Fabuland1 is not itself today.
There are no shuttles filing in from the outskirts, no crowds snaking through the central stations, and no vendors hungrily pitching at passers-by.
All non-essential businesses have closed early, leaving the city’s famed sliding walkways silent and still.
But stations and vendors and walkways are not really what this city is all about.
After all, The Sign, hammered into the Founding Rock where the city limits meet the wasteland, does not read:
Fabuland, City of Sliding Walkways!
or,
City of the Great Migrating Workforce!
or,
City of Effortlessly Dependable Infrastructure!
The Sign, painted and planted by The Fabule themselves, reads:
Fabuland, City of Screens!
And today the screens glow as bright as they ever have, and on them, The Contest2 plays for all.
It plays in the downtown apartments of well-to-do and on the sides of the Glitterton Alley scrapers. It plays across cheap, stacked panels in department store windows, so even those who have by some miracle forgotten what day it is, can watch transfixed like everyone else, only with grocery bags dangling listlessly by their sides. And it plays in apartment G-48765 in the Starlight Estate, where Ponyrella, her two daughters, Isabel and Morning, and their M.A.I.D, Darla, are huddled in the cramped screening room of their family apartment.
“Darla,” says Morning impatiently, “when is Daddy on?”
“I’m sorry but I don’t understand,” says Darla. “Do you want me to call Mr Hanson?”
“No, Darla,” says Ponyrella. “She wants to know what time The Contest starts.”
“Ahh, but The Fabule’s Contest has already started. It started 4 hours ago, right on schedule.”
Ponyrella nods and sighs. Something pretending to be the show they were promised had indeed started hours ago, but all they’d been treated to so far were endless promotions, smug talking heads, and compilations of street interviews filmed months earlier. If she has to hear one more time about how this is a “landmark moment,” a “generational event,” or “the opportunity of a lifetime,” she might just put her foot all the way through the family Screen. The resulting fine would be worth it.
At 13.59, a PinkSuit flickers on, his finger pressed into an invisible earpiece beneath his candyfloss wig.
“I’m hearing now we can go live to the TeleSphere for the first of our finals. This is it, citizens! The opportunity of a lifetime is upon us!”
The Screen cuts to a dimly lit stage where five silhouettes sit motionless. Flicking to the wide shot, the same stage is visible in the background; in the foreground, a crowd of Fabuland’s best and brightest, all in identical grey cottons, are wandering aimlessly on a dark tarpaulin.
Morning nudges her little sister awake. “Isabel, it’s starting!”
Isabel sits up and rubs her eyes. “Is Daddy on?”
“Not yet, Sweetie,” says Ponyrella, “but he’ll be on soon, I think.”
Ponyrella’s eyes scan the Screen looking for her husband. Did he even get this far? Would she be able to spot him if he did? What would be asked of him?
No way to know other than to keep watching. Just the way The Fabule likes it.
+++
Norm Hanson scans the waiting room and sees himself reflected hundreds of times.
Everyone here is just like me, he thinks, all Norms, like me. Tall Norms and short Norms, fat Norms and girl Norms. Norms with string instruments slung across their shoulders and Norms with bulging financial accounts, but all Norms just the same.
Every few minutes a buzzer goes off, another number flashes across the waiting room’s semi-reflective wall panels, and another Norm rises gingerly and shuffles off toward their fate.
Eventually, it’s Norm Hanson’s turn to do the same.
A PinkSuit with ice-blue lips leads Norm down an sterile corridor to a violet-hued room, empty but for a steel table and two laminated chairs. Though the light is dim, Norm can just make out the intricate floral designs on the walls that are probably not walls. He suspects there are cameras concealed somewhere in the pattern.
The PinkSuit takes a seat and motions for him to do the same. She pulls a translucent cube from her jacket pocket and slides it into the centre of the table.
“Okay, Mr Hanson,” she says, with a practiced smile that in the dim violet light is almost a grimace. “You have five minutes. You may proceed.”
A countdown in neon pink flashes onto each surface of the cube. Norm’s intestines become a closed fist.
5.00… 4.49… 4.58… 4.57…
“What?” he stutters.
“Is there a problem?” says the PinkSuit.
“No. I mean… No, there’s no problem. It’s only that I didn’t think it would be like this. You’re not going to ask me any questions?”
The PinkSuit shrugs. “Would you like me to?”
In the run up to The Contest, Norm had spent hours learning how to keep his expression neutral under pressure. He doesn’t need a mirror to know what a waste of time that has turned out to be. “Can you?” he asks. “If you could, I think that would help me to focus.”
“Very well, Mr Hanson. What sorts of questions would you like me to ask you?”
He cringes. Had all the other Norms had felt this ill-prepared? He thinks about Ponyrella and the kids, snuggled up in front of the Screen.
Looking at the timer, he breathes in—
4.27… 4.26… 4.25…
—and out.
“Please tell me exactly what it is you want me to do,” says Norm. “I don’t want there to be any confusion.”
The PinkSuit looks at Norm with the faint irritation teachers reserve for simple but well-meaning children.
“Mr Hanson, it’s really quite straightforward. I want you to tell me, or show me, why you and your family, out of all the citizens of Fabuland, deserve your place in the live finals of The Contest. I’m sorry, I thought that was clear.”
If this is all part of the test, he’s failing with abandon. He scans the wall again for cameras. The thought of being on-screen makes him shudder. “Well, first off, I have a family. A beautiful wife and two precious little girls and I—”
Norm cuts himself off. What a stupid thing to start with. Half the Norms in the waiting room have families of one kind or another. The PinkSuit’s unmoved eyes seem to tell him as much.
He tries again. “My wife is a dentist. A bloody good one. And there aren’t many things in life I’m certain of, except that you can’t too many dentists.” The PinkSuit seems neither to agree nor disagree. “Err… and Morning, my eldest, she’s so smart. She’s already learning Fabulian and she’s only eight years old! She could be a translator or something, no question. And Isabel, we’ll all need entertainment, right? I know everyone says their kids are funny but honestly, she’s hilarious. Everyone says so, she’s…”
2.54… 3.44… 3.43…
“And me… well, I’ve worked on Glitterton Alley for fifteen years, and in all that time I’ve never taken a sick day. I’ve had promotions over the years, too — not as many as I think I deserved, mind, but I never complained. I understood. That’s just the way of things. And I always congratulated the citizen that beat me to it. I always just got on with it. That’s me. Whatever I’m asked to do, I just get on with it.”
The PinkSuit’s mouth twitches into a half smile before returning to it’s frightening neutrality.
“You know,” says Norm, “there’s so much more I could say. I even prepared a song in case that was something you wanted, although that doesn’t seem quite right now. I think if you just tell me a bit more about what you’re looking for — a bit of context maybe? I don’t mind if you take up some of my time to do it.”
“Very well, Mr Hanson, but I’m not sure I can tell you anything you don’t already know. What are we looking for? Only the best citizens Fabuland has to offer. Those special few capable of continuing and expanding upon the legacy of The Fabule.
“Mr Hanson, as I am sure you are aware, all we have built here will soon fail us. There is no stopping that now. It is simply the price that must be paid for burning so brightly for so long. Not everyone can be saved but by the grace of The Fabule, we can save some.
“So, all I want from you Mr Hanson is the answer to the following question: why do you and your family, of all the citizens of Fabuland, deserve to be counted among the saved?
“Or, put another way, how can you repay the favour of having your children’s future returned to them by the grace of The Fabule?”
2.57… 2.56… 2.55…
“You know,” says Norm. “In training for this, I went twice a week this Fabulian Psychology guy — Zora, his name was. I’ve got some — I mean, I had some self-confidence issues, you know? He taught me how to give myself a break, and showed me how to better appreciate my own worth. It was great, actually. I got a lot better.
“But to quantify it? And then compare it to all the other Norms — I mean, people in the waiting room, back there? I just… I don’t think I can do that.
“I really don’t think it’s for me to decide my own worth, you know? I think that’s a job for you, or for my wife, or for anyone else who has cause to. All I can tell you is that I’m a good man. I love my family and I work hard. That’s all I’ve got.”
He’s pleased enough with that. It feels good inside. It feels like the right thing. The PinkSuit doesn’t seem to respond in any meaningful way but he’s beginning to think she’s incapable of doing so.
If that’s not good enough, so be it.
Norm sits back in his chair and watches over a minute tick away on the timer.
“Mr Hanson,” says the PinkSuit. “I should tell you, as it stands you have not qualified for the next stage of The Contest. Is there anything you would like to say in the minute you have remaining?”
Norm sees himself standing on the overcrowded 6.45 express shuttle to the Starlight Estate, surrounded by all the other sorry Norms. He slides open his front door. Hovers around the threshold. Isabel and Morning tug at his shirt. Are we going, Daddy? Are we going? Ponyrella reads his expression before he has a chance to speak. A wave of guilt runs cold right down to the soles of his feet..
0.49… 0.48… 0.47…
“Please!” The plea escapes before he has a chance to question it. He feels himself sliding back into the sorry excuse of a man he was before The Contest was all anyone wanted to talk about. “I don’t know about everyone else but if I don’t have this I have nothing. I already lost my job for this. I’m sorry, I should’ve told you that already, but there it is. I was so focused on pleasing The Fabule that I got myself fired. I lost Ponyrella, too. We’re still together on the surface and we have the kids but I can see it in her eyes, like those gamblers you see on the late night channels sometimes, the ones who know they’ve made a bad bet but now they’re stuck with it. The funny thing is, this bloody contest, it helped. I think it gave her hope again. Hope in me. Hope that she wouldn’t have to spend the rest of her days living in a five-by-five on the Starlight Estate. And I just know, I know it in my heart that if I fail at this, I’ll lose her forever. So, please. Please just let me go through to the next round. I need this.”
0.20… 0.19… 0.18…
“I can change. I’ll be a better man than I ever was before. I swear it.”
0.14… 0.13… 0.12…
“I’ll do all the jobs nobody else wants. I’ll do the M.A.I.D’s jobs.”
0.07… 0.06… 0.05…
“I’ll do anything.”
That timer stops as though Norm has stumbled upon a secret password.
In a way, he has.
+++
Norm steps into the darkness toward the mumbling voices. He clenches his fists, grinds his teeth. He is a warrior preparing to step out before a thousand hungry eyes, all waiting to watch him die in the jaws of some giant beast.
The hallway opens out into a cavernous auditorium. The plainly dressed stage is dark save for a few back-lights and a table with five empty seats.
The Norms wander around like ghosts at the end of the world. Some mutter pleasantries. Some have their eyes scrunched closed as if trying to recall a vital piece of their training. Most simply move from one spot to the next, waiting for someone to show up and tell them otherwise.
Five back-lit figures step out onto the stage causing a whisper of trepidation to run through the Norms.
Tap. Tap. Tap. A fingernail on a microphone.
The Norms go silent.
“Citizens,” says a voice like warm treacle. “In a moment, I will count down from three, whereupon you will hear a klaxon. At this point, the cameras will begin their work. You will have one hour before the klaxon sounds again. During that hour, you have one goal: do all and anything you can to stand out from the citizens around you.
“There are six-hundred-and-sixteen citizens in this room, and there are ten rooms just like it all over Fabuland. Only thirty will make it through from each room.
“A few rules. Any acts of physical violence will result in immediate disqualification. Full frontal nudity is also cause for disqualification — though what constitutes as full-frontal will be left to the discretion of our judges. Finally, collaboration is strictly prohibited. Any citizens found working together, will be disqualified together.
“If those rules are clear and accepted, please raise your right hand.
“Good. Then let us begin.
“Three… Two…One.”
+++
It was as if they’d only been on pause. As if they’d been frozen mid-sentence, their next words left cocked and loaded on their tongues.
Ponyrella watches, horrified, as the klaxon blares and frees them from their stillness. A cacophony of jeers and cries invade her screening room as oceans invade sinking ships. They howl and holler. They rip off their shirts and beat their chests. They dance and rave and swear into the apathetic wide-angle lens. The madness of the truly desperate, a show for all Fabuland to enjoy.
“Mama,” says Isabel. “Why isn’t Daddy moving?”
Her eyes focus in. Sure enough, there’s her husband, stood like a child in a war-zone, corkscrews sprouting from the soles of his shoes and burrowing into the auditorium floor.
“I don’t know, sweetie.” She pulls the girls in close.
Soon it will be time to vote.
She imagines the eyes of Fabuland flicking from screen to screen, contestant to contestant, seeing, through all the madness, amidst the flailing arms and gnashing teeth, her husband, Norm Hanson, still as an old post, with the fear of The Fabule in his eyes.
She hopes that will be enough.