Imagine, if you will, that Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol has been adapted into an allegory about NASA. Follow Senator Ebenezer Scrooge (R - Alabama) as he is taken on a magical journey through time and space, witnessing events as they occurred, are occuring, and will occur if the status quo continues.
"Good morning, Senator Scrooge!" Senate staffer Bob Cratchit was already hard at work at his desk, having arrived hours before anyone else to get a leg-up on the day. The Senator's perennial scowl did not lighten for a moment, nor his head incline even the slightest toward Cratchit as he replied, "And what's good about it, Cratchit? How is this day any different than any other?"
Scrooge already knew the answer to this question, and indeed Cratchit's desk and wall were cluttered with Apollo 11 memorabilia - a scale model of the Eagle, a poster of Earthrise, and even his tie was solid blue with a large NASA logo right in the center. "Why, it's the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landings, sir!"
Scrooge snickered in contempt. "Bah, humbug! They used my tax money to gallivant around a rock garden - money that should have been used to napalm the Commies and shoot hippies. And I thought you were a liberal, Cratchit - wouldn't you rather they spent the money on lazy poor people and those socialist schools you love so much?"
Cratchit looked up from his Blackberry in puzzlement. "Umm, Senator Scrooge, Apollo 11 was an example of what public education is for, and something people around the world could aspire to; an event lifting people's spirits beyond their daily concerns." Scrooge's reply was muttered under his breath as he turned away, "...humbug. Who's my first meeting of the day, Cratchit?" "The NASA administrator, sir."
***
Admin: Good morning, Senator.
Scrooge: hmph
Admin: I was hoping to talk to you about the COTS program.
Scrooge: What about it?
Admin: Well, I know that you're blocking stimulus funding going to the program, and...
Scrooge: And I shall continue to to do so. If the space cadets at SpaceX think they can do a better job of making rockets than the dedicated cost-plus contractors in Huntsville, whose generous campaign donations I am honored to accept, let them do so without public funding. In fact, I don't even know why we allow them to launch at all - we already have launch companies, and they are always punctual with their campaign contributions.
Admin: But, sir, the Space Shuttle will be retiring in a year. Without the potential presented by COTS, America will have no independent spaceflight capability - we will have to buy flights from Russia.
Scrooge: That is not the case. Our boys in Huntsville are working on the Ares...
Admin: (giggle)
Scrooge: Sure, it's way over budget, conceptually flawed, will take years longer to be realized than much cheaper, quicker, and more productive options...but it's in Alabama! I am the Senator from Alabama! And even if it never works at all, the money will still have been spent in my state. What part of this are you not getting?
Admin: Sir, if American space is allowed to fall apart, the businesses you're talking about will disappear.
Scrooge: Then give Marshall the money they need to make a thoroughly ridiculous architecture marginally functional, and stop trying to undermine their efforts with rational proposals like COTS-D.
Admin: Sir, you have a monkey's shit for brains.
Scrooge: What?
Admin: I said, give me a call if you change your mind.
***
Senator Scrooge was relaxing in the Senate lounge after hours, puffing smoke rings from his favorite brand of cigar as the last of his colleagues departed. It had been a particularly lucrative day of meetings with lobbyists, and with the exception of the NASA administrator, a lot of fun. He took a puff, then swirled a sip of aged scotch around in his mouth, savoring the flavor and the solitude. But just then a weird, recurrent sound began outside in the hallway.
Clink...clank...clink...clank...
It began far away, but slowly drew nearer and louder. The sound was metallic, and all along accompanied by a slow shuffling sound, as of someone dragging their feet. Scrooge assumed the night custodian was doing some maintenance work, and wasn't taking care to be quiet because he didn't know there were still people in the building. As it drew nearer, it began to annoy him. "Hey, keep it down at there!" For a moment, the clanking stopped...and then the door flew open, and standing before him covered in chains and grime was...
...SEAN O'KEEFE!
Scrooge jumps out of his chair, knocking his scotch glass on to the floor. "What the fuck?" O'Keefe's eyes stare owl-like; he is disheveled, and he slowly inches toward the Senator with his chains scratching along the floor. After a few moments, Scrooge realizes who it is and his puzzlement deepens - "Mr. O'Keefe, what the hell is going on here? What are you doing here, and why are you dressed like that?" O'Keefe blinks a few times, and then in a low, moaning voice, begins to speak:
"My dinner was tainted with mescaline. Meeeeeeeeescaline. At first it was enjoyable, but then a talking mailbox told me to pass along this message to you: That you will be visited by three spirits tonight." O'Keefe then seemed to look down at his chains in sorrow. "These chains, Oh these chains! At first I put them on as armor to protect me from the legion of onion people who were coming after me, but now I see they are a metaphor for my failures as NASA Administrator. You've got quite a chain growing yourself."
For a moment, Scrooge looked bemused and uncertain how to proceed. Then he grabbed the nearest phone and dialed the security desk. "Yeah, this is Senator Scrooge in the lounge. We need an ambulance here right away." He hung up the phone, and decided to keep O'Keefe talking to keep him from going apeshit or doing anything that would result in bad publicity later. "What do you mean your 'failures'? I thought you did a superb job, keeping the focus right where it should be - bean-counting and keeping your contractors happy."
O'Keefe moaned in anguish, "Ohhhhhhhhhh" and shook his chains. "Advancing mankind into space was my job, but instead I held it back, just as you are now doing." Just then paramedics ran through the door, and O'Keefe panicked. "Oh, no! The onion people!" He then ran toward the other side of the room and jumped out the window, shattering the glass. Senator Scrooge and the paramedics both rushed to the window to see if he was okay, but he had apparently landed well, and was up and running off into the distance in seconds, shaking his chains and screaming at random passers-by.
***
Scrooge was tossing and turning in his bed, his mind swirling with the events of the day. Had it been someone's idea of a joke, sending O'Keefe to him in an altered state after he had showed the new NASA admin who's boss? Normally he had a sixth sense for the political angles, but this day's madness just wasn't clicking. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something move...nope, nothing. He sank back on to the pillow and closed his eyes. "Zis is a nice house, ja?" Scrooge leapt out of bed and turned the light, eyes wide in alert. A man in an outdated suit was standing by the door. "Please allow me to introduce myzelf - I am Dr. Wernher Von Braun. Und I am here as ze Ghost of NASA Past."
"Otis!" The Senator yelled for his bodyguard, and pushed the panic button by his bed. Von Braun stood impassively, but seemed amused. After yelling a few more times and getting no response, Scrooge then picked up the phone, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on the intruder...only to find no dial tone. He then tried his cell phone, only to find it was getting no reception. "How did you get in here?"
"Ze physics of ze time-traveling ghost are very interestink, und I vould love to discuss zem, but ve don't have ze time, ja?." Scrooge began looking around in confusion, trying to figure out what might be causing these weird experiences. Scrooge avoided Von Braun's gaze as he said, "You're not real. I'm dreaming, or having a stroke, or something."
Von Braun chuckled. "If so, you must be a pretty strange person to be hallucinating Wernher Von Braun. As I said, I am ze Ghost of ze NASA Past, and I am here to show you vut NASA vas vunce like. You ver zere, but you heff clearly forgotten. Zo, let's go." Von Braun straightened his tie, and suddenly they were no longer in the Senator's bedroom, but in a muddy rural field. The dirt underfoot was reddish under the hot Sun, and Army Jeeps were parked outside a few low, dilapidated military buildings. Scrooge recognized the place immediately by the smell of the air, and the color of the dirt - Northern Alabama. At first he was shocked and disturbed, but as he had always felt good going home, the atmosphere softened his fear. If this was a dream or a hallucination, at least it had turned somewhat pleasant.
"Zis is ze spot ver President Eisenhower vill announce ze creation of NASA, just a few years from now, and rename ze place Marshall Spaceflight Center. Got a good enough look at it?" Von Braun straightened his tie, and the scene shifted again - the immediate area was now paved over, with several buildings nearby and completed Saturn V stages being loaded on to special vehicles for transport to Florida. At seeing the Saturn V stage, Von Braun sighed as if remembering a lost love. "Zat's a good rocket, ja? But some idiot sought it would be better to just srow it away und build a Space Spruce Goose. Oh vell. Zat is anuzzer story."
Another tie-straightening, and they were now in Mission Control in Houston. No one was moving or even visibly breathing, and for an instant Scrooge wondered if Von Braun was presenting a moment frozen in time - but then he noticed that lights on the control panels were blinking. "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." It was as if the Sun had risen on all the faces in the room, cheers erupted, handshakes passed between the stations, and the glow was palpable. Incalculably enhancing that glow was the knowledge that hundreds of millions of people around the world were feeling the same thing. The ghost of Von Braun was himself grinning widely, seeming more alive than at any point since Scrooge first saw him. "I vish I could stay here forever, but..." At this, he once again straightened his tie, and a different Mission Control appeared around them.
The people working the stations now had longer sideburns, and some of the equipment was different. There was nothing like the atmosphere of tension before, and the reporter's viewing gallery was empty. Glancing around the room, Scrooge saw an Apollo 17 mission logo. Over the com came a different voice, received crisply: "As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come — but we believe not too long into the future — I'd like to just say what I believe history will record — that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17." A few faces turned somber at these words, suddenly seeing the tragedy that had been obscured behind checklists and routine issues.
A lone tear fell from Von Braun's eye on to his jacket. "Vell, I vould show you vut comes after, but I cannot stand ze boredom. Nussing has really changed since zis tragic moment, zo I will leave zat horrible interregnum up to your next visitor. But hopefully you appreciate vut it is zat has been lost." Von Braun loosened his tie, and Scrooge found himself back in bed with the lights off, as if nothing had happened. For several minutes he just stared at the ceiling, the smells and images of the past swirling in his head, but slowly he began to rationalize and dismiss it all as silly dreams from the edge of sleep. He decided to get up and have a night cap to chase away the confusion, but was stopped cold when, removing the covers, he saw that his bare feet were covered in red dirt.
Unable to think of a sensible rationalization, Scrooge just laid back down, stared at the ceiling, and went over the visions again and again. He didn't notice the time passing, and was not aware that he had spent an entire hour cycling in his mind through the scenes Von Braun had shown him. In fact, he was so engrossed in his thoughts, that he didn't even notice it at first when there was suddenly an astronaut in an orange spacesuit and reflective-visored helmet standing at the foot of his bed. How long had it been standing there before it registered on his mind? Scrooge realized he should be spooked by the appearance, but it was such a non sequitur - a bright orange spacesuit amid all the polished wood furniture - that it simply didn't have that effect.
"I suppose you're the visitor Von Braun told me to expect?" Scrooge said it with profound annoyance. The voice that answered sounded as if it came from a radio com, seemingly omni-directional and attended by bursts of static and beeps denoting the beginning and end of transmission: "We are." There was an odd harmonic quality to the voice, as of several people speaking in perfect sync. "We are the Ghost of NASA Present." Just then, Scrooge caught a glimpse of two mission patches on the suit's arms: STS-51-L, and STS-107. He didn't recognize the designations off the top of his head, but had a chilling intuition about which two missions they signified. He was now thoroughly creeped out, and was glad for the reflective visor on the suit.
Just then the gloved hand reached up to the visor and began raising it. "Oh shit," Scrooge moaned. But instead of any of the horrors that his imagination had conjured, a flood of mundane images and scenes of NASA bureaucracy filled his mind, projected from the open helmet. Project, after project, after project cancelled. Study, after study, after study undertaken and then shelved without any real consideration. Cheap, efficient solutions that could be implemented immediately, simply ignored. The post-Apollo malaise and make-work missions flooded his mind: Apollo-Soyuz, whose only purpose was to use up stocked hardware left over from the Moon program. Skylab, turning astronauts into what they would become from now on: Specialty lab technicians, rather than explorers or pioneers.
Then came the Shuttle, and all the Byzantine political threads behind its development became simultaneously known to him. The government had never really believed in space exploration to begin with, and having reached the Moon the motivation of American supremacy no longer existed. Apollo was cancelled and the last pretense of manned exploration dissolved, but...huge business interests and bureaucracies had evolved and grown fat on the money from Project Apollo, and had no desire to go extinct. Believing in nothing, but hungering for money just the same, they began to look for a way back in - something gimmicky and flashy. We couldn't go back to the Moon, because we had already been there and there was no impetus to go back. Couldn't go to Mars - the expense would be politically impossible.
Eventually it was figured out that destinations weren't even necessary, and in fact were detrimental to business: They bring too much attention, involve too much danger, and once reached, the political will to continue going collapses. Just staying in orbit and doing make-work is much better for business - keep the infrastructure humming, the contracts flowing, and the lobbying grease going to Washington. But the public still has to be given some kind of excitement to go along with the initial expenditures, so it should be a flashy new vehicle. Something that looks really cool and says "future," even if underneath it's the most baroque contraption ever built. A spaceplane, that's the ticket!
So the studies done on spaceplanes and lifting bodies are dug up, sky-high promises about new political support are loosely bandied about, and naive engineers spoiled on Apollo begin to think they'll actually be allowed to build a functioning RLV. Pretty soon the money spigot is once again flowing to Marshall Spaceflight Center and other once-venerable institutions turned parasitic zombies, and the Space Transportation System (STS, aka Shuttle) is born on paper. Suddenly reality is involved in what had been a purely intellectual exercise, and decisions have to be made - and when they're made, they're made by bureaucrats and politicians, because who really cares what an engineer thinks? Scrooge witnesses the following exchange:
Engineer: Well, it turns out we're going to need a couple of more years of development on that component to get it as cheap and reliable as planned.
Bureaucrat: Are there alternatives?
Engineer: Sure. (chuckle) We can hack together a super-expensive system on the fly that works on a wing and a prayer, but there won't be any cost savings, and it'll contribute nothing to reliability or reusability.
Bureaucrat: We're already experiencing some schedule slippage, and we need to keep that to a minimum if we can. Go with the one you know you can do now.
Engineer: Uh, I was kidding when I offered that option. It seems to me we're making a lot of decisions that have nothing to do with the alleged purpose of the program. I mean, the entire point of this system is cheapness and reliability, but we don't seem to be investing anything in either.
Bureaucrat: You're not going to get promoted with that attitude, buddy-boy. Now just build something that looks cool and doesn't blow up on its maiden flight and we're good.
A vast assortment of other scenes and images played out in Scrooge's mind, including events he himself had participated in, cancelling or underfunding programs that would have greatly advanced human spaceflight because they were competing with existing programs at Marshall. Once the public got used to seeing the Shuttle, other gimmicks had to be invented without adding much additional risk or inspiring too much attention. "(Insert noun) in Space." Sex in space? Nonononono! Way, way too much attention! Plants in space, insects in space, mice in space, exercise in space, cool new suits to do spacewalks with, yeah, that's the ticket. But...people feel like this has nothing to do with them, so let's throw them a bone. Teachers in Space! Let's have a contest and let some nobody hitch a ride; it'll make the plebs feel warm and fuzzy, and convince the space nuts we actually give a shit.
Just then the torrent of imagery ceased, and was replaced by a single scene. Scrooge could see and experience everything as if he was there, but he had no physical presence, and perceived as a disembodied entity. He was in the Shuttle cockpit as it ascended. The astronauts were in their orange flight suits, and everything vibrated while the engines fired and the SRBs were still attached. Suddenly the loudest sound he had ever heard roared through the cockpit, and everything jerked with bone-shattering violence. The scene was too chaotic to tell what kind of state the astronauts were in, whether they were still conscious or not, but after long seconds of intensely violent motion, all was still and loose debris floated around. Earth and sky wheeled and traded places continuously outside the windows. Scrooge couldn't tell whether the movements of the crew were conscious or the flailing of falling rag-dolls - the suits were too bulky and the light changed too rapidly to really know. The scene cut out with startling abruptness, plainly signifying the point at which the cabin had hit the Atlantic ocean.
For a moment, all was quiet. Then the recriminations, finger-pointing, budget threats, excuses, investigations, empty promises, and finally, deliberate amnesia. He saw, as if traced with a brilliant red marker, the direct path from the circumstances of the Shuttle's creation to the scene he had just witnessed, and saw that that path continued. Rather than being allowed to explore; rather than creating new possibilities; NASA was just the servant of zombie contractors.
Their gimmicks wore ever thinner, until it became obvious that the Shuttle would have to do something in order to rationalize its continued existence. Not explore, of course - that would be anathema. But something as mundane and expensive as possible - the absolute maximum of banal expenditure: A space station. In fact, maybe we can get other countries involved, so that we can suckle off the teat of every major space program on Earth! With a space station, it's like killing two birds with one stone: It's a "destination," yet you explore nothing by going there; and it's something to do, yet you accomplish nothing by building it, because it isn't designed as a way-station or a construction site for deep space ships. Just "something to do." The bare minimum excuse to keep the funding flowing. And as soon as it's completed, after two decades and $100 billion of investment, let's plan on ditching it so we can move on to the next make-work assignment.
A new Shuttle cockpit scene appeared around him. The air outside the windows glowed orange-pink as the ship descended through reentry, and the pilot calmly went through the usual procedures. Nothing was amiss. And then the world turned into an inferno. Suddenly, Scrooge and the astronaut were standing in a field, and a ball of orange fire streaked through the sky, shedding glowing pieces as it traversed the heavens. The strange, disembodied radio voice spoke: "We believed, and we gave our lives for the dream. You won't even get out of its way."
"I...I...uh..." Scrooge sputtered, looking for some glib platitude or defensive rationalization, but came up empty. He just shut his mouth, and looked up at the flaming meteor that had been someone's dream. When he looked back at the astronaut, more overview images flowed. More recriminations, investigations, and rhetoric. Everyone was losing patience, and even the space nuts were getting wise to what NASA had become. Demands for destinations were heard, so the bullshit factory cranked up again and came up with Constellation. No destinations need actually be realized, just used rhetorically as the ever-receding carrot for the continuation of make-work spending. And in the meantime, the Alabama space sector gets to build not one, but two new rockets. Neither are intended to be cheap or revolutionary; in fact, neither are intended to actually go anywhere, but simply to be built - just like the Space Shuttle - at maximum cost and minimum functionality.
Without warning, they are suddenly standing beneath a huge rocket on a gantry, and the humidity and palm trees suggest they're in Florida. The payload faring is substantially thicker than the body of the rocket, which has "SpaceX" emblazoned on its side. Without saying a word, the astronaut dumps a ton of info about the rocket and its development into his mind. It is the Falcon 9, and has been developed from scratch at a lower cost than most NASA contractors incur just to make a new version of an existing rocket. He sees in his mind its economical elegance, the design simplicity and innovation of the Dragon crew capsule, and the wide open pathway it paves to cheap, reliable access to space. The disembodied radio voice chimes in: "You demand taxpayers fork over tens of billions for paper rockets, but don't want to allocate $100 million for this. Challenger and Columbia out." At that, Scrooge is once again back in his room, lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
After a few minutes of thinking, he suddenly explodes in frustration and throws his pillow at the wall. "Okay, dammit, get this over with so I can go to sleep. Next!" Out of nowhere, a hooded figure in a black robe appears at the foot of his bed. It speaks in an apparently affected hiss, "You should take care not to lightly invite glimpses of the future!" Despite the distorted voice, he seems somehow familiar. Scrooge isn't at all frightened by him - he seems strangely comical; goofy, even. As he realizes who it is, the louche absurdity of the evening hits him like a ton of bricks. "Jim? What the fuck are you doing in a Reaper robe in my house, hissing like a snake, and talking like a carnival fortune-teller?" Standing before him is...
...JAMES INHOFE!
Inhofe hisses and tries to pull the hood lower to hide his face. "There is no Jim, there is only Zuul...err, I mean, I am the Ghost of NASA Future! Respect me, or you will know my wrath! Hiss! Hiss!" Scrooge's eyebrow raises, and he walks over to Inhofe. "Jim, just what the hell is going on here?" The black-robed figure's shoulders drop, and he sighs in resignation before pulling back the hood. "Look, Eb, don't tell anyone about this but I moonlight as a servant of dark forces. And don't tell me I'm not a ghost - I can be just as scary as the real thing! I thought about getting a scythe, but I couldn't find one." Scrooge moves his gaze around the room and ceiling, as if scanning for the hidden camera capturing this farce, but decides that whatever it means, this is actually happening.
"If you say so, Jim. Well, let's see what you've got to show me." At the invitation, Inhofe swooped his robe over Scrooge's face...and nothing happened. "Uh...Jim...?" "Hold on, hold on, I know what I'm doing." Scrooge hears the sound of a map unfolding beneath the robe, hears keys jingle, and a small light source glows through the fabric. Inhofe mutters to himself..."that's fourteen down, six over...no, shit, upside-down..." The sound of the map shuffling. "Jim?" "Okay, got it!" The robe swoops down from Scrooge's eyes, and they're standing in a field of red mud - Alabama, at the exact same spot where Wernher Von Braun had first taken him. Except that the mud was littered with trash, the buildings are abandoned, the grass overgrown, and a rusted sign is carelessly nailed to a nearby tree: "Dick Shelby's Krazy Junk-Yard Extravaganza!"
"Recognize this place, Eb? It's Marshall. Personally, I'm glad all that rocket crap got stopped. All that math and science, it was making America godless. The sky is for the Lord and the birds only. And no more of that Commie 'climate science' being done on the taxpayer dime." A group of young boys were gathered nearby, setting up cans and knocking them over with rocks. One of them was reading a tattered book with the NASA logo on the cover, when another grabbed it from his hands and threw it into the mud. "When you gonna learn, readin' ain't sheeit?"
The reader grabbed his book out of the mud, and pushed the other kid back. He replied, "Books tell you all kinds of cool stuff. Like this place - betcha don't know what it used to be." "Oh yeah, what?" The reader's eyes lit up at the opportunity to talk about what he had read. "They used to make giant rockets that flew into outer space, and even put men on the Moon!" As he said this, he could clearly picture it in his mind, as best he could imagine based on the few badly-faded photographs he had seen. He expected the others to be awed by this information, as he had been, but they just doubled over laughing.
"Boy, you is an idjit. A crazy lil idjit, tellin' them stories and fairy tales. Cain't nobody go to the Moon. And ain't nobody go to outer space but Commie Chinamen." As the moronic bully spoke, Inhofe nodded approvingly, and plainly felt the scene was an example of eminent virtue in America's youth. The reader was insensed at this, and stood up to his detractor: "You don't know what you're talking about. They did so make rockets here, and they did send men to the Moon!" In response to this "insolence," the bully pushed the reader to the ground and began punching him. The other boys ran over to join in, punching and kicking him, calling him a "Commie" and a "book-readin' queer."
Inhofe chuckled in delight at the scene. "Anyway, Eb, it's not all peaches 'n cream these days - there is some bad stuff I gotta show you." Once again the robe whisked across Scrooge's eyes, and a montage of scenes played across his mind: The retirement of the Space Shuttle; the cancellation of Constellation; American astronauts becoming little more than cargo for Russian rockets, and finally abandoning the International Space Station altogether; the Chinese landing on the Moon and filling space with infrastructure; NASA being relegated to a subsection of the Department of Commerce, and mainly involved in repairing TV satellites with unmanned robots.
Then scenes started playing out regarding Scrooge himself: The campaign contributions disappearing as the contractors went bankrupt; the political support disappearing with the money; finding his committee seniority usurped by Senators with more mojo; unable to obstruct legislation or impose amendments, he becomes an irrelevancy, and is reduced to being Ranking Member of the Fisheries and Wildlife committee. Lacking political invincibility, he's soon prosecuted for bribery, defeated in an election by a Blue Dog Democrat, and has to sell most of his holdings to afford the best attorneys. He ends his days as a junior partner in a local lobbying firm, helping deliver state business to a urinal-installation concern.
Suddenly, Scrooge is staring at his own portrait standing beside a coffin in front of rows of empty seats. Only one person is present - a local reporter. He knows the funeral director, and speaks to him: "So, who was this one?" "He was a politician or something, and then he sold piss pots." "Ah." The reporter wrote and underlined "Slow news day!" on his pad of paper, sighed, and left. Scrooge was by now enraged to hear his entire life dismissed in such terms, and angrily advances on the reporter only to find himself walking right through him. "Dammit! This cannot be my legacy!" He turns to Inhofe in desperation. "Jim! This isn't right! Do you think maybe you got it wrong, and showed me something that won't really happen?"
Inhofe looks taken aback by Scrooge's reaction. "Eb...what are you talking about? You lived a great life, made a lot of money, and showed those spacer eggheads who's boss. I'm absolutely positive you go to Heaven. Not that I can see that sort of thing, but your life was so exemplary that I can't imagine it not being so." Despite his collegiality with fellow corrupt politician Inhofe, Scrooge had always had nothing but contempt for the man, whom he felt to be one of the stupidest men alive, and now that perception boiled over in blatant loathing. "You think this is what I want to see happen? Damn you, I do not! I want things to be different! Can they be?" Inhofe begins to look puzzled. "Umm, I'm not really sure..."
Scrooge grabs Inhofe by the shoulders and begins shaking him. "Damn you, can I change the way it goes!? Can I!? Tell me, damn your lizard eyes!" At this, Inhofe becomes angry, and replies "Oh screw you, tough guy. You know, I always knew you weren't a real conservative, the way you could use big words like a college sissy!" With a swish of the robe, Inhofe disappeared, leaving Scrooge staring at his own portrait. He collapsed to his knees and began sobbing.
***
Scrooge woke up curled on the floor at the foot of his bed, his cheeks still stained with tears, and sunlight streaming in from the windows. Filled with a sudden sense of hope and purpose, he went through his morning routine singing and whistling. When greeted by his driver, he did not grumble under his breath as he usually did, but replied in kind. He could not wait to get to work, call up the NASA administrator and begin talking about ways that the Agency could get back on track to real exploration, and once again become an inspiration to mankind. "Do you know what day it is?" he asked his driver. "I believe it's July 21st, sir." "Yes, but that's not the whole story. It's the first day of the new Space Age!"