Transcript

(sentimental piano music)

[Narrator] They came to me because they said

I was a hard worker, that I was dedicated

and thorough and I got the job done.

And they said that it was good that I was discrete,

and that I knew how to keep a secret.

(shushing)

They told me that they had made

contact with extraterrestrial beings,

but that they had kinda messed up

and apparently the aliens got pretty angry.

(alien bellows)

(rocket beeping)

The good news, they said, was that it

would take 17 years for the missile

to even reach Earth so, you know, no worries.

They set me up in a small room with a huge computer,

said I could eat and drink as much as I wanted,

it was all on the house as long as I got the job done,

and that I remain thorough, and discreet,

and knew how to keep a secret.

At dinner, my wife could sense something was off,

but I think she blamed it on her catfish

which, to be fair, was pretty nasty.

(buttons clicking)

They wanted me to get it all down on paper,

some sort of definitive record of man's existence

on Earth before it all went--

(office explodes)

They said I wouldn't have to worry

about anything else for 17 years.

They even assured me a spot on

the international space station,

which apparently would be able to support

400 inhabitants for at least 36 months.

They told me to focus on names and faces and people,

and that history was made by individuals

rather than dates and events.

In the long-run, they asked,

Who are the people that should be remembered?

The first names I began to type surprised even myself,

Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt,

the Big Four from an old war, followed by

other US presidents and the Founding Fathers,

and so-on and so-forth, down a rabbit hole of history,

Down past Martin Luther and Dr. King,

and Malcolm X and the Beatles,

past Cleopatra and Tutankhamen,

and Socrates and Plato and Camou and Freud

and Ford and Fonda.

(computer fizzles)

After 13 years, the hard-drive sputters

and whirs and tells me it's full.

They assure me that's all the space station has room for,

and the deleting game begins,

the rephrasing game, the condensing game.

(sentimental piano music)

Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman

get grouped as one person.

Castro and Mao get to stay but Marx is out.

Orson Wells has his entire career

reduced to American Director who made Citizen Kane.

All I write about Marie Curie

and Joan of Arc was how they died.

And the biggest entry ends up being for Jesus Christ,

even though I mention, twice, the possibility

that he may never even have existed.

(switches click)

(microwave beeps)

And every night I go home and I stare my wife in the face,

and she asks me, What's wrong?

And I say, Nothing, while I try to think

of any names I might have forgotten

and she throws away another catfish.

And that's when I remember, Cat Stevens.

But then I realize he's probably not that important,

at least not important enough to override

Ninoy Aquino or Eugene Debs or Louis Pasteur.

(door slams)

And as I slowly start to come to terms with a society

in which no one remembers Cat Stevens, the weight

of all those other forgotten souls suddenly hits me.

And I think about all the lives that'll never be passed down

to the future generations of space children.

They'll never even know how Tiradentes fought

and died for Brazilian independence,

how his body was torn to pieces

and his head was placed on a stake,

a document written in his blood

denouncing him for crimes against the crown.

They'll never hear that story,

and even if they do, they'll have more important things

to worry about, day-to-day space station things like

what’s the quickest way to get to Holodeck B

or when will the tractor beam be up and running.

Their tiny little human brains’ll

never even have the memory storage

to remember us, the people of the turn of the millennium,

like the Turkish man in the cafeteria

that always gave me a little extra slop,

or the cop on La Brea who’s the only crossing guard

in the county to never cause an accident,

(car roars)

or my wife who, for 17 years, kept trying

to perfect her catfish, day after day,

while her husband didn’t say much more than nothing.

Is it up to me to keep their memory alive,

stuck in a space station for 36 months

telling every space shadow who’ll listen about the slop

and the crossing guard and my wife and the catfish?

And who will keep my memory alive?

Who will remember me, when the space station

crashes down to Earth and there’s no one around?

Who will remember all this work

that I’ve done for the past 17 years?

All the work that I’ve done before this?

All the good days I’ve had and the

bad days I’ve suffered through?

All the times my dad was proud of me

and all the times my mom made me feel better?

All the crushes I had and all the girls I kissed?

All the teachers I ever had

and all the classes I had to take?

All the lessons I had to learn?

All those notes I ever took?

All those memories and all those moments

just floating around on an empty radioactive earth?

Aren’t you going to be late for work? she says.

The ship is leaving at noon but she has no idea.

She doesn’t even know about the missile,

and I can’t bear to tell her.

Then I realize I can’t bear to leave her.

Yes, I say, I’m going to be late.

It’s fine.

No one will miss me.

And I take a bite out of her breakfast catfish,

and it tastes like the most delicious thing I’ve ever had.