November 18, 2024 | Awake & Dreaming

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is an iconic annual event held in New York City on Thanksgiving Day, organized by the Macy’s department store. It is one of the largest and most famous parades in the world and has been a cherished holiday tradition since its debut in 1924.

Key Features of the Parade:

Massive Balloons: The parade is renowned for its giant helium balloons shaped like popular characters from cartoons, movies, and TV shows. These balloons are carried through the streets of Manhattan by teams of handlers.
Floats: Elaborately designed floats featuring holiday themes, pop culture icons, and corporate sponsors are a staple of the event. Many floats also feature live musical performances.
Performers: The parade showcases a variety of performers, including marching bands, cheerleaders, dance troupes, and Broadway cast members, adding to the spectacle.
Celebrities: Celebrities and entertainers often make appearances, either performing or waving to the crowds from floats.
Santa Claus: The parade traditionally ends with the arrival of Santa Claus, symbolizing the official start of the holiday season.

Route and Broadcast:

The parade travels through Manhattan, starting near Central Park and ending in front of Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square. It is broadcast live on national television, allowing millions of viewers across the U.S. to enjoy the festivities.

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is not only a celebration of Thanksgiving but also a significant cultural event that brings families together to share in the joy of the holiday season.

Getting back to the journeys of my family, set in the fantastic futuristic science fiction universe that I have created in my mind, read this post and the remaining before you proceed. Ok, all caught up? Now read on!

So after the exciting and beautiful scenes under the oceans where we spent almost 2 days exploring the waters and admiring the giant creatures, we boarded the spaceship and before we had dinner, we left orbit and the spent the night and the next day in space, as we were headed to our next destination. However just around noon the next day, while I was on the bridge at my controls, I notice that we detect a weak signal coming from a star system that was charted decades ago and came back as being devoid of most type of life. A couple of my cousins come to the bridge and I ask them to check it out.

Sensing that this could be interesting, I give the command to change our heading and the ship is now heading towards that star system. As we go for lunch, the 3 of us inform the rest of the family that we are headed towards this stars system to investigate the signal. Initially I wasn’t expecting to beam down to the planet to check the source of the signal but as we finish our lunch and we approach the source, I was getting ready to beam down with big robot and a few military ones. However most of my cousins are now gearing towards beaming down as well.

As I go back to the bridge, it is found that the signal is emanating from a snow and ice moon – one of a few that go around this large planet. Quick scans find no spaceships or life on the moon as well as the others. On the planet we find very early stages of microbial life on it but nothing else. This is exactly what the report from the previous exploration of this area of space stated. However it seems that this signal wasn’t reported back then and it looks like the signal was activated very recently – by what I don’t know. So once we are in orbit, I decided to beam down with all my cousins, our domestic robots that transport the pets and all the military robots, leaving just the bridge robots along with our elders and the kids on the ship.

The moon is covered in snow and it looks like a catastrophic non-natural event changed the moon’s climate and over a period of time it has settled to this light snow falling almost on a steady rate. We find the source of the signal is a large alien building, the only one we can detect on the entire moon. We beam right near the entrance and then scan the building. We go in through the entrance that we are easily able to break open and search the ground level. We find the signal source and I have to decide if I should leave it on or shut it off.

We connect to the computers that are running the building and soon discover that the moon was a research station & residential for an alien race who built this building on this moon nearly 2000 years ago. An experiment that they did went horribly wrong and that changed the climate of this moon. Luckily except for some plants and trees which weren’t really affected, there were no animal life on the moon. We spend a few hours exploring the building, moving around in smaller groups of 6 and then decide to beam back up. Once on the bridge, I leave a marker for the Starfleet like organization about this discovery, so they can send a team to fully investigate the building and do more research on it.

That done, I join the 4 or 5 cousins who were on the bridge with me and we move to join the rest. We take off the protective suits and change into more comfortable clothing and grab drinks and food before sitting own to eat and enjoy some long conversations. Our ship is headed out into space again.