# Has anybody else read Stephen King's short story 'The Jaunt.' Wow **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [January 17, 2020, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574 "2020-01-17T17:17:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/41 "2020-01-23T14:59:51Z")
Eye fingers? 🙂 > **[I Am the Doorway](https://stephenking.fandom.com/wiki/I_Am_the_Doorway)** > > "I Am the Doorway" is a short story written by Stephen King. The story was originally published in the March 1971 issue of Cavalier, and was later included in King's own 1978 collection Night Shift and in the 2005 anthology Thrilling, Chilling... ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/42 "2020-01-23T15:05:54Z")
Add another one the the “Sticks with you even after thirty-plus years” column. The line, “It’s longer than you think, Dad!” still sends shivers. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/43 "2020-01-23T15:12:00Z")
> [@robby](#): > > As to the premise of the story: if the consequence of being jaunted while awake were really that dire (i.e. death or insanity), surely the protocol would involve something more than just a quick inhalation of anesthetic gas that could be so easily circumvented by a kid. It’s not fun if they just show up on Mars and go about their day and nothing happens. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/44 "2020-01-23T16:08:03Z")
> [@robby](#): > > Somehow I never came across this story before, but was prompted to read it based on this thread. > > …and despite the very interesting premise, I thought the execution came across as both dated and juvenile. King’s description of the hellscape that the world had become by 1987 due to the continued oil crisis was definitely overcome by events. The juvenile part was the reaction of the son after being jaunted – Stephen King seems to relish shocking his readers by having the boy claw his own eyes out. > > As to the premise of the story: if the consequence of being jaunted while awake were really that dire (i.e. death or insanity), surely the protocol would involve something more than just a quick inhalation of anesthetic gas that could be so easily circumvented by a kid. (Which is why modern general anesthesia for surgery is a much more involved process, in which the anaesthetic agents are generally administered intravenously.) Anesthesiologists also conduct tests and carefully monitor patients before and during surgery to ensure they are unconscious. I had the same thoughts while reading the story: the procedure for doing this was pretty haphazard if a 12yo could just hold his breath and fake being unconscious. I was originally on team sensory deprivation, now I’m on team “sent to Hell or something like that”, for the following reason: For somebody who has been sense-deprived as long as the kid has, he still came around to the post-jaunt situation pretty quickly - he knew he jaunted, he knew he held his breath, he knew he was on Mars, he still recognized his father, he was even referencing the conversation they had within the previous (hour?) right before the Jaunt. Hell, his psyche was still together enough that he had to prove how smart he was by claiming how he outfoxed the nurses AND one-upped his Dad. However long you have to be in a sensory deprivation tank to forget what you were doing right before getting into the sensory deprivation tank… however long that length of time was, the kid did not spend it in the Jaunt. Billions of years? No way. And so I think he was subject to unspeakable horrors. Mental, physical, who knew? But it wasn’t mere sensory deprivation. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/45 "2020-01-23T17:07:36Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > Eye fingers? No, eye fingers are fingers for eyes–finger eyes are eyes on fingers. ---
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/46 "2020-01-23T17:27:34Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > No, eye fingers are fingers for eyes–finger eyes are eyes on fingers. Mmmmm. . . ladyfingers. . … ---
**Author:** ![Turek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/turek/32/18782_2.png) [@Turek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turek)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/47 "2020-01-23T19:12:23Z")
> [@Biggirl](#): > > Mmmmm. . . ladyfingers. . … [“lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_Type) ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/48 "2020-01-23T20:03:31Z")
I thought it was specifically revealed that what happened in The Jaunt was that your perception of time became almost infinitely slowed. Even though your trip was instantaneous, your mind perceived it as being trapped in an endless white void for all eternity. Black Mirror actually did kind of touch on a similar phenomenon in White Christmas. John Hamm had a copy of some woman’s consciousness trapped in a similar “endless white void” holding area and ran the clock for a thousand years until it complied and Siried the original’s house like it was supposed to. Most of the Skeleton Crew stories are great. The Myst. Cain Rose Up seems a bit quaint these days, but it was terrifying when I was a kid in the 80s. And I don’t trust that fucking cymbal clapping monkey in my kids room that I don’t remember ever bringing home. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2020, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/49 "2020-01-24T02:53:53Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Black Mirror actually did kind of touch on a similar phenomenon in White Christmas. John Hamm had a copy of some woman’s consciousness trapped in a similar “endless white void” holding area and ran the clock for a thousand years until it complied and Siried the original’s house like it was supposed to. You are [slightly conflating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirror)#Plot) two of the sub-stories. (Also, _Star Trek_ did something similar to Miles O’brian in an episode–a virtual prison sentence.) ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2020, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/50 "2020-01-24T03:59:51Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > There is also the short story about the guy with the finger eyes. [This dork?](https://www.reddit.com/r/WorthlessSuperPowers/comments/74awsl/ten_eyed_man_a_man_with_the_power_to_see_using/) ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2020, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/51 "2020-01-24T04:58:59Z")
The kid in _The Gate_ got an eyeball on the palm of his hand. (Hand-eye coordination?) ---
**Author:** ![Purd\_Werfect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e47c2d/32.png) [@Purd\_Werfect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Purd_Werfect)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2020, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/52 "2020-01-24T17:46:47Z")
For some reason, the short story/novella “The Sun Dog” sticks with me most from King’s shorter works. Just something about the concept the story’s based sets off primal alarm bells for me. ---
**Author:** ![2ManyTacos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/3da27b/32.png) [@2ManyTacos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2ManyTacos)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2020, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/53 "2020-01-30T16:55:30Z")
Some people have already hit on this, but FWIW how I interpreted it was that Jaunting while awake causes your consciousness to basically just ‘exist’ in an infinite white void (could also be a black void but the kid’s father specifically elucidates a white void) for what it perceives to be an eternity. I guess the length of perceived time is indeterminate, because existing in such a way without any external stimuli would cause any time to feel longer than normal. The fact that the prisoner specifically uses the term “eternity” makes me think that it’s at least a thousand years long, though. Real time obviously still passes, though, because at some point the conscious Jaunter is zapped back into his or her body. That’s what makes the story of the endlessly Jaunting wife so disturbing; if even a fraction of a second (!) is perceived as thousands of years - and by the time of the story the wife was Jaunted thirty years prior - then that means she would’ve already by that point experienced a trillion trillion trillion eternities or something like that. Truly disturbing. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2020, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/54 "2020-01-30T18:40:53Z")
It’s a great horror story, not science fiction. Trying to analyze exactly what happens during the Jaunt runs into problems like ‘how is he forming memories with no neurons changing state’ or ‘what’s fueling his energy to think for this huge amount of time’, but most horror isn’t scientifically rigorous. Also, things like this qualify more as ‘what a horrible way to die’ than a ‘fate worse than death’ to me - at some point in the endless time of jaunting, your brain is going to go insane to the point that you’re not even you anymore, which I’d count as death. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2020, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/55 "2020-01-31T12:36:40Z")
> [@2ManyTacos](#): > > Some people have already hit on this, but FWIW how I interpreted it was that Jaunting while awake causes your consciousness to basically just ‘exist’ in an infinite white void (could also be a black void but the kid’s father specifically elucidates a white void) for what it perceives to be an eternity. I guess the length of perceived time is indeterminate, because existing in such a way without any external stimuli would cause any time to feel longer than normal. The fact that the prisoner specifically uses the term “eternity” makes me think that it’s at least a thousand years long, though. > > Real time obviously still passes, though, because at some point the conscious Jaunter is zapped back into his or her body. That’s what makes the story of the endlessly Jaunting wife so disturbing; if even a fraction of a second (!) is perceived as thousands of years - and by the time of the story the wife was Jaunted thirty years prior - then that means she would’ve already by that point experienced a trillion trillion trillion eternities or something like that. > > Truly disturbing. That’s more or less what I thought. We don’t really know the mechanism for how the Jaunt works. Just that somehow a person’s consciousness is decoupled from any external stimuli, including the sensation of time passing. So it literally seems like you have always been there and always will be. Or maybe it’s just a hallucinatory effect. Like you don’t really experience “eternity”. You just think you do. Maybe there’s just an endless loop of “post rock” music playing during the Jaunt? > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > You are [slightly conflating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirror)#Plot) two of the sub-stories. > (Also, _Star Trek_ did something similar to Miles O’brian in an episode–a virtual prison sentence.) Right. The “cookie” lady was only 6 months. Still a long time to be trapped in a white void IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2021, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/56 "2021-03-03T01:50:27Z")
> **[Fear The Walking Dead Co-Creator Adapting Stephen King's The Jaunt for TV](https://www.cbr.com/fear-walking-dead-co-creator-dave-erickson-stephen-king-the-jaunt-tv/)** > > Fear the Walking Dead co-creator Dave Erickson will adapt Stephen King's 1981 short story The Jaunt into a TV series for MRC Television. ---
**Author:** ![Enjoy\_Slurm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enjoy_slurm/32/3937_2.png) [@Enjoy\_Slurm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enjoy_Slurm)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2021, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/57 "2021-03-03T03:31:55Z")
A TV series? How? A movie, maybe, but a whole series? ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2021, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/58 "2021-03-03T03:33:49Z")
In your head, in your head, za-ahm-BEH… > [@JohnT](#): > > the procedure for doing this was pretty haphazard if a 12yo could just hold his breath and fake being unconscious. I dunno - I flew on airplanes in the 80s and everything seemed pretty lackadaisical by today’s standards. (Hell, _society_ seemed pretty lackadaisical.) I think it fits the zeitgeist. Agree with those who prefer King’s short fiction to his novels. I think my fave is the one with the guy on the desert island who eats his own foot. I will not hold my breath (heh) waiting for _The Jaunt: The Series_. If I could lay a bet, I would bet it will suck. But hope springs eternal with King fans, I have found, and I wish them all the luck in the world with this one. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2021, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/59 "2021-03-03T04:22:33Z")
> [@Enjoy\_Slurm](#): > > A TV series? How? A movie, maybe, but a whole series? I know. That’s longer than you think. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2021, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/60 "2021-03-03T04:24:00Z")
> [@snoe](#): > > I think my fave is the one with the guy on the desert island who eats his own foot. _Survivor Type_, IIRC. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574.md?page=4)