You had been marinating in delusions of Schwarzenegger-level grandeur, dreaming of championship stages and oil-slicked pecs, when the world as you knew it collapsed inside the Canyon High Student Lounge. There you were, slouched on a vinyl couch, flipping through the San Francisco Chronicle, when existential dread blindsided you like a sucker punch to the solar plexus. The culprit? A doomsday op-ed dressed up as science journalism.
According to futurists and a certain Princeton physics professor named Gerard K. O’Neill, Earth’s days were numbered. The human species, it seemed, was destined to ditch the planet and board lunar shuttles en route to solar-powered orbiting colonies. O’Neill’s vision of humanity’s next chapter was detailed in The High Frontier—a prophetic fever dream of “closed-ecology habitats in free orbit” powered by sun-harvesting mega-panels. To make matters worse, the article was illustrated by some artist named Don Davis, whose watercolor nightmares depicted tranquil cottages, babbling fountains, and crowds of eerily placid, malnourished utopians.
But what truly made your blood run cold wasn’t the loss of Earth’s ozone layer or the scarcity of clean water—it was the complete and utter absence of gyms in space.
No dumbbells. No squat racks. No gravity.
You were staring down the barrel of the greatest crisis to ever confront the adolescent mind: the total obliteration of your bodybuilding future. What good was a solar-powered paradise if it left you looking like a string bean in a Speedo? You’d be condemned to slurp nutrient paste in zero-G while your muscle mass withered into oblivion. You pictured yourself floating aimlessly through space, a tomato with toothpicks for limbs, indistinguishable from the other protein-starved citizens of O’Neill’s nightmare.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Student Lounge was oblivious. Kids were gossiping like caffeinated squirrels. Others were playing Paper Football with apocalyptic enthusiasm, as if the Earth weren’t on the verge of being abandoned for a weightless dystopia. You wanted to scream, “Shut up! My dreams are dying!”
That’s when Liz Murphy strolled in, radiant and red-haired, walking straight toward you. She handed you a birthday card that screamed, If It Feels Good, Do It! Her smile was bright enough to reroute satellites. She was clearly flirting—or at least offering a hand in friendship—but you were paralyzed by cosmic dread.
You glanced at the card, then back at her. “It’s over,” you muttered, face ashen. “No gravity. No bench press. No protein. Space is going to destroy bodybuilding.”
Liz blinked. “What?”
You handed her the newspaper like you were delivering the last will and testament of humanity. “They want to launch us into space. Colonies with no iron. No steaks. No deadlifts. My dream physique? Finished.”
Liz read for a few seconds and then laughed—hard. “Are you serious right now?”
“Deadly,” you said, your voice trembling with conviction.
“I came here to give you a birthday card, not an existential crisis,” she said. “I’m not proposing marriage, you melodramatic meathead. Relax.”
Her laughter was like an emotional defibrillator, jolting you back to reality. You chuckled—barely. Still, the horror lingered. The gym-less future. The protein-free vacuum of outer space. But for now, you allowed yourself to accept the birthday wishes… and the present moment. After all, if the end was coming, you might as well enjoy the applause before gravity lets go for good.
Cinemorphosis 
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