For rent

Everything that happens in this Universe or, for example, on one of its inhabited planets, could seem extremely strange to an outside observer or time traveler.

 

It just so happened that the people who inhabited one of the planets of this Universe used all the benefits, goods, services and even habits... for rent. For example, they bought houses for rent, visited museums and concert halls, and parks for rent. Everything that could be purchased for some time was, in fact, purchased for rent. The exception was food.

Books were rented and libraries were used for rent. Various knowledge was also for rent. Many people could use them, immediately and simultaneously, naturally, if there was a need for this knowledge. Equipment and technologies were purchased for rent.

 

Religious practices and beliefs were also borrowed, even Heaven and Hell. As do ideologies and social formations. Tastes and morals. Traditions. Health was also given for rent.

 

There was even music and art for rent. They were just created for the longest rental period. Everyone used them, always and everywhere. They rolled for centuries, millennia, eras.

 

Everything that could be used repeatedly and for a long time (if it was all stored and preserved properly) was rented and purchased, as well as rented out and re-rented, resold. Even money was purchased or rented. Often their use ended so quickly that they were rented again, which became increasingly more expensive. And yet, they were one of the most popular goods.

 

The rental cycles themselves - from birth to death - were also rented. Because people were renting their lives. And they disposed of them as best they could, knowing that this rental would end sooner or later.

 

The dialectical nature of this strange situation of existence lay in the fact that they also rented the planet on which people lived and breathed, and the planet itself gave them for rent everything that they used on it - from their very life to its benefits and fruits.

 

However, it was precisely this strange way of rolling coexistence between people and the planet that guaranteed its continuity. After all, the planet itself existed for rent - from the moment of its birth until the renters living on it destroyed it.

 

In any case, the possibility of destruction of the rented planet was predicted by the people who inhabited it for rent. And they thought about renting new worlds in order to continue their strange way of existence there too. For rent.

 

And only death was not for rent.

 

November 20, 2016, original (Russian version)