Jailbird

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It was like an emergency ward after a great catastrophe. It did not matter what race or class the victims belonged to. They were all given the same miracle drug, which was coffee. The catastrophe in this case, of course, was that the sun had come up again.

She said she sneaked into bars and department stores and motel lobbies to listen to the news on television, but that the sets were almost never tuned to the news. Sometimes she would hear a snatch of news on somebody’s portable radio, but the person owning it usually switched to music as soon as the news began.

You could not get into heaven until you had submitted to a full review of how well you had handled the business opportunities God, through His angels, had offered to you on Earth.

All happiness is religious, I have to think sometimes.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You couldn’t help it that you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed—so you were a good man just the same.”

We are here for no purpose, unless we can invent one. Of that I am sure. The human condition in an exploding universe would not have been altered one iota if, rather than live as I have, I had done nothing but carry a rubber ice-cream cone from closet to closet for sixty years.