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The flaming warmth birthed from the amber powerhouse that was our Sun starts to diminish and waver as it drapes its linen dress over the horizon, slowly surrendering to time as it is engulfed under the void of the horizon; a lightless sky soon depressing in hue to its darker shades. Night will take the Sun’s place, and the cicadas will rise from nocturation to blanket the silent stars with their orchestral ticks and clicks like an ancient hymn of the night. This is no hymn, but rather a battle cry, a signal; a chance for humans to understand that the night no longer belongs to them; instead, they are to be secluded in their needlessly cosy and warm homes until their solar protector rises once more. Piper, bless her heart, was never one who entertained being bossed around, a value extended to the great Mother Nature herself. Here now, the lone woman sits on a porch that was once hers, though in name only, watching the light from the sky disappear after a final brushstroke of amber peels away to reveal the night sky’s blank canvas.
Now what?
A cage, they called it; some, a prison; to most, a utopia. Starr Park was a place that promised happiness at every second, in a world where smiles were eternal, and nothing could ever hurt you, ever. Propaganda, they called it; those against them, the S.P.U.D.E. Lies, manipulation, deceit, their lovely assortment of worlds sprinkled like cinnamon over everyday conversations, alluring and enticing the starved workers for a better, fuller future.
But a lie that was. The S.P.U.D.E., so insistent, so ADAMANT on fighting the evil that was Starr Corp, to bringing the CEOs to the flashing camera lights, to prod their hollow heads with boom mics and fly them off to far-away lands, failed to deliver on their original promise: assisting the distressed. S.P.U.D.E., Starr Park Union for Distressed Employees, in fact, did not assist the distressed employees. Rather, they made their victory known by triumphing over the big bad and taking down Starr Corp; their anti-evil stance. But to ask the S.P.U.D.E. what has become of these so-called “distressed employees”, your conversation will take the turn of a humble ciciadian orchestra composed under the night sky. Destroying the evil and uplifting the good are two processes fundamentally packaged as separate instructions, yet one is more attractive than the other, more powerful and comes shrouded in newspaper front pages and talk shows, rendering the other useless. This is what has become of Piper and the rest of the surviving Starr Park employees; they are free now; they have been saved. The work is done. It is time to move on. They do not want to see their sorry faces anymore; being alone in the town that despises your breath is a wonderful picture, and should be met with a high flair of gratuity.
Some union.
A fact unknown is that to many, Starr Park was home, not the theme park itself, but the people; robots, the undead, mystical creatures and humans from all walks of life laughed and drank with each other under the park's strange magic and watchful gaze. But not anymore. Now, they are alone, sent back into the hardened world like unmolded clay, bearing a body with no name, no meaning and no income in their inventory except for the tiniest gram of hope that they will find themselves before the others find them.
The sweet tea enclapsed around Piper's slowly whitening knuckles had long since dissipated its lively wintry feels into her similarly frigid body. Lukewarm and tasteless, she still sipped on it, unresponsive as the room-temperature drink flowed down her oesophagus to neither warm nor cool her body. As of right now, she just felt like…existing. Not in the sense of watching the birds as you let blades of grass melt into you; no, rather, existing as a broken brick in an abandoned building, face left blank as rain, hail and shine failed to crack its hardened body. What used to feel like little people running amok in her busy mind was left to the same abandoned fate, cobwebs lightly rustling in a mind that was once so full of life, colour, and happiness and…
…Well, manufactured happiness. Her existence in the park was nothing more than a permanent play as an unscripted thespian. That woman, clad in blond hair over the smooth skin of her face, was not her. An idea of her; a persona of her; the perfect version of her; the true her.
Now what?
She recalls the people, jaded and torn, no different than her, who used to call that strange theme park their home. She wonders of them now. Are they back to their birth home? Do they even have a home? Starr Corp was predatory; many of its workers were homeless, “rescued” by the park that simultaneously gave them a life whilst also taking it away. She doesn’t want to think of her friends as on the streets.
But it all happened so quickly.
One moment the whole island was collapsing, ear drumming and feet vibrating as the earth shook beneath her; the next moments were a haze, until she woke up, alone, body pressed against the soft grass of a lightly dewed abandoned field. Back home; no, back to her birthplace. That was the last memory she had of Starr Island.
Wow, she didn’t even realise she never got to say goodbye. To the people.
And the robots?
Her grip tightened around her cup, threatening to crack open the ceramic into the same patterns etched onto her broken heart.
She remembers…Rico. The sentient gumball machine
Oh, how silly it was; a sentient gumball machine. But it was real. So real. She had many lovers in the park: the self-centred cowboy, the idealistic mariachi, the obsessive fangirl; but none, none, came as close as they did to Rico. It was ironic; he did not bear the veins of blood that circulated human life, and yet the circuits and code in his system somehow shone more humanity than many men in the town she currently resides in. That park was a place of magic, it really was. Sure, the real magic, flowing through strange purple rocks native to the island, was the result of its subsequent demise; but the proper magic, the one found in its people and bearing a half-life of infinity, was the one they could never take away.
And the one they could never replicate.
This town, so barren and emotionless, could never compete.
But she has to move on.
It was Starr Corp’s plan after all: convince its employees that the outside world would never want you back. That this park was a haven like no other.
It was right about that.
She tried hard; she tried so hard to smile at kids and shake the hands of fellow women, but looking above at their faces only returned a wrinkled face of fear.
They didn’t want her; maybe they never did.
But there was a place that did.
She could move, but to where? Nowhere. It didn’t matter anyway.
The cup in her hands was drained to its core. It was nothing now. Like she was nothing.
But a cup can be refilled, can it? But cups aren’t humans.
And humans were never easy.