On Weekdays and Sunday, everything’s open dawn to dusk, beyond that into smoke into air (on request), that’s long been explained: how the Groups revolve, depart for their selected schedule by times TBA, how it’s all always repeated again…but of course, the Guide goes on, during the day, regular opening hours, there are still a handful of places, just a few, really, designated offlimits; this is for your own safety, please understand; we’d hate for inquisitiveness to interfere with your experience here: certain cafés and libraries, that theater and concerthall, this park, this garden, this phonebooth, that bench, the westbound monorail, then the monorail eastbound, too — whatever you’re unsure of be sure to ask, of yourself. Those aren’t noted on the map, of course, avoidance is up to them, rather it’s a basic measure of selfcontrol, curiosity’s suppression, a modicum of delimitation’s denial; it’s up to their paranoia, we’re saying — and as long as we’re at it, their Guide repeats herself quickly, there’s one last rule you should know (contingency comes when it comes — how we all have to keep inventing maniacally to keep up with the real); this the most important, keep it in mind: you are not allowed not to have fun, she brightens for this, but artificially, you’re not allowed to not enjoy yourselves, or at least learn from this, an education, explore us, discover yourselves. In the script. Remember, we’re here for you. Ask us anything. Except that. It’s experience’s absolution, it’s wild. Total immersion. Meaning, a mess. Also, strangely, but this they’d been told at the facilities before being mustered to the aeroports, then off: all species are welcome in Polandland, your pets are ours; except dogs, they’ve been explicitly forbidden, though certain streets have been littered with their droppings, dreck wedged smeared between cobbles, at many doorways, too, atop specified stoops, and barking’s to be heard at all hours of the day into night: apparently, Management has their turds imported from overseas, and employs specialized droppers to secrete these foul piles throughout Polandland during the darkest hour of sleep; reel-to-reel barking’s piped in as well — and in wells, down and distorting, up from a gutter of speakers also occluding the mouths of every statue, reverberant under every sewergrate, a low rumble. And finally, so that nothing should distract: smoking’s actually encouraged, and snuff, too, pinches of tabak handed freely around, as is imbibing from open containers of overfermented kvass, vodka, slivovitz, an assortment of schnapps widely available, vice included in the price, that on their immoderate heads — in public, whenever, whatever you want: l’chaim, l’chaim, you’ll probably need it.
Once deloused and uniformed for the day, the Sandersons walk a botched hip downstairs together to the Castle’s courtyard then toward the Banquet Hall, to break their nightly fast in the continental style, with free refills on hope, coffee or tea with your choice of juice. An hour later, they make their way to the lobby, to join a handful of others just waiting around: some are with kinder, some are with parents, others are parents and kinder themselves; they’re flipping through pamphlets “evilly communicated” (badly translated) on purpose, stapled reams listing optional offerings, a candlelit tour of the catacombs, a river booze cruise late afternoon; some are talking, others asking yet even others to take images, initiatory in the mysteries of what to press where, the button click when and then, wind: not that they’d ever have the opportunity to develop these photographs, movies or memories, to share them with loved ones, in slides, projected upon eyes and their livingroom screens — to mount them in albums, framed on the wall or for the mantel shelf in the hall, pass them down generations and further, but again maybe it’s only an initial record that matters, only the semblance they’re after, the image of image.
Of course, no one has film.
