“What does the C stand for, doctor?”
“You in health work?”
“No, I’m just curious, doctor.”
He stared at me with disbelief. “You must be in health work.”
“No doctor.”
“You’re the first patient in months to ask. Your heart, lungs, nerves are in good shape but most important is your collagen. That’s what the C stands for. It’s a fibrous material composed of seventeen different amino-acids and it holds your joints together. Collegen keeps your organs in place, too, I might add. If your collagen ratio isn’t just right, this Park isn’t for you. We had too many accidents when we first opened. Have fun!”
Outside his office my yellow and red pill was waiting. “You’ve passed your medical,” it said in its calm motherly voice. “Isn’t that nice? Now you just follow me, dear, to the attendants.”
We went into a big room lit up with the strange white light I had first seen approaching the Park. The attendants stood in rows like fish in a tank, all dressed alike in skintight black suits. The Park insignia, AAP, gleamed against their chests. In that light they seemed inhuman; their faces were so expressionless, they were so alike, their hair cropped close so that if you only looked at the faces there was no telling the men from the women. And they were all beautiful.
One of those attendants was Cleo Fly, I thought, as the Voice, that friendly Voice, boomed, “Congratulations, all you fortunate wearers of the C. You’ve won your letter. Congratulations.”
I wasn’t the only one excited. Nearly all the C-wearers were chattering or giggling or staring at the attendants who stood silent and motionless as statues.
“Your entertainment is Our Pleasure!” the Voice boomed. “Attendants!”
They walked over to us. A beautiful black-haired girl stood before me. “Are you Cleo?” I asked.
She nodded indifferently and in a cold professional voice said, “Atomic Amusement Park offers two rides, sir. There is the main ride on the Atomic Rollercoaster. And a preparatory ride that you can select. There is the Constant K Ferris Wheel, the Hall of Quantum Mirrors, the Proton-Neutron Tunnel of Love, the Meson Thunderbolt. Select any ride you wish and afterwards we’ll go on the Rollercoaster.”
I was, by now, not only tense, but dizzy. That strange white light seemed to be sinking into my eyes, changing my outlook on things. I mean my mental outlook1. All about me I saw the attendants pairing off with the thrill-seekers. “The Thunderbolt!” I heard one of them saying. A woman giggled hysterically and said, “I guess I’ll try the Hall of Quantum Mirrors — ”
It was only with a powerful effort that I recalled the Commissioner’s instructions. This cold-voiced attendant waiting for my answer was an assignment. ‘The Tunnel of Love,” I said.
She took my hand as if I were a child. We went into a dimly lit corridor that expanded and contracted like a giant worm. On its rounded walls, murals unrolled — moving murals that were like dreams, the secret dreams of the passions and orgies that sometimes haunt us when we sleep — and shadowy naked man and women did naked things. They shocked me and they fascinated me.
“Nature is a pairing!” the Voice said suddenly. “Magic pairs, magic numbers. Why does the helium nucleus have two protons and two neutrons? The oxygen nucleus eight protons and eight neutrons? Two, the magic number two. Magic pairs, Magic numbers! Nature is a pairing of proton-males and neutron-females that between them create the family of particles. Magic numbers, magic pairs!”
The corridor, this expanding and contracting corridor, suddenly went black, and I felt myself moving with Cleo as if we were being blown round and round by some force outside ourselves, and as we circled, the Voice seemed to circle with us. “You are now in the Proton-Neutron Tunnel of Love! Men, think of yourselves as electrically charged protons! Women, think of yourselves as negatively charged neutrons1. Mysterious nature …”
There was no glimmer of light anywhere, and yet I sensed that we were all circling together as if in a dance whose music was the Voice.
“Why does the neutron emit an electron to become a proton? Why does the proton emit a positron to become a neutron? Sublime swap of opposites! Proton-Males and Neutron-Females, would you like to exchange your sex in the Tunnel of Love?”
To someone like me it sounded positively immoral, but as we swung through the blackness, I thought, Crockett, this is an assignment. An assignment. Cleo is suspect number one. Number one, number one, I kept thinking and squeezed her hand that I was holding. It was limp and cold like the hand of a ghost. “Cleo,” I said with determination. “You’re beautiful, Cleo.”
“Don’t call me Cleo,” she whispered.
“What shall I call you?”
“Neutron.”
“Neutron?” I almost gagged, but gritting my teeth I said, “Dear Neutron.”
“Dear Proton,” she whispered but even her whisper was cold.
The blackness was no longer complete. Blue and red spots of misty light1 appeared for an instant and then vanished. I could see the face of the neutron I was with, and the more distant faces of the other couples. Now and then we collided but there was no sensation of impact. We had all become lighter than feathers, small as particles of dust whirling around in limitless space where only the Voice was constant.
“Mystery of nature! Energy is matter, and matter is energy. Proton-Males and Neutron-Females, are you ready to surrender your energy? Surrender, surrender, emit your positrons and electrons, surrender, surrender …”
Cleo’s face, now bluish, now reddish, floated dreamily close to me and there was a little smile on her lips. As there were little smiles on all their faces, on all the bluish and reddish faces. I had forgotten about the Commissioner. I felt as if I were fainting, a pleasant fainting, oh so pleasant and wonderful, and the Voice seemed inside of me. Cleo’s eyes had closed like a woman asleep in her bed and a distant memory of my sleeping wife stirred in my mind. I could see my wife asleep, and responding in sleep to my caresses.
“Surrender, surrender,” the Voice was saying. “Surrender in the Tunnel of Love, the Ultimate Sex Pool, protons into neutrons and neutrons into protons …”
And then I no longer heard any words, only sound, a roaring steady sound as if all the winds of the world were blowing, the blue and red lights swinging like dying lanterns in an immense blackness, and the sensation I felt was no longer gentle. For I was caught up in those winds and I was no longer holding Cleo’s hand but was paired with her, mouth to mouth, body to body, trembling and shaking, the blue and red lanterns like shooting stars, the blackness burning. Yes, burning itself, for all about were streaks and jags of green and yellow and purple2. The trembling and shaking became more and more violent, and it was wonderful, the lights fusing, a rainbow of color that only lasted a second, and with a bursting sensation of relief I watched the rainbow colors die out in the blackness, and there was only blackness, and with it came a feeling I had never known before, the feeling of being a woman.
A woman! Made like a woman, a woman….
And then the ride was over. That strange heavy white light poured in on us. Cleo pulled free from my hold and joined the other attendants. Again they stood in a row, emotionless and passionless in their black skintight suits. Not so the rest of us. Some stumbled as if drunk. Others laughed. One woman who had just felt herself to be a man strutted about like a crazy rooster while two or three protons who had been changed into neutrons fingered their chests as if astonished at their lack of neutron breasts. I controlled myself. What I felt I will omit since it has no bearing on the events of this history.
And clear and friendly, the Voice sounded. “Did you enjoy the Proton-Neutron Tunnel of Love? And now for the biggest thrill of all — The Atomic Rollercoaster. Remember, the Atomic Rollercoaster helps condition you for space travel! A human being in space must exert sufficient internal pressure to drive oxygen into and carbon dioxide out of the blood stream. You are all physically fit and your collagen ratios are excellent. But you
must be just as fit psychologically. You must know what is ahead of you in order to retain your mental balance! A trip on the Atomic Rollercoaster lasts thirty-one minutes but it will feel like eternity. Thirty-one minutes of sensational pleasure. Your entertainment is Our Pleasure! Attendants!”
Again, they stepped forward, and Cleo took my hand. I stared at her cold face, and I couldn’t believe she had ever smiled, or that I had ever kissed her in the Tunnel of Love. At the end of the corridor we entered a room built of glass. Ceiling floor, walls were all glass, and above us and below and on all sides, other glass rooms stretched to what seemed infinity. Oh, the feeling. As if I were inside the very inside of things.
“Illusion!” the Voice said. “These glass chambers reproduce the ion glass-microscope with which the first pictures of atoms were taken. Pictures, 20,000,000 times in magnification! Illusion equals eternity! Eternity equals illusion! Be prepared to be reduced in size. How else can man enter the tiniest of all worlds where billions of atoms can fit on the point of a pin? Illusion equals eternity! The Atomic Rollercoaster will take you on a trip to the atom of uranium whose nucleus has a diameter of of a centimeter. Don’t be alarmed, folks! Remember that after exactly thirty-one minutes you will return to your normal size and weight. Some day when man completely controls his biology, he will truly enter the atom, but in this twenty-first century your Management can only create the illusion. Do you understand? Are there any questions?”
There was a moment of silence but nobody spoke up.
“If any of you wish to turn back please say so,” the Voice boomed.
Again, there was silence and the Voice said. “Illusion equals eternity. I=E, and E=I.”
And there before us as if materialized out of the Voice stood a dozen automatons1, their bodies black metal like the black skintight suits of the attendants, their arms and legs white metal. They had white metal faces or rather slightly curved surfaces without features on which the letters2 E=mc2 were elevated and so designed that they seemed to be two spectacles joined together by the = sign.
They must have whirled up, faster than sight, out of the glass floor, for when they moved, they changed into blackish-whitish streaks. The next thing I knew, one of them was attaching a black belt around Cleo’s waist. Its white metal hand whizzed towards its own middle, and from it a second black belt was in its hands and around my waist. All in a flash! I saw now that Cleo’s belt and my belt, all the black belts were lettered in white; ION.3
“Are you ready, IONS?” the Voice asked. “Are you ready to bomb the nucleus of the uranium atom?”
I thought of the Tunnel of Love, and the Atomic Rollercoaster ahead of us, and lucky for me my collagen ratio was in tip-top shape. I fingered my black belt with nervous fingers. “Is it steel?” I whispered to Cleo.
“Can’t you enjoy yourself without asking questions?”
“Is it steel?”
“Yes, for the Dee-magnets4, and now please keep still.”
“Ions, march!” the Voice ordered.
Led by our attendants, we entered a second glass room, but this one was much larger, and the two magictomatums inside it seemed four or five times bigger than those in the first glass room. They waved us on into the next room, and the next, so many that I lost count. And each time, the glass rooms became more and more immense, the magictomatums so tall that I had to lift my head to see them. It was like trying to see the tops of trees. Far up, I could see their black faces and white E=mc2’s gleaming under the distant glass of the ceilings. And we came to a room where I couldn’t see their faces, only the ever rising blackness of their bodies, only the whiteness of their legs, and even the Voice began to sound distant.
“Ions, you are getting smaller and smaller! But remember — Illusion equals eternity, I=E.”
Glass room after glass room, and now the feet of the magictomatums no longer had the shapes of feet but seemed to stretch for miles and miles, a white wall, and although I remembered what the Voice had said about illusion, and told myself it was nothing but a series of distortions in a series of mirrors, still the terrible fear went through me that I was actually shrinking down and down and down. Smaller than an ant, a hundred times smaller, a thousand times smaller, a million times smaller, for in the next room the white wall was no longer a wall but like all the snow in the world, a white eternity. And only the Voice like the voice of God saying. “Ions, you are approaching the ladder to the ion source!”
And in that immensity where nothing had a shape, it was fantastic to see a ladder looming up ahead of us. I gripped Cleo’s hand tighter. It was a hand, it was a miracle, as she was a miracle in her black suit, a miracle of shape in a white world without shape or dimension. I stared at her with tears in my eyes, and at the other couples, I felt as if we were the last people alive, come in pairs to witness the birth of a new world out of all that shapelessness.
The first couples were already climbing up the ladder — a ladder that seemed to be about twenty times as high as any of us and ending at a round hole, a hole of light, pink light.
“Where does it go, Cleo?”
“To the ion source.”
“And where does that go?”
“To the Rollercoaster1.”
I hesitated when it was our turn to climb. She pulled gently on my hand and smiled for the first time since the Tunnel of Love. “Let’s go, Ion,” she whispered. We went up the ladder to the pink glow. The couples who had preceded us were standing at the base of what appeared to be an endless curved wall, whose top I couldn’t see, made of odd shaped brick.2 Other couples were coming up the ladder out of the white void we had left, through the pink hole of light.
“Ions!” the Voice said at last. “You are about to board the Rollercoaster. Step this way, step lively! Board the Rollercoaster and move at the speed of one hundred million electric volts3! Your entertainment is Our pleasure! Smash the riddle of the universe, the nucleus of the uranium atom!”
I must have balked, for Cleo’s hand, holding mine, tightened as if to calm me. “It will be very pleasant,” she whispered.
“Ready, Ions?” the Voice asked. “Ready now! Steady now! Obey your attendants!”
“Jump!” Cleo said and her eyes were bright, and she was smiling.
“Jump where?” I asked, and again she smiled. I felt myself shivering from head to foot.
“We have to jump from gravity. Like this,” she said, tugging on my hand. I shut my eyes and jumped. Right away, a gentle swinging motion carried us off. It was like being on a combination swing and merry-go-round. I opened my eyes and stared at the ions ahead of us, all of us swinging up and down, the merry-go-round taking us around and around, everything pink like a pink atmosphere, and far away, a million miles away, the towering Dees. I looked at Cleo, and I smiled also, and as we circled I felt a tingle, a nice pleasant tingle. It was the first charge4. Now, the swing swung us higher. Now, the merry-go-round went faster. The Dees, although still a million miles away, were a little closer, and then there was another tingle. Up we swung higher and faster, and Cleo was smiling with joy as we whirled around the next spiral. There was another tingle, and another, the spirals lengthening, and the next tingle wasn’t so pleasant, and the next was like the shock of death — but we didn’t die. Death changed into life, a swifter life, a swifter speed as the Dees came closer and closer, and the Voice spieling at us. “Ions, you’re on your way at one million electric volts. Two million electric volts. Three million electric volts! On your way to the world of the uranium atom! Uranium 235, one of the lighter isotopes! Your ancestors first released the energy of the uranium atom by splitting the nucleus! On your way at four million electric volts!”
The sensations of the swing and the merry-go-round became one sensation, and I waited for the next shock with fear and delight, knowing now that it wouldn’t kill me, but still fearing it, and when it came and I was accelerated ever faster I laughed with joy. Ever faster, so fast I no longer felt as if I had a body with a body’s parts but had
been reduced to a particle of fear and delight, roaring down those infinite spirals, the Dees closer and closer, leaning inwards as if about to collapse. And Cleo was laughing with joy — I couldn’t hear her but I could see her head shaking on her neck.
“You’re on your way to the riddle of the universe!” the Voice boomed. “Five million electric volts! Ten million electric volts! One hundred million electric volts!”
Higher! Faster! And higher still, and even faster, a whir, a whiz, a whoosh and now there was a new sensation, not that of the swing or merry-go-round, but a push. A push building up behind us, pushing so hard, so terrible, that I felt as if I were about to burst and fly apart — and suddenly we shot out into space where there was only the Voice.
“Ions, you have entered a vast theatre of electric-magnetic forces! Between the nucleus of the uranium atom and its nearest orbit there is a gap vaster in proportion than the space between our sun and the orbit of the earth. Ions, ahead of you is the riddle of the universe!”
Far far away, oh so far away like a far away star, was the world we were speeding to, on its outskirts a host of dead little moons circling on seven orbits.
“Ahead of you are the electrons, the ninety-two electrons of the uranium atom!”
I felt as if I had wings, wings of voltage immeasurable, winging through space to this distant solar system. I felt I had wings, and when we passed through the outermost of the seven orbits, oh, God, who can describe the feeling of wonder, a wonder Columbus must have felt when he sighted the new world — and a new world it was, blazing with color.
“The riddle of the universe where energy is changed into matter and matter into energy! The spectacle of the ages! Look at those particles of mass ahead of you! Those blue comets are positrons. Those purple meteors are mesons. Look at those particles of energy. Those orange asteroids are photons. Those green rays are gravitons. The spectacle of the ages! Matter into energy, energy into matter!”
Fun House Page 5