The Annihilation of Foreverland

Mr. Campbell moved his hand quicker than Danny thought possible.
    ERIC ZINDER!
    Mr. Campbell’s hand reached inside his pocket—
    Danny punched the tablet.
    The classroom went dark.
    Desks slid and tumbled. Mr. Campbell fell into a heap of overturn ed chairs. He laid motionless, hand buried in his pocket.
    Eric Zinder was still highlighted on the tablet.
    “Cut that sort of close.” Zin leaned inside the room.

62
    He had drifted away – how long, he couldn’t say – when the rattle of the air handler went quiet.
    The air stopped blowing.
    The lights went out.
    The room was pitch black.
    “What the hell is going on?” someone said.
    Mr. Jones felt a tingle on the back of his neck. He had never had the sensation before. He was told that the tracker was installed for his own protection, that everyone had one in case something went wrong. Even the Director had one. But, he was assured, no Investor ever had experienced the unconsciousness brought about by the tracker voltage that shocked the nervous system and overloaded the senses.
    But they all felt it.
    It was sudden. Like a hot wire spiking the back the head.
    The old men dropped like sacks of meat.
    Mr. Jones’s foot twitched in the dark. He would never experience pain that intense again. He would never feel anything again.
    None of them would.
    His last thought. We deserve this.

63
    The Director walked around the sundial, taking his time to let the grass slip between his toes. The gray Nowhere had blotted out the blue sky, descending like a plague of locusts.
    She thought she could take his world.
    Not anymore.
    The girl was on her hands and knees inside a circle of dirt. She wouldn’t escape the ring where the Director focused all his attention. He willed her to experience her flesh curling off her bones, willed her to sense the smell of fried hair and boiling bones. None of it actually happened to her.
    But she felt it.
    He took a knee. Her red hair hung over her face, shimmering as she convulsed. He lifted her chin. Her face contorted. Eyes filled with tears.
    “It’s all over, Lucinda. ”
    She lunged, snapping her teeth at his hand. He pulled back, laughing.
    She cried out, curling into a ball.
    Now that she was out of the Nowhere and into the open, he knew everything about her. Everything .
    “You know what you are , don’t you?” he said. “You’re just a thought. A memory. You’re nothing different than data. You are a reflection, a shadow, of a girl that once lived. A girl that is now dead. Your body has long since fed the worms. How does that make you feel?”
    He waited.
    Her skin fluttered in waves. Her nervous system fired uncontrollably. It appeared her flesh was trying to strip itself from her body.
    “I am Foreverland, Lucinda. This whole existence,” he stood up, waving his arms, turning in a circle, “that you’ve been trying to destroy is me. It is my mind that creates this. That’s why I’m a little bitter you’ve been pissing on it.”
    He wiped the hair from her face so she could see him.
    “You’re one dimensional, darling. You can’t understand what I’ve done to help people. You don’t know what I’ve sacrificed to give them a new life. I pulled their memories from their damaged minds to heal them.
    “At first, Foreverland was just a computer program but it didn’t work. It was too scripted, too artificial. Their identities didn’t survive and they turned into vegetables. I discovered they needed an alternate reality that’s organic. I became that, Lucinda. They plug the needle into their brains and transfer their identity into my mind where they can live their fantasies. Where they can heal their lives. I am the beautiful mind that heals them. I am the new dimension of existence.”
    He leaned closer.
    “And you tried to take that away. Shame on you.”
    Another wave of pain. She shook, bouncing on the ground. This made the Director smile. He began pacing around the circle, observing the trees barely visible in the gray fog.
    “I gave you life when I pulled you from Reed’s mind, Lucinda.”
    He breathed the sweet air.
    “You’re dead, but I made you live, again. And how do you repay me? A thank you? Maybe a kiss on the cheek?”
    He looked down on her trembling body.
    “You’re an ungrateful little bitch. But not for long.”
    She was inferior. He could control her, but he couldn’t destroy her. And as long as she was inside Foreverland – inside his mind – she would be a distraction. But