AirbnBuchenwald

I sat criss-cross applesauce on the verdant mound in front of my little brother’s elementary school growing up, fixated on a macramé blanket laid out before me. The blanket was woven in blue and white, beads of the same colors threaded throughout. The beads seemed to shift up and down like an abacus, guided by an invisible hand, calculating something, I don’t know what.

The sun was warm on my back, and the grass beneath me was slightly damp. I ran my fingers lightly over the square knotting, feeling the threads' texture and the beads' smoothness. As I sat there, lost in the motion of the beads, the afternoon sun began to dip lower in the sky, spreading dusk across the knoll.

It was getting dark so I walked past the parking lot and along the curbside, approaching my little brother’s elementary school. I entered the front lobby. The floor was scuffed, worn in places but still reflective under the fluorescent lights. As I stepped into the front lobby, I felt my feet lift off the ground.

I floated in the air, feeling weightless, my bones bird-hollow. I looked around to see my brother’s peers drifting alongside me. My little brother was there too, and we all reverted to eight years of age. We had chipmunk cheeks, neotenous eyes, and gaps where deciduous teeth used to be. We were all dressed in forest green and navy blue school uniforms. We smiled at each other, sharing unspoken joy.

We wrestled in the air, boys and girls, locked in mock combat, our strength perfectly matched. Arms and legs tangled, we spun and tumbled, propelling higher, only to come together again, tussling and giggling. Equals we were, fluid and fearless, unfettered by the ground below.

Time dilated in our childhood world of unalloyed exploration. We built forts, climbed trees, invented games, raced, and dreamed together. No one expected anything beyond the joy of companionship. I remembered my brother and our bond.

Limitless potential and no ulterior motives.

I descended, my feet making a soft thud as they touched the ground. As I walked down the hallway, I felt my limbs stretch and my muscles subtly redefined themselves. My hips widened, introducing a new, unfamiliar sway to my gait. My chest blossomed, tender and strange at first.

The hallway seemed to stretch before me, and I saw my reflection in the windows. My cheeks, once round, had become more angular, while my jawline softened into delicate curves. My skin, previously smooth and unblemished, now showed the occasional mark of puberty. My hands and feet grew, awkward and disproportionate at first, until they finally aligned with the rest of my evolving body.

My waist cinched in, and my legs grew long and strong. My hair thickened, and hormones surged. I sensed the phantasm of expectations.

I reached the end of the hallway, now my familiar self in her mid-twenties, marked by three gray hairs and a burgeoning desire to create with my opposite. Stepping outside, I found what had once been a school transformed into a resort. With its formidable iron bars, the entrance gate stood as a stern sentry. The building began to curve and warp along a half-circle driveway that wrapped around a flowing stone fountain, set amidst a meticulously maintained lawn, the greens of a golf course.

The building, made of weathered stone and brick, showcased a stately, symmetrical design. Large windows punctuated the stonework, while ivy climbed the walls, softening the structure's severity. The driveway, lined with neatly arranged cobblestones, led to a grand wooden door.

There, I encountered a loose acquaintance from university—a classmate from Hillel. All I knew was that he was trilingual in Russian, Spanish, and English, and a classically trained pianist. Dressed in business casual, he offered me a cigarette, which I accepted with a grateful nod.

"It’s been years," I said, taking a short puff from the cigarette and adjusting the mink stole on my shoulders, a piece I recognized from my mother’s closet.

"Yeah, I’m an economist now, living on the Upper West Side," he replied. "What do you do?"

"Older men," I confessed.

"I asked what do you do not who do you do. My father is looking for someone. He’s a widower," he said. "He’s lonely."

"…"

"You should meet my dad."

I found myself observing the world, as my inherent voyeurism is my greatest weakness and my biggest strength. I drifted through a world where everyone was a tourist and every building was a gray rental. The only colors existed on our screens. Prisons had become obsolete; no one had the will or the inclination to commit serious crimes. Our prisons were repurposed into hotels, painted in shades of beige, warmer than the transient, wan Airbnbs, a form of rapacious, vampiric capital that never went away. Cities were destroyed.

Every former concentration camp was now a hotel. It made sense: if our prisons were hotels, so too must be the concentration camps. I learned this as an unnoticed observer at the United Nations.

In the green assembly hall, Sheldon Adelson, cryogenically preserved in a glass jar, was wheeled onto the stage. His voice came through the sophisticated speaker system with unnerving clarity.

"Distinguished delegates," Adelson's voice resonated, "we have forgotten the horrors of the Holocaust, especially you faggots in the UN who keep bullying Israel who is stronger than all of you combined. To ensure that such atrocities are never forgotten, I propose that every building not designated as a dwelling must function as a Holocaust Museum. This includes schools, post offices, restaurants, DMVs, amusement parks, gas stations, apparel stores, malls, and even adult stores—everywhere."

A wave of shock and outrage surged through the assembly. Delegates from various nations sprang to their feet, shouting over one another. "What about our genocides?" they cried. "What about the tragedies in our histories?"

The uproar grew as nations voiced their anger, arguing that this proposal unfairly prioritized one atrocity over others.

In response, the UN Secretary-General addressed the assembly with calm authority. "While we recognize the suffering of all genocides, the Holocaust's unique industrialized scale requires special consideration. To preserve historical context while addressing practical concerns, we propose an alternative solution, a final solution if you will. The former Holocaust camps, with their extensive infrastructure, should be converted into high-end accommodations to fund the Holocaust Museum Project. These sites will be transformed into Airbnbs disguised as hotels."

A mix of disbelief and reluctant acceptance spread among the delegates, especially those from Iran, Neo-Bavaria (formerly Argentina), and the loose cantons of Southern Brazil. The Secretary-General continued, "The rack rates for these accommodations will start at five thousand dollars per night, reflecting the significant cleaning and maintenance fees necessary to uphold the historical integrity of the sites. This is a far cry from other Airbnbs where guests must take out their own garbage to a landfill thirty miles away. The cleaning fees will set people free."

Compounding the controversy, it was revealed that BlackRock had partnered with Airbnb in a sweeping initiative to ensure all residences worldwide would transition to Airbnb-style accommodations, effectively eliminating traditional home ownership. BlackRock’s investment would transform every dwelling into a rental, making permanent homes a relic of the past.

"To honor the gravity of the Holocaust and ensure its memory endures," the Secretary-General declared, "we will provide a boutique, retrofitted experience at five thousand dollars a night just so people don’t forget how bad the Holocaust was. The Anti-Defamation League has given its seal of approval as the Every Wall is a Wailing Wall Act of 2264 did not work. As Walter Sobchak famously said, ‘If you will it, dude, it is no dream.’"

The cryogenically frozen Ayatollah, Shah’n Kahn’nery, leaned toward his aide and whispered, "I thought Theodor Herzl said that."

Cryogenically preserved Paul Kagame, irate that his Hotel Rwanda Initiative had been overshadowed, and even Netanyahu’s preserved head, who found the proposal unsettling, voiced his discomfort, remarking, "I thought Tel Aviv was the gayest we could get. This is a bit much."

Delegates were outraged by the idea of replacing stable homes with a global network of transient rentals, and the merger of historical reverence with commercial interests ignited a fierce debate over the balance between preserving history, economic priorities, and fundamental human needs.

The Roman Catholic Church was outraged. "They have more real estate than we do now," the Pope said.

Back in the building where I had met my university acquaintance, I now stood as his father’s new trophy wife. His father, a distinguished elder in a striped seersucker suit and a silk ascot, was decent enough. Still, I felt a pang of guilt; I was with him out of sheer pragmatism, not love. He seemed to prefer the companionship of men, often remarking that the bond between men was purer. "Men used to die for each other in trenches and hunt woolly mammoths together," he would say, lamenting how mechanized warfare, mass extinction and industrial food production had diminished such intimate connections.

I wished I was a man or an equal as I was during my childhood.

He was hosting guests, some of whom were visibly disgruntled.

"The railway accommodation was nice, but it wasn’t included in our stay!" a high-strung woman exclaimed. "I was also fed up with the incessant blaring of the singular unmutable channel, Disney-HBO-Blacked-Max-Plus."

My ex-widower gently pulled me by the waist and whispered, "Please fetch a bottle of Catena Zapata Mundus Bacillus Terrae Malbec, Gualtallary, ’95, from the wine cellar."

I knew it was one of the most expensive Argentine wines, priced at least six million dollars due to inflation.

As I made my way past swimming pools and artificial intelligence crooning Lana Del Rey’s "There’s No Business Like Shoah Business," I reached the steel-bound wine cellar. In line with corporate social responsibility measures, the door had no disposable keys; it required saying, "I’m sorry" to open.

Inside the wine cellar, I was met with an unexpected sight: no wine bottles, just artisanal ketchup in glasses, mason jars of vinegar and olives, and shelves of raw selvedge denim.