The Age of Amy: Behind the Fun Zone

by BRUCE EDWARDS

  Then the ride slowed to let off its passengers. As it came to a full stop, the pink donkey was right in front of me.

  Zac wasn’t on it!

  I raced around the platform, looking under spotted horses, over purple giraffes, and around plaid camels. Zac was nowhere!

  With the next group of riders aboard, the carousel started up again. No one was riding the pink donkey. I slowly approached the fearsome animal, watching its up-and-down motion before grabbing the saddle with my shaking hands.

  I looked into it’s painted, black eyes.

  “How are you at fulfilling dreams, Mr. Donkey?” I said. “Tell you what: You help me and I promise you a new paint job. Pink isn’t your color. I don’t mind telling you, I’m afraid of where you’re going to take me. But there are some good people there who need my help, and wishing to help people is the best kind of dream there is.”

  I leaped up onto the donkey’s back.

  “Make room, you guys. Here I come!”

  Chapter 12

  Hacked!

  Laughing Lucy’s incessant cackling was the only sound I heard. After a few spins on the merry-go-round, I had gone deaf to everything else. Lips moved, but I heard no speech. Balloons burst, but there was no pop!

  I held on tight to the pink donkey’s brass pole like it was a life line. Then on the next turn, I passed out. Hearing Lucy’s insane giggling was the last thing I remember.

  I was now awake, but so drowsy that I couldn’t open my eyes to save my life. I relied on my other senses to tune in to my surroundings. I was laying flat on my back, on a hard, chilly surface. Florescent lights buzzed faintly above me. The air was cool and fresh, like the airflow from a hospital oxygen tank.

  Brightness seeped through the narrow opening in my eyelids. As they widened, I saw a large, windowless room with white walls and a tile floor. The stark space was empty, except for a door on one wall and a blurry object in the corner.

  My vision sharpened. The corner object turned out to be a garment rack. Articles of clothing hung on wire coat hangers, each covered with a clear plastic bag, as if having come from the cleaners.

  Propping up on my elbows, I tapped on the stainless steel table I was lying on. It was like being in the operating room of some TV medical drama, and I was the likable character about to go under the knife. But what if this O.R. was real? That possibility jarred the remaining grogginess right out of me!

  The door was my only escape.

  Without a second thought, I leaped off the table and ran full speed toward it. I was halfway there before realizing that I didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. The laundered garments I had seen were my own. I hid behind the clothes rack, naked as a jaybird, without so much as a sheet to wrap myself in.

  Then a calm voice filled the room:

  “Please don’t be alarmed. No harm will come to you.”

  “Where am I?” I hollered. “What am I doing here?”

  “You are in a decontamination chamber.”

  A bright light flashed overhead, as brilliant as a lightning strike.

  “Decontamination complete. You may now get dressed.”

  I had just finished tying the laces on my sneakers, when the door swung open wide. Behind it was an electric cart driven by a robot—the same type I had seen at the Jimmie Joint.

  “Please get in,” it said politely.

  I crept to the open doorway and looked out. The cart was pointed down a long corridor, that seemed to go on for miles.

  “Can you tell me where I am?” I asked the mechanical taxi driver.

  “I am unable to respond to that question,” said the robot.

  “Where are you going to take me?”

  “I am unable to respond to that question.”

  The robot seemed to have a glitch in its speech circuitry.

  “Give me one reason why I should get in your cart?”

  Clang!

  The tunnel went totally dark. Only the cart’s headlights pierced the blackness. Then the robot started to drive off.

  The idea of being left behind in total darkness in a strange place didn’t appeal to me.

  “Wait for me!” I yelled, then jumped onto the moving cart.

  The robot dropped me off in front of an elevator. There were no up or down buttons by the door, just a large round one. I pressed it firmly. The doors parted, but instead of facing an elevator car, I was staring at the interior of a starship—or so it appeared!

  Lights blinked on instrument panels at crew stations marked Navigation, Communications, and Engineering. A humungous video screen looked out into the depths of space. Stars twinkled behind the blue rim of Mother Earth as it rotated ever so slowly toward the ship. And in the center of the intergalactic command center: the captain’s chair.

  My gut told me that I wasn’t onboard an actual orbiting spacecraft. A working Earth orbiter would have a more practical design. Where were the crew lockers, storage modules, and zero-gravity potties like the ones on the Space Shuttles? Maybe it had been created to fulfill some teenager’s Fun Zone dream. I had already witnessed the elaborate effects that place was capable of manufacturing.

  There was no one around to stop me from sitting in the captain’s chair, so I did.

  “Full ahead!” I commanded my pretend crewmen. “Warp speed! Steady as she goes!”

  A joystick was mounted to the armrest. I figured it to be the steering mechanism for dodging asteroids. I grabbed hold of it, but the controller broke off in my hand. No severed wires dangled below it. The dummy device had been shoddily glued to the painted plywood surface.

  This was no starship, nor even a futuristic flight simulator. It was a child’s playroom, a fantasy land for young, wannabe space commanders.

  While trying to reattach the joystick, the sliding doors opened with a loud swish! I sprang from the captain’s chair, and looked behind me to see two rather large men standing in the doorway. They were outfitted in armored uniforms, like rebel guards in some space fantasy. Red helmets covered their heads. Matching floor-length capes hung down their backs. The weapons they displayed were probably harmless, but with their fingers gripping the triggers, I assumed the worst.

  The men took a giant step into the room, then dutifully took their places, one on each side of the door. They snapped to attention and saluted, as another helmeted man appeared in the doorway. This one had substantially less bulk, and was much shorter than his massive bodyguards. His face, too, was hidden under a helmet that was polished to a deep, glossy black. Planting his clenched fists firmly on his hips, he boldly entered the room.

  Without a word, the man in the black helmet strutted over to the captain’s chair and stared down at it. Then he tilted his head up at me, his stare suggesting that I had broken the rules by sitting in it.

  He jumped back and drew out a sword—not a real sword, but one of those toys with a long plastic cone attached to a flashlight. He waved it around in a threatening manner, while growling like a ferocious lion.

  His display was laughable. I folded my arms and smirked at his lame attempt to intimidate me.

  Seeing my reaction, he stopped waving his plastic saber. His shoulders drooped in disappointment.

  “Aren’t you scared?” he said, his voice muffled behind his mask.

  I pointed to his store-bought plaything.

  “Scared of that? The most damage you could do with it is knock over a few house plants.”

  He removed his helmet. Underneath it was the unmistakable face of Tobias Goodfellow!

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked arrogantly.

  “Who doesn’t?” I said. “You’re Toby the Conqueror, ruler over the Jimmie empire.”

  He leaped up onto the captain’s chair, holding his toy weapon proudly over his head. “President and CEO of Monstro Industries, if you please!”

  “Whatever,” I said. “Now I have a question for you: What’s up with bringing me here?”

  He plopped down into his chair, like a disobedient child who
jumps on the living room furniture.

  “In a moment,” he said. “First, tell me why you have come to the Fun Zone.”

  “To find my lost cousin, Nell.”

  “Lost? Did you try checking with Lost and Found?”

  “Don’t be cute! You know why I came. You know everything about me through my Jimmie.”

  Toby’s face lit up like a torch. “Isn’t that amazing? All over the world, Jimmieheads happily let me spy on their every activity, read their innermost thoughts, and eavesdrop on their deepest feelings.”

  “You’re also taking advantage of people.”

  “And setting them free in return. Technology is freedom. TV remote controls liberated people from having to cross a room to change the channel. Mobile phones broke the chains that tied them to public pay phones. And when reaching for a pocket device became too burdensome, I came to their rescue, emancipating them with a hands-free alternative. Face it. We live in a culture of laziness. Jimmie’s popularity is simply part of a natural progression.”

  “And that justifies everything, does it? While you’re reaping astronomical profits by exploiting people’s idleness, how about naive little girls too immature to see through your scam?”

  “Nell came to the Fun Zone of her own free will.”

  “She’s only thirteen, you sicko!”

  Toby was visibly upset, an emotional state I was happy to take credit for.

  He paced the floor. “You think I’m evil. Well, I’m going to prove to you how wrong you are.”

  Toby pulled a palm-sized, wireless tablet from his pocket and tapped the screen. A secret panel on the ship’s wall slid open to reveal an old-style phone booth.

  “Ever seen one of these?” asked Toby.

  “In history books and old movies,” I said.

  “Well, this one’s not for making phone calls. It’s a Beam Booth. Step inside and it will transport you anywhere in the world in seconds. Wanna try it?”

  “If you think I’m going in there, forget it.”

  “It’s perfectly safe. I’ll show you.”

  He stepped into the narrow glass box and slid the folding door closed. Lifting the pay phone receiver, he punched a few numbers on its keypad, then waved goodbye. The moment he hung up the phone, the booth instantly vanished!

  Beam Booth, indeed! I had seen stage magicians vanish boxes bigger than that. Now, if I could only vanish from the room that easily. The sliding door was my only way out, but something told me that the guards weren’t going to hold it open for me.

  A minute later, Toby’s magic booth reappeared.

  The door unfolded, and there stood Toby, smiling, with a colorful Hawaiian lei around his neck.

  “Beautiful weather in Maui this time of year,” he said. “C’mon in.”

  Magician’s trick or not, joining Toby in that little booth was total craziness. I would be putting my trust in someone I loathed. But I itched to see if it really did what Toby claimed it could do, and I’ve never been one to pass up a chance for adventure.

  I stepped inside.

  Toby closed the door and lifted the receiver.

  “Why do you control this thing with that old phone?” I asked. “Why not just control it with your Jimmie?”

  Toby chuckled. “For the simple reason that I don’t have one. A brain is much too precious a thing to be messed with.”

  I braced myself in the corner as Toby entered a number.

  “Here we go!” he said, then hung up the phone.

  I expected to feel a jolt, or something, but there was no movement whatsoever, not even a vibration through my fingertips against the glass. There was no roaring of motors, no rushing of wind, just dead silence. The world outside was in total blackness, like we had been dunked in a vat of black ink. The light from the booth’s halo ceiling lamp was all that kept me from freaking out.

  “You might want to shade your eyes,” said Toby. “We’ll be outdoors in daylight in a few seconds.”

  A moment later, we were surrounded by brightness, like someone had just flipped on a switch to the sun.

  Toby opened the door. “Come with me.”

  I hesitated, then followed him into an unfamiliar world.

  He had brought me to a rural African village, where mud huts with straw roofs were the style. I watched with fascination as the native people went about their daily activities: men herding sheep over sparse grassland; women drawing water from a stone well; children playing soccer in the rust-brown dirt.

  “Look there!” said Toby.

  In the center of an array of solar panels stood a modern building. A sign above the entrance read Goodfellow Medical Clinic.

  “This village had battled common illnesses for generations,” said Toby. “Most of their afflictions could be easily cured and prevented with modern medicine. I funded the construction of this clinic, and my foundations underwrite the cost of its operation.”

  I was in shock. How could I not be impressed by that? Toby’s public persona was that of an arrogant, self-indulgent billionaire. Maybe there was a kind-hearted side to him that never made the headlines.

  Back in the booth, Toby dialed another number, and we were beamed onto the sidewalk of a noisy city street on Skid Row. Crowds of street people filed into a church with a tall steeple. Inside, seated at rows of long tables, hundreds of needy individuals were being served hot meals.

  We pushed through the doors of a huge kitchen. Toby grabbed a ladle and stirred a boiling kettle of soup.

  “No one should go hungry,” he said. “This country produces enough food to feed everyone and then some. I established a network for food distribution through one of my civic charities. We feed thousands here every day, and provide nourishment to thousands more in developing countries.”

  Another phone number, and we were whisked away to the back of a classroom. Behind the desks sat students of all ages, genders, and nationalities.

  Their instructor was lecturing the class when he spotted us.

  “We seem to have a surprise guest,” he said to the class. “Everyone, say hello to Tobias Goodfellow!”

  The entire class rose to their feet and applauded.

  “This program helps those who help themselves,” said Toby over the ovation. “Anyone willing to put in an honest day’s work receives free training and job placement. Families are given free housing while their providers learn a trade.”

  I was totally bowled over by Toby’s selflessness. But I was confused. How can you regard someone with such contempt, and admire him for his compassion at the same time? Was his generosity for real, or was this yet another trick to manipulate my perception of him?

  Returning to the spaceship, Toby relaxed in the captain’s chair. My feelings were so jumbled that I couldn’t think of anything to say to him, except:

  “You still haven’t told me why I’m here.”

  Toby seemed a little agitated. “You may have heard about the problems we’ve been having with Jimmies lately.“

  “I have,” I said, “and I’ve seen the results.”

  “Those microchips weren’t defective. They’re made from totally reliable, first-class components. Not one has ever failed. Ever!”

  “Then how do you explain the Jimmie Cruiser crashes and the JimmiePal cyber attacks?”

  “That’s just the problem. We can’t explain it. Truth is, we’ve been hacked!”

  “But I thought Jimmies were hack-proof.”

  “So did we. Who the hackers are, and how they’re doing it has totally stumped us. We’ve tried unsuccessfully to block these cyber-terrorists from accessing our servers. Regrettably, the only option we have left is to reboot the entire system.”

  Hearing this filled me with a sense of victory. What Toby viewed as a catastrophe, I saw as a triumph for humanity—and I wanted him to know it.

  “That’s too bad,” I said sarcastically. “That’ll put you back to Jimmie 1.0.”

  “Correct. But there’s a bigger problem. Rebooting requires a re
set code, and no one knows what it is.”

  “Why don’t you just pull the plug on the whole thing and give people back their dignity?”

  “I’m afraid that would be an epic mistake. Billions of investment dollars would be lost, Wall Street would go into a nosedive, and my financial partners would be very displeased. This whole mess couldn’t have happened at a worse time. The company is in the midst of a major expansion.”

  I laughed. “Having more wealth just out of your reach must be driving you crazy. But why are you letting a stupid code stand in your way? Surely, your computers could crunch every combination of numbers and find out what the code is.”

  “If only it were that simple. You see, you have only one chance to enter the correct code. If it isn’t the right one, every Jimmie in every country in the World will automatically self-destruct.”

  “I’m touched. I really am. But you still haven’t explained what all this has to do with me.”

  Toby tapped on the screen of his pocket device. On the ship’s wall monitor, the view of space was replaced by a picture of my drivers license. Animated graphics appeared in the foreground, indicating my heart rate, blood pressure and respiration.

  “These are some of your real-time Jimmie stats,” said Toby. “But Jimmies don’t just show us the state of your physical health, we can also monitor your emotions.”

  Three vertical bar graphs popped onto the screen, labeled Nell, Fred, and Zac. Each reading floated at around 50%.

  “Watch what happens at the very mention of these people,” said Toby. Then he spoke their names out loud:

  “Nell.”

  Her bar went up a tad.

  “Fred.”

  His went up a little more.

  “Zac.”

  Surprisingly, his reading soared to well over 80%!

  “Well, well!” said Toby. “You appear to have a great fondness for this young man.”

  My face blushed, then turned red with rage.

  “What have you done with him?” I demanded.