three-oh-seven.
They were told that they were officially classed as infallible and they would be accordingly rewarded, once the gifts were sorted. Some rejoiced, some thought this was due and put on an indifferent face. Herding them all to the holding plateau was an effort but finally the brave three hundred and seven volunteer travellers took their position, sitting down, safely welded to steel benches, air flowing through tubes surgically attached to their breathing organs, poison pills in hand and ready to be deployed.
They were on a mission and they would never collect their cash reward. Their beneficiaries — specified in the Wilfully Executed and Final Exit Contract — would be paid a certain amount according to the Traveller’s weight, age and number of healthy brain cells.
The Travellers were the subject of conversation, debate, office chit-chat, awe, bafflement and pure ridicule. They were at once dumb, heroes, adventurers, pioneers, petty cash grabbers, insurance cheats, deluded clowns and glorified forever. By the time they were irrevocably tied to 300,000 pounds of metal to be rocketed into deep space they had lost all sense of both certitude and doubt. Their existence was no longer.
Sighs might have been heard, ideas for an alternative ending could have been explored, open vistas as never contemplated before suddenly appeared as a viable option. Delirium was commonplace, a petty drug liberally shared with no substance changing hands, simple vacant looks, tentative shuffling of a leg or an aborted turn of the head — aborted because helmets, too, had been locked into position to facilitate the cervical fracture procedure to be performed precisely seventeen seconds before takeoff.
