One Billion Drops of Happiness (20 page)

Whatever it was, on that fateful day Effie Brigham’s mother was compelled to go to the Excelsior office building in the centre of the city. She had not gone to work; she and all the other dispossessed citizens were shunning it shamelessly. Their former cold logic and reason had evaporated into thin air. They no longer cared about the consequences, or of the imminent slowing down of this marvelous civilization.

If her daughter knew what she was doing, she would have disowned her. Effie had been one of the fortunate few who had never known a Suppressitor glitch. Consequently, she had been promoted at the speed of light over and over again at her job in the fibre trade. She was now responsible for two million workers.

Fortunately the fibre trade would always receive excellent business because every few months a new technology was developed, leading to hordes of people rushing to buy the latest, most efficient materials. The more modern the fibres, the harder working it made a worker appear to their contemporaries. It showed that you required such no-frill articles because you were simply too darn occupied working for the country to bother cleaning the older generation of garments. Soon the fibre trade would be redundant when they eventually invented self-sterilising clothes. Only the citizens who had lived in the olden times cared about what colours they were wearing. The younger citizens had grown up in an age entirely unconscious of physical appearances.

‘If I could work eight days a week, I would in a shot,’ Effie had chirruped to her mother. ‘We have to work twice as hard now that more and more people have stopped working. You too. It’s the least we can do for this wonderful country.’

Her mother had said nothing. She kept her sour thoughts to herself these days.

To be honest, the government of New America had no idea how to handle this unprecedented situation. They decided that if they publicised the growing crisis too greatly then it would only set off more people into an irreversible panic. Already tens of millions of people had either stopped going to work or were shacked up in the local hospitals. There was nothing they could do at this point. It was best for them to stay quiet while they figured out what to do.

Bathsheba Ermez was full of ideas. She had taken to the Presidency like a natural. Her mix of brusqueness and bluntness was ideal for the current climate in the country. She had already enjoyed several successful face-offs with Zachary DuPont, who was trying to do everything in his power to backpedal and not have to go to war. Unfortunately it was already too late. It had already been declared; the damage was done. How they would begin to fight the superpower that was New America was still a mystery without solution, even to him.

As for New America, they had not taken the declaration seriously at all. They had more pressing matters to deal with. Henry had advised Bathsheba Ermez to concentrate on rushing through the final stages of preparation for Ophelium. He was confident that this funny business would blow over very soon. Productivity in the country had slowed significantly, but was thankfully it was not yet at breaking point. Only a little while longer and this whole sorry saga would be history.

Meanwhile, Effie Brigham’s mother was arriving at Excelsior Headquarters in a bad state. She was spewing fury at the government; spewing fury at the country that made her work every day of her life without rest. She was tired. She was angry. She was confused, yet she had never seen so much clarity. How dare they poison the world? How dare they kill the animals, those poor things, those mostly four legged creatures that nobody had given a damn about until now? How dare they! It was wrong, it was heinous!

Merely the sight of the building boiled her blood. She looked around and spied several thousand other people just like her in the immediate vicinity. They must all have shared the same idea. It was not borne of genius however; the Excelsior building was an easy target for the dissatisfied.

She fixed a determined eye at imposing entrance of the building before letting loose and launching into a high pitched cry.

‘Stop the oppression, say no to suppression!’

The others stopped buzzing around in a disordered fashion and turned to watch her.

She yelled again:

‘Stop the oppression, say no to suppression!’ she found that one arm began rhythmically punching the air while her feet began to stamp.

‘Stop the oppression, say no to suppression!’

This felt natural, this felt right. The people around her began to whisper excitedly. Perhaps it was ironic that now these citizens were bunking work, they still instinctively welcomed a task to carry out.

‘Stop the oppression, say to no suppression!’

A few hundred people joined in.

‘Stop the oppression, say no to suppression!’

A few hundred turned instantly into a few hundred thousand.

‘Stop the oppression, say no to suppression!’

Effie Brigham’s mother excitedly hoisted herself onto the low roof of the entrance archway. She gasped in delight at the swarms and swarms of matchstick people marching in unison before her, manically chanting her recently dreamed words. Her eyes shone bright. So this was what it felt like, she was finally living!

The crowd roared in approval at the sight of their makeshift leader elevated over their heads. The roads were instantly irrefutably blocked. It had all escalated in the blink of an eye. The resulting scene was total mayhem.

‘Stop the oppression, say no to suppression!’

The roar was almost ear splitting. The crowd was swelling dangerously. Casual passersby who were up to that point mostly in control of their Suppressitors found themselves abandoning ship and giving in to the will of the pack, the sheer noise and excitement simply too much for their delicately balanced devices.

‘Stop the oppression, say no to suppression!’

People could not help but join in, the energy was positively effervescent. They screamed until their lungs were torn, and then screamed some more. It was as if all the years of emotional suppression were being released in one fell swoop.

‘Stop the oppression, say no to suppression!’

Then suddenly, out of absolutely nowhere, a large handful or so of figures clad in pure white from head to toe darted onto the canopy where Effie Brigham’s mother was still stomping her foot resolutely, an enormous grin spread across her face. Later, some people would swear they came hurtling from the windows of the Excelsior building. Nobody would truly know for sure; the whole thing happened in an instant.

In a matter of seconds, Effie Brigham’s mother was spirited away kicking and screaming, but it did not matter, for the chanting of the crowd drowned it out. Those who could see assumed it was all part of the spectacle. Those who could not see simply continued chanting, growing louder and louder until the confused roar of the people at the front interrupted the former mosaic precision.

With their leader vanished into thin air, there was no longer anybody to conduct the orchestra of protestors. The shouting fast transformed into a muddled din. Those at the back had no idea what was going on and the halt in proceedings only agitated them further. A few hundred people whose Suppressitors resumed emitting weak signs of life began to run away as they came to their senses. To be caught here would be catastrophic – career suicide at the very least.

People jammed into the middle sections of the crowd saw this and misinterpreted the motive. Basic human instinct kicked in and they too, began to flee. Soon tens of millions of people were hurtling in every direction, the terror magnifying as each second passed. There was absolutely no escape from the blaze of emotions afflicting the citizens. Worse still were the millions of people caught amidst the stampede, the millions of people who in their fright, lost their footing and fell, dropping like flies.

Afterwards it emerged in official circles that these millions of people who now lay motionless on the ground could have been saved. Of course they could have been saved – this was new America for goodness sake. The normal protocol would have been to send them to the hospital where they could have been immediately patched up and sent home, but alas, in these tumultuous times, the hospitals were all full to the brim and closed firmly to all new patients.

Therefore, the question was finally brought to the attention of an unimpressed President Bathseba Ermez: what to do with the fallen protestors? After all, although crushed, they were still breathing and could easily be put back together again when the hospital crisis eased.

Her answer was instant and it was simple.

‘Sign them all off,’ she said without emotion. ‘I want the roads reopened by noon.’

Her will was done.

Later that afternoon a government official came by Effie Brigham’s office. She greeted them briskly. She was extremely inundated with work; her taskforce of two million was decreasing drastically by the day.

In a low but solemn voice, the official explained to Effie Brigham what had happened to her mother. That she had been caught inciting violence in an anti-government protest. That she had been ferried away in disgrace and immediately Signed Off under orders of the new President.

Effie Brigham did not blink an eyelid.

‘Good job,’ she said. ‘Miscreants have no place in our society. Our new President has done well to make an example of such odious behaviour.’

‘Come to the lake, I have something to show you.’ Lars said one day, quite solemnly.

Xandria looked up at him, noticing that his eyes contained an honesty about them.

‘Of course,’ she said jumping up. ‘I’ll come now. Where are we going?’

‘You’ll see,’ he said, with a faint grin. He looked like Gabe when he did that.

Their many shared walks together had built a sense of ease between them. Sometimes he talked and she would listen, but he never probed about her life in New America. She liked it that way; she knew his opinions on the country and was glad that he momentarily overlooked them in return for her simple company.

When they arrived at the lake there was a solitary wooden boat bobbing at the waters’ edge.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing curiously.

‘Get in,’ he said. ‘We’re going to a bird island.’

He extended his arm to steady Xandria as she viewed the contraption with much suspicion.

‘It’s how people traversed water since time began,’ he explained. ‘It’s a boat.’

Safely seated, Lars began to row expertly across the water, rounding a corner of the lake that Xandria had never yet seen beyond. There was more of the same crystal lake extending to the tree-lined shores in the distance. They glided through the water, Xandria feeling surprisingly contented.

She sat back and sighed. Lars looked over at her.

‘Are you happy?’

She found herself smiling.

‘If this is what it feels like, I could do with some more.’

‘Wow.’ He slowed the boat before whistling in amazement. ‘I can’t believe it, she’s finally happy. Hooray!’

He shouted into the empty skies, causing the nearby birds in the trees to flap their wings and scatter. He examined her face.

‘Is that a smile?’ he teased, ‘I daresay it is! At last she smiles!’

Xandria’s smile felt boundless; before she knew it she had thrown her head back and a strange sound was reverberating around the lakeside. She was laughing for the very first time. Lars soon joined in, resting his oars and sitting back with Xandria, laughing up at the cold sky, laughing at nothing in particular until they could both laugh no more.

They sat there companionably for a few moments catching their breath.

‘Was that worth it?’ he asked, turning to her. His eyes were warm, so much warmer than she’d ever seen.

‘One hundred percent,’ she said, surveying the scenery. ‘This place is so beautiful. I love it here.’

‘She speaks of love, she’s definitely changing…’ Lars teased, before his face became still. ‘But seriously, it’s something you have to be careful with. It’s one of the more dangerous emotions.’

‘Why?’ Xandria asked.

‘Love is the most powerful weapon,’ he said, taking up the oars again. ‘From it everything else is borne, hate being its most venomous consequence.’

‘Are you saying that humans should stay away from it?’

‘Only that you should never depend on anyone else for your happiness,’ he replied, eyeballing the shoreline as they came nearer to the shore.

‘From what I’ve seen of it, I think it’s like a key and a slot.’ Xandria attempted. ‘With time the shape changes and the key no longer fits.’

‘Too many people find the wrong person.’ Lars said shortly, hopping out of the boat and dragging it up the shoreline. Xandria had too disembarked when instructed. ‘You should look to find the person who would gladly have their own heart broken a million times before yours should so much as bruise.’

Xandria mulled this over. Lars retreated back into his silence as they walked. Occasionally he would intersperse the quiet to show her this bird and the other. If she was honest, Xandria was paying more attention to what Lars had said earlier.

‘Sometimes I wonder,’ Lars had confided hesitantly, ‘if the fruitless human quest for love, often spanning a lifetime of agony, is in response to God defying us to find a better love than his own?’

Xandria was confused by this God and his prevalence in the Olsens life. Lars seemed to have an unshakeable belief in this invisible deity above. Sometimes she did not understand the things he said, so she said nothing in response. Maybe he was asking himself these things more than he was actually asking her.

As the thorny undergrowth snapped and crackled underfoot with every step, for the first time in a long while, Xandria realised she had not thought of Henry. The love potion had finally subsided; she was free. It had been a gradual ending, she felt grateful for that now. No inward shriek of regret that there would be no more immaterial moments with that person, no cringe-worthy sequences of desperate pleading and disproportionately amplified desire. Instead, it had been rather like the smoothest space flight, that instant when you landed so delicately it was only when voices erupted around you that you jolted into the consciousness that the journey was complete and you had absolutely missed the ending.