LoveStar by Andri Snaer Magnason

temporary contract of unscientific short-term relationship?’” asked Sigrid, deeply offended, when she went to open a joint account at the bank. “We’ve already found love.”
    â€œDo you have scientific confirmation from inLOVE?” asked the cashier.
    â€œThe confirmation’s just a formality,” said Sigrid in a gentle but firm tone. “We’re quite sure.”
    The cashier shook her head. “You’re taking a big risk.”
    Indridi and Sigrid avoided anything that could possibly cast a shadow on their relationship and drew a positive strength from anything that related to love.
    â€œHuh,” said Indridi, reading aloud an interview with a newly calculated couple. “Call that true love! It sounds like one of our bad days.”
    â€œLook!” cried Sigrid as they cuddled up under a blanket on the sofa, crunching popcorn and watching a young man calculated with a forty-year-old woman. “I felt just like that the first time we met. I felt like that then and I still do,” she said, kissing Indridi.
    â€œI think I know where happiness lies,” said Indridi, indicating a point in the middle of his chest, just above his midriff. “It’s here.”
    Sigrid felt his chest. “Where’s happiness, Indridi? Show me where happiness lies. Is it here?” she asked, tickling him until he laughed. “Is love here?” she asked, tickling him with her gentle fingers.
    Indridi suddenly turned serious and gazed into Sigrid’s face. “Every time I draw breath I feel an ache and want to breathe in time with you forever.”
    â€œYour happiness is not there,” whispered Sigrid. “That’s my happiness. My happiness floats on your midriff like a sleeping eider duck, but your happiness is here.” Taking his hand she laid it on her breast. “Your happiness is here,” she said, and he touched her breasts, which were soft and warm and beautifully white below her sunburnt neck.
    Some people found Indridi and Sigrid soppy, but they enjoyed being soppy. Being sincere, talking straight from the heart, and feeling the tickling above their midriffs.
    The LoveStar theme park was not only the world center for death, it also became the center for love and scientifically proven happiness, and the origination point for well-calculated bliss after inLOVE was set up. Nowhere in the world was there so much contentment gathered in one spot.
    After love had been proven, love letters were sent out all over the world and people flocked to and from the country in white cruise ships. These were a welcome change from the black LoveDeath vessels, and the smell of money they emitted was much fresher than the odor that clung to LoveDeath. The atmosphere of the town was transformed when hopeful individuals disembarked with a letter in their jacket pocket and a bouquet of roses in their hands, glancing around, quivering with anticipation, knowing that nothing but happiness awaited them. Scientifically proven love and happiness.
    It was much more pleasant to see infatuated human sandwiches hauled on board the cruise liners under the Statue of Liberty than to see pensioners piled up in the LoveDeath buses. It could be awkward if someone forgot to put tranquillizers in their coffee and a whole herd of walking LoveDeath came to their senses, burst into tears, called home, and asked whether no one was going to come and give them a send-off or keep them company on the last lap. Even the LoveDeath method itself was undergoing a change. In the future, only twin stars would fall to earth.
    Indridi and Sigrid sometimes lay cuddled up for whole days at a time, and for them the letter from inLOVE should only have been a formality. When the letter arrived they had intended to go and cuddle up for a few days in the vaults up north in a continuation of the love and happiness that would last until they fell to earth over the Blafjoll mountains in a blaze of