The date on the invitation seemed at first like a typo: February 11th, 2056. And thus people received their first indication that this year's party was going to be a little…different. And we don't mean the record 26.9 inches of snow that Ma Nature decided to dump on Manhattan that night.
 The 66th Annual Black Hearts Party provided a firsthand look at the party as it would be fifty years in a very bleak, very grim future, where breeding-age adults were paired up by the State in a process known as Lifemating, in time for Valentine's Day's jackbooted descendent, State-mandated National Mating Day (featuring tax-free breeding all day long).
The dance floor was transformed into a miniature Times Square, with poster-covered walls, propaganda billboards, and electronic signs that scrolled slogans ("REPORT SELFCRIME WHEREVER YOU SUSPECT IT"), weather reports ("20% CHANCE OF RUST SHOWERS"), and even the occasional anti-Mating Day message that hackers had planted. Partygoers danced to the ancestor-offending music of DJs Patty Hearst and Legion while a lucky few were able to ponder the resistence banners swaying overhead from the ass-pleasing futuristic Vibrocouch, before it fell victim to its own popularity and burned out all three industrial-strength vibrators inside.
 The stage was shrouded in black cloth, inside of which the Chamber of Destiny was reborn. No longer a spectator sport, the Wheel now commanded the actions of not only the Spinner and Victim, but of everyone watching as well. It demanded mass gropings and enforced sex-specific hookups, thereby quashing the political aspirations
of all inside. In addition, the Wheel was equipped both with a timer and the Expositron, a reverse glory hole for anonymously displaying ones "shameful bits" to an unsuspecting dance floor.
Meanwhile upstairs guests satisfied their non-sexual appetites with black Asian-themed foods including cold black sesame noodles, forbidden black rice, and black rice pudding. The more
adventurous/hungrier/drunker partygoers sampled our assortment of curious, "edible" black Chinatown snacks including black grass jelly, several types of dried seaweed, "candies", and, of course, dried fish.
Available at the bar were several tasty, lip- and tooth-blackening drinks, such as our signature black rum punch, black sangria, and black cosmopolitans.
Pornonymity was back, allowing people to unleash their inner porn star (and impress passersby) with complete anonymity. While not assisting the "performers" with encouraging leers, camera skills or deft Sharpie, our sexy Pornonymity girls and boy commandeered the DJ booth in the lounge, spinning and committing crimes against the State until late in the evening.
 Located across from Pornonymity were two State-sanctioned Breeding Chambers. Of the two, only one was up and running, periodically blasting guests with sexually motivational video and helpful breeding instructions not soon to be forgotten. Despite the fact that the other Breeding Chamber was "out of order" enterprising partgoers managed to put the dark, padded room to enthusiastic (if not exactly State-sanctioned) use.
Other surprises awaited at various points around the ship, including disturbing black aerial sculptures, FORTUNE FISH TO COME!, a historical exhibit of the
Constitution of the United Republic of America, tasty urinal fish, and the magnificent Dogcoon Tree, which, in accordance
with 2056 Dogcoon-celebrating traditions, was 8 feet in height, suspended, and covered entirely with white feathers. Guests wrote prayers to Dogcoon on scraps of paper and
pinned them to the tree in the hope that Dogcoon might "feel your wishes and fly them to the comfort hands of action".
Late in the evening, despite the mounting snow drifts, the party was graced with an appearance by vaudevillian supervillain Doctor Donut — the only one there whose teeth are naturally black — who proceeded to storm around the boat shouting insults and shaking his eclair at amazed black-clad valentine haters.
And yes, for the first time in our sixteen year history, someone finally came as a mime.
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