Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is a short story first published in its original form as "The Big Trip Up Yonder" in Galaxy Science Fiction in January 1954. It was reprinted, expanded and retitled, in Canary in a Cat House in 1961, Welcome to the Monkey House in 1968, the first volume of Library of America's Vonnegut set in 2012, and Complete Stories in 2017.

Plot Summary

By the year 2158 the invention of cheap and readily available anti-gerasone has stopped aging and natural death. Huge portions of personal income are taxed for defense and old age pensions. The ultra-aged have accumulated massive wealth and voting influence. To feed Earth's twelve billion people, most food is made from processed seaweed and sawdust. It's not uncommon for multiple generations of families to live crammed together in small apartments in contiguous, densely overpopulated cities. In one of these apartments in Alden Village, a New York City development in what was once southern Connecticut, lives 172 year old Harold D. "Gramps" Schwartz. Already elderly before anti-gerasone was developed and possessor of the only private room, he rules over his extended family of twenty two by frequently altering the inheritors stipulated in his will for any minor perceived misbehavior or disrespect. The currently favored couple is granted the daybed in the living room, while all others sleep on assorted mattresses and sleeping bags, with the worst spot by the bathroom.

One evening, grandson Lou and his wife Emerald stand on the balcony, venting to each other about the situation with Gramps. They join the family to watch T.V. and Lou quietly makes a snide remark during the news to Em, causing them to lose their favored status to Lou's father, Willy. Every family member has held both positions multiple times in the fifty years since Gramps first claimed that he's planning to stop taking his anti-gerasone just after witnessing some important event. While dozing outside the bathroom, Lou catches his great-grandnephew, Mortimer, diluting Gramps' anti-gerasone. Deciding that if he reports it everyone will be treated worse, he decides to empty the bottle and refill it from all the bottles of the other family members. While doing so he drops the bottle and is caught by Gramps, who locks himself in his bedroom. Em says she'll stand by Lou no matter what.

Since they are now in the lowest social spot, the next morning the two bring Gramps his breakfast of astronomically expensive real food, as is the custom. They find a note from Gramps declaring that the betrayal of a family member was too much to take and that he has left a new will leaving the property in common to the whole family. They all immediately begin fighting over rights and position, to the extent that the police have to be called. The family members savor the individual privacy of their jail cells, hoping they'll all get sentenced to a year. Gramps, having returned to the apartment from the nearby tavern, savors his own privacy while watching a commercial for the new de-aging super-anti-gerasone.

Original Version

The version published in Galaxy Science Fiction is largely identical except the family name is Ford and it lacks the prologue on the balcony with Lou and Em which provides most of the exposition about the world in which the story takes place.

Adaptation

A 13-minute short film under the original title The Big Trip Up Yonder was released in 2014. It was directed by Sandro Galleo-Giesse, written by Bruce Feigenbaum, and starred Evan Gerstel, Christi Berlane, and Alan Myles Heyman.

See Also

• "Welcome to the Monkey House", another story featuring overpopulation and anti-aging medications
• "2BR02B", another story featuring overpopulation and anti-aging medications