The Jaunt (short story)
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| Author | Stephen King |
|---|---|
| Country |  USA |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Released in | The Twilight Zone Magazine (1st release), Skeleton Crew |
| Media Type | Magazine |
| Released | 1981 |
The Jaunt is a short story by Stephen King first published in The Twilight Zone Magazine in 1981, and collected in the 1985 anthology Skeleton Crew. It belongs primarily to the genre of science fiction rather than King's customary horror, but is quite characteristic of King in probing deeply the minds of its characters when they are placed in incredible circumstances. The story takes place in the near-future where the technology for teleportation, referred to as "Jaunting", is commonplace, allowing for instantaneous transportation across enormous distances, even to other planets in the solar system.
[edit] Plot
As a family prepares to be "Jaunted" to Mars, the father entertains his two children by recounting the tale of this crude form of teleportation's curious discovery and history. He explains how the scientist who serendipitously discovered it found out early on that it had a disturbing, inexplicable effect on the mice he "sent through"--concluding that they could only survive the "Jaunt effect" while unconscious. That, the father explains, is why all people must breathe in a special anaesthetic gas before using the Jaunt.
The father spares his children the gruesome semi-apocryphal account of the only human ever known to be Jaunted awake, a condemned murderer offered a full pardon for agreeing to the experiment. The man "came through" and immediately suffered a massive heart attack, living just long enough to utter a single cryptic phrase:
It's eternity in there...
We learn that about thirty people have been jaunted alive and that they either died instantly, or went insane. One person even used the portal to send his wife into a horrific kind of limbo, stuck between two jaunt portals.A fter he finishes his little story, the family is subjected to the sleeping gas and Jaunted to Mars. When the father awakes, he finds, to his horror, that his inquisitive son held his breath in order to experience the Jaunt while conscious, and has been rendered completely insane. Hair completely white, corneas yellowed with age, clawing out his own eyes, he reveals the terrible nature of the Jaunt: while physically the process occurs nearly instantaneously, to the conscious mind it seems to last what can be conceived as an eternity.
[edit] Trivia
- In the short story, computer time is still "rented" in the future.
- The premise of the work is loosely taken from Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, which is mentioned by name.
- Exxon (now Exxon/Mobil), along with most petroleum corporations, become water purification corporations after a supposed oil crash in the early 21st century.
- The name of the criminal chosen to be the first waking human Jaunt is Rudy Foggia, leading some fans to speculate that he is one of King's incarnations of Randall Flagg.
