I finished reading ‘The Jaunt’ a few days ago, and I have to tell you guys that it’s probably the one thing I’ve read in years that has really stuck with me. Truly unsettling.
I am always kind of dubious to the whole ‘fate worse than death’ trope, but I have to say that King really did create a premise that justifies such an idea. In particular, the part about the guy who Jaunted his wife with no exit point was just chilling as Hell.
Has anybody else read this? What did you think? And the big question: because it’s never explicitly revealed, what exactly do you think happens to somebody who Jaunts while conscious?
I read this many years ago and I agree, it stuck with me much more vividly than most of King’s short stories. I’d almost like to see this concenpt revived in a Black Mirror episode.
I like the fact that it’s not made clear about what anyone may or may not experience while taking a conscious jaunt. The line “It’s …eternity in there.” says enough.
First read it when I was 13, and it blew my young mind. I told everyone I knew about what an awesomely terrifying story it was. “Beachworld” was the other story from Skeleton Crew that stuck with me for it’s horror.
Skeleton Crew has proven to be the only Stephen King product that I’ve enjoyed, and even then, only some of the stories were any good, imo.
Not to mention (although I am indeed mentioning it), it’s implied that the laws of the ‘Jaunt’ universe are different from our own. If one enters a Jaunt while in a sleeping state, everything is fine. One apparently remains sleeping during the trillion years (or whatever length of time) it relatively takes, no need for food or water, no waking, no suffocating for lack of air (if there is no air). If awake while undertaking a Jaunt, one is conscious during the entire length of time (which could well be trillions of trillions of years), although the same conditions apply. Maybe unable to move in any way, floating in a vast sea of nothingness. When the poor wife is mentioned as screaming forever, I imagine that as silent screaming. And my Og, yes, subtle in description, but to ponder it – what a horrible fate! Also, King has used this particular device before - having a character’s hair turn white from sheer horror - but here, reiterated, the kid’s hair turned white not from the length of relative time spent Jaunting but from the horror of experiencing it while conscious. Last point: if one lived for billions of years, say, would one actually be able to retain memories of a handful of years lived before that, even if the billion years was nothing but hanging in a void?
this is my favorite Stephen King short story. I like horror stories that are more psychologically scary and less killer clown or vampire scary (not meant to disparage IT or Salem’s Lot I like those too)
Sure, you have your subjective eternity as a disembodied mind, but maybe it’s much, much worse than that. King did not write what other things the kid revealed at the end before they hurriedly wheeled him away…
The issue I have with the premise is: how do you measure & determine “time” in such a situation? Time in the normal 3D universe requires physical processes to progress in a steady manner. Yes we then have the subjective experience of time as humans, on top of that-but how can one experience such in a timeless void? Clearly a human brain cannot exist for millions of years (or however long a particular Jaunt took), so who or what is experiencing the trip?
The story more or less explains that it has nothing to do with physical time- measuring instruments sent through register only nanoseconds. Think of it as the Warp in Warhammer terms, or whatever.
Didn’t reread the story before making my post above, and it had been some years since I did read it, so my points suffered from a lack of precise detail. I was pontificating from the viewpoint that the Jaunt was like a portal or moving through a tunnel, rather than the disintegration and reintegration that teleportation is normally presented as in most fiction. Here is an interesting paper I found on the subject (link to pdf).
It’s gotta be over 30 years since read it. It stuck with me so much that many years later, more than a decade, I was having emergency surgery. Upon waking up I found that I was the center of attention. The doctor explained that I was given two drugs: one that put me in twilight but causes hallucinations and another to suppress the hallucinations. The suppressant did not work at all on me.
I remember vaguely and sporadically what I was thinking (and apparently saying), like a blackout drunk remembers what he did on a bender. One thing that I strongly remember was thinking that I wasn’t here or there. That I was a thinking mind cast out and drifting through the vastness of space and that I would surely go mad doing nothing but thinking about how there was nothing and doing that forever.
A nurse confirmed that I told them all that Stephen King was right, it’s longer than you think. And then I started crying.
I also remember other, more embarrassing thoughts I may have said out loud but that’s not what this thread’s about.
Yes that was one of the more terrifying shorts stories ai have ever read. It’s been a long time since I read it but it was fascinating how they gave a little backstory about testing it on animals and prison inmates. I do remember the ending literally caused a shiver to go up my spine.
And that’s the thing about this eerie story: you are not misremembering. It functions exactly like a “portal”. You can stick your hand in at one end and wiggle your fingers across the room. You can send precise instruments through and measure no discontinuity in time, temperature, pressure, etc. Perfectly safe. Just one trivial thing, don’t stick your head in there while you are awake…
It stuck with me, but the part I didn’t really agree with was the kid came back and acted like a kid and called his dad ‘dad’.
He was probably stuck in the jaunt for trillions of years, if not much much longer. The concept of a ‘dad’ would have been long forgotten to him by then.