Author's note: I heard the gist of this story from an “Italian” friend. I found it a bit comical. The story really needs to be expanded upon.
Basically, they (the people of the story) built their apartment buildings as good as space-craft. It’s the evolution of the best housing possible. The buildings have superb environmental controls including waste recycling.
Landlords collect all the people who can’t pay their debts into the same building. Once the whole building is full of people who owe more money than they can ever pay, then the building is actually launched into space as a space-craft. No warning is given to the building occupants. The building typically crashes down on a primitive planet where there are no modern services. The people in the building are left to fend for themselves on a new world. Landlords write off the cost of the loss of the building as a space exploration expense.
Scene:
There's a discovery in a farmer's field. Buried under about 20 feet of mud is the remains of an apartment building. The apartment building is dated to have been buried thousands of years ago. The building is full of the remains of dead bodies.
Scene:
Building occupants are wondering why there is such sophisticated radio and computer equipment in the building. It seems to be overkill for the average apartment building and some of the equipment doesn't seem to serve any obvious purpose. One of the tenants asks: "Have you ever seen the sub-basement ?"
Scene:
CSA takes an interest in a near earth orbit cluster of asteroids. The asteroids appear to be rectangular in shape with regular craters. It looks like the asteroids might crash down somewhere in the Canadian mid-west.
Scene:
The launch of a building is played up in the news as a massive explosion and fire. It's claimed that the building was totally destroyed, but several witnesses claim they saw the building shoot up into the sky.
Scene:
Alan, a young lad who is highly religious is studying the bible, when he hears a loud rumble and the building begins to shake. Alan has never been able to keep his bills up to date, and thought he finally found the ideal place to reside; a nice building where the rent was dirt cheap.
Scene:
A building is entering the Earth's atmosphere and automatic deployment of the parachute has failed. The buildings occupants scramble to deploy the parachute manually before the building crashes into the ground.
Scene:
A small group of the building's occupants have taken up studying the building as a spacecraft as a cause. They are attempting to learn everything they can about the workings of the building and it's destination.