Stephen King Short Story The Jaunt Pdf Free
Kasey Finkenbinder
"The Jaunt" is a horror short story by Stephen King first published in The Twilight Zone Magazine in 1981, and collected in King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew.[1] The story takes place early in the 24th century, when the technology for teleportation, referred to as "Jaunting", is commonplace, allowing for instantaneous transportation across enormous distances, even to other planets in the Solar System. The term "Jaunting" is stated within the short story to be an homage to The Stars My Destination, a science fiction novel by Alfred Bester.[2]
In the distant future, humans have developed a form of instantaneous teleportation called "the Jaunt", enabling colonization of the Solar System. Mark Oates and his family are preparing to travel to Mars for a two-year business trip. As the Jaunting service prepares the other passengers, Mark entertains his two children by recounting a semi-apocryphal tale of the discovery and history of the Jaunt. He explains how in 1987 a scientist named Victor Carune inadvertently discovered the ability to Jaunt after years of research when he accidentally teleported two of his own fingers. Although the procedure functioned perfectly when he tested inorganic objects, Carune discovered a side-effect on the mice sent through his two portals. The mice would either die instantly or behave erratically before dying moments later. He eventually discovered that beings of higher neural activity, such as animals and humans, could only survive the Jaunt while unconscious. Mark explains that this is why all people must undergo general anaesthesia before Jaunting.
Mark spares his children a gruesome account of the first conscious human to experience the Jaunt, a condemned death-row murderer named Rudy Foggia who had been promised a full pardon upon taking part in the experiment. After six other inmates were Jaunted under the effects of anesthesia, Foggia emerged insane, screaming that the Jaunt was an "eternity" before dying of a heart attack. Mark also omits mention of the 30 people who have Jaunted while conscious, voluntarily or otherwise. Each time, they either died instantly or emerged insane. Scientists had come to conclude that while Jaunting is physically carried out almost instantly, to a conscious mind it lasts an indeterminately long amount of time, perhaps millions of years, leading to a conscious person simply being left alone with their thoughts in an endless field of white. However, Mark attempts to present this fact in a gentle way as to not frighten his children or his wife as, unlike him, they are Jaunting for the first time.
After Mark finishes his story, the family is subjected to sleeping gas and Jaunted to Mars. Upon awakening, Mark is horrified to find that his adventurous son Ricky deliberately held his breath while being administered the anesthesia to experience the Jaunt while conscious and has been rendered completely insane. Ricky shrieks that Mark has no comprehension of how long he had been there, and begins gouging his own eyes out as he is wheeled away from his terrified family by several attendants.
I was thinking of a cute title for this post, and my first idea was that a Stephen King short story could be called a "little King." A collection of them should have a catchy collective name, and "murder" (as a "murder" of crows) was too good to pass up. Anyway, here's the review....
Not every story in 1985's Skeleton Crew is Stephen King's best, but since this collection contains my all-time favorite King story "The Jaunt" along with other classic King stories like The Mist, "The Monkey," "The Raft," and "Survivor Type," it's hard not to rate this one highly. Of the lesser-hyped stories, I also really loved "Gramma," "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut," "Beachworld," and "The Reach."
Others are also notable, like "The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands" or "Nona" (even if the former is a little problematic in the ways its Lovecraftian inspiration is). Often in a short story collection I'll skip the stories that don't grab me, so it's a testament to King's skill that I felt like I had to read every story (at least those I haven't read before).
I've probably read "The Jaunt" about four or five times, since I have students read it for my horror and philosophy course. One of King's most explicitly science fictional stories, this one takes place in the future where tele-transportation technology goes wrong, so very wrong. Have you ever been afraid to be alone with your own thoughts? Is this why philosophy is so scary? From the philosophy of horror to the horror of philosophy!
"Survivor Type" is one of King's more disturbing stories (and that's saying something) about a surgeon stranded on a desert island who turns to extreme measures to survive (very recently made into a great animated episode of the new Creepshow series on Shudder).
Of the lesser-hyped stories (those that are more rarely on people's lists of favorite King stories), I really loved "Gramma" as an exquisite exploration of the horrors of aging and death (from the perspective of a kid... check out King's Insomnia for the perspective of the elderly themselves).
"The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands" takes place in a private club in Manhattan (maybe the same one from King's "The Breathing Method" in Different Seasons? I'd like to think so) and contains a lot of excellent Lovecraftian tropes: stodgy old white dudes encountering mysterious forces, a nested narrative, etc. Unfortunately it also contains some of Lovecraft's xenophobic racism in the depiction of India as a barbarous place of evil magic ... but maybe that fits with how white Americans of the era would think. I'm not sure, but for me it tainted what was otherwise a great story.
"Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" and "The Reach" are great examples of King being more whimsical rather than creepy. They're both the type of thing pretentious literature types would call "magical realism" (shortcuts through spacetime in Maine and ghosts and other strange happenings on an island off the coast of Maine). I can't be the only person to notice an odd resonance between "The Reach" and "Nona."
"Beachworld" is another explicitly science fiction story about a crew that lands on sandy planet where danger and delusions await. The idea of a beach with no water nicely dramatizes the existential absurdity of contemplating our place in a vast, confusing universe. Plus, there's a robot referred to as an "andy," which is sure to please my fellow Dark Tower fans. As any true Constant Reader knows, the wheel of ka connects all things Stephen King.
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The father spares his children the gruesome semi-apocryphal account of the first human to be Jaunted awake, a condemned murderer offered a full pardon for agreeing to the experiment. The man "came through" and immediately suffered a massive heart attack, living just long enough to utter a single cryptic phrase:
The father also doesn't mention that since that time, roughly thirty people have, voluntarily or otherwise, jaunted while conscious; they either died instantly or emerged insane. One woman was even shoved alive into eternal limbo by her murderous husband, stuck between two jaunt portals. The man was convicted of murder; though his attorneys attempted to argue that he was not guilty on the grounds that his wife was not technically dead, the implications of the same argument served to secure and hasten his execution.
After the father finishes his story, the family is subjected to the sleeping gas and Jaunted to Mars. When the father wakes, he finds that his inquisitive son held his breath in order to experience the Jaunt while conscious, and has been rendered completely insane. Hair white with shock, corneas yellowed with age, clawing out his own eyes, the boy reveals the terrible nature of the Jaunt: "Longer than you think, Dad! It's longer than you think!" While physically the process occurs nearly instantaneously, to the conscious mind it lasts an eternity and beyond.
Between movies, TV, and even a few video games, there is a sea of Stephen King adaptations out there for fans to consume, but there are still a number of his works yet to be lifted from the page. One of these is his 1981 short story, "The Jaunt." This bite-size sci-fi horror story packs a ridiculous amount of substance into just over 20 pages. It's a tale that chronicles the invention of teleportation, referred to as "Jaunting," told from the perspective of a 24th century family waiting to be Jaunted to Mars for a business trip. Initially, King's short story plays casual, but as things move along, it becomes clear that the dangers of Jaunting are much greater than expected. King's full-on novels are one thing, but "The Jaunt" proves that King can be terrifying even when he's paired down to a simple short story. If there's any untapped work of his that is riddled with potential, you're looking at it right here.
"The Jaunt" was originally published in The Twilight Zone Magazine in 1981. King was deep into his career of writing hit horror novels, coming off of a major string of instant classics like Carrie, The Shining, and The Stand, just to name a few. Regardless of the fact that he was a worldwide phenomenon, King continued to sharpen his craft by writing short stories that would go on to be published in magazines. With how popular his works were becoming, any and every property that sported the name Stephen King on its cover, poster, or slogan was sure to rake in boatloads of cash. This meant these short stories would live a temporary life in magazines, then go on to be published again in mass short story collections like his '70s collection Night Shift. "The Jaunt" would eventually come packaged in 1985's Skeleton Crew, the step that gave this story a life of its own, growing its reputation as one of King's best.
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