Utopia, Inc.

by James LePore (December 2018)

The Abyss, James LePore

You have reached Utopia, Inc., your World Government-contracted resource for all of your needs.

Please listen carefully as our menu has changed.

For reservations at any of our way station hotels, spas or residences, including our brand new Euphoria Villas, press one.

To speak to a guest at any of our way station hotels, spas or residences, press two.

For technical support for any body part under warranty, please listen to the following sub-menu:

Enter your warranty number and then choose from the following:

For central nervous system, press one.

For musculoskeletal system, press two.

For the heart, liver and kidneys, press three.

For all other organs, including reproductive organs, press four.

For the endocrine system, press five.

If you are not sure which category fits your part, press six.

For non-warrantied parts, please hang up and dial 911.

If you believe in a Supreme Being, but are having doubts, press three.

If you are an atheist, but are having doubts, press four.

If you need extra piety credits, enter your SJW number and choose from the following:

To enter our Change of Color program, press one.

To volunteer to write slogans on coffee cups, press two.

To volunteer to bring toilet paper to Venezuela, press three.

To volunteer to become a doctor in Cuba, press four.

To volunteer to become a patient in Cuba, press five.

If you would like to leave the country you are living in and then return illegally, press five. (To be eligible for benefits under this program your total net worth must be under two million dollars).

If you would like to be on the Global Commission for Human Rights, press six. (Enrollment in this program is currently restricted to Iranians and members of ISIS).

If you would like to become the Secretary General of the United Nations, press seven.

If you would like to listen to the rest of this recorded message in a voice of a different gender, press eight. (You will have 76 genders to choose from, including none. If you choose none, the voice you hear will be randomly chosen by a randomly-chosen computer built at our fully unionized, government owned COEXIST factory in Cambridge, Massachusetts).

If you would like to become the president of Yale University, press nine.

If you would like to attend Yale University, press ten.

If you would like to apply for a license to hunt and kill global warming deniers, press eleven.

If you would like to speak to one of our assisted suicide technicians, press twelve. (You must be thirteen or older to participate in this program. If you are not thirteen or older, you must have the recorded permission of your legal guardian or a random stranger over the age of thirteen).

If you would like to be the Attorney General of the United States, press fourteen.

If you would like to be on the United States Supreme Court, press fifteen.

If you would like to join Augusta National Golf Club, press sixteen.

If you would like to live out your life without having to listen to this recording or another like it ever again, press seventeen. (You will be visited by a government officer who will ask you a series of questions related to your negative attitude).

If you would like to speak to an agent, please send a written request to your nearest Utopia, Inc. field office. Your letter will be burned while the office staff drinks vodka and arranges to have you and your entire bloodline tortured and killed.

________________________________
James LePore practiced law for twenty-plus years, then turned to writing fiction and taking pictures full time in 1999. In 2009, his first novel, A World I Never Made, was published by The Story Plant. Four others, in what LePore calls The Invictus Cycle followed. He has written a book of short stories called Anyone Can Die, a volume of flash fiction (Blood, Light and Time) that evolved from a series of blog posts, and three historical novels with the screenwriter Carlos Davis, featuring J.R.R. Tolkien and Ian Fleming in WW2 espionage adventures. His most recent books are the novellas Breathe in Grace and Eyes of a Wolf. His website is here.