LoveStar by Andri Snaer Magnason Page B

rockets lying around in the old superpower territories, just waiting to be put into service for LoveDeath. And it was no more difficult to launch a rocket in a gale-force blizzard up in Oxnadalur than it was to land a jumbo jet at Keflavik airport in the same conditions. It was all a question of money and marketing, possessing the energy to produce cheap hydrogen, and launching enough rich and famous people to attract the public’s attention and create a mood. It was a question of the right man getting the idea. LoveStar did not actually need to know much himself. He had long given up working with his original field of study: the navigation skills and brain functioning of Arctic terns, butterflies, and bees. He didn’t need to be an expert in hydrogen, launchpads, astronomy, solar winds, or cloud-drift. This knowledge could be bought. All he needed was the idea, a clear aim, funding, and the power of persuasion to drive a team of people to one goal. He didn’t need advice or expensive opinion polls; he felt instinctively what would work and made it work.
    The salesmen from LoveDeath’s Mood Division sat oozing sympathy at the deathbeds of movie heroes and rock stars. They darkened the wards, turned on their laptops, and projected impressive interactive publicity films.
    â€œLoveDeath will be a brilliant publicity coup for you; it’s still so new that the launch will make international headlines. We’ll make sure that a clip from your music video will be played during the evening news and, if you’re lucky, a greatest hits CD will be released all over the world.”
    â€œIt was only one song, I only had one hit,” sighed the aged star on his deathbed.
    â€œIt’ll be re-released. The record sales alone will pay for LoveDeath in a week. You’ll make a killing from this. Your name will be immortal. It’ll live on among the stars.”
    At LoveDeath things were worded the right way and put in the right context. LoveDeath made death cleaner, grander, more glamorous, and simpler. It saved on land area. There was no grave to neglect, no guilt about weeds, no headstone to buy later. No stench, no horror or grinning skulls.
    Creeping worms and grinning skulls became forever linked to the old method in people’s minds after a successful advertising campaign in the early days of LoveDeath. The campaign’s flagship was the award-winning advertisement Rotting Mother :
    The first year beneath the soil is shown speeded up. A young mother is lowered in her coffin into a cold grave; her beautiful body blows up, turns blue, and rots, and in fast-forward her body seems to know no rest—it writhes and swells and her face is gnawed away by maggots until her corpse seems to scream. Then came the new method:
    CLEAR SKY
    SHOOTING STAR
    LOVEDEATH
    The clean method. Cleanness mattered. A simple, beautiful idea. LoveDeath was beautiful and the concept was easy to grasp even for children who couldn’t understand why someone who was supposed to go to heaven should be buried in the ground.
    Child: Mommy! Where do the bad people go?
    Mother: They go to hell.
    Child: Where’s hell?
    Mother: Hell’s under the earth.
    Child: Is Granny going to hell, then?
    Mother: No, she’s going to heaven.
    Child: Why was she put in the ground, then?
    Mother: Oh, you’ll understand when you’re older.
    Announcer: LoveDeath, now everyone can go to heaven for only thirty thousand points* (*per month for twelve years)
    LoveDeath: The high point of life!
    Â­â€” Dramatized radio advertisement —
    The old method paled in comparison to LoveDeath. How can your granny, who’s underground, buried in hell, be soaring in heaven like an angel? No, it didn’t make sense. The old idea was not clean. The explanation was too far-fetched: the substance here, the spirit there. Was that an appropriate end to a beautiful life? To be lowered into a cold grave? To send your loved one to their