The Snackateria has everything you could ever want—chips, soda, candy, pizza, burgers, fries. Every table has ordering stations where you can look through catalogs of stuff and order whatever you want. The shipping times have been crossed out and now there’s an Instant button. When you push it, somebody rushes in from a back room and brings it right to you.
“Having to wait for things hurts your happiness,” Ruth explains. “Want some more fries?”
I say yes, and she gets me a new batch. They’re perfectly hot and crisp, like the first batch.
“I’m sorry you had to see that with Thomas earlier,” Daniel says, shaking his head. “Some people just can’t adjust to being happy all the time.”
“Omigosh,” Ruth says, midfry, her eyes wide. “When I first got here, I was a mess. Just a total and complete mess. Remember, Daniel?”
“Hmmm,” Daniel says meaningfully, though he seems way more into his fries than what Ruth is saying. He’s arranging them in straight lines and putting a thin string of ketchup directly over the middle.
“I used to do pageants and stuff, but then I developed an allergy to spray tanner and I couldn’t compete anymore? My whole world crumbled. I totally went into a depression, got all messed up on drugs and stuff,” Ruth explains. “I was hurting my happiness. So they sent me to CESSNAB.”
“Whoa,” I say.
“Oh, not because they didn’t want to deal, but because they loved me so much. I see that now,” she says, biting her already ragged nails. “The first time I bowled and hit all those strikes, it was like I’d won the evening gown competition and finished it off with a speedball! I totally cried. Everybody was so happy for me. And I just wanted to keep doing that, you know? To keep being all happy.”
Daniel lays out another line of fries and does the ketchup art on them again.
Ruth claps. “Oooh! Tell him your story, Daniel.”
“I had major control issues,” he says, eating his fries one at a time. “I grew up playing sports and being in honors classes, which was cool when I was on top. But by the time I hit sixth grade, I wasn’t getting the top grade in math or pitching the best game. They’d built another school in my town and these other kids were really good. I couldn’t handle it. I cracked under the pressure. One day, I crawled into a locker at school and wouldn’t leave it. They had to use the jaws of life to get me out. That’s when I had my awakening. All that competition and winning and people being better at things than other people? It hurts your happiness.”
I squirt a whole bunch of ketchup on my plate. It splatters my fries. Daniel looks a little sick. “But doesn’t it also make you want to try harder? That sense of competition?” I can’t believe I’m saying this. I’ve never tried hard at anything in my life.
“That’s where you’re wrong, my friend,” Daniel says, smiling. “It’s our culture that teaches that. Not our nature.”
Ruth looks me right in the eyes. “Don’t you just wish you could let that stuff go? All that worry?”
“Yeah,” I hear myself say. “I do.”
Daniel puts his arm around me like we’re best buds. “That’s the great thing, Cameron. You can! Being happy is a choice totally within your control. The universe has arranged for you to be happy. You just have to accept it.”
“And here at CESSNAB, we’ve got a lot of products to back that up, to keep the happiness going, so you never have to feel unhappy. Not for one, single second.” Ruth smiles at me in a flirty way. “You seem happier since you bowled, Cameron. Am I right?”
“Yeah. I guess so,” I say.
“See?” Daniel pats me on the back. “That’s the power of this place.”
“We like to think of CESSNAB as a gated community for the mind, and the stuff that doesn’t increase our happiness we just keep out,” Ruth chirps. “Like your friend, Gonzo. He’s … troubled,” she says, using the word Daniel supplied earlier. “Full of fear. Fear is such a negative emotion, you know?”
“We find we don’t need that here,” Daniel says. “That’s why we have the commandos, why we work to keep out the bad things. So we’re always safe all the time. And if we’re safe all the time—no rejection, no bad news, no negative thoughts, no failure—we stay happy, and then our parents are happy that we’re happy, and, you know, it’s all good. It’s a pretty simple philosophy, but it works.”
