The Big Trip Up Yonder

In a suffocating future apartment, the Ford family lives under the tyrannical charm of Gramps, a 172-year-old patriarch kept alive by anti-gerasone and by the sheer pleasure of constantly rewriting his will. He spends his days mocking the present, insisting that humanity has already done everything worthwhile "a hundred years ago," while his descendants scramble for his approval, a daybed, and the promise of inheritance. When Lou is once again disinherited, the family's bitter, comic routine is thrown into chaos by a disturbing discovery: someone has been tampering with Gramps' life-extending medicine. Lou learns that Morty has been secretly diluting the anti-gerasone with tap water and rushes to fix the sabotage before Gramps notices, but the attempt ends in disaster when the bottle shatters. Expecting fury, Lou instead sees Gramps retreat with unsettling calm, leaving the household unnerved. By morning, Gramps' bedroom is empty, and the Fords are forced to confront the possibility that he has finally vanished. Blending dark comedy with unease, the story becomes a sharp, unsettling meditation on aging, dependency, and the moral disorder of immortality. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.