by Richard Farr
Part one: A mere analogy
You’ve always dreamed of foreign travel and you’re aware that there’s a long history of people doing it, and benefiting from it. But you live under a regime that closed the borders a couple of generations ago, at the same time criminalizing the act of researching potential destinations. (Many countries were dangerous, they said, and some tourists were coming home with tie-dyed shirts and peculiar ideas.) To protect the vulnerable, a War on Travel was announced. In the years since, you have grown up with little more than rumors of other cultures, climates, cuisines.
Change is afoot, however: members of a professional group, the globiatrists, are pushing back. They have looked into the history of travel and they agree it’s fraught with peril. But there’s evidence that some destinations may be the best way to treat Immobility Syndrome (IS), a condition involving chronic inability to be happy with never going anywhere. Drugs have been developed that sometimes help IS sufferers think about something else, but more and more globiatrists say that “for treatment-resistant patients travel may be a risk worth taking, so long as they are chaperoned. By one of us.”
In due course things do loosen up. Amid concern that unwise people might attempt to travel alone (or are already doing so illegally), permits are issued for some IS patients to take “trips.”
Unfortunately, even seeing a globiatrist and being tested for IS is too expensive for many people. Also the diagnosis may be negative, in which case you have to go to a different globiatrist and try again. Read more »