“This is delicious. By ‘they’ I take it you mean the prince.”
She nods.
“So is this the Shangri-La Zone?”
“Nope. That, at least in theory, is big-time commercial. This is residential with some commercial accoutrements.”
“How come there’s no . . . well, life here?”
“Money. And momentum. Or at least a more formal type of commitment from some of the better-known multinationals.”
“What’s the holdup?”
“For starters, in addition to the worldwide economic collapse, they’re waiting for more aggressive measures to be taken by the Galadonian government to stimulate foreign investment and development. Plus they have legitimate questions about cultural restrictions, infrastructure deficiencies, political instability, and, frankly, the emotional stability of the man in charge of the whole shebang.”
“Apparently Happy Mountain Springs didn’t get that memo. With those obstacles, why would anyone consider it?”
Madison Ellison sits down next to Henry. “A market the size of a nation, even a micro-nation like this, is a terrible thing to waste.”
“So what are you, like the royal Realtor or something?”
“Nope,” she answers. “PR. Last year the Galadonian government contracted my parent company to maintain its stellar magical-little-kingdom image in the world while cleaning up any potential messes that may occur during the upcoming, let’s call it transitional phase.”
“What company?”
Before she responds, her phone rings. She holds up a hand as she rises to take the call. “Yeah. Yes. Well, if that’s the case, then why not do a video press release about something positive, about how, I don’t know, these new state-of-the-freaking-art factories are actually empowering, not enslaving, women, giving females from rural areas opportunities they never could have experienced prior to the prince’s social renaissance. Two s’s in renaissance.” She clicks off the device and stares out the window, gathering her thoughts before returning her attention to Henry.
“Is that what this is?” Henry says, gesturing at the house and beyond. “Ground zero of a social renaissance?”
“Absolutely. It remains to be seen whether that which is being reborn is good or bad. But it’s a renaissance nonetheless.”
“That is, if you’re sticking with the literal versus the humanistic variation of the definition. What company are you with again?”
“I didn’t say. But it’s not one you’ll have heard of. We had to do a totally separate spin-off after the prince contacted my old blue-chip firm, which you surely have heard of. Had to because of the risk, because of the potential PR fallout for our corporate umbrella brand if our name were to be attached should this all go horribly awry. If you want a hint, it’s the same Madison Avenue firm that China hired to put out fires before the Beijing Olympics.”
“Tainted milk,” Henry says, counting on his fingers. “Lead in toys. Choking pollution.”
She takes a bite of toast and, with her mouth full, answers. “Exactly. And don’t forget Darfur and all those pesky human rights issues. We didn’t make them go away, but we certainly spun them the best possible way.”
“Tibet be damned.”
“I mean, what do you remember about Beijing? Michael Phelps’s eight gold medals or a couple of human rights crazies protesting outside that French supermarket?”
“Darfur be damned.”
Madison Ellison waves him off. “Please. What are you gonna do, blame the brands, the quarter-pounder with cheese and the twelve-ounce can of Coca-Cola, for the mess the world is in?”
Henry holds up his hands. “Hey, I’m supposed to be teaching people in a toxic watershed to talk about crystal-clear bottled water. I’m in no position to blame anyone for anything.”
Madison Ellison stares at a text message flashing on the screen of her device. It’s important enough to divert some of her attention from him, but not enough to stop her from replying. “In a sense, you know what we are, the people such as me who assign made-up stories to real world events? In an indirect but very accurate way, we’re the historians of our time. Not necessarily the work we do, but the things that our work is a response to. Because if someone in my position creates an alternate or modified version of an event, it’s highly probable that there is a much more interesting and troubling reality behind the spin. Poison in the paint. Blood on the blueprints. Electoral deceptions. Unravel that spin, backtrack through the diversionary press releases, the shiny happy viral e-mails, the pithy sound bites and paid advertorials, and you’ll get a jaw-dropping three-sixty view of how the twenty-first century truly works.”
“Other than the fact that I could not disagree more, I understand.”
“You’ll see.”
“Curators of alternate realities.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Okay, then,” Henry asks. “What’s the story behind the story of this place? What is it a response to?”
“This place? This has more made-up stories per square inch than any place on earth. Right now it’s quiet, but we’ve been formulating preemptive responses to a number of scenarios, for when it all, knock on wood, goes kerplooey.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Madison Ellison shakes her head. “We make a lot more money on triage than on preventive medicine.”
“Is this really the Jonas Brothers?”
She nods. “Makes me think of home.”
Henry wipes up the last bit of omelet with his toast and looks up at Madison Ellison. “Sounds like you could use a little break from your Galadonian adventure.”
She laughs. “They make me think of home in a negative way. Reminds me of what I left. The truth is, there’s no place I’d rather be than right here.”
~ * ~
On the short walk back to his place after breakfast, Henry stops and watches a mud-splattered Toyota Land Cruiser roll down the street and turn in to his driveway. A young, angry-looking Galadonian man is driving. Maya gets out of the passenger’s side. She opens the back door and takes a brown paper bag out of the rear seat and says something to the driver before closing the door.
Henry knows that he has no right to feel this way, but the presence of the man with Maya fills him with jealousy.
“How are you feeling?”
“Much better. I’m assuming that strange Indian man at the call center wasn’t a dream?”
Maya smiles. “Mahesh? He’s about as real as real gets.”
“What happened?”
“You passed out. Probably from the blow to the head. Exhaustion. Lack of sleep and food. Culture shock. Narcolepsy. Whatever it was, you were out. Here, I brought you some essentials.”
He accepts the bag and bows from the waist. “Want to come inside for a cup of. . . whatever might be in this bag?”
“No. I’m going back to work. There’s no need for you to come in today. We’re still practicing the basics. There’s two more pills in the upstairs bathroom if you need them. You should rest.”
He thinks about protesting but knows the last thing he needs right now is more pseudo-American role-playing with Mahesh and the gang at the call center. “Thanks,” he says. “It’s been a bit of a frenzy since I got here, much of which I brought on myself. And thanks for keeping an eye on me last night. Madison filled me in.”
Maya says, “Not a problem,” and pivots to head back to the Land Cruiser.
He can’t help it: “Who’s your friend?” As soon as the words come out, he wishes he hadn’t said them.
She turns, no longer smiling. “He’s just that,” she says. “He’s my friend.”
~ * ~
iVoid
Losing his marriage, his job, his home, his mojo, and, twice in the last week, his consciousness is one thing. But now Henry has apparently somehow lost his music—5449 songs in all, the entire contents of his meticulously curated iTunes library. It’s not in his library, not on his hard drive, and he can’t find his iPod,
which holds only a fraction of it anyway. The thought of living here, or anywhere, without his security blanket of life-stage-appropriate songs paralyzes him with dread.
He never would have told Maya that he was content to languish alone around a strange and barren house in a foreign land if he had known it would be without music.
Rebooting the machine and searching the hard drive doesn’t help. Nor does slowly banging his forehead against the kitchen tabletop. Calling AppleCare from Galado, for the time being, isn’t something he’s up for.
It’s not just the music. It’s the combinations of songs. Their precise order. The quirky titles he gives to each grouping. Painstakingly created for certain situations. Distinct responses to specific events. Similar, he thinks, to Madison Ellison’s definition of PR, except with music he is the solitary victim of his own spin.
Though it would cost thousands of dollars, it might somehow be possible to recall and repurchase a great many of the missing songs. But the mixes, the playlists, which reflect nothing less than the syncopated rhythms of his soul, he could never come close to replicating.
Looking around the vacant home, dwelling on the silence, he thinks, Now I know how a junkie feels. Only a junkie, in theory, gets a little better every day that he goes without.
Without music, he realizes, what I really feel is alone.
Staring at the laptop screen, trying to will the songs back from the digital void, he sees an instant message clicking into his in-box. It’s Rachel. She did it, he thinks. She’s stolen my manhood and my soul and now she’s stolen my songs, with witchcraft.
—Howz Galado?
—Where’s my music, Rachel?
—Pardon?
—You know what I’m talking about. Give me back my music
library.
—OMG. It’s gone?
—Don’t play innocent, witch. Undo thy spell.
—There is no spell, Henry. How many times have I told you to
back up your files? And lay off the witch stuff. I’m just having some fun.
—At my expense?
—To an extent, yes. Absolutely. Plus what’s so wrong with
believing in something? What do you believe in, Henry?
—
—That’s what I thought.
—Shambhala.
—What?
—An unreachable utopia. I believe deeply in that, and nothing
else. Unless of course someone’s casting spells on me.
—What’s a spell, Henry, except someone else’s version of a
prayer? A proactive wish.
—Last I checked, prayers were supposed to be for redemption,
forgiveness, love, and the helping of others. Not the condemning and punishing of souls. Not for revenge, thievery, and the emasculation of soon-to-be ex-husbands,
—Oh, that. I was drunk. Sorry, but it made me feel good. I needed
a spiritual outlet.
—Couldn’t we have simply joined a Unitarian church?
—It won’t happen again. I’m coming to terms with us. Past and
future tense.
—How’s the house?
—Worth another 25% less than last time we spoke. You heard
about our bank, right?
—No.
—It no longer exists. Bought out by a brokerage firm that may or
may not be in existence by the end of the week. Our nest egg, fittingly, is gone. So, I ask once more: how is Galado?
—Maybe Galado, I am learning, is what I deserved. Hypocrites.
Criminals. Lunatics. And now—no music.
—Maybe that’s a good thing.
—
—Henry?
—Look, Rachel. I’m. . . It’s obvious that you deserved better. Not
at first, maybe, because I wasn’t so bad for a while. . . but if you want to make a case for later. . .
—
—We loved each other, right? Now, not so much. So we move on.
—Well, this is sort of why I’m writing.
—You met someone?
—Living with. Sort of.
—Okay. Mr. Las Vegas?
—Yeah.
—How romantic. Did you work that into your pickup line—Hey,
my husband’s having his balls snipped as we speak, at my insistence, in fact. . .wanna have sex?
—It wasn’t like that.
—
—Anyway, I just wanted you to know. And to tell you to, you
know, to take care of yourself, Henry, and that I hope things turn out well for you over there.
—
—?
—I’m glad you’re happy, Rachel.
He stares at the last passages onscreen for a while, wondering if something else will pop up or if that will be the end of it between them, with all future communication initiated by her attorney. His in-box is filled with messages, all work-related. There was a time when he had a circle of friends who would call and later e-mail each other, but after he moved to the country he let more and more time go between sending and replying to messages. As the weeks turned into months, the incoming e-mails slowed to a trickle, and by the time last year that he decided to do something about it, most of his alleged friends’ addresses had changed and his wry suggestions for long-overdue get-togethers were kicked back to him unopened. To be sure, there were more ways than ever to track his old acquaintances down—Google begat Classmates begat Facebook, Linkedln, Twitter, and all the subsequent social networks—but he made no further attempts. He found a sad sort of solace in the fact that he had at least tried to reconnect, once, and something else entirely in the epiphany that he hadn’t really wanted to in the first place.
The effort mattered more than the result.
He’s still staring at the screen when it blinks off, then on, then off again. The fridge motor has also shut down, and looking up, he sees that the light over the kitchen sink is out too. At the spa there were backup generators for Galado’s frequent power outages, but in USAVille this is not the case.
~ * ~
There Are No Bonus Rooms in the
Ruins of an Imagined Future
Two hours of solitary is enough.
He laces up his hiking shoes, grabs a sixteen-ounce bottle of Happy Mountain Springs water from the package Maya brought him, and heads out into the abandoned neighborhood.
A sheet-metal sky of factory particulate is suspended just above the base of the surrounding mountains, obscuring the post-noon sun and shearing off the rooftops of the empty homes of the valley. At first he purposely holds to the center of the broad paved street as he walks, content to contemplate from a distance the dozens of peripheral structures in various stages of incompletion. But the further he walks away from his driveway, the more he begins to wander onto the pale, hard-packed dirt of the unclaimed front yards and within arm’s reach of the timber webs of unsheathed exterior walls and roughly framed saber-toothed gables.
In his life he has been guided through developments in progress where there was a palpable sense of what’s soon to come, the kinetic buzz and tease of anticipation. The pull of the imminent. But walking on the cross-hatched two-by-twelve floor joists of one of a hundred three-bedroom townhouses indefinitely frozen in Phase Two, he isn’t feeling the thrill of what’s yet to come, or what might one day come, so much as the cold surety of that which will never be.
In his life he has also explored many ruins, including an 1850s Colorado silver-mining town, a burned-out Victorian hotel on the lake of his youth, and an abandoned Boy Scout camp deep in the Adirondacks. And those places, while spooky, held a different fascination. Their splintered and crumbled walls were dusted with the residue of human experience. There were memory shards in the rubble, and in the surrounding air the morbidly thrilling sensation of lives lost and unrequited dreams floated like a phantasmagoric presence.
But this place. Yeah, it’s a sort of ghost town, only one in which no one has ever lived or died. Which is somethi
ng he finds in many ways eerier and more disturbing than a Civil War battlefield or a graveyard at midnight.
This place.
The ruins of an imagined future.
He hops off the first-floor platform onto the chalk-hard earth and takes a swig of Happy Mountain Springs’ finest while surveying the frozen residential landscape of USAVille.
If music were an option, he decides that the song for this moment should be “Where Is My Mind?” by the Pixies (the Purple Tape, seventeen-song original demo-check).
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