Alternate Ending to HappinessTM

When Edwin went in search of the real Tupak Soiree, he would be led to Paradise Flats and find Jack’s trailer to be a hub for a handful of nerdy looking gentlemen surrounded by very expensive looking computers and technological equipment. Edwin would learn that Jack McGreary was actually a very wealthy man who owned the whole town of Paradise Flats, but became extremely reclusive after he was abducted by aliens right out of his La-Z-Boy. He was sent back to Earth once they coerced him into helping them take over the planet. McGreary secretly hired a team from NASA to come out and help him communicate with the aliens so he could send information and take orders from them. What I Learned On the Mountain turned out to be the work of aliens who decided it would be easier to mount a global takeover if Earth’s inhabitants were subdued into happiness, and the whole thing was relayed through Jack. Once Edwin found out what was going on, he would have to be sworn to secrecy, and join their ranks if he wanted to live through the end of humanity. Reluctantly, and without any real intent on keeping his word, Edwin would agree. In a last effort to try to get the world back to the state it was in before What I Learned On the Mountain, Edwin would write How to Be Miserable, According to Tupak Soiree, and use his old office to get it published. The book would be a best-seller, and the nation would begin to come down from its happiness high. In the meantime, the aliens would have found a far more inhabitable planet elsewhere in the universe (a place without pollution and global warming taking its toll), and abandon their plans for global domination of Earth. As souvenirs, they would decide to take a few thousand human slaves with them (Jenni, Nigel, Harry Lopez, Jack McGreary and Mr. Mead among those taken). The mass disappearance would cause a new wave of religious fanaticism, once Mr. Ethics wrote a book attributing it to the “second coming of Christ”. Edwin would take over Mr. Mead’s old job at Panderic and be Mr. Ethics’ editor, making himself a decent profit off of the new book.

During the whole happiness epidemic, May would become pregnant in her stint as “Cotton Candy”, and wouldn’t remember who the father was. Once she was miserable again, she would decide to keep the baby and start a new life as a single mom working for a new publishing house. She and Edwin would see each other occasionally for drinks or lunch, but nothing romantic would ever come of it.