The Park Service 01: The Park Service

by Ryan Winfield

  She looks back again and nods, but says nothing.

  “What level are you from?”

  “Now serving Doris Tiegs,” a robotic voice says.

  I look toward the speaker—

  DORIS TIEGS is displayed on the LCD screen.

  The steel door slides open.

  The woman stands and tugs at her sleeves, adjusting her jumpsuit. She casts a nervous glance my way as she walks past me to the open door. It slides closed behind her, and I’m alone in the room. The animated woman starts her loop again:

  “Soon, your every dream will come true …”

  I missed him. I missed my dad. Maybe if I’d been a little less selfish, less wrapped up with Hannah, maybe I would have remembered in time to catch him. It’s too late now. I’ll never forgive myself for missing him. For not being able to tell him—

  What’s that smell? Is that tobacco? Pipe tobacco?

  I reach in my shirt and lift my father’s pipe to my nose—nothing. Any odor has been long washed away. I look down the yellow hall but it’s empty. My eyes search the room, landing on the bathroom door. I step to the door, twist the handle, and pull it open. A cloud of smoke billows out, and when it clears, my father stands there with a guilty smile.

  “Dad?”

  “Son?”

  He steps from the bathroom and I throw my arms around him. At first he’s stiff, his arms at his side. Then he softens, reaching his free hand around me and patting my back. I realize I’m as tall as he is now, and nearly as big, too. I bury my nose in his neck and smell his familiar scent of tobacco and soap. It suddenly feels awkward to be hugging him, so I let go and step back and look at his face. He looks younger than I remember, almost innocent somehow.

  “What are you doing, Dad?”

  He holds up a makeshift pipe, teeth marks already on its stem, smoke still curling from its bowl.

  “Guess the darn habit’s harder to kick than I thought. I wanted one last smoke. Your mother doesn’t like the smell, you know. Never did. Hey, you still got the pipe I gave you?”

  “Of course I have it.”

  I lift the pipe from my shirt so he can see it.

  “Good,” he says. “Keep passing it on. How are you, son? You look different. They don’t have barbers up here?”

  “It’s nothing like we’ve been told up here.”

  “No, I’m sure it’s not. But I always knew you’d be the one they called up. I knew it. I’m proud of you.”

  “Dad, I need to talk to you.”

  “I mean it, son. I’m proud of you. Really proud. All of Holocene II is. And your mother will be, too. I’m so excited to see her, I’m jumping outta my skin like a seven-year cicada before the War.” He looks down at the pipe in his hand. “Ah, heck, I’m so darn nervous I’m puffing away in a bathroom like some learning annex kid getting high on busybee algae.”

  “There’s no ice, Dad.”

  “What’s that you say?”

  “It was all a lie.”

  “What was a lie, son?”

  “Everything was. The ice, the radiation, the disappeared atmosphere. All a bunch of damn lies.”

  “When did you start talking like this? I don’t like it.”

  “Dad! Aren’t you listening to me? We’ve been kept locked up like prisoners, Dad. Locked up with lies.”

  The virtual woman begins her loop again:

  “Soon, your every dream will come true …”

  My father frowns, lifts a hand, lets it drop.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying, son.”

  “Dr. Radcliffe is alive.”

  “Dr. Radcliffe?”

  “Yes. After all this time. He’s nearly a thousand years old, and he never went to Eden.”

  “Are you okay, son?”

  “Are you hearing me? They lied.”

  “I’m sure they have a good reason,” he says.

  “Yeah, they think humans are a virus.”

  “We have a virus?”

  “No!” I shout, “We are the virus.”

  He reaches out and rests a hand on my shoulder.

  “Hey, hey, calm down now, kiddo. I’m sure you’ve got things mixed up. You’re all worked up here. This is my big day, son. Let’s not spoil it, okay? Everything’ll be fine. And if they need a smart fellow to straighten things out up here, they’ve picked the right one with you.”

  “Now serving Jonathon Van Houten,” the speaker says.

  The steel door slides open.

  I look up at my father’s name on the LCD screen:

  JONATHON VAN HOUTEN.

  I knew his name was Jon, but I never knew it was short for Jonathon. I wonder what else I don’t know about him, what else I’ll never have the chance to know now.

  “That’s me, son. Lucky they go alphabetical or we might have missed saying goodbye.”

  He leans down and sets his pipe on one of the seats.

  When he straightens, I grab his hand in both of mine and bring it to my chest.

  “You don’t have to go, Dad. We can walk out of here right now. I’ve got a boat. We can take it up to the surface. The sun is up there shining sure as we’re standing here. You don’t have to retire. There’s no reason to retire. No reason to walk through that door.”

  His eyes are wet when I finish. He reaches his free hand up, clenches it around my hands, and steps toward me. We stand like that, chest to chest, hands locked at our hearts.

  “I love you, son, but you’re wrong. There’s every reason in the world for me to walk through that door.”

  I feel a tear roll down my cheek, because I know he’s right. He’s waited a long time for this moment. More than fifteen years raising me by himself, my name reminding him every day of the woman he loves waiting for him here in Eden.

  “Will you tell her I love her?”

  “Of course I will,” he says. “Of course I will.”

  I wipe away another tear.

  “Don’t cry, son. We’ll see you soon enough.”

  I wish it were true. I wish I were going into Eden with him right now. But I can’t bring myself to tell him that it may well be another thousand years before I do.

  “Now serving Jonathon Van Houten.”

  He turns away and steps toward the door. Then he stops and turns back. He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a sealed plastic case and presses it into my palm.

  “Won’t be needing my tobacco in there,” he says.

  I don’t know what to say, so I fight back the tears and say nothing. He wraps his hands behind my neck, pulls me forward and kisses the top of my head, just like he used to do when I was a young boy. Then he turns and walks across the room and through the door without looking back.

  As the door seals close, I say:

  “I love you, Dad.”

  CHAPTER 34

  But What About Eden?

  Just Great.

  The door’s locked.

  Turning back, I enter the round room again.

  I look at the closed door to Eden, the blank LCD screen that had displayed my father’s name just moments ago. I see his makeshift pipe abandoned on the seat where he left it, and I’m overcome with longing already to see him again. Then I notice a sort of phone hanging on the wall. A sign above it reads:

  RETIREMENT ANXIETY HELP LINE?

  I pluck the receiver off its cradle and hold it up to my ear. After a few seconds, it beeps and a voice comes on:

  “How may I help you?”

  “I’m stuck down here.”

  “Anxiety is a common response to change,” the scripted voice drones out. “You’ll feel much better once you’re invited inside for a tour of the retirement process. And if you’d like, we can—hey, wait a minute,” the voice changes from scripted to sincere, “we don’t show any other retirees. What’s your name? Where did you come from?”

  “My name is Aubrey. I came from the lake house.”

  There’s a muffled pause on the other end, someone talking in the background. Then another v
oice comes on:

  “Aubrey, is that you?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “This is Dr. Taft. We met the other day, remember? How did you get in there? Never mind, I’ll be right down.”

  Less than a minute later, a hidden panel in the wall opens and Dr. Taft waves me into a vestibule leading to a staircase.

  “My goodness, boy,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re lucky you didn’t walk through the wrong door and get rendered into Eden. We need you around here, you know.”

  “Sorry,” I say, “I was just looking around.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here anyway,” he says. “Radcliffe is much too slow about things, and it’s high time we got you up to speed. Come on up. Today’s the perfect day to visit Eden.”

  He hits a button and the panel seals shut.

  I follow him up the long flight of stairs and through a door into a control room where several scientists look up from their workstations, their backs hunched, their fingers frozen at their keyboards. They take me in with red-rimmed eyes, then return to their work without a word. They sit in front of a wall-length window overlooking an enormous circular pool surrounded by a metal catwalk and covered with a domed ceiling. The pool is pulsing with red bursts of electricity that light the scientists’ faces, giving them the appearance of old men staring into some giant flickering fireplace.

  “Is that Eden?” I ask.

  “Yes. And you’re just in time to see how it works,” he says, pointing to an LCD display on one of the workstations.

  The display shows another circular room, smaller, more sterile, with a strange chair mounted in its center. The chair faces a wall flashing with more relaxing nature scenes. A door slides open, and a naked woman steps into the room with her arms crossed over her breasts. I recognize her as the woman I just met from Holocene II, although her head has been shaved and she looks thinner stripped of her jumpsuit.

  She steps up into the chair and sits, her eyes darting around the room before settling on the screen, the waterfall scene there making her smile. The lights dim slightly. The chair reclines on automatic hinges. She takes a deep breath and leans back, her body relaxing into the contours of the seat. When her head hits the headrest, a syringe darts out and pushes a needle into her neck. She winces. Then she smiles, and her eyes slowly close. She looks young and peaceful sleeping naked in the chair.

  Then the chair transforms, locking her ankles and wrists in place. A strap unfolds around her chest, cinching her into the seat. Braces flip out and trap her head. A panel in the ceiling opens and robotic arms descend, a steel disc encapsulating her head. A whining sound rises on the display speaker, and then the arm pulls away, taking the top of her skull with it. Her mouth opens in a sort of sleeping sigh. I gape at the exposed folds of her brain, vomit rising in my throat. Another arm lowers, covering her head. It lifts with a soft vacuum sound, pulling her brain free. A smaller arm slips a blade underneath, severing the brainstem. Her jaw drops completely open, her bottom teeth showing, her tongue lolling out. The arm lifts her brain toward the ceiling, slides away on its track, and disappears into an opening in the far wall. Her body sits strapped in the chair, her jaw resting on her chest, her open skull empty and red. The straps free from her ankles, her wrists, her chest. The head braces retract. A trapdoor opens in the floor, and the chair tilts forward until the dead weight of her brainless body slides off, disappearing in a tangle of limp limbs into the hole.

  “Watch here now,” Dr. Taft says, pointing at the window.

  The mechanical arm slides through the wall carrying her steaming brain out over the circular pool.

  “Why is there smoke coming off her brain?” I ask, choking back my sudden need to vomit again.

  “It’s cold in there,” he says. “Twenty below in the pool.”

  “Why isn’t it frozen?”

  “Glycerin,” he says, drawling the word as if it were some key ingredient in a favorite recipe. “Electrical currents move better in a cold brine, plus it helps to preserve tissue. We mix glycerin in to keep it from freezing.”

  One of the scientists taps his keyboard and a rope of wires rises from the red pool, a plastic coupling on its end. Another scientist guides the brain down with a joystick, lining up the brainstem with the coupling. The coupling senses the stem and constricts, connecting the brain to the wires. Then the arm releases its suction and the brain plunks softly into the pool and disappears. The red light pulses a little brighter, as if greeting the newest member of Eden.

  “Can you locate individual people?” I ask, thinking maybe I can see my mother. “I mean, can you see what they’re dreaming up? What they’re remembering?”

  He shakes his head. “Dreaming up? Remembering? What has Radcliffe told you? Besides, we don’t bother tracking who’s who. And it really wouldn’t matter much anyhow, seeing as they all get tethered together in test groups.”

  “What do you mean test groups?”

  “Test groups for peaceful habitation.”

  “Peaceful habitation?”

  “I know,” he says, tossing up his hands. “Sounds crazy to me, too. We all know there’s no way in eternity humans could ever live in harmony with themselves, let alone the rest of the planet. But some of us needed proof.”

  His voice seems far away—his words foreign, his message delayed. I look directly at him, confused.

  “You mean to tell me you run tests on them?”

  “Oh, it’s quite harmless,” he says.

  “Harmless how?”

  “They have no idea who they are, really, or who they were. No memory, no willful participation. They’re all good as dead when we loop them in. Of course, we make sure to erase any traumatic events every time we begin a new test.”

  “I’m confused here,” I say, truly baffled by what he’s said. “What kinds of tests did you say you run?”

  “Oh, all kinds. You name it. We feed hypothetical worlds into the system and see how they respond. We accelerate their time, expedite the results. We’ve tried every government, every form of economy. We’ve tried too few resources, too many, just enough. We’ve tried different social structures. We’ve even toyed with neuroanatomical differences in the sexes. Increasing sexual dimorphism, decreasing it, and eliminating it all together. And with every test, we get the same result. Humans reproduce unchecked. They over consume, and destroy their environment. Then they destroy one another. Every test. Every time.”

  “But what about Eden?” I ask, trembling. “What about living in a virtual paradise forever with the people you love?

  “Nursery rhymes,” he says. “Nothing but nursery rhymes.”

  “It’s all a lie?”

  “We needed to tell the poor people something to make life bearable down there. The truth would be inhumane”

  The horror of what he’s saying hits me hard.

  “So you’re telling me this is one big test incubator?” I say, gesturing wildly toward the window. “That all these brains are nothing but test subjects?”

  “What you’re looking at,” he answers, “is a giant petri-dish culture of the worst parasites to ever be created. And we have nearly nine-hundred years of test results to prove it. But, who knows—maybe you’ll find something different.”

  The red pulsing makes me dizzy.

  My flesh breaks out in sweat, my knees buckle.

  I turn back to the LCD display just in time to see the chair tilting forward and my father’s lifeless body sloughing away into the open trapdoor in the killing room floor.

  I lurch backward, reeling, falling, reaching. I grab Dr. Taft and turn and puke on his coat.

  He grips my shoulders. “What’s wrong with you, boy?”

  I place my hands on his chest and thrust him away from me. He loses his balance and falls flailing on top of the desk, knocking keyboards and monitors onto the floor. The scientists scramble to their feet and stand motionless, staring at me, not quite knowing what to do.

  I race for the exit and pl
unge into the dim red light of the underground cavern.

  I pause to bend over and puke again.

  Then I rush to the boat.

  CHAPTER 35

  My Last Mistake

  “You use them for social experiments?”

  Dr. Radcliffe looks up from his book.

  “Ah,” he sighs, nodding, “looks like someone’s been on a little field trip.”

  I step farther into the study.

  “You murdered my father!”

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” he says.

  “Of course, you wouldn’t!” I shout. “You’d use some fancy term to rationalize it, just like you do with everything.”

  He waves to the empty chair.

  “Have a seat. Let’s talk.”

  “I’m tired of talking,” I say, standing my ground.

  He closes his book and sets it aside.

  “I wanted Eden to work. I really did. But the brain just doesn’t go on the same without the body. It doesn’t dream, it doesn’t remember. It reverts to some primal state. Responding to stimuli—sure. But with no volition of its own. None, I tell you. And no connection to the prior life of its donor.”

  “So you enslave them as test subjects?”

  “I did it for the greater good,” he replies, throwing up his hands and letting them fall in his lap again. “I thought maybe we’d find some way humans could live peaceably. Some system of government, some environment of equality. I didn’t do it to harm anyone, Aubrey. I did it in hopes of freeing Holocene II one day. Can’t you see that?”

  “I see that you’re a sick, sick man,” I say, spitting on the carpet to show my contempt. “A sick and evil man.”

  He leans forward and looks at my spit stain

  “Well, you might be right there, kid. We’re all evil men. And that’s the problem. That’s why we need to be destroyed. The whole stinking human race.”

  I stand there staring at him, wishing I could pick up a fire poker and bash in his skull. But my anger dissipates into self-loathing. I’m just as guilty as he is. Guilty of going along with him, guilty of buying into his crazy dogma. I should have been firmer with my father, more insistent. I should have made him leave with me. He’d have known what to do. The thought of his body sliding off that chair makes my stomach turn again.