The Electric Kingdom

by David Arnold

  “What place?” asked Lakie.

  “A safe zone.” Monty offered her the earphone. “Go on.”

  As Lakie listened, Kit wondered what this scene might look like from the little window in his projection room upstairs. Instead of a magic light producing moving pictures, one would see only a dark and cavernous room, six hundred empty seats below, and a stage at the far end with an enormous white screen. On the stage, in front of the screen, four people eating at a table with a few flickering candles.

  Lakie removed the earphone.

  “Right?” said Monty. “It’s perfect, right?”

  Lakie, just above a whisper: “Maybe.”

  “What’s it say?” Kit asked.

  “Here.” Monty leaned over, was about to stick the device in Kit’s ear, when Dakota reached out and grabbed Monty’s wrist.

  “Mom—”

  “I don’t want your head filled with nonsense fantasies about safe zones. Our zone is as safe as it gets.”

  “Until it’s not,” said Monty.

  “We run drills. We are vigilant about high sun curfew. And cinnamon.”

  “This place”—Monty pulled his hand out of Dakota’s grip, and then offered the earphone to her—“it’s a cluster of islands, small and secluded. Run by legit preppers. Well stocked, well guarded. It’s perfect.”

  Kit watched his mother calmly set down her fork and he thought of how much he loved her motions, the way all the pieces of her moved as one. He loved that necklace she always wore, a long chain looped through a key, and how, the more she meant what she said, the more she moved, and the more she moved when she talked, the more that key swung from side to side. These were the things that made his Dakota his. But something had changed in those movements and smiles, something had slowed and dimmed, as if her wick had burned too long. And for the first time, Kit allowed himself to put a word to his thoughts: sick.

  His Dakota looked sick.

  “I know you blame me,” she said. Out of nowhere, tears started welling, and she looked from Monty to Lakie. “You should know, no one blames me more than I do. But I promised your parents—we promised each other that if anything happened, whoever was left would raise the kids like they were our own. I’ve done all I can to honor that promise. I love you both so much. Believe it, don’t believe it, that’s the truth. And because I love you, please hear me when I say—there are no safe zones. The Paradise Twin is it. And we are not leaving.”

  Dakota climbed down offstage slowly, gently, as if made of glass. Her back to them, she said, “We’re doing baths tomorrow, it’s starting to look a little too Lord of the Flies in here,” and then she walked off, disappearing into darkness down the aisle.

  They ate in silence for a while, the sibling kind, where the air was stuffed with a history of words, too full for new ones.

  Eventually Lakie said, “Tuesday tomorrow.”

  Pushing food around his plate, Monty said he would switch out rainwater and change the filter. Kit said he would do cinnamon, knowing full well Lakie had taken care of both chores the past few Tuesdays.

  Suddenly Lakie was chuckling.

  “What,” said Monty.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just—Lord of the Flies.”

  A few laughs, but they turned half-hearted and eventually broke to dust, evaporated into the high ceiling of the Main Theater. Kit still remembered finding the book in his library, those mean eyes and curly blond hair peering up from the green cover. He’d read it, hoping to find out how, exactly, one became Lord of the Flies. Ultimately, he was left with more questions than answers, and couldn’t tell if the book was supposed to be funny or tragic or what. He couldn’t tell if he saw himself in those wild kids, or if he was just hunched over a homemade radio, desperate for connection.

  what wondrous magic, the Paradise Twin!

  In its heyday, the Paradise Twin was quite the spectacle. People with fancy dresses and fancy suits and big fancy cars came and waited in line under the marquee for a movie called Gone with the Wind, which Kit could only assume was a film of suitable fanciness, and not just because of the clientele, but because under the title on the marquee were the words BOTH SCREENS SOLD OUT.

  He knew about these things from the old black-and-white photo. And photographs, unlike book covers, never lied.

  A lit candle in one hand, Kit stood between the lobby restrooms—one labeled GUYS, the other DOLLS—and stared up at the photo. His Dakota told him it had been taken in the thirties or forties. She said back then, people got themselves “all dolled up” to go to the movies. He tried to put himself in a pair of those fancy shoes, tried to see his home the way these blurry images might have seen it: an avenue of entertainment.

  The grime of years had certainly taken its toll on the old theater. Even so, it was in decent shape. The high-ceilinged entrance and marble floors, the extensive crown molding, the murals of masks and ribbons, the glass chandeliers and light-bulb movie posters and concession shelves made of mirrors, all of it fit for the fanciest of people.

  It was called the Paradise Twin because it had two separate theaters: the bigger one was called the Main Theater; the smaller one was the State Theater. Kit’s bedroom was upstairs, in what had once been the Main Theater’s projection room. The projector was still there, dormant in a corner, the ghost of movies past. There were nights when Kit was grateful for that ghost. Surrounded by cases of old reels, he’d walk to the thin window where the projector had once conjured magic tricks with nothing but a little light.

  Once, digging through the boxes of old reels, his Dakota had found her favorite movie. “It’s called E.T.,” she’d said, her face lit up like the sun. “It’s about this gentle alien with healing powers who befriends a boy on Earth.”

  She’d told him more of the story, and as she talked, she held the reel in her hands like it was the baby brother he never had.

  Her face was almost too bright to look at.

  “What was the kid’s name again?” she asked this reel, eyes in another world. “Evan, I think. No. Elliott.”

  Upstairs, aside from the Main Theater projection room, there was also the State Theater projection room, where Monty slept, and a little lounge in between, where Lakie slept. Downstairs, a door behind the lobby concessions said MANAGEMENT, and this was his Dakota’s bedroom. Behind that, a kitchenette with a woodstove and pantry. The State Theater, they’d converted into a storehouse for Dakota’s canned foods and medical supplies and whatever they brought back from scavenges.

  They were lucky, Kit knew this. Not just that they had a place to call home, but that they were alive to call it anything at all. But recently he’d taken to standing here between GUYS and DOLLS, staring at this old photograph, wondering if this was it. The feeling was new. He hadn’t quite wrapped his brain around it yet. The notion that what his life had been up to this point might very well be the rest of his life forever—this stirred something inside him. And so he stood and stared and thought, This photograph unleashes my psyche.

  Psyche was a word Kit knew, which embodied that vague, down-deep compartment where a person kept the soul of their truest self.

  He’d read that somewhere, he was pretty sure.

  When it came right down to it, Kit wanted this photograph to come alive. He wanted it to turn into the very thing it could only now represent: a motion picture. But it wouldn’t. Those fancy shoes were probably scattered all through the surrounding mountains, filled with nothing but marrowless feet-bones.

  “Both screens sold out,” he said quietly, standing in a daze.

  He’d counted the seats in both theaters. He knew the maximum capacity of the Paradise Twin.

  It was 946.

  For all the things Kit knew, one thing he did not know was how it felt to be in the same building as 946 people.

  He turned from the photograph, climbed the narrow staircase to his projec
tion room, and thought back to that day his mother found the movie about the gentle alien. She’d spent that whole afternoon rigging an old solar-power strip to the projector; that night, her face full of sunlight, she’d ushered Kit and Monty and Lakie into the theater. “Pick a seat,” she’d told them. “And get ready.”

  Kit still remembered the quiet of the dark theater, as if whatever magic was about to happen might be scared off. A few minutes later a clicking rattle came from behind them, and the giant screen flickered with electric light, and Kit felt the sun of his Dakota in his own heart as he prepared to watch a movie.

  It lasted maybe three seconds.

  In his room now, he walked to the corner, put a hand on the old projector. The reel of E.T. was still stuck in its teeth. He never knew what went wrong, if the power strip blew, or if the projector just didn’t have any life left. But that night, in the dark stillness of the theater, they’d heard Dakota descend the narrow staircase, cross behind the concession counter, enter her room, and shut the door behind her.

  It was the last time Kit saw that particular sun in that particular face.

  genesis, a bedtime story

  Dakota Sherouse moved into the Paradise Twin when she was three months pregnant.

  Kit had heard the story often. “So many times, it feels like I was there,” he said.

  His Dakota tucked him in cocoon-style, just like he liked; she pulled the covers up under his chin, just like he liked. “You were there, my little Kit.”

  “Inside your uterus.”

  “Kit.”

  “Can’t see much in there.”

  She did that little chuckle-sigh he loved, and then asked where he’d learned about uteruses.

  “So Your Mom’s Having a Baby, Fifth Edition, Kate Mendelsohn, MD. Found it in your box marked old stuff.”

  “There were a lot of books in that box.”

  “I read those, too. Most were about pregnancy.”

  “Well, I was a midwife,” said Dakota.

  “You practiced midwifery.” If there was a better word in the English language, Kit hadn’t found it. And he’d found a lot of words. “There were also books about making babies. So I pretty much know all about sex and that sort of thing.”

  “Okay. Well. Okay.”

  Kit was born in the Paradise Twin, well after the Flies hit. He’d never asked who his father was. The introduction of some random-faced, lumbering oaf would only serve to ruin what was otherwise a perfectly good story. His mother had once lived in a commune in the mountains, and so Kit assumed that was where it had happened. Where he had happened.

  The genesis of him happening.

  Genesis, which was a word he knew, basically meant the beginning of a thing.

  “Did you want to eat dirt?” he asked.

  “What . . . in the world?”

  “The book said that happens sometimes. When you’re pregnant. Possibly linked to an iron deficiency. You crave dirt, clay, laundry starch, charcoal—”

  “They’re called pica cravings, and no, luckily, I never had those. Now, would you like to hear the story or not?”

  Dakota told him how the thought of having a child had always made her nervous, how helping so many women deliver their babies had made her think she might never want her own.

  “But then the angel came,” said Kit.

  Dakota smiled like a true-believing breeze. “In the commune, in the middle of the night, long before I was pregnant with you—an angel came to me in a dream. Don’t be afraid, said the angel. One day you will have a son, and he will be one of a kind, a pure soul, and a friend to those in need.”

  Kit reached up, touched the key around his Dakota’s neck. “The next morning . . .”

  “The next morning, when I woke up, I found this key in my hand. I still have no idea where it came from or what it opens.”

  “A supreme mystery.”

  “It is. But I decided to wear the key as a reminder of that night. And as a monument to you.”

  Kit simultaneously loved and hated this part of his genesis: the appearance of the angel always made him feel special; the angel’s prophecy, however, seemed unlikely given he would never leave Town. But the story was far from over, and so he pushed these doubts away and listened as his Dakota explained how, years later, when she was pregnant with him, a large swarm wiped out more than half the commune.

  Under the covers, he pressed his feet together, tried to get the blood flowing.

  “The Mackenzies and I were planning to leave the commune anyway,” said Dakota. “After the swarm attacked, everything was in total disarray. It was the perfect time for a fresh start. Joanne was my best friend. We were both—”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why were you and the Mackenzies going to leave the commune?”

  In the calm sea of this conversation, the question was an unprecedented ripple; for some reason, until now, Kit had never thought to ask it.

  “Well . . .” Dakota seemed to consider. “Remember our talks about how the world ended for everyone, but how the means to that end was different for different people, especially people of color?”

  “Because of structure racism.”

  His Dakota smiled in a way that somehow made Kit sad, and she said, “Structural racism,” and she was about to say something else, but her eyes landed on the door to Lakie’s room, and she grew suddenly silent.

  “What?” asked Kit, following her eyes to the closed door.

  “I think . . .” Lost in memory, she stared at the door a moment longer before looking down at him. “I think you should talk to Lakie or Monty about this.”

  “They were still little, though. When you guys left.”

  “They remember enough. And they were old enough to have conversations with Joanne and Elias about what happened.”

  “Can’t you just tell me?”

  She smiled at Kit. “It’s not my story.”

  Such a den of secrets! His Dakota wasn’t normally so enigmatic. This was all highly unusual for the Paradise Twin.

  “Where was I?” Dakota asked.

  “Joanne was your best friend . . .”

  Dakota explained how she and Joanne were both midwives in the commune, how they spent tons of time together. “She loved the mountains. Her husband, Elias, loved the water. And so they named their children after the things they loved.”

  “The mountain and the lake,” said Kit.

  “Monty and Lakie were old souls from the start. The names suited them. When it was time to set out for a new home, the five of us were ready.”

  “Six, if you count me. I was in your uterus.”

  “Tell you what. Let’s leave my uterus out of things from here on, shall we? But okay, when the six of us left, we wanted to find a place where we could settle down, and where I could get ready to welcome you into the world.”

  “Nesting.”

  “Oh my God, yes, nesting. What else did this Mendelsohn clown teach you?”

  “You don’t want to know. Continue.”

  “We needed a place that could be easily barricaded, but nothing too suffocating. Someplace safe, but a place that was about more than just survival. I prayed for a sign.”

  “And then you saw one.”

  Dakota nodded. “I hadn’t expected a literal sign, but that’s what I got. A large billboard by the side of the road. Billboards were mostly advertisements, trying to get people to buy things they didn’t need.”

  “Why would someone buy something they don’t need?” asked Kit.

  “Back then, some people had more money than they knew what to do with.”

  “Like billionaires.”

  In the olden days, there had been a breed of human known as “billionaire.” To qualify, you had to have at least a billion cash-bucks. One billion! But the r
eal mind-boggler was that billionaires kept on being billionaires even when they knew there were people who had zero cash-bucks.

  What a zany place this world had been.

  “This particular billboard stood out because it advertised a church,” she said. “But here’s the wild part.”

  “You’d seen that billboard before.”

  “Who’s telling this story?”

  “Proceed,” said Kit.

  “I’d seen that billboard before. Before the commune, before the Flies hit, back when lights were electric and ice cream was cold. I was on my way home from a date when I got stuck in a traffic jam.”

  “Too many cars in one place.”

  “That’s right. It was snowing hard, I remember. I was sitting in my car, not going anywhere, when I looked up and saw someone spray-painting words on a billboard.”

  “What did the words say?”

  “I don’t remember. But a minute later, this couple in the car ahead of me needed my help.”

  “Your expertise in the field of midwifery.”

  Dakota smiled a big one. “The woman was in labor. Stuck in traffic. I remember thinking, This is why I left the house tonight. Not for a date. I’m here for this woman and her baby. So then, years later, pregnant with you, traveling with the Mackenzies, looking for a sign—”

  “You saw the billboard again.”

  “And it reminded me of that night stuck in the snow. Of the woman, whose name I never knew, and her baby, which made me think of you. And it reminded me of the date I’d been on, how the man was a bust, but the place he took me—”

  “An old movie theater in a little mountain town.”

  “It was perfect. And so the five of us—sorry, six—moved in. We spent those first weeks scavenging, storing up the State Theater, packed the place so full of water jugs and cinnamon and seeds and matches, you could barely see straight. And when the time came—”