Multiplex Fandango

NOW SHOWING ON SCREEN 15



City of Joy



Starring a radioactive Mickey Mouse

and a mutated Goofy


“Kids say the darndest things”

– Art Linkletter


Presented in 3D

(please return glasses at the door)





No vids. No access to the learn-verse. No friends. No sim-time. No fun.

Sally Mae Coleridge ruminated in her own fifteen-year-old self-pity as the Glow Train took her to the City of Joy. Beside her, the vidscreen, which initially had shown the browns and blacks of scorched earth and the flattened desolation of Florida, now showed the way life used to be at that place they once called Disney World: thousands of children and adults dressed in non-uniform clothing running happily amok through the park, taking rides, eating food, and laughing with all the curious fidelities of happiness.

“First opened in October of 1971, Disney World and its four parks were once the world’s most-visited recreational resort,” the monotone voice of the vid’s narrator said. An old map showed the park, poised between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in the center of Florida.

“I remember when my father took me to Epcot Center,” her father had said when they first boarded the train. “The Tomorrow Room showed us what the future would look like. I was so inspired by the possibilities. And although none of that really happened, I can still feel the hope I felt when I first saw what might be.”

“I never went, but my cousin did,” her mother had said. “She used to rave about Magic Mountain and the Magic Dragon rides. She always used to say that it was the only time in the world she was at once terrified and filled with joy at the same time.”

Sally heard it all but pretended not to listen. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to lose her hair like everyone did when they returned. She didn’t want people to know that she’d even gone. If she had the choice and opportunity, she’d hide until it was all over.

“Might as well get out of the funk, young lady,” her mother had said, poking her in the shoulder. “We’re doing this for you and you should appreciate it.”

“But I don’t want you to do this for me,” Sally said.

“You’re too young to know what you want. Your father and I want you to see what the learn-verse won’t teach you and what the sims won’t show.”

“I’ve accessed all the information, mom. What good will it do me to go there?”

“There’s something to be said for actually going someplace and experiencing it.”

“But do I have to lose my hair in the process?”

“Some would wish that was the only thing they’d lose.”

“And why do they call it The City of Joy? Why not the old name?’

“The new name reflects what it has become. In truth, it really doesn’t have a name anymore. People just call it that. Besides, Disney Corp no longer owns it.”

That conversation had been an hour ago. Sally didn’t buy it, but she was unable to do anything about it. She stewed in her fugue until another girl slid next to her and introduced herself.

“My name’s Amy Judd. I’m from Arkansas Agro. Who are you?”

Sally tried to act sullen, but one look at the dark circles under the new girl’s eyes, the sallow complexion, and the already bald head told her much about who Amy Judd from Arkansas Agro might be.

“Sally Coleridge from Denver Metro,” she said with as much verve as she could muster.

“You don’t want to be here, do you?”

“Whatever gave that away?”

“It’s all over your face. You look eternally sad.”

“Doesn’t everyone who comes here?”

Sally didn’t hear an answer and eventually looked at Amy. Instead of a frown, a smile beamed from Amy’s wan face.

“Don’t tell me you like it?”

“Like it? This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Sally examined the other girl more closely. She was an agronaut whose life was meant to be spent in the nutro-swamps of the Arkansas Plains. Hers was destined to be a hard life. No sim-time. Days spent under the swamps or floating on a harvest barge. If she’d been born into a metro, things would have been different for her. She’d have been more like Sally. But she hadn’t been. She was an agro.

“But aren’t you worried about the radiation? My learn-verse mates tell me it can cause all sorts of defects.”

“I’m not worried about the defects.” For the first time the girl frowned.

Sally looked around at the others as if for the first time. There were several unlucky kids like her, but there were also a lot of adults. Some looked hale and healthy like her parents, but there were quite a few elderly, someone’s grams and gramps. Then there were some like Amy, their bald heads giving them away, like beacons of ill health riding above the seats.

A hum sounded as the train began to slow.

They were due to change trains.

But not before the showers.



***

Sally screamed as the orange water hit her. From every direction at once, it shot into her pores and private places. The soap that made the water orange smelled sickly sweet. They said it killed all germs, thus eliminating the chance of a superbug being created in the radioactive areas. Sally could care less. It felt as if the hot water was lacerating her and she couldn’t wait for it to end.

And all because of a hurricane: Hurricane Uma, to be exact.

No one had known about the RBMK–1000 reactor Fidel Castro had built in the Cuban jungle until it blew. The same model as those at Chernobyl, the Soviet Union built a nuclear reactor in Cuba during the height of the Cold War. But the war ended, as did Castro. And it wasn’t a dozen years later when the reactor suffered a meltdown, its outdated components mismanaged by undereducated technicians. The radiation might have been localized had it not been for Hurricane Uma, which passed over the island, scooping up the radiation and pushing it forward, as a communal gesture to Cuba’s fraternal nemesis, America.



***

When she slid onto the seat of the clean train, her pout was full on. Her skin throbbed. They made her wear a red pantsuit, the shirt short-sleeved and awful. She ran the fingers of her right hand through her hair as she stared at the vidscreen. It showed Florida as it had been: trees, swamp, the occasional alligator, roads, combustion cars, buildings, people, life… So much had changed. In some ways, Florida now was no different than the rest of the world. Global Crises. Meta-bugs. Economicides. Gone was the way of the 20 Century. Sally touched the bottom edge of the vidscreen and watched as it flipped to now. The ground was brown and green, prime real estate returning to swamp. Here and there black scorched earth marred the landscape like scars, melted metal and glass from additional nuclear strikes by U.S.-fired missiles, a coup de grâce to the eternally wounded land of Florida. She touched the screen again and it superimposed a ghostly image of the past onto the present. Only then did she realize the totality of the devastation and the loss.

“Can I do that?”

Amy Judd slid next to Sally. She wore a yellow pantsuit that looked ghastly. Sally gestured to the window as if to say, be my guest.

“No. Not that.” Amy lowered her head and blushed. When she looked up, she wore an embarrassed smile. “That.” Amy pointed at Sally’s hand as she repeatedly pulled it through the lustrous long hair.

Sally stared at the other girl’s baldness. She didn’t want the girl to touch her at all. But a spark of humanity ignited within her, and as it grew, so did Sally’s desire to make the other girl feel better. After all, she was going to die.

Sally nodded.

Amy quickly reached for the hair, but stopped before she could touch it. She seemed to gather herself, then slowly let her fingertips caress Sally’s hair. She pulled her hand through several times. It wasn’t long before tears came into her eyes. She removed her hand, wiped her eyes with the back of one hand, then dropped her hands to her lap, where they trembled with the memory of the touch.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

Sally found herself staring at the other girl’s hands. So much like her own, yet they were so different. While Sally grew up in a metro with skyscrapers and solar bunkers, Amy’s life was spent in an agro. Was it the fertilizer that had given her cancer, Sally wondered, or was it the solar radiation? The nails on the girl’s hands were ragged and broken, as if she chewed them, or raked them against something hard. Sally had never broken a nail. Her hands were as soft as the skin of her thigh.

“You girls going to do the park together?” Sally’s mom asked. She approached from the head of the train car. She wore a red pantsuit like Sally’s.

The girls exchanged glances. Sally opened her mouth to answer, but noticed a bald woman staring at them. Instead, she changed the conversation.

“Didn’t your aunt come here once and ride Magic Dragon?”

“It was my cousin,” Sally’s mom said. Then she laughed. She placed a hand on the back of the seat.

Sally noticed that her mother’s nails were like her own: perfect and unblemished.

“She thought it was going to be like the old movie, but it was nothing like the purple cartoon dragon. Rather it was a furious contraption made from steel girders and red elastic facing.”

“Purple cartoon dragon?” Amy asked.

“Popular 20 Century 2-dimensional cinematic icon that promoted drug use,” Sally replied. She’d accessed the learn-verse earlier and had a tag waiting for just this sort of question.

“Oh,” Amy said, blank-faced. “And it’s a ride?”

“Not just a ride,” Sally’s mother said. “It’s a roller coaster.”

“We aren’t going to have to ride it are we?” Sally asked.

“So dramatic.” Her mother sighed. Then she looked forlornly at Amy who refused to meet the older woman’s eyes and shook her head. “We can’t ride that one, honey. Magic Dragon is a special ride for special people.”

Amy looked and held Sally’s gaze for a long moment, making it clear that she was one of the special people for which the ride was made. Sally turned away, changing the subject.

“Why joy, mom? Why do they call it The City of Joy? I mean, it’s an amusement park surrounded by a radioactive wasteland. Where’s the joy?”

“Joy comes in all forms. Your joy might not be the same as someone else’s. It all depends on what you are trying to possess, what you have to gain. I suppose joy is the feeling you get when you attain that which you most desire.”

“I want to possess my hair.” Sally’s pursed her lips.

“Sally. Look around you. Don’t you think they do, too? Where’s your decorum?”

Sally didn’t have to look to be reminded of all the bald people. Her mother would disabuse her of her desire to keep her hair, but it was a hard thing for Sally to ignore. Her hair was, after all, an integral part of who she was.

“Sorry, mom.” She almost meant it.

She and Amy sat side-by-side for the rest of the ride. Sally found herself increasingly thinking about her “new friend.” Sally had sim-friends and learn-verse mates. She was very popular in some circles, especially Geography Clique 214 and the Red Zone’s 18 Century Trivia Room. Her avatar had won several awards and was viewed by first-learners as if she were some angelic figure. She never really considered having someone real to talk to, but the proximity of the girl stirred something within her.

“You’re not perfect.” As soon as the words left her mouth, Sally was horrified she’d said them.

Amy examined Sally and replied, “Neither are you.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“That’s okay. You’re a metro. Dad says that you guys are barely human anymore. He says you’ve been computerized.”

Sally glared at Amy, then burst into laughter.

“Computerized?”

“Yep.”

“Where are your parents?”

“They couldn’t leave the agro. Blue algae season started last week.”

“And they let you come here alone?”

“Why not? Is it dangerous?” Amy laughed.

Before Sally could respond, a hum sounded.

The train slowed.

They’d arrived.



***

They left the train single file. For the first time Sally breathed the air of Florida and as she did so, she knew that it was getting inside her, changing her, killing parts of her. The very air was deadly, laced with invisible radiation. Soon she’d lose her hair. She’d have to be bald for awhile, like Amy and the others. It would take a long time to grow back. Sometimes she heard it didn’t grow back at all. Whatever happened, her avatar would be her eyes and ears to the –verse until she was back to normal. Sally thought she felt her skin tingling, but she’d heard that it was all in her mind.

The amusement park rose out of the dusk. Night was falling, the sky red and yellow with purple hues. The rides, especially both roller coasters, were studded with lights. Sally felt a tinge of excitement upon seeing the sheer size of the roller coasters. She knew that one was Magic Mountain and the other was Magic Dragon, but which? Water was everywhere. It glowed a bright green from radiation-spawned algae. Larger-than-life robotic animalifications roamed the concourse. Colorful and cheerful, they were a bit scary.

Her parents invited Amy to spend her time with them. Sally didn’t really understand why, but didn’t see the harm. Soon, they were spinning around in teacups, riding a boat down a thin river with attacking robotic hippos and alligators, and herky-jerking up and down on giant mechanical arms. In between rides they walked along the concourse, robotic giant mice with elephantine black ears ran to and fro, trying to hug every child they could find. When they came to Sally, she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, understanding why the girl walking in front of them broke into tears when it happened to her.

They didn’t eat or drink anything, as was the rule. But they did spend some time in the smell museum. Both Sally and Amy loved the smell of something called pepperoni pizza. They couldn’t’ decide if they liked the hotdog with mustard, relish and ketchup, but found themselves oddly drawn to it. The most interesting was the smell labeled “Ambient Pollution 2015.” They gagged from the stench. Unbelievably this was how the air smelled like back then. The last smell was the best, and was promised to have been a yester-year staple of amusement parks. They called it cotton candy and the merest whiff made the girls grin from ear to ear. They ran back to it seven times before Sally’s parents convinced them to move on.

Finally it was time to go. The time had passed far more quickly than Sally would have thought. Amy from Arkansas Agro had a practical side that made her the perfect foil for Sally’s jokes. By the time they’d left the cotton candy, they were walking hand in hand.

Sally’s mother had defined joy as that feeling you get when you attain that which you most desire. At the time, all Sally could think of was her own hair. But gone were all thoughts of her long locks, replaced by the happiness of being in the moment with Amy. She hadn’t really known what she most desired until she had it. Their differences aside, they were both girls whose daring understanding of the qualities of life created a bond that had cemented over the course of two hours.

But then the bell rang, announcing it was time for everyone to return to the train.

Sally felt a tug on her arm. Amy refused to go.

“Come on. You can’t stay here, silly.”

Amy smiled, then frowned, then smiled again. “Of course I can.” She tried to pull away again, but Sally gripped harder. “Now look who’s being silly,” Amy said.

Sally noticed that those wearing yellow weren’t making any move towards the train. In fact, many of them were turning around and heading towards the Magic Dragon. Sally, her parents and Amy had ridden Magic Mountain four times and had felt their hearts leap and dance inside their throats. She’d reached such heights of joy, she felt her smile would never go away.

But it did.

“Mom, tell Amy to stop playing around. Tell her it’s time to go.”

A group of bald, yellow-suited women stared at her, their whispers lost in the sound of the train’s alarm. They pointed at Sally, gathering like a conspiracy of crows. Sally wanted to scream for them to stop staring at her, but she couldn’t make her mouth work any more. Her throat ached with the effort.

Soon her mother had her by the arm and was pulling her away from Amy, the park and the joy she’d so recently felt. When she was in her seat and the door was shut, Sally realized that Amy wasn’t ever coming back. She realized that Amy had come here to stay.



***

Sally took the orange water with a lot more bravery than when she’d arrived. She’d never thought to ask about the colors of suits. She never thought about not coming back. The orange water cleaned the radiation away, but it could never remove the memory of the little bald girl in the yellow pantsuit, who did nothing more than be her friend. They’d shared cotton candy smells. They’d shared teacup rides. They’d even shared laughter as her mother had broken into song about Puff the Magic Dragon, and the stupid lyrics about little boys, imagination, and the Land of Honah Lee.

In a moment of epiphany, Sally realized that The City of Joy wasn’t named for the living; all along it had been a place for the dying. The joy Amy had found was because of Sally and her parents. The girl wasn’t alone her last day. She’d spent it with friends. Sally felt a spark of delight in that knowledge, perhaps the first grain of happiness that would eventually fill in the emptiness in her chest.

Sally ran her fingers through her hair, as she always did when she was nervous. Only this time, strands came away with her fingers. Her hair was starting to go. Soon, she’d be like Amy. But instead of a death warrant, her bald head was more a souvenir of the experience. Sally wondered if she’d look pretty with no hair. She wondered if she’d look like Amy. She wondered if she might just make her avatar appear the same.

She sat back and remembered her last glimpse of The City of Joy. Just before the train had pulled away, heading back towards civilization, Sally had keyed the vidscreen to life. She’d watched the line of yellow-suited people as they’d snaked towards the Magic Dragon. She’d searched the crowd, hoping to see her friend one last time. Eventually she spied her, two tiny arms raised in rapture as the cars carried the sick and damned through the twists and loops of the roller coaster, onward, upward and downward, and on past joy to forever.

***

Story Notes: I wrote this story in one sitting as well. I was having a conversation with someone and someone said, “Imagine if Florida becomes unlivable because of all of the hurricanes.” It got my brain ticking and before long I had the idea of the setting. But as far as the theme, that came right out of the childlike innocence of the cartoon movie character Puff the Magic Dragon. I apologize if I tricked you into reading a science fiction story. It was one of the one’s I’ve written of which I am most proud.