We're All Stars

"There lies a border between being educated and losing one's mind, but that line is
thinner than anyone would ever expect."


Long before the future of flying cars and elevated space villages, the world was nearing its end. Time had taken its toll on the planet and the locusts were nearly full. The globe became one great highway. Everything could be reached and likewise it was all destroyed. Where once stood forests, now were studio type sets of the wilderness. Trees made of plywood described the scenery of what was once the Sierras, the Smokey Mountains, the Alps, the rainforest, and so on and so forth. The last remaining forests were cut down to provide the wood for the tour's necessary props. And thus the world was on the brink.

Somewhere along the way it became the consensus that everyone should speak English, thus making it easier to communicate across the globe. No one quite remembered where this idea arose but it didn't matter anyway. It was the new world, a world in which you could be in contact with anyone in the universe without leaving your couch. So that's what people did. They sat there waiting for the world to come to them, and how grand the notion seemed. They sat there with their computers at hand and their Teleprompters putting words into their mouth. "It's so much easier without having to think," said one man when asked about the effectiveness of his new machine. "The words just pop right up for you. I can be creative, insightful, funny, and inventive at the push of a button." What a unique and intelligent world it was. No longer was it anyone's concern as to who was doing the thinking.

Television gave way to the door-to-door actors that brought new meaning to the term reality TV. "It's so real, you can smell them in your living room," was the catch phrase. After a while everything became reality played by the billions across the globe. Everyone was an actor and cameras took in every motion from the tops of Everest to the depths of coalmines. Thus the world finally became reality. Everyone was on film. The museum of cinema started its prehistory at the closing of the 20th century when reality television and movies came to the forefront. Films like Ed TV and The Truman Show, and TV shows such as Survivor and Big Brother were seen as the masterpieces of the American, and eventually the world's, artistic expression, (not to mention a structure for worldwide living). And at the end of the world Reality TV became known as "Life Vision." And everyone was an actor. And no one ever thought to consider the only question left in the universe: "who was watching?"

The conglomerates weren't watching. They were playing their own roles. In all actuality there were no more conglomerates because they all fell under the control of one. And that one held the power. Governments were no longer necessary. The world was owned by business and all of the money in the world flowed through the one source. It didn't stop there. This one conglomerate went as far as to own every copyright in the universe. Thus they controlled the thoughts of humankind and after a while people accepted this as fact. After all, the Teleprompters let them know what to say. The conglomerate, which called itself LOCUST, told the world that it was doing human kind a favor.

Singer/Songwriters would no longer have writers block because they no longer existed. Music became a product of indulgence. Who needed individual expression when what these conglomerates produced sounded like the sirens of Homer's Odyssey? Likewise, artists didn't have to paint because the conglomerate produced the art for them. "Expression" became the brand name for the clothing line all artists, and musicians eventually endorsed.

In fact anyone who was different, anti-conformist, or unique (at least that is what they were told), were clearly visible by the clothes they wore. T-shirts said "UNIQUE" in bold letters across the front. It was as if the creator came down and used a labeling device on the forehead of every human being. After all, it made it easier to distinguish someone by these labels and far less painful than what many "different" people previously attempted, such as piercing extreme parts of their bodies and coloring their hair. It was all the same anyway; the conglomerate just simplified the process. And so the world unraveled.

By now the year was around 2083, too early for the end of the world by many people's standards. The public was outraged and they showed it in the expressions they mimicked from reruns of MTV's Real World, which aired at the dawn of the 2l " century (the century that would prove to be the earth's last). Everyone figured it was inevitable, but no one ever expected the apocalypse to arrive in his or her lifetime. "How could this happen to us," they asked, drowning in their own self-righteousness, their thoughts echoing that of the LOCUST. "Where did we go wrong?" By now everyone on earth could communicate through the same language, customs, and thought. Finally there was a standard for life that the world could live by and now it seemed all for not. How incredible. All this time the conglomerate punched its buttons and felt that the right moves were being made. They were simply aiding the momentum of the planet that had slowly evolved from the end of the 20th century. "Surely that was a time of prosperity," it said in the beginning. "It ought to be our model of consistency." And drowning in this line of thought, it could not figure out what went wrong.

The world was not prepared for self-destruction in 2083. It was the consensus from the beginning that the world would not be destroyed at the hand of its own sword. Everyone figured that it had to come to and end someday, but they envisioned the hand of death to belong to the machines or aliens, or at least one of the scenarios played out in Hollywood movies. Robots were machines of destruction, not people. This apocalypse became an entirely new Hollywood script, (the first creative idea since the mid 20th century). The actors of this particular script would be the inhabitants of the earth. "Damn originality" cried the dissolving world, “it should have been flushed out long ago." The cries were heard by nothingness. The world had opened up and swallowed itself in.

Eventually, similar to the supernovas of the far off FRONTIER, the earth had its grand finale. It ended similar to the way in which existence came to be. Life was lived from one show to the next, one finale to the other until there was nothing left. The series was cancelled. The earth swelled up to a glorious scene of brilliance and in one last hurrah, combusted into the innumerable pieces of its past. These pieces were scattered across the universe and lost forever.

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When a star is born, it is constructed of an unthinkable number of individual elements. Its brilliance is in the elements. Over time they mold together to form one unique structure in which all uniqueness is lost. Eventually they burn out. Its brilliance is in the elements.

WE ARE ALL STARS