LoveStar by Andri Snaer Magnason

could wonder about the fish, the balloon had reached the right height, the wire grounded the Northern Lights, and a blazing electric river was sucked down the copper wire like a whirlpool down a drain. The mast stood blue as a welding torch in the darkness and the power lines hummed and crackled as the energy surged north along them to LoveDeath. Einar went back into the hut and turned out the light.
    Indridi and Sigrid were left behind and watched the balloon glowing like a lightbulb or extra moon with a vortex spiralling around it. They listened to the hum as the energy streamed to earth and watched the odd flash of lightning dart around the wire. Indridi began to think about the float and river again. The old man had emptied the river like the bull in the folktale, while the stars lay like goldfish on the black riverbed. All around they saw balloons popping up from the mountaintops. LoveStar twinkled brighter than ever behind its cloud and a star fell.
    â€œSomeone just died,” they both thought as one. Sigrid’s eyes brimmed with tears, as it wasn’t long since her great-grandmother, Kristoline, had gone the way of all flesh with LoveDeath.
    When Kristoline died she was not simply lowered into a cold grave to rot away. Kristoline had been saving up for LoveDeath for a whole decade. Once all sign of life had vanished from the screen, they closed her eyes, and Indridi comforted Sigrid while the old woman was taken by lift down to a branch of LoveDeath in the hospital basement. A woman in a black flight-attendant uniform dressed Kristoline in a silver costume and put her in the black refrigeration unit outside.
    The daily yield of the dead was collected from the city at 5:30 pm, and a transport truck thundered north with the bodies, turning left just before the theme park at a road sign that read:

    The truck drove into a tunnel at the foot of the mountain and came to a stop in a white-scoured dome. In the middle stood an angled rocket with the words “LoveDeath” printed along its side. The rocket struck an odd note in the polished surroundings, looking fairly battered after countless launches and rough landings on land and sea. The doors of the craft stood open and Kristoline was rolled inside on a conveyor belt along with all the other individuals that the country had yielded that day, in addition to a large crop of Faroe Islanders, Danes, and Norwegians, who had already been loaded on board.
    Indridi, Sigrid, and her family took their seats in a gallery on the fifty-seventh floor of the LoveDeath wing of the LoveStar theme park. There was a spectacular view through the glass wall over the glacier, the airships, and the launchpads lined up along the mountain peaks on the western side of the valley. Children ran and bounced cheerfully round the gallery after an exciting day in the company of Larry LoveDeath, a remorselessly cheery bunny in a space suit. A day spent with him helped them gloss over the shock of death. In fact it was so successful that there were few things children found more exciting than LoveDeath: “Great-grandma! When are you going to LoveDeath?” Sigrid’s little cousin had asked Kristoline relentlessly in recent years. “My friend’s lucky. She’s met Larry LoveDeath four times.”
    Straggling from the shopping mall with their half-liter bottles of Coke, the teenagers slumped sulkily in the corner, played computer games on their lenses, or hung out on chat lines while their mothers scolded: “Your grandmother is making her grand exit, Magnus dear, will you please pay attention!”
    The men got themselves beers at the bar before the big moment arrived and all eyes were fixed on the window. In the bowels of the mountain to the west of the valley the iron doors closed. The hydrogen rocket fuel ignited, and the earth shook as it lifted slowly off the peak before shooting up into the sky on a vast column of fire and smoke. Grieving yet captivated, the