The Big Trip Up Yonder by Kurt Vonnegut

0:00Yamavap Resortant Casino at Sandman Well is bringing the biggest laughs to the stage. Break Taboos with Ali Wang on August 28th and 29th. Enjoy Ralph Barbosa's Dry Humor on September 18th and 19th. And don't miss Nikki Glazers on Apologetic Comedy November 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavap Theatre dot com. Only at Yamavap Resortant Casino celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in must be 21 to enter. Fandool is now available everywhere in the US. So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are. Including these places. May this year most rewarding season ever with Fandool. Age and location restrictions apply. Product availability varies by market. CFandool dot com for eligibility. Gambling problem called 1-800-Gemmar.

1:02This episode is brought to you by TickTack. Lay something, get your game on because the TickTack lineup just got a new teammate. Dr. Pepper TickTack. This new double threat puts two of your favorite flavors into one box of mince. And when two iconic flavors come together, the result can only be iconic. Score big. Try Dr. Pepper TickTack today. Shook. Welcome to the Horop Apple Podcast. The big trip up Yonder by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Gramps Ford, his chin resting on his hands, his hands on the crook of his cane, was staring irresibly at the five foot television screen that dominated the room. On the screen, a news commentator was summarizing the day's happenings.

2:03Every 30 seconds or so, Gramps would jab the floor with his cane tip and shout. Hell, we did that a hundred years ago. Emerald and Lou, coming in from the balcony, were they had been seeking that 2185 AD rarity privacy, obliged to take seats in the back row. Behind Lou's father and mother, brother and sister-in-law, son and daughter-in-law, grandson and wife, granddaughter and husband, great grandson and wife, nephew and wife, grand nephew and wife, great grand niece and husband, great grand nephew and wife, and of course, Gramps, who was in front of everybody. All save Gramps, who was somewhat withered and bent, seemed by pre-antigiarist own standards to be about the same age. Some were in their late twenties or early thirties. Gramps looked older because he had already reached seventy when anti-jarrison was invented. He had not aged in the 102 years since. Meanwhile, the commentator was saying, Council Bluffs' Iowa was still threatened by stark tragedy,

3:05but 200 weary rescue workers have refused to give up hope and continued to dig in an effort to save Albert Haggadorn 183, who has been wedged for two days in a... I wish he'd get something more cheerful. Emerald whispered to Lou. Silence! Gramps, next one shoots off his big bazoo while the TV's on is going to find himself cut off without a dollar. His voice suddenly softened and sweetened. When they, way of that checkered flag at the Indianapolis Speedway and old Gramps gets ready for the big trip up yonder. He sniffed sentimentally, while his ears concentrated desperately are not making the slightest sound. For them, the poignancy of the prospective big trip had been dulled somewhat, who having been mentioned by Gramps about once a day for fifty years. Dr. Brainard Kees-Bullard continued the commentator. President of Wyandotte College said in an address tonight that most of the world's ills can be traced to the fact that man's knowledge of himself

4:07has not kept pace with his knowledge of the physical world. Hell, snorted Gramps. We said that a hundred years ago. In Chicago tonight, the commentator went on. A special celebration is taking place in the Chicago Lying-in Hospital. The guest of honor is Lowell W. Hitz, age zero. Hitz, born this morning, is the twenty-five millionth child to be born in the hospital. The commentator faded and was replaced on the screen by young Hitz, who squalled furiously. Hell, whispered Lou to Emerald. We said that a hundred years ago. I heard that, shouted Gramps. He snapped off the television set, and his petrified descendant stared silently at the screen. You there, boy. I didn't mean anything by it, sir. Said Lou, aged 103. Get me my will. You know where it is. You kids all know where it is. Fetch, boy. Gramps snapped his knalled fingers sharply.

5:08Lou nodded, Dully, and found himself going down the hall, picking his way over bedding to Gramps' room, the only private room in the Ford apartment. The other rooms were the bathroom, the living room, and the wide windowless hallway, which was originally intended to serve as a dining area, and which had a kitchenette in one end. Six mattresses and four sleeping bags were dispersed in the hallway and living room, and the daybed in the living room accommodated the 11th couple, the favorites of the moment. On Gramps' bureau was his will, smeared, doggy, perforated, and blotched with hundreds of additions, deletions, accusations, conditions, warnings, advice, and homely philosophy. The document was, Lou reflected, a fifty-year diary, all jammed onto two sheets, a garbled, illegible log of day after day of strife. This day, Lou would be disinherited for the 11th time, and it would take him perhaps six months of impeccable behavior to regain the promise of a share in the estate,

6:09to say nothing of the daybed in the living room for M and himself. Boy, called Gramps. Coming, sir, Lou hurried back into the living room and handed Gramps the will. Pan, said Gramps. He was instantly offered eleven pans, one from each couple. Not that leaky thing, he said, brushing Lou's pen aside. Ah, there's a nice one. Good boy, Willie. Accepted Willie's pen. That was the tip they'd all been waiting for. Willie then, Lou's father, was the new favorite. Willie, who looked almost as young as Lou, though he was 142, did a poor job of concealing his pleasure. He glanced shyly at the daybed, which would become his, and from which Lou and Emerald would have to move back into the hall, back to the worst spot of all by the bathroom door. Gramps missed none of the high drama he had authored, and he gave his own familiar role everything he had. Frowning and running his finger along each line, as though he was seeing the will for the first time, he read aloud in a deep, portentous monitor like a base note on a cathedral organ.

7:20I, Harold D. Ford, residing in building 257 of Olden Village, New York City, Connecticut. Lou hereby make, publish, and declare this to be my last will and testament, revoking any and all former wills and codicils by me at any time here to form mate. He blew his nose, importantly, and went on, not missing a word, and repeating many for emphasis, repeating in particular his ever more elaborate specifications for a funeral. At the end of these specifications, Gramps was so choked with emotion that Lou thought he might have forgotten why he'd brought out the will in the first place. But Gramps heroically brought his powerful emotions under control, and, after raising for a full minute, began to write and speak at the same time. Lou could have spoken his lines for him, he had heard them so often. I've had many heartbreaks here leaving this veil of tears for a better land. Gramps said and wrote, but the deepest heard of all has been dealt me by.

8:22He looked around the group trying to remember who the malefactor was. Everyone looked helpfully at Lou, who held up his hand resigningly. Gramps nodded, remembering, and completed the sentence, my great grandson, Louis J. Ford. Gramps answered, said Lou, don't quibble, you're in deep enough now young man, said Gramps, but he made the change. And, from there, he went without a misstep through the phrasing of the disinheritance, causes for which were disrespectfulness and quibbling. In the paragraph following, the paragraph that a billonged to everyone in the room at one time or another, Lou's name was scratched out and Willie's substituted as air to the apartment head, the biggest plumber of all, the double bed in the private bedroom. So, said Gramps, beaming. He raised the date at the foot of the will and substituted a new one, including the time of day. Well, time to watch the Magarvi family. The Magarvi family was a television serial that Gramps had been following since he was sixty, or for a total of 112 years.

9:30I can't wait as he was going to happen next, he said. Lou detached himself from the group and lay down on his bed of pain by the bathroom door. Wishing Anne would join him, he wondered where she was. He dosed for a few moments, until he was disturbed by someone stepping over him to get into the bathroom. A moment later he heard a faint, gurgling sound, as though something were being poured down the wash basin drain. Suddenly, it entered his mind that Anne had cracked up that she was in there doing something drastic about Gramps. Anne? He whispered through the panel. There was no reply, and Lou pressed against the door. The worn lock whose bolt barely engaged at socket held for a second, and let the door swing inward. Morty? Gasped Lou. Lou's great-grand-nerfew, Mortimer, who had just married and brought his wife home to the Ford Manage, looked at Lou with consternation and surprise. Morty kicked the door shut, but not before Lou had glimpsed what was in his hand.

10:33Gramps enormous, economy-sized bottle of anti-jarrison, which had apparently been half-emptied, and which Morty was refilling with tap water. A moment later Morty came out, the air defiantly at Lou and brushed past him wordlessly to rejoin his pretty bride. Shocked? Lou didn't know what to do. He couldn't let Gramps take the mouse-trapped anti-jarrison, but if he warned Gramps about it, Gramps would certainly make life in the apartment which was merely insufferable now, harrowing. Lou glanced into the living room, and saw that the Fords, amrled among them, were momentarily at rest, relishing the botches that the MacGarvis had made of their lives. Stelthily, he went into the bathroom, locked the door as well as he could, and began to pour the contents of Gramps' bottle down the drain. He was going to refill it with full-strength anti-jarrison from the 22 smaller bottles on the shelf. The bottle contained a half gallon, and its neck was small, so it seemed to Lou that the emptying would take forever, and the almost imperceptible smell of anti-jarrison, like Worcestershire sauce, now seemed to Lou in his nervousness to be pouring out into the rest of the apartment through the keyhole and under the door.

11:48The bottle googled monotonously. Suddenly, up came the sound of music from the living room, and there were murmurs in the scraping of chair legs on the floor. The television announcer, the 29,121st chapter in the life of your neighbours in mine, the MacGarvis. Footsteps were coming down the hall. There was a knock on the bathroom door. Just a sec, Lou cheerly called out. Desperately he shook the big bottle, trying to speed up the flow. His palm slipped on the wet glass, and the heavy bottle smashed on the tile floor. The door was pushed open, and Graham's dam-founded stared at the incriminating mess. Lou felt a hideous prickling sensation on his scalp, and the back of his neck. He grinned, engaging glutherous nausea, and, for one of anything remotely resembling a thought, waited for Graham's to speak. Well, boy, said Graham's at last. Looks like you've got a little tidying up to do.

12:51And that was all he said. He turned around, elbowed his way through the crowd, and locked himself in his bedroom. The Ford's contemplated Lou and incredulous silence a moment longer, and then harried back to the living room, as though some of his horrible guilt would taint them too if they looked too long. Morty stayed behind long enough to give Lou a quizzical annoyed glance. Then he also went into the living room, leaving only emerald standing in the doorway. Tears streamed over her cheeks. Oh, you poor lamb. Please don't look so awful. It was my fault. I put you up to this with my nagging about grounds. No, said Lou, finding his voice. Really, you didn't. Honest him. I was just... You don't have to explain anything to me, hon. I'm on your side, no matter what. She kissed him on one cheek, and whispered in his ear. It wouldn't have been murder, hon. It wouldn't have killed him. It wasn't such a terrible thing to do. It just would have fixed him up so he'd be able to go any time God decided he wanted him.

13:55What's going to happen next, then? Said Lou, hollily. What's he going to do? Lou and emerald stayed fearfully awake almost all night, waiting to see what Gramps was going to do. But not a sound came from the sacred bedroom. Two hours before dawn, they finally dropped off to sleep. At six o'clock, they arose again. For it was time for their generation to eat breakfast in the kitchenette. No one spoke to them. They had twenty minutes in which to eat, but their reflexes were so dull by the bad night, but they had hardly swallowed two mouthfuls of egg-type process seaweed, before it was time to surrender their places to their son's generation. Then, as was the custom for whoever had been most recently disinherited, they began preparing Gramps breakfast, which would presently be served to him in bed on a tray. They tried to be cheerful about it. The toughest part of the job was having to handle the honest to good eggs and bacon and all your marghering on, which Gramps spent so much of the income from his fortune.

14:57Well, said emerald, I'm not going to get all panicky until I'm sure there's something to be panicky about. Maybe he doesn't know what it was I busted. Lou said, hopefully, probably thinks it was your watch, Crystal. Offered Eddie, her son, who was towing apathetically with his buckwheat-type process so-dust cakes. Don't get sarcastic with your father, said em, and don't talk with your mouthful either. I'd like to see anybody take a mouthful of this stuff and not say something. Complain, Eddie, who was 73? He glanced at the clock. It's time to take Gramps' breakfast, you know. Yeah, it is, isn't it? So Lou, weekly. He shrugged. Let's have the tray, eh? We'll both go. Walking slowly, smiling bravely, they found a large semicircle of long-faced Ford standing around the bedroom door. Em knocked. Gramps, she called brightly. Breakfast is ready. There was no reply, and she knocked again harder.

15:57The doors swung open before her fist. In the middle of the room, a soft, deep, wide, canopied bed, a symbol of the sweet, biambide, who every Ford was empty. A sense of death as unfamiliar to the Ford's as zoroastrianism or the causes of the seapoy mutiny, still every voice slowed every heart. Orde, the ears began to search gingerly, under the furniture and behind the drapes, for all that was mortal of Gramps, father of the clan. But Gramps had left not his earthly husk, but a note, which Lou finally found on the dresser, under a paperweight, which was a treasured souvenir from the world's fair of 2000. Unsteadily, Lou read it aloud. Somebody, who I have sheltered and protected, and taught the best I know how all these years, last night turned on me like a mad dog, and diluted my anti-jera-zone, or tried to. I am no longer a young man. I can no longer bear the crushing burden of life as I once could. So, after last night's bitter experience, I say goodbye.

17:05The cares of this world will soon drop away like a cloak of thorns, and I shall know peace. By the time you find this, I will be gone. Gosh, said Willie brokenly. He didn't even get to see how the 5,000-mile speedway race was going to come out. Or the solar series, Eddie said, with large, mournful eyes. Or whether Mrs. McGarvey got her eyesight back, added multi. There's more, said Lou, and they began reading aloud again. I, Harold D. Ford, et cetera, do, hereby make, publish and declare this to be my last will in testament, revoking any and all former wills and quotasils by me at any time here to for-made. No, cried Willie. Not another one. I do stipulate, red-loo, that all of my property of whatsoever kind and nature not be divided, but do devise and bequeath it to be held in common by my issue without regard for generation equally, share and share alike.

18:07Issue, said Emerald. Lou included the multitude in a sweep of his hand. It means we all own the old damn shooting match. Each eye turned instantly to the bed. Share and share alike, asked Malti. Actually, said Willie, who was the oldest one present, is just like the old system, or the oldest people had up things with their headquarters in here, and I like that, exclaimed him, loons as much of it as you do, and I say it ought to be for the oldest one who's still working. You can snooze around here all day waiting for your pension check while poor Lou stumbles in here after work all tuckered out, and how about letting somebody who's never had any privacy get little crack at it? Eddie demanded hotly. Hell, you old people have plenty of privacy back when you were kids. I was born and raised in the middle of that goddamn barracks in the hall. How about... Yeah, challenged Malti. Sure, you've all had it pretty tough, and my heart bleeds for you. But try honeymooning in the hall for a real kick. Silence!

19:10Chanted willy empiricly. The next person who opens his mouth spends the next six months by the bathroom. Now clear out of my room, I want to think. They shattered against the wall, inches above his head. In the next moment of free for all was underway, with each coupled battling to eject every other couple from the room. Fighting coalitions formed and dissolved with the lightning changes of the tactical situation. M and Lou were thrown into the hall where they organized others in the same situation and stormed back into the room. After two hours of struggle with nothing like a decision in sight, the cops broke in, followed by television cameramen from mobile units. For the next half hour, Patrol wagons and ambulances hauled away forwards, and then the apartment was still, and spacious. An hour later, films of the last stages of the riot were being televised to 500 million delighted viewers on the eastern seaboard. In the stillness of the three room Ford apartment on the 76th floor of building 257, the television set had been left on.

20:18Once more, the air was filled with the cries and grunts and crashes of the fray, coming harmlessly now from the loudspeaker. The battle also appeared on the screen of the television set in the police station, where the Ford's and their captors watched with professional interest. M and Lou and adjacent four by eight cells were stretched out peacefully on their cuts. M called Lou through the partition. You got a wash basin all your own, too? Sure, wash basin, bed, light, the works, and we thought Graham's room was something. How long has this been going on? She held out her hand. For the first time in forty years, huh, I haven't got the shakes. Look at me! Cross your fingers, said Lou. The Lord is going to try to get us a year. Gee, M said dreamily. I wonder what kind of wires you'd have to pull to get put away in solitary. All right, pipe down, said the tonke. Or I'll toss the whole kid and kaboodle of you right out.

21:18A first one will add something to anybody outside how good Jailies ain't never getting back in. The prison has instantly fell silent. The living room of the apartment darkened for a moment as the riot scenes faded on the television screen, and then the face of the announcer appeared like the sun coming from behind a cloud. And now, friends, he said, I have a special message from the makers of anti-Jarison. A message for all you folks over 150. Are you hampered socially by wrinkles, by stiffness of joints, and discoloration, or loss of hair? Well, because these things came upon you before anti-Jarison was developed? Well, if you are, you need no longer suffer, need no longer feel different and out of things. After years of research, medical sciences now developed super anti-Jarison. In weeks, yes, weeks, you can look, feel and act as young as your great-great-grandchildren. Wouldn't you pay $5,000 to be indistinguishable from everybody else? Well, you don't have to.

22:24Safe, tested, super anti-Jarison costs you only a few dollars a day. Right now for your free trial, Carton. Just put your name and address on the dollar postcard and mail it to Super. Box $500,000 is connected in New York. Have you got that? I repeat it. Super. Box $500,000. Undaligning the announcer's words was the scratching of Gramps' pen, the one willy had given him the night before. He had come in a few minutes earlier from the I'd-Lower Tavan, which commanded a view of building 257 from across the square of asphalt known as the Olden Village Green. He had called a cleaning woman to come straight in the place up, and had hired the best lawyer in town to get his descendants a conviction, a genius who had never gotten a client less than a year and a day. Gramps had then moved the day bed before the television screen so that he could watch from a reclining position. It was something he dreamed of doing for years. Sconnack today. Moment, Gramps. Got it.

23:25His face had changed remarkably. His facial muscles seemed to have relaxed, revealing kindness and equanimity under what had been taught lines of bad temper. It was almost as though his trial package of super anti-Jarison had already arrived. When something amused him on television, he smiled easily, rather than barely managing to lengthen the thin line of his mouth a millimeter. Life was good. He could hardly wait to see what was going to happen next. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to support our work, you can find horror-babbling easily with a quick online search, or by seeking us out on Patreon, Bandcamp or YouTube. Our content is available across multiple platforms in various formats, videos, audiobooks and podcasts. We appreciate your support.

24:35You