laughed appreciatively. “Enjoying their imaginary party, are they?”

“That they are. Look, Carnel is in the closet making out with Becky Keegan. Neither of them look like that. He weighs more than that, and that is not her nose. It’s hysterical, how they’re willing to fool themselves.”

Johnson leaned toward the monitors to look. “Sad. There are children playing in the main hall. They’re showing kids that it’s okay to opt out of your own life. What a disgusting font of western excess.” David grunted in agreement. “Hey,” Johnson said, looking at David. “I know you don’t go in either, but I was thinking. Why don’t we just go in to make fun of it? Check it out, laugh at it, you know?”

“I can’t,” David said, tapping his balding skull. “Metal plate. Drone strike, Afghanistan, friendly fire. Remember?”

“Oh.” Johnson’s face flushed. “Right.”

“You’re going in anyway.”

“Uh. Just to view the front lines of the war mankind is happily surrendering to,” he laughed. “I mean, I don’t care. It’s dumb.”

“I thought you said it was all fake, and thus not worth losing a minute of real life over?”

“Yeah, I did, but-“

“‘I’d never voluntarily put myself to sleep to dream a lie.’ You said that.”

“Okay, but I’ve never been in there, and I feel like this- this is an important moment in history, and I need to know the enemy, see it up close to understand-“

David turned back to the monitors. “Hey, don’t let me stop you. Knock yourself out.”

“Yeah. David, I—“

“Go ahead, ‘opt out of your own life.’ Have a great time.”

Johnson put his head down and turned to head for an empty cot. He mumbled something over his shoulder. It might have been “sorry.”

David stared at the monitors with bleary eyes. He realized that if he’d taken it a little easier on the whiskey, he could leave. As it was he’d crossed the line from pleasant buzz into the strange lands beyond. He’d have to wait it out. The flask was empty anyway. He skittered it across the table to clunk against a monitor showing the team from marketing. They were laughing and clinking champagne flutes in front of a roaring fireplace.

A cheer went up in the banquet hall. Johnson had appeared. He waved to everyone and looked around. David leaned closer to the monitors and watched. Johnson’s eyes had a quality as they traced the scene, and there was no mistaking it. It was childlike amazement. He picked up a cup of eggnog and sipped at it. His eyebrows jumped and his mouth formed the word wow. Friends from the office approached him and began a conversation, and he grinned.

David stood up suddenly and pitched the card table of meager snacks against the wall. “Fuck it, that’s fine,” he snarled. He looked over the rows of cots. Fat losers hooked up to tubes, all of them.

What if he were to somehow shut it all down? He could, everyone was asleep in their stupid little make believe clubhouse he couldn’t visit. He could go right to the server area and just pull wires until it stopped. Then maybe, just maybe, he’d go home and eat that bullet he’d been saving for a midnight snack. He barked a hoarse laugh.

He turned back to the monitors and their screens full of his blissful coworkers. His eyes fell upon a circle of kids around a woman telling a story from a book. David leaned forward and zoomed the camera in on the scene. The children were listening, rapt, to T’was The Night Before Christmas. One of the children was asleep in her mother’s lap. Her mother was stroking the girl’s hair gently. Sleeping in a dream. Peace on earth.

David stared for a time, then walked outside. A cold tide of night air washed over his face. He lit a cigarette.

In his younger days he’d believed that he’d served in the military so that others might know peace. It had meant something to him, like Christmas itself. It was good of him, it was noble. It was a gift he could give. Now he was all used up and bitter and no one gave a shit about what he’d lost in the process. Thank you for your service, now fuck off. He spat on the ground, missing the feeling of having some purpose. Some service he could perform. Now the people he’d sacrificed for were enjoying the make-believe fruits of their freedom, and he couldn’t join them, and they didn’t care at all.

David angrily wiped away hot tears and his mind returned to the little girl sleeping in her mother’s lap. The Daydream may be pretend, but that fantasy had given that girl her moment of peace. Maybe it was a good thing. He could let the party continue, let that girl sleep while he guarded the office in his security uniform. Let them keep pretending, even if he couldn’t join them. He flicked the butt away. “God knows I don’t have much left to offer.”

He looked up and took note of a bright star hanging high in the sky. Was that the north star? He realized that it didn’t matter. He could pretend it was.

David opened the door and walked back inside.