Theme Planet (9 page)

“Hmm,” said Dex, drinking his
lager. “We’ll see.”

The hover bus hummed away from
the Shuttle Port and down rolling lanes between rolling fields. Sunshine shone,
and distantly children giggled and soft music played and this new world, this
alien
Theme Planet, seemed like a wonderful, perfect place to be right now.

~ * ~

It was later.
Much
later.

The Kool Kid Zone was... perfect.
And the Colls family didn’t get a room. They got a
suite
of rooms with
every technological advancement, and everything they could ever dream of in a
holiday suite, provided as standard. Forget upgrades. The whole of the Kool Kid
Zone Hilton was an upgrade.

PopBot Lex entertained the
children with an alien holo puppetshow and Gigglegum tricks whilst Dex and
Katrina took a long, relaxing bath. She swam over to him (yes, the Jacuzzi was
that
big)
and snuggled up close, soaping his chest.

“We’re going to have such a good
time, aren’t we, honey?” she said.

Dex smiled. “You know what? I
have
started to relax. And it’s the first time I’ve ever been on a holiday where
everything ran so smoothly; ran like clockwork. I am agog with wonder. I simply
cannot believe my eyes.”

Kat kissed him, and for long
minutes they savoured the kiss, hands stroking one another under the bubbles.
Then Kat pulled away.

“You hungry, Mister?”

“Only for you, babe. Come back
here. I’ve got something to give you...”

“Haha, oh, I bet you have. Not
now, though, come on, the kids are starving and Lex has recommended a fine
Japachinese restaurant just a few minutes away. He’s even pre-booked us a table
just in case
we want to take him up on his recommendation.
And
he’s
persuaded the kids to have a relaxing first day and we’ll start on the big
rides
tomorrow.
How cool is that? God only knows what he promised them.
Drugs, probably.”

Dex snorted a laugh. “Hell, that’s
more like it! The slimy little Lex bastard. I don’t trust him.” Dex winked. “First
chance I get, I’ll pour some Cokey Cola down his arse-slot.”

Katrina rose from the bubbles and
pulled on a silk robe. “Come on, lazy mutt. Out you get. I’m starving. And if
you’re a good boy...”

“Yes?”

“You can have me for dessert.”
She winked.

~ * ~

DEXTER
STOOD OUTSIDE the entrance to
Insane.
He gazed up. And up. And
up. Man,
that’s a big fucking rollercoaster,
he thought to himself. Closely followed
by,
there’s no way on Earth my little girls will want to go on this when
they get up close and personal. Will they? Or did I breed proper little
psychopaths?

He looked down. Molly held one
hand. Toffee held the other. They both gazed at him
adoringly.
As if to
say:
come on, Dad, don’t let us down now, don’t let us down again. We want
to go on the ride! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease...

Dex glanced back, over his
shoulder, to the viewing area where one-hundred-inch screens zoomed and snapped
around with close-ups and pans, and took comedy photographs of screaming
punters screaming.

“Great,” he muttered.

“Go on!” yelled Katrina. “What
are you waiting for, you big girl? Waiter service?”

“Ha-bloody-ha,” said Dexter,
voice wooden.

“Come on, Dad!”

“This way, Dad!”

“Don’t be scared, Dad!”

“It’ll be a great laugh, Dad!”

They moved through to the queuing
area.
Please let there be a queue. Please let there be a really, really huge
fucking queue.
But for once, there wasn’t. For once, Dex had been betrayed
by the God of Queues. The bastard. He wanted to stamp his foot in sheer
frustration.
You bastard!
He waved a mental fist up at the heavens,
scowling.
You bastarding bastard!

“Look, Dad, there’s no queue!”
beamed Molly.

“Great,” muttered Dex.

“This way dad,” said Toffee,
tugging his hand.

“Fine,” muttered Dex.

“I’ll buy the photo!” shouted
Katrina, helpfully, from the viewing area.

“Great!” he shouted back. Then
muttered: “And I’ll buy you a gag.”

They walked down various gleaming
corridors showing The History of the Rollercoaster, each with a Terrormeter
Rating - which started off with Is and 2s, and finally, just as they were about
to board the CAR, revealed that
Insane
had an official Terrormeter
Rating of 10.

“Out of a hundred?” asked Dex,
hopefully.

“Out of ten, dad!” said Molly,
and tugged him into the darkness of the CAR.

~ * ~

Chains clanked.

Three thousand people sat in
bright-eyed anticipation, knuckles white, teeth clenched, gasps gasping.
Sunlight defined a glittering broad canvas, as big as the world. A subtle
breeze, ripe with vegetation, caressed the graceful, mechanical ascent. There
was a background of
excited
chatter; a
hum
of anticipation, and
energy.

Except for Dex. Yes, his knuckles
were white. Yes, his teeth were clenched - but that was more from a need to
stop himself cursing like a space bum than any real anticipation of the horror
to come.
Rollercoasters! Ha! Who invented them? What bloody idiotic idiot
invented such a pointless way of achieving “fun”? Eh?

A breeze whipped Molly’s hair, as
she peered over the edge of
Insane’s
carriage CAR. Like a long metal
caterpillar, it clanked and ground its way up the massive incline. And the
problem with a massive incline was
not
just the massive descent waiting
for you on the other side, indeed, but the
massive
anticipation of the
massive descent waiting for you on the other side.

“Ain’t this fun, Dad?” beamed
Molly. He’d never seen her so happy. Gone was the sullen, dark, moody
expression, as if she were some kind of reject from Munsters, Part 6000. No.
She had brightened. She had
come alive.
And for that alone, it was worth
the price of entry.

The clanking continued.

Metal, killing metal.

Dex breathed deep. They were high
now. He tried not to look down. Shit. He failed.

He glanced at Toffee, with her
perpetual bright expression of bouncing happiness. Her face was framed by
blonde curls; she really was Daddy’s Little Girl. Again, Dex’s heart melted at
the look of sheer exhilaration on her face. The pure
joy.

Eventually, the climb ended a
full
five kilometres
up. The world, the theme park, the
Theme Planet,
spread before the assembled ride freaks: colourful, and awesome, and vast.

To the left, fields of dancing
pastel flowers jigged in the wind.

To the right, mountains of obsidian
sat like majestic dragon’s teeth, quiescent, waiting, glittering.

Ahead, amidst gleaming oiled
bodies, jewels sparkled on a turquoise sea crested with foam.

“Aren’t we high up, Daddy?”
shouted Molly over the buffeting tussle of the wind.

“Mmmmm,” said Dex, clinging on in
absolute terror.

“Isn’t this fun, Dad?” enthused
Toffee, her blonde curls whipping about her head.

“Grrrrt,” he managed between
clenched teeth.

There came a hiatus:

A long moment of peace, and
serenity, a pause for thought, a moment to study one’s own wisdom in these
things; one’s own mortality; one’s own longevity; one’s own connection to God.

Then there came a
bang,
a
clank,
a lurch... and a sudden, violent drop into infinity and oblivion, and Dex
screamed and he didn’t mind admitting it, he screamed like a girl because
everybody
screamed like a girl as they were caught in the Fist of the Gods and hurled
towards the ground at breakneck speed, hitting a loop and careering out of
control and hitting a flick-back and Dex felt his spine coming up through his
mouth.
Is it fucking safe?
screamed his speed-and dope-addled brain.
Of
course it fucking isn’t! How can something this bloody insane be bloody safe?
But then, it’s all in the name you puddle-brained muppet. It’s called
Insane
because it IT’S FUCKING INSANE!

“Waaaaaaaaahh!” went Molly,
giggling.

“Braaaaaahhaaaaaaahh!” went
Toffee, waving her hands in the air.

“I’m going to be sick,” said Dex,
clutching his stomach and wondering again how bloody old he was, how bloody
grumpy he was, and hadn’t he liked shit like this as well when he was younger?
Enjoyed the speed? Relished the adrenaline? Thrived on danger? Yeah, right up
to the point where you see a dead body, all squashed up and crushed up and
broken like a train-wreck doll. Then it didn’t seem so much fun anymore...

The
Insane
CAR bucked and
rolled, spun and looped the loop-the-loop. It banked and jigged and did all
manner of things Dex was pretty sure were impossible under the Laws of Physics.
It was a bloody miracle his breakfast stayed in his belly, and that was all Dex
could think about. The
churn.

What was Theme Planet’s neat
little extended strapline, again?
It’s better than drugs! It’s better
than sex! It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s neat... If you haven’t been sick, you soon
will be!
Dex grimaced in his rapid descent. Yeah. Well. When he had
boots on solid ground again, he was going to find the
manager
of Theme
Planet and be sick in his lunch. That’d teach the bastard.

“It’s coming!” somebody yelled,
and Dex strained to see behind himself; but of course he couldn’t, because he
was locked in tight and supposed to be looking
forward
and focusing on
the
experience.

“What’s coming?” he yelled, and
glanced at Toffee, and saw her eyes widen just a fraction in their buffeting,
clanking,
clanging,
thrashing, screaming descent.

Oh, no,
he thought, and turned his head
back as... they hit the sea...

Water splashed up and around
filling his world with a deep green watery vision, and it was all around him
and he thought,
Oh, my God, they’re going to kill us; oh, my God, we’re
going to drown...

But of course, they weren’t, and
it took Dex long, long seconds of struggling violently at his restraining
rollercoaster brace to realise that it was all for effect, all for
fun,
baby,
and they cruised and dropped, jerked and spanked and flipped and flopped, all
within the totally safe confines of a clear tube beneath the ocean.

“Wow,” said Molly.

“Wowsers,” agreed Toffee.

The
Insane
rollercoaster
continued to roll and coast, far beneath the waves.

And even though they were still
falling, even though they were still looping-the-loop, now they could see
swarms of fishes, colours glittering through the subterranean twilight. Schools
of sharks and whales and all manner of other marine life - or whatever Theme
Planet alien-breed aquatic equivalent they happened to be - swam and flapped
majestically around the still-falling, tumbling, looping rollercoaster.

It’s never going to end,
realised Dex.

I’m trapped. In Hell. I’ve been a
Bad Man. And it’s going toooo laaaassssstt for ever.