Before Tomorrowland (15 page)

The bellhop didn’t seem interested in telling Lee, but Clara shushed him anyway. “Lee! Don’t be a spoilsport. Come on!”

They stepped into the elevator and Clara hunted on the tall selection of numbers. “What floor, what floor? Did he say?”

“Thirty-two,” said a male voice. A big hand shot through the closing doors and held them open. He was a tall, handsome man with dark hair. His suit was well tailored like anyone
else’s in the lobby, but his muscles bunched under it, taut and heavy. Almost like that guy from Sloane House...

“I’m Henry, with Plus Ultra,” said the man as he entered the elevator. “I’ll be escorting you the rest of the way.”

T
HE ELEVATOR
rose. He scanned and saw the Plus Ultra-designed surveillance camera hidden in the control panel. He activated
the dampening protocol, which killed the camera, but also slowed the elevator’s ascent. Henry crossed his arms and attempted to look human. The mother was the lost cause of the pair. She was
a dreamer. Her clear eyes and eager smile said so. Her son was harder to figure out, and so possibly more dangerous. “Are you enjoying yourselves?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s been just incredible!” said Mrs. Brackett, taking off the glasses and gesturing with them. “However you did that with the buildings and the narration...and such
beautiful designs! I’m an artist, so...It’s very inspiring.”

“When did you start?”

“I’ve been drawing for years! Ever since—”

“No,” said Henry, brusquer than he wanted. “I meant...this.” He waved at her glasses, not sure what exactly to call “this.”

“When did we start the game? It’s sort of a game, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Just this morning—one of your people gave me the comic yesterday, if that’s what you mean.”

“Mr. Faustus.”

The boy piped up. “Yeah, that guy is really strange-looking.”

“Lee,” said the mother.

Henry turned to the boy. “He is the strangest-looking man, isn’t he? I agree.” He X-rayed Lee and saw no glasses on him. But he did have the comic book. “No glasses for
you?”

This statement embarrassed the boy. He shifted his hat on his head and said, “I, uh, lost mine, but they don’t work for me, anyway.”

“Do you have any others?” asked Mrs. Brackett, waving her glasses back and forth as she spoke. “He can’t see out of mine. I mean the buildings and the enhancements, he
can’t see them.”

“I would give you another pair, but I have run out. I’m sorry,” he said. “May I see your comic book, please? I need to confirm your number. You don’t have to give
it to me. Just flip through the pages for me if you don’t mind. We print our codes in at random, for security.”

The boy followed his directions exactly. As Lee fanned the pages, Henry picked up all their details in an instant, and tried to remember to remain placid in spite of the revelation which floored
him.

Tomorrowland was real.
For all those years, Plus Ultra had lied to him and teased him and made him feel like a little fool. Yet there it was, drawn into some boy’s comic book with
neat explanations in white boxes. He had an overwhelming want to respond to this revelation that his parameters of expression wouldn’t allow. A curse. Laughter. Even tears. His placid
façade was both a useful mask and a prison.

Focus.

Henry reoriented himself. Plus Ultra wouldn’t reveal itself without a reason, and even in this façade of transparency, there would be a secret purpose. Selfish, dehumanizing,
exploitive purpose. Whatever it was, he had to stop it.

The last page of the comic automatically activated his analytic capability. It was a word puzzle. He solved it in 0.7 seconds. He lingered on the last sentence:
WE ARE WAITING
FOR YOU.
It was a statement intended for the two hapless souls standing before him, for whatever reason. Not for him. He would just have to tag along. “All fine,” he said.
“Thank you very much.” He checked the floor count again. The elevator was halfway up.

“This is all for fun, right? I mean, it’s gotta be,” said the boy, laughing nervously. Henry’s scan of his vital signs suggested a state of high anxiety. Was it due to
his mother’s collapse at the convention yesterday? Perhaps. And irrelevant.

“Nope. It’s all true,” said Henry, looking Lee square in the face.

His mother elbowed him in the ribs. “He’s pretty good, isn’t he?” She pivoted back to Henry. “Seriously though, you must do work on stage here in New York, huh?
Would I have to audition for something like you’re doing? It seems like it would be so much fun.”

Henry just kept quiet.

“I’m sorry,” she continued. “I don’t mean to break the spell. I just can’t help but wonder how it all comes together. Oh! Can I show you something?”

She dug into her purse and brought out a sketchbook. “When I see these amazing things you’ve made it just fires my imagination. I drew this one while we ate
breakfast—it’s your post office tower. I was thinking, what if instead of a safari in the building, you had those teleports actually
send
people to Africa. Yeah?” She
turned the page, anxious to show Henry more. The next illustration covered two pages. It was a cityscape of towers and interlacing arches and elevated pathways crowded with humans accompanied by
dozens of robots, each boxy and overtly mechanistic but unique in design.

“You drew that during breakfast?” he asked.

“Yes, this would be a whole city of your buildings with these bridges. As for the robots, I think it would be interesting if—”

“We’re here!” Henry interrupted. Actually, they were still a floor away, but he really didn’t want to hear a single word of her robot philosophy. The elevator shuddered
to a stop. The doors slid open. He modulated his voice for maximum politeness. “After you.”

Henry followed them down the hallway. He knocked out the ten surveillance cameras hidden in the walls. Room 3227 was on the right side, the numbers tacked to a double door. A quick X-ray told
him the room was ninety-five hundred square feet. There were no personnel inside, no humans, no robots, but he did detect dozens of mechanical devices, many emitting digital signals. There was
something familiar about their signatures, something he didn’t trust. He set his analytical systems to producing an escape plan and fight protocol.

He put his hand on the doorknob and pretended like he knew what was coming. “I think you’re going to like this,” he said. Mrs. Brackett raised her shoulders up to her ears and
grinned back as he turned the knob and swung the doors wide. An array of interactive kiosks filled the salon, all flashing and spinning and chattering. He knew what this was, even before he saw the
banner mocking him with six giant red words:

PLUS ULTRA’S SHOWROOM OF THE FUTURE!

There was even a butler with a serving tray fused to his hand. It was stationary and did not speak, but otherwise it was just like the one from his childhood. He flashed on the butler on Coney
Island with the broken teeth, and how its face must have ripped apart from the bomb he’d planted. He wanted the same for this one, there and then. Every lurid flash and smiling metal face
took him back to

and once more, Henry’s childhood hopes for the future burned bitter inside his lifeless circuits.

He came out of his reverie to the sound of the woman gasping and clapping her hands. She was standing in front of a tall, rectangular obelisk in the center of the room. It was embedded with
twelve video monitors, which, combined, presented a full-size image of Orson Welles dressed in a black suit, greeting them with his deep voice:

“Welcome, fellow visionaries, to our hall of wonders. Please enjoy the stations and move forward when the blue lights flash so that every visitor may have an opportunity to explore. Return
to the guest book area at the nearest convenient quarter hour to learn your next destination, where the father of Plus Ultra himself awaits you—Mr. Nikola Tesla.”

The mother and son ventured into the exhibit, heading in different directions. She bolted with excitement. He was cautious and self-conscious. “What future shock awaits the hearts of men?!
Only The Shadow knows!” the boy joked aloud to no one. “Incredible.”

Henry forced his two-hundred-pound legs to trudge forward, one after the other, into the spectacle. One display touted a transportation system called a “wire transfer:”
IMAGINE PHONE BOOTHS IN EVERY MAJOR CITY
,
WHERE INSTEAD OF SENDING YOUR VOICE AROUND THE WORLD
,
YOU COULD SEND YOUR WHOLE PERSON!
He tried to imagine it. He didn’t like it. He
resolved to adjust his sensors to tune out the din when his attention was drawn to a small, simple video monitor tucked away in the southeast corner of the room. It was by far the most modest piece
of technology in the salon, almost conspicuously so. But when Henry read the large yellow card taped to it, he understood it was the most important item there:

On the screen, Orson Welles gazed back with twinkly eyes and a small, mischievous curl to his lips. “For years, we have pursued safe, efficient means to share with the world our most
exciting treasure, the wondrous resource that has served as our laboratory for developing the technology you see here.”

Safe and efficient. Henry clenched his jaw. Right.

“We tried many things over many years. Some worked better than others, but none of them met the criteria of safe and efficient, until now. We call it the Grid. Drawing upon extraordinary
energies that can literally be described as ‘otherworldly,’ the Grid can warp time and space and send man into a land we call...The New Frontier. Let me show it to you now...”

Henry set his vision to RECORD as Welles began to narrate a cartoon. It depicted the Grid as a vast lattice of intersecting electrical coils located off the Eastern seaboard of the United
States, and it ended with a quick succession of shots on futuristic megastructures in an exotic landscape. One of them included a gleaming factory churning out scores of humanoid robots. The
presentation left many questions unanswered. But whatever the full story, Henry now knew one thing for sure: his target.

The mother laughed. He turned to see her swinging her arms in empty space as the sound of a baseball cracked and a simulated crowd cheered. A tinny announcer’s voice yelled, “Home
run!” from the entertainment system. Mrs. Brackett raised her arms in victory, spinning to Henry. “Oh, mercy,” she cried, “I wish I could take this home for Lee! He has to
see this. Have you tried it?” Henry gave an absent shake of his head. “You should! I never tried real baseball, but this hitting home runs is pretty good. Lee would love this, where is
he? Lee?!”

Henry stepped closer to her, not wanting to give away his complete disinterest. He tried to think of something a normal person would say.

“Your son likes baseball?”

“Yes, he was very...” Her eyes had moved off Henry. She was looking across the room and her smile had faded. Henry turned to see what had captured her attention, and as he did, she
stepped toward it.

The boy was standing in front of another screen that extended almost to the ceiling, topped by a sign:
MEDICINE OF THE FUTURE
. Henry could just hear the words of another
life-size video figure, a doctor, speaking to Lee over the cacophony. Lee seemed to be working alongside the doctor as they treated an imaginary patient by running a small instrument around its
torso. Mrs. Brackett stepped up behind her son and put a hand on his back, but the boy didn’t seem to notice. He was absorbed in the game.

“The patient sustained third-degree burns, but we’ve discovered that he is also suffering from several debilitating illnesses. Once, these ailments would have been terminal. In the
future, we will be able to cure them all. Just imagine. Try applying your instrument here.” Lee followed the doctor’s directions. The burns healed instantaneously. The mother watched
her boy at work. Her eyes shined. “Alzheimer’s. Hepatitis. Cancer. All the ailments we fear, made harmless through the marvel of science.”

The boy looked up at his mother then. Henry saw tears in their eyes.

“Wouldn’t that be something,” said Lee.

The mother wrapped her arm around her son’s chest and kissed his right shoulder, then rested her head there a moment. When her eyes drifted to Henry, she showed concern. “Are you all
right, sir?”

“I’m fine,” he replied by default. He couldn’t maintain the ruse of courteous obsequiousness. He’d been frowning. Seething, actually.
Oh, yes, they fixed me,
too, and look what happened.

Mrs. Brackett gave Lee’s shoulder a last tender squeeze before letting him go. Of all the points of pain in the room, watching that touch was the hardest to take.