The Hunt: In Manhattan, Creative Types from Galaxy UDFj-39546284 Find a Home

by Alex Sharp

For context, see here and also here.

Marjorie jjjj9_ never dreamed she would own an entire residential island. But then again, she never dreamed she would leave the outer reaches of space and a thriving career as a bespoke weaver of neutrino scarves, either.

Love can do that, though. Love and your own intergalactic spacecraft parking lot.

“Of course I’d read all about how up-and-coming Earth is, how practically everywhere has wireless now. That’s really important to me,” said Mr. Noah *Sm?nbob, who grew up in the Dagobah System.

“We loved our star system, but we’re looking to start a family, and the confines of a completely industrialized city-planet were starting to wear on me,” said Ms. jjjj9_, who, like her husband, is “pushing 3000.”

“If I want to clone more than 1 or 2 hundred offspring, I knew we had to make a move.”

Last summer, when solar flares made for an inconspicuous entrance through the ozone layer, they began the hunt.

Their broker, Nancy Miller of United Properties, LTD., initially tried to sell the multi-limbed-anaerobic-entrepreneurs on islands elsewhere. Iceland — a good deal but the light wasn’t great — and Australia — great space but too minimalist, with a history of bug problems — were both voted down.

California proved tempting, with its liberal sensibilities, beautiful beaches, and the prospect of blowing out a fault line to set the state adrift in the Pacific Ocean. Even though the privacy of an island hundreds of miles out to sea — with only the screams of trapped denizens who had been unable to escape before the renovations to keep them company — was tempting, “who has the energy for that kind of overhaul?” asked Ms. jjjj9_.

The couple decided what they wanted was a move-in-ready location.

With an initial budget of 4.5 million space euros, they were pleased to discover the exchange rate worked in their favor.

“They could literally buy the souls of myself, my entire family, and every person I have ever known or loved,” said Ms. Miller.

Although the sky was the limit, the *Sm?nbob-jjjj9_s were intrigued by the photos they browsed online depicting the cozy charms of Manhattan, home to 1.6 million humans at the time of sale.

“So we hopped on the Intersteller Rainbow Bridge one Saturday morning after yoga, and decided to see for ourselves,” said Mr. *Sm?nbob.

Mr. *Sm?nbob’s father, Imperial Space Lord *Sm?nbob, invented the Intersteller Rainbow Bridge in 1974.

“We just fell in love,” Ms. jjjj9_ said. In between meetings with brokers and confrontations with vast mobs of soon-to-be-displaced Manhattanites, the couple ripped up the just-completed Second Avenue subway line to take home as a souvenir and caught a retrospective at The New Museum.

“It had such a fresh vibe,” she said.

The asking price for the island was $4 billion, with monthly charges of around $3 million. The couple made a low offer, and were thrilled be accepted. “It’s a buyer’s market right now,” said Ms. Miller, “and the current tenants were really motivated to avoid provoking a stressful protracted intergalactic war.”

A crushing fiery holocaust was narrowly avoided after the couple learned the island had been incorrectly zoned for flooding. Mr. *Sm?nbob admitted at one point he lost his temper. “Listen, the whole planet is pretty much” underwater, he said, using a slightly stronger word. “But you only live once until being reincarnated as a pure ball of sentient light capable of manipulating the boundaries of time, right?”

Some quick thinking on the part of the sellers resulted in the addition of Staten Island to the sale, for no additional fee, to mitigate the costs of any future flood damage. That smaller island will soon be home to the aforementioned parking garage, a coup for a couple who plan to keep their entire 17,000-strong space pod army close by, just in case.

The basement level includes an extensive subterranean transportation system, which the couple plan to turn into a lazy river. The ground floor has been neglected and needs work — with a few exceptions, the previous tenants’ landscaping had been nearly all paved over — “but we’re working with a really great design firm based in Madrid,” Ms. jjjj9_ said.

Those humans who have remained on the island, in thrall to their new mayor-overlords, seem to be taking the transition well: “Vogue is going to do a thing in the August issue,” Ms. jjjj9_ whispered.

The couple plan to make a few cosmetic changes to their new home, like opening up the penthouse roof of every condominium beneath 34th Street to make docking easier for all 432 in-laws. The area north of 116th Street will be razed to make way for a recreation complex, and negotiations have already begun to take over the lease on New Jersey.

“So far we’re really pleased,” Mr. *Sm?nbob said. “We’ve been telling all our friends back in UDFj-39546284, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a full-on invasion in the next few years.”

Some things require an adjustment period, like less Xenon in the air than the couple would prefer.

But Mr. *Sm?nbob is up to the challenge. “My wife is rubbing off on me,” he said. “I’m feeling pretty crafty. I think a little manipulation of the chemical makeup of the Earth’s atmosphere is well within my abilities. And that’s what Youtube is for!” Mr. *Sm?nbob also recently imported mammoth killer slug-bees, and plans to try his hand at bee-keeping in the space formerly known as Central Park.

Ms. jjjj9_ likes to tease her husband about his affinity for some of Earth’s baser pleasures: “He loves siphoning natural gas out of long-stored ground reserves upstate,” she said. “I keep telling him he’s going to get fat! ”

He just shrugged: “You can only do Seamless so many nights.”

This story is part of our Real Estate Month series.

Alex Sharp works in communications in NYC. Some of her landlords have definitely been from outer space.

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