Alva Towne Unamusement Park
Chapter 2: Artist's Eye: Evolution
Date: September 2nd, 2024
As we waited in line for Fuzzy Aliens: The Musical, a pre show plays on the screens above the queue line. A alien appears and clearly is very fuzzy like furry level fuzzy. "Hello. Hello? Is this thing on?! Yes it is! Welcome to Fuzzy Aliens: The Musical! In just a short time from now, you will be entering the theater for our comedy show crossed with spontaneous musical numbers. Isn't that great?! I'm just an intern so I dont have the screen time to introduce myself! See ya in the show though! Please be patient, we're still getting ready backstage." We look around cautiously and peer at the screen during that whole thing. Carlos laugh: "Best self deprecating joke I've heard all day!" We don't really say much. We just wait to get inside the theater. Once we do, I state: "This looks like a fusion of elements from various theaters in theme parks. The ceiling and seating remind me of the Kings Island Theater. The walls and stage: Monsters Inc Laugh Floor. And the colors scream I don't even know what." We find a place to sit down and do so. After everyone is safely seated, the show begins. A blue alien rises out of the floor: "Hi there, everyone! My name is Buddy and I have the screen time required to be the host of this show! Thank you for taking time out of your day to join us! Before we get started, I want to make note of some procedures you need to be aware of. Do not run out of the exit doors during the duration of the show. If there's an emergency, let one of our theater attendants know and they'll assist you. No smoking. Please no video recording, flashes, or photography of any kind."
I decide to tune out the show to look out for danger. I am decent at pretending to pay attention. I've done it in elementary school and at church because while I no longer outright oppose going to a church service for a family member who passed away, that doesn't mean I need to listen to most of the songs sung there. Things like "thoughts and prayers" do nothing for me because I'm an ex-Christian. Pray for me if you want but that does nothing noticeable or meaningful for me personally. I'm only interested in hearing the stuff about the deceased family member. Aka the main point of funeral church services. I'm not afraid to admit that. Anyway, enough about that. I'm not the only one secretly looking around for danger. We use our eyes more so than our heads to look for anything out of place but that still didn't prepare us for what would happen during the final musical number. With shows, as long as we look like we're paying attention, we can easily avoid suspicion. It's as simple as that. I only vaguely paid attention enough to hear the show host say: "And now, it's time for the grand finale! Our music number! Sing along if you know the words!" At first, I ignored the words for a few seconds until I heard the word "die". "That's right, all of you are going to die today in this theater! If you somehow survive, it doesn't matter because something else will kill you instead one way or another! But still, we very much intend to kill all of you right here right now. You're all immersed in this show, this is the grand finale, time for all of you to be slaughtered!" The aliens all keep singing dark lyrics as they start attacking the audience with huge killing intents.
Barla yells: "Someone better have a damn plan for how we get out of here without looking suspicious!" The vampire in our group, Madison speaks: "Because this is a music number, the lights are dimmed. We can slip away through the darkness." I reply: "Problem is we need to try to help save at least a few of these people and the exit doors are firmly closed shut." Barla speaks: "Let's just grab some of the most vulnerable people in here and book it! Dominic, can't you force the doors to open with your hacking?" I add: "Wait, there should be a control panel near the doors. Every attraction in a theme park has a control panel somewhere. For indoor shows with animatronics, I've seen them placed on the walls with tiny lights showing where they are once the main lights are turned off or dimmed. Or we can just teleport out of here into a crowd of people again outside. Whatever seems safer and less of a hassle. Unless we can make the attraction 'accidentally' break but we have to break things sparingly. If we break every attraction we go on, it will look suspicious very quickly. *engages a animatronic in a fight* Let's see how smart these aliens really are. They're audio animatronics which means they shouldn't be able to handle our full skills." Carlos shouts: "Or we can pretend to be killed!" Pirate Blaster replies: "No time for that! They're massacring everyone! Several people are dying a second in here." In the end, we choose to break the attraction. Dominic messes up the control panels running through the attraction's programming.
This stops the animatronics and turns the emergency lights on. We blend ourselves into the crowd of survivors and someone yells: "Let's get out of here!" The exit doors opened automatically due to the ride's breakdown. Some mechanics walk in, one of them says: "Okay-" But they are unable to say anything else as they are trampled by the crowd of terrified guests who had become terrified despite their complacency. It's all thanks to how many people were being killed in there as much as I hate to say it. But once we're a short distance away from Fuzzy Aliens: The Musical, the crowd around us calms down and go back to "business as usual" vibes. I shudder at that: "This is complacency taken to an extreme even further than I've seen in my world firsthand. Now they're acting like none of them were almost slaughtered in there." Yappa Yappa replies: "Even I agree with that. But can we go on that deadly roller coaster now?!" "I don't think there's much of an option otherwise here. Trying to prepare everyone fully for it would take too long. Besides, we all have experience going places through wormhole teleportation and space ships and what not. Not all of us can handle properly that huge roller coaster but we really can't put it off any longer, can we? The anticipation is killing even me." As we walk towards the entrance to Expedition Observable Universe, we saw all kinds of horrifying things get shrugged off or ignored by people. Someone threw away some napkins and a paper cup into a sci fi trash can only for a tiny alien creature to eat that stuff along with that persons entire hand and arm.
They bled to death. We tried to save them with discreetly cast healing magic but it had no effect. Someone else ran away from one of the Techtopia restrooms being chased by a killer robot toilet. High above the area, robotic drones flew around and randomly unleashed flesh melting laser blasts in the crowds. A small child tripped and fell. When their parents tried to help them back up, the 3 were crushed to death by the crowd around them. When anyone tried to sit down on the chairs at the outdoor dining tables, they were zapped with a lot of electricity and collapsed with their bodies smoking due to being fried by all those volts of electricity. Alternatively, people who sat down on short concrete walls had their rear ends literally set on fire. That concrete must be so hot that it would take an Earth with an atmosphere filled with so much greenhouse gas that even Sandusky, Ohio becomes inhospitable due to climate change to make concrete THAT hot. And that's only a few of the things that we saw. I gritted my teeth while keeping my mouth shut at seeing all of this. I wish we could do more to stop this but our enemy is a villain who is more clever and powerful than he lets on. He puts on all the charm needed to make him seem like a really nice and charismatic and charming guy when in reality, he is not. We cannot underestimate him and that's why it's so important that we keep a low profile. The less he knows about us when we try to nail him, the better.
I stopped gritting my teeth once we got in line for the massive roller coaster. The building we first walk into looks like a massive space colony with a really long and well themed queue. Nothing much happens as we wait in line for it in the shorter line thanks to the queue things we have. We look at every little piece of detail. As we get close to the actual station, Dominic speaks: "It's been very difficult for us to find anything suspicious or out of place. Our foe has nearly thought of everything. He has made sure this park is designed to even keep the eyes of observant artists from noticing much. He didn't count on individuals like us coming here and likely still has no idea that we're even here for the time being though. For once, I'm not the one who needs to complain about a nap causation." I add: "The materials used to build this park must have been designed to even stand up against nuclear weapons. That would explain why they're so sturdy and why this park clearly wasn't designed with individuals as strong and capable as us in mind. It's all really well planned out besides that part specifically. Planned out to avoid the wrath of a modern military but not enough to stop us." We just continue to converse, keep our eyes peeled, and pretend that we're having a fun day. No one is killed in the queue line as far as any of us could tell and soon, it was almost time for us to be directed to the rows situated just before the roller coaster gates. The coaster seems to have 4 tracks, rather than 1, Space Mountain at the Magic Kingdom's 2, or 1 but with 2 loading stations thanks to moveable track.
That sort of thing was present in Firehawk at Kings Island aka X-Flight in its prior location, helping massively with ride capacity. But it wasn't enough to not make Firehawk an operating nightmare in its final years. We are directed to the 3rd loading station called Spaceship Yellow. And as we approached the row lines, we heard a recorded voice speak: "Attention all Expedition Observable Universe riders, you are about to embark on a journey that will take you to the known and virtually unknown. You will travel billions of light years through a smooth course that will allow you to observe the universe all around you. You will see prosperous alien utopian worlds, comets, stars, moons, and much more. But to do so safely, please take note of these safety precautions. This is a high speed roller coaster that goes up to 489 feet above the loading station. It will take you to a maximum speed of 286 MPH and through 16 inversions along many drops and over 2.5 kilometers of track. This ride is not recommended for those who have any of the following going on: motion sickness, disability, recent surgery, neck or back trouble, pregnancy, and other conditions that may be aggravated by this attraction. The weight limit for experiencing this attraction is 300 pounds for each rider. Enjoy the journey, leave here immediately if you shouldn't ride, and please stay safe."
I sigh: "Yeah, this coaster's a really neck breaker, isn't it? They don't need to add live xenomorphs to kill riders on this thing. It's already extreme enough as it is. And if the track is rough enough, that makes it all the more dangerous. Bonus danger if the track was screwed up as poorly as Son Of Beast's track was. This thing shouldn't exist if the level of technology in this world is the same as it is in my own. There needs to be more advancements for something like this to be actually safe to ride. And yet, people flock to this like moths to a flame. And they get themselves burned to ash." Once it's our turn to get on (there's 8 rows with 2 riders per row), the voice speaks again: "Your journey will soon begin. Please enter the rockets carefully. Take careful steps while entering. When you sit down, please fasten your seatbelt first before pulling down on your lap bar. A staff member will be around shortly to quickly check your restraints before you are sent off on your journey throughout the documented observable universe. And please note that there will soon be a launch sequence." Herbslavin and I naturally are sitting in the same row. And thanks to some magic, the weight of the gear we and the others are wearing has been temporarily lightened to make it so we don't weigh over 300 pounds. With my armor on, I normally weigh over 1300 pounds but not today. And no one around us is even remotely aware that we're wearing layers of disguises that hide our real outfits like my armor and cape. A couple minutes later and we're off into a giant bright colorful tunnel.
"Now activating launch sequence. Countdown begin. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1." We hear the LSMs launch us to a dangerously high speed as we go up over 400 feet after we speed through the long tunnel. Around us, we would see planets, yellow stars, white dwarfs, black holes, neutron stars, asteroids, comets, mythical planets like Nibiru/Planet X, exoplanets, probes like Hubble and James Webb, supernovas, gamma ray bursts, quasars, you name it. That along with space ships, UFOs, cosmic horrors, etc. We quickly reached the very top of the coaster before plunging downwards much further than just under 500 feet given the fact that it doesn't take 289 MPH of launch induced speed to clear a 489 foot tall coaster tower. The real speed needed is much closer to 120 MPH. As we reached the end of the first drop, I felt some of my bones break. Some of the others on the ride were screaming in agony now. Someone's head came off due to a loop coming right after the first drop and very nearly touching the very concrete bottom of the entire attraction's structure. Considering the fact that we didn't stall at the highest point, we must have launched at like 145 MPH. I'm not even sure how the train is staying on the tracks. Going into a normal sized loop at 289 MPH? That's unsafe and unheard of. After the loop, we went through a few helixes leading to a really tall second hill which should have been armed with brakes at the top but wasn't. We just dropped as soon as we reached the top of it. It was followed by several non banked turns and straight parts along with several hills of identical height. After that, it went so high up that it nearly stalled at the top of the hill we were now on.
Following that, we descended into helix after helix with the speed increasing more and more. It was like something straight out of an extreme coaster built in Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. Following the helix, I started having colors appear in my vision and feeling strange. It's never been this bad on any other coaster I've been on, not even Orion or Backlot Stunt Coaster. The intensity of this coaster made The Voyage at Holiday World's intensity seem like nothing. That coaster is a beast that has done things to me. But this coaster? It's a killing and vomit machine. I recovered from the colors in my eyes but they came back here and there anyway. I saw a rider a couple rows ahead throw up, pass out, and die as we entered into yet another hill followed by 6 large loops and a diving loop that almost sent us straight towards the concrete floor of the whole structure. But it got even worse from there. The coaster abruptly entered a break run with so much force that we were almost ejected as it stopped before the next hill. Flight Of Fear's brakes at the end of it are intense enough to make me say: "heave." but this is something else entirely. The lights around us come on, almost tricking us into thinking the coaster is over but I knew this trick from Revenge Of The Mummy. The voice from before speaks: "You made it back. Well done. Some of you managed to survive. It's unfortunate that not all of you could make it. It seems your experience was a lot more turbulent than we planned. We're now returning you to where you started. It will be a slow process but it will work out." I shout: "Don't fall for it! This coaster is far from over!" And that's when the coaster launches again to a speed even faster than the previous launch speed.
We then go down another huge drop before immediately going up to an extremely high point again with no mercy after being launched again as soon as we reached the bottom of the sudden huge drop. As we went down the huge second coaster tower with a already ridiculously high speed to begin with, the coaster track changed to wood without warning, causing a very rough transition and things to get much more bumpy and intense. I could feel every part of my body scream in agony. If it weren't for my armor, I would have had many of my bones dislocated by now not to mention completely lost consciousness and suffered brain damage. Loud blaring space music suddenly starts playing throughout the entire train. I could feel my eardrums scream and almost start bleeding. At this point, my friends and I are the only ones still alive or undead on this train. The others are dead and there's nothing we can do about it at the moment. We went through several hills in a row with too much speed before the coaster enters a splashdown element with a lot of violence involved in doing so. But it still wasn't over. The coaster launches again and ascends to speeds and heights even higher than before now. We go through the rest of the track without stopping for any reason again. Next to experience was multiple barrel rolls followed by extreme s bends as the coaster transitions to being inverted somehow after a painful transition back to steel track from wooden track. By this point, most of my bones were broken or dislocated and my eyes were bleeding. The others were even worse off than I was from what I could tell. Somehow, I have not lost my breakfast or lunch riding this monstrosity.
We would remain inverted until the grand finale. But before we got there, we went through multiple brutal inverted s bends with literal sparks flying from the coaster wheels. This was followed by brakes failing to slow us down in the least and the discomfort from feeling that happen. After that, here's what we experienced before the final element. Another huge hill was followed by giant loops, corkscrews, and over banked curves. The coaster was well defying 2024 level coaster technology by now. After that stuff, we went into a vertical spike without losing much speed between going up and going down it as the turn that led to it turned over to take us through the rest of the circuit. The riders who have died by now have had their corpses crushed by the force of the roller coaster. Now that we have cleared the vertical spike, we go through several towers of helixes followed by a lot more inversions, extreme amounts of air time during some random bunny hills, and several hills after another in a hyper coaster like fashion. The hills were cleared far too quickly to comprehend. With that all done, the track returned to regular steel track with the coaster train no longer hanging below it. That also came with another LSM launch, taking us so high up that we left the coaster's entire structure behind entirely. We very nearly stalled at the top before another LSM launch all the way up there that caused us to plummet what must have been at least 1,000 feet only to crash into the concrete below. The train survived and somehow got itself to get back up before the voice speaks again: "It appears some of you managed to survive all of that. It's too bad for you that there are no refunds. You're getting what you waited in line for, no questions asked. Die."
Out of nowhere, a bunch of hungry xenomorph queens appear. Carlos yelps: "Not them again!" I reply: "Of course it's them! It's almost always the xenomorphs if nothing else! Damn it! How are we supposed to get out of this one?! You're all close to death and most of my bones are broken or dislocated!" Dominic yells: "There is a way out of this but what is it? Playing dead won't be good enough against these xenomorphs.. Wait. I know. Let's play dead and pretend to be so dead that our bodies stink of decomposition. That will require a spell as I cannot possibly move to get my experimental smelltilizer ray out to use on us." Bray takes care of the spell part and we all pretend to die after the Sage heals all of us except for me because my zombie body cannot be healed by anything that's designed to heal. I can only heal through ailments like poison or withering. The xenomorphs fall for it and back off. After that, some janitors walk into the area we're in. One of them sighs: "Ugh, I hate disposing bodies killed by this roller coaster. Most people's bodies are already in pieces by the time they get here. Those xenomorphs usually leave almost nothing left but for some reason, they hate eating corpses. They only want to eat live humans. That's why all of these bodies haven't been devoured whole. Okay, let's get this over with and bring these bodies where they need to go." "The ritual room?" "No, the dumpster. Get with the program. You may be new here but you should know this all by now still. The ritual room is where the souls of all of the people killed in this park go. I don't know what the boss wants with them but he does want all these souls that have died and will die of agony."
They undo the restraints of our seats and drag our bodies out before putting them in body bags. Once that's done, they transport us along with actual dead bodies to a dumpster near the front right edge of the park. Once there, they open up all of the body bags and put us and the actually dead bodies inside the dumpster for a dump truck to collect. After they leave, we start moving again and teleport back to Techtopia after using what we need to to bring ourselves back to full condition including me drinking a really deadly poison to heal the damage the coaster dealt to me.. Barla speaks: "Hey, don't we need to do the other 3 tracks of that coaster now?" I groan: "Even I hated riding that thing. But we have no choice. We better use spells to lessen the agony we feel this time. I don't want to be on the verge of throwing up again. Incidents of throwing up in my original body still kind of make me queasy when I think of them. Especially that one time in the car in 2018.." We reluctantly spent the next hour doing the other 3 sides of the coaster which all had the same exact layout but mirrored and whatever. It was 2:21 PM when we finally got out of the last track to ride. At the end of it after the crash, what awaited us wasn't xenomorphs. Instead, it was a bunch of monsters that looked like a cross between Stitch, the nightmare alien from Extraterrestrial Alien Encounter, aliens from Kings Island's Alien X scare zone, and Men In Black: Alien Attack aliens. Once we returned to the main path of the Techtopia area, even I was still feeling sick and out of it. "Even I feel horrible despite my high nausea tolerance on roller coasters. I have literally eaten pizza and breadsticks for breakfast at Kings Island before riding the likes of Banshee and turned out just fine.
We should sit down unless we can wait long enough to go on one of the dark rides in this area.." Carlos looks really green: "Can I get something to drink first? I'll feel a lot better if I do.. This isn't fun.." Luckily, we all brought large bottles with water inside with us. We pull them out of our inventories, having decided to drink some first before doing anything else. It just was a good idea considering the fact that Carlos really needed to and none of us have had anything to drink for a while. It's a hot day so even though the gear we wear all has built in cooling stuff, we still have to have something to drink every so often. The cooling stuff in my armor reduces how much I sweat while sparring or sword training by a massive amount. After drinking, we all put our bottles away and go to the nearest sci fi restroom partially in an attempt to free ourselves of how awful we feel further. I couldn't help but notice all of the litter, vomit, and blood on the ground on our way to the restroom. The janitors work fast but there's still so much of it at any time in this area apparently. It's still visible despite the pathways being made out of steel in this area with UFO trash cans and rocket benches and floating signs and laser fencing where concrete walls aren't present. After doing my business in the restroom and putting the stuff I had to unequip to do so back on, I flush the toilet only for a alien cyborg creature to jump onto the bathroom floor from a ceiling vent and screech at me from the other side of the stall I'm currently occupying. I open the door so fast and forcefully that the creature is sent flying hard into the sinks on the other side of the room itself. That doesn't do damage to the sinks but it still hurts the alien cyborg. "Hey you, you want to go, you damn alien? Sorry but Im here to ride roller coasters! Screw you! I just want to have fun!" I run to the sinks and expertly dodge every attack the creature throws my way while washing my hands with the acid soap and so on.
After drying my hands with the spiky paper towels, I toss the towels at the alien. That does nothing but I wanted to look like I was either afraid or trying to ignore the alien. I run out of the restroom just as Bray secretly casts a very powerful spell that kills all of the alien cyborgs in the restroom while making it seem as though it was just a freak accident somehow. With that done, we feel well enough to wait in line for one of the dark rides. According to the sign, it's called Asteroid Blasters so it's a shooting ride. Barla smirks: "Hell yeah! This ride's all mine to conquer!" Bray nods: "Indeed. You are the best marksman in our small group." The queue is themed to an asteroid mining facility that is being bombarded by what look like robot asteroids. And on some of the walls, there appear to be red robot eyes watching our every move. Not only that but there's even a nice space house with a family of asteroid miner animatronics going about their lives, unprepared for what's happening around them. As we get closer to the loading area, 2 animatronics speak with the same voice at the same time on either side of the room proceeding the loading area. "Welcome to Asteroid Blasters. We have ourselves a major situation. I am a AI housed inside of several androids at the same time. My name is of little importance. Please listen. We need your help. Someone has created asteroids combined with killer robots and they're creating chaos all over this asteroid mining space colony. Your job is to blast those robots before they destroy everything. Everything here is in your hands now. To attack a robot along with any debris that gets in the way, you will have to look for the lighted targets on each one after you enter the vehicles designed to fight the likes of them. Good luck."
There are 2 rows that can fit up to 6 people for each car. We are able to fit inside of 2 cars. Once we enter, we hear a different voice speak: "Alright, please listen carefully. Make sure to in fact go after the lighted targets and make sure to follow the safety measures I'm about to read over. Keep all body parts inside the car at all times. Phones and cameras and other devices are not permitted to be used on this attraction. Please put them away now if you haven't done so already. You must focus on the mission out there. It's up to you to save us from this invasion. Who knows, you might even find the villain responsible for this." We are in for one hell of a shooting ride. It features the level of detail found on the Buzz Lightyear shooting rides as well as screens for the background areas which even feature some targets as well. I don't really focus on what anyone else is saying nor do I speak. I just focus on the targets. With my eyesight being much better in this body than my other body, I was able to see where everything was clearly. But I knew that even a shooting ride like this was still going to try to kill us somehow. I don't know how it will but it will do so someway somehow. It's only a matter of time until that happens now. We kept firing at targets over and over again. Robots, robot asteroids, and chunks of rock seemingly headed our way with the vast terrain of flat rocky surface covered by small and large asteroids as well as mining equipment and space vehicles. But every so often, some kind of masked overlord would appear physically and on screen. And every time they did, they'd say: "You dare defy my plans? Go ahead and keep trying. See how futile it is to! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Nothing actually bad happened until the final room of the ride before the exit area. At that point, our vehicles suddenly switch to another omnimover, taking us closer to the villain, now fully unmasked as someone who appears to have once been human before being infused with organic material from all kinds of creatures.
This was in addition to the fact that they also had android and cyborg features. They speak as we shoot at them: "You cannot stop me! You may think my plans are failing but they're not! You will never escape my wrath! Never!" A nearby animatronic comes to life and starts fleeing from the confrontation while screaming: "Home base! Get me out of here now! Quickly! I gotta get out of here! The villain's going to get me! Save me!" The villain continues: "You have done well to stop my attack up to now but it's fruitless in the end. I'm going to kill all of you now. I know this is all just a shooting dark ride attraction and that I'm just an animatronic but I will still kill you and anyone else who dares stand in the way of my plans!" Out of nowhere, a laser beam appears and starts melting the cars we're inside of. Our enemy laughs: "I told you! It's over! You're all going to die! Surrender now and I will grant you a quicker less painful death! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!" But we don't give up. We keep firing at them as well as the thing creating the laser but nothing works. So we play dead and the laser stops. "I win! You lose! And you're all dead now! You were fools to stand against me! And now, this asteroid mining colony is mine!" Our cars are taken to a very dark room just beyond the animatronics we just left behind. Once there, the secondary omnimover stops and we are taken to another dumpsters before teleporting straight back to the heart of Techtopia. What I didn't know until I was told right after all of that was that many of the targets we hit triggered a lot of deadly things to occur. I just became so focused that I somehow managed to ignore all of that. I'm still not sure of it myself. Moving on, we decided to head to the other omnimover dark rides in the area after that. They tried to kill us too but I don't want to write about them much.
After the last of them, Carlos complains: "Is it me or is it starting to get as hot as Neksdor in this park? I don't even want to cause mischief right now.." I sigh: "Don't tell me.. Is this park and the area around it secretly in some kind of giant dome that's climate controlled? Or is this world burning far too many fossil fuels? I can feel it too but it's not enough to make me sweat. You'd think I'd be drowning in my own sweat with everything I actually have on. My plate armor has leather on the insides of them and then there's the chainmail and the robes underneath. The cooling stuff is serious helpful but wow, I can still feel how hot it's getting in this park." People around us are no scrambling to get indoors for air conditioning but in the midst of all of the ensuing chaos, people are collapsing of heat exhaustion or worse left and right. Seeing this, I exclaim as it only gets hotter: "This is evil! Not even our cooling stuff will save us much longer if it gets hot enough out there. You can literally develop heat exhaustion without realizing it. I should know. I experienced heat exhaustion several years ago at Hollywood Studios. I don't even recall feeling that hot by the time symptoms began. I just felt so tired. The kind of tired you feel when you get really sick. I had to go back to the hotel and get in bed to try to sleep in the afternoon because of that. We better get inside. Doesn't matter where. We just need to get inside. And drink more water. This is no accident. It doesn't get this hot even in Florida as of 4 years ago. The last time I was in Florida in my original body."
Pirate Blaster nods furiously: "I think I'm starting to experience heat exhaustion myself!" Barla exclaims: "Damn it! We can't lose you!" We rush indoors into a gift shop. I catch the pirate before he collapses to the ground. We work together to cool him down. It took 20 minutes for him to recover. The current time is now 3:32 PM. We all breathe a sigh of relief that he's okay but around us, chaos still reins. It is so hot outside and so crowded inside that most people outside right now are unable to get inside anymore in the part of Techtopia we're in. Most succumb to the heat and most of them are soon dragged away by janitors. I sigh: "This is the kind of things Florida's DeSantis wants. This is what banning water breaks causes to happen to outdoor workers during the summer. This really is evil. This park is so dangerous, it's a wonder that OSHA clearly hasn't done anything to shut it down if it even exists in this world and this park is in its jurisdiction." Dominic sighs: "About that. We have new information from our comrades all over the park but not enough time to go through much of it right now. But listen. They found a OSHA inspector's corpse rotting away inside a tree near a big attraction themed to an ancient temple in the jungle adventure themed area of this park. And another was found inside the lion exhibit at the safari zoo area." Madison speaks: "Now we know just how far the park manager will go to make people suffer here. As far as we know, the Winterville area is currently giving people in it frostbite right now."
Bray nods: "This makes it even more vital that we explore the rest of this area. We need to move onto the next area before the park closes at least. There's a few more attractions in this area. As well as shops and restaurants. We have to explore all of them." We soon enter the next attraction to go through. Looking up at it, I ask: "Is this ride anything like Test Track? The ride itself has track that's very similar to Test Track's." We get in line for it. It's called Escape From Space Prison. After a few minutes, we hear one of the ride's cars zoom by. Barla shouts: "Is that ride vehicle designed to cause riders to be laying down or something?! What kind of attraction is this?!" I reply: "Asteroid Blasters clearly has elements of Boo Blasters and Buzz Lightyear. I saw what you saw too. This attraction does have Test Track technology as I asked but why are the riders in fact laying down? There's only 2 attractions I know of and been on that do that. The former Firehawk as well as Nighthawk at Carowinds. This is a strange one." The queue is themed to a space prison as expected. Cafeteria, prison cells, warden's office, we go through all of it. And then there was the pre show in the outdoor area. A person with a southern accent speaks harshly: "Listen up prisoners, it's time for roll call! Let's see if everyone's here and there's no stinking possible escapees missing! *seconds pass* Okay, looks like everyone's- Wait, where's the most troublemaking one?! Where is that thing?! *alarms go off before someone attacks the person* GAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! WHAT THE?!" The person who is obviously the warden is knocked out cold. The assailant stops attacking once that happens and turns to face us.
"Hello there. You're new here, aren't ya? What did they get you all for? Being annoying? Having fun? Whatever it is, it doesn't matter because if you agree to help me, I can get all of us out of here through the greatest prison break in intergalactic history! Just follow my instructions and we can get out of here together. Seriously, I'm so over this place. It's so boring and depressing and the food is horrible. I'm ready to get out of here and I hope you are too. Meet me by my cell in a few minutes and we'll talk about what to do next. Don't worry about the warden, he'll be out for hours. I got him pretty darn good." The loading station is themed to a prison block of cells. Or that's what I thought for 2 seconds. Upon closer look, it's themed to solitary confinement. As we get in the row lines, the voice of the rebellious prisoner speaks: "Okay, great! You're here! Listen carefully. I have to be quick before the guards catch on. A friend of mine procured us some special vehicles that can go at any speed and grow or shrink to any size. With them, we're going to sneak through the vents and then bust our way out of here before eventually jumping to hyperspace. That friend of mine already escaped through a one way self made escape pod so they're fine. As for us, we'll have to get so fast that not even the main spacecraft of the prison can catch us. The guards are coming this way. Hurry, get in the cars as soon as they get here! I will be right behind you! Oh and please keep all body parts inside them at all times. If you have conditions that may be aggravated by this prison escape, you should stay. We'll come get you another time."
The others are more in awe of this park than I am because I have spent far more time in theme parks than any of them have. Carlos speaks: "This is so cool!" I reply: "It is but it also isn't. This park is so amazing that it can get away with claiming intentional murders as ride accidents. It makes its victims think it's even better and safer than Disney World until it kills them one way or another. If the food poisoning isn't enough to get them or they're too fast for the things waiting for them to flush the toilets or throw stuff away, something else will get them even so. I saw a treehouse attraction listed on the map. I bet that thing is full of methods to kill people. And who knows how this ride will try to kill us. We have to be vigilant as always. As great as the theming is, we can't forget just how dangerous this place intentionally is. It's like addictive social media with algorithms. So full of distractions and fun that you miss and ignore the dark truths of it all and that ends up being your reckoning. Except, it's much more dangerous but less socially toxic." After a couple of minutes, we enter the vehicles. We fasten our seatbelts and pull down our lap bars. There's a special kind of evil with the rides in this park. They have the correct and proper restraints so people don't immediately fall out of them and die that way. And yet despite that, these rides still kill most of the people who ride them anyway in the end. It's like the villain wants people to have so much fun that their agony when they die is all that much sweeter to him. The horrified and shocked expressions on their faces when things turn against them.
He must revel in such a cruelty. The very definition of taking a risk and finding out how poor of an idea it was. Just like being careless and catching Covid multiple times due to doing so before eventually suffering due to the post viral condition Long Covid. Considering how crowded this park is, it's probably a hotbed for illness spread as well. So if nothing in the park nails someone and they somehow make it out alive, it might end up being disease that gets them in the end. That would be a very ironic way to go.. Anyway, once everyone is secured and the restraints are secured and checked, the voice of the ride's main character speaks again: "Okay, one last thing before you head out and catch up with me. You're about to go down. That's right. Your vehicles are about to put you in a laying down position to more easily get out of here and avoid guard fire. Why do I need your help escaping? The more the merrier plus I need people to push buttons to blow up stuff. And it's fun!" And just like that, we're now laying down. As the ride starts, we go through a motion that reverses which ends of the cars are front and back respectively so we can see more so what's behind us rather than what's in front of us. First, we go through the vents with nothing major happening until we get out of them and right to a prison wall. "Okay, all of you! We're almost out of here already! But the guards are coming this way! Fire your vehicle's weapons and toast them with some of them already! Hurry! There isn't much time to do nothing! Don't hesitate! Just push the big red buttons and the rest will be done automatically for you!" Up until this point, the vehicles have been moving at a similar pace and speed to the vehicles on Spaceship Earth at EPCOT which is where Test Track also is.
I choose not to touch the one within my reach. The plot will continue as intended no matter what. And with all of that, explosion effects are activated and use a mix of triggered effects and recorded sounds to pull them off. "Great! Nearby guards eliminated! Let's bust out of here!" And that's when we bust out of the prison as our vehicles accelerate to a rather high speed. We go outside before going inside to another show building full of close encounters with the prison ships and what not. After a couple of minutes, it feels like we're almost done with this other show room. "Darn it! They are catching up to us! Okay! Now is the time to get serious! Hyperdrive, activate!" And with that, we launch out of the show building and return to the one we were just in where we see scenes of passing worlds and stars before slowing and landing on what looks like Earth in the far future with a Dyson Sphere around the Sun among other things. The ride slows down and comes to a stop at what looks like some kind of scrap town in the middle of a dump. A animatronic of the protagonist of the attraction speaks: "Okay, we got away. Thank goodness. But.. I have a confession to make. It isn't the prison's fleet of ships you really had to worry about. Compared to the real threat, they were small fry until I blew them up just now. That's right. I'm the real threat. This universe is prison. It isn't just Techtopia, the vast civilization on many worlds that's a prison. It's this entire universe and the only escape is death! HAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAAAHAHAHA! I could help you escape this universe but no.
I have something much more fun in mind. I'm going to kill all of you! I was lying about having a friend. I was the one who really built these vehicles and designed them. It took me years to but it's all done now! And I'm going to celebrate by making sure all of you die here! I will put you through so many things that there's no way any of you will survive!" The track below us drops and we fall for about 15 seconds, suggesting a long drop that ends with lots of noises as the vehicles crash into the road below or whatever it's supposed to be. "Not enough to kill you, huh?! Whatever! Take this!" Our vehicles are then subjected to all kinds of things: intense heat, freezing cold, you name it. "Ugh, why won't you just die already?! Fine! Behold, the finale for all of you!" Doors open up to reveal a giant meat grinder. "IN YOU GO!" Our vehicles are launched straight into the giant meat grinder. I doubted even my armor could hold up against it. Bray wordlessly teleports all of us out of there and into safety. Dominic yawns: "Are we getting numb to seeing all of this death?" I shake my head: "No. I think it's more like we're just coping with it and not focusing on how it makes us feel. We're casting it out of sight out of mind to focus on the mission at hand. But eventually, our emotions will burst forth unless we do something about it. Ignoring one's troubles is so easy and common where I come from that it's no wonder people are in denial about so many different things. Some people are in denial about how people view them. Many are in denial of Covid. They don't want to hear about it anymore and let's be honest, who does?
And because they don't, they stop thinking about it and fall prey to the lies that it's mild and no big deal now that vaccines are around for it. And let's not get into how car accident deaths have become acceptable deaths. The general vibe of guests in this park matches that sort of denial. They're so absorbed in their own enjoyment that they dismiss anything that doesn't bring them joy. If they just escaped being killed in the bathrooms, they just revert back to normal theme park visitor behavior to forget about what they survived. But none of these things make problems go away. It's like surviving an attack by xenomorphs and acting and thinking like it never happened even though you know the xenomorphs are now looking for you. And then, when they find you, you end up dying because you were in denial of them posing a direct and constant threat to your life. This park preys upon flaws like the tendency for people to avoid their problems like the plague. If enough bathroom survivors spoke up about what they experienced, this park's reputation would eventually collapse and people would stop coming to it. When enough people tell the horrifying truth about something, not even those trying to hide it will be able to hide it any longer. With that in mind, we need to go through the rest of this area pronto." We drink some more water before rushing to the next attractions to do. Or at least, that was until we all got pretty hungry. My stomach rumbles. Haven't heard it do that in a long time. Dominic yawns: "What a nap causation. Guess we gotta have a first dinner somewhere before riding what else there is to do around here." The heat is now more tolerable out of nowhere. Was the heat earlier some kind of attempt to culling?
Or was it some kind of twisted experiment come up with on the fly? I remark as we head towards the closest restaurant to our location: "You know, this whole adventure in my mind was expected to be this true horror story on the level of a horror movie. And yeah, it basically is. But there's an element of horror that's missing when it comes to us. When telling this adventure as a story with us as the primary characters, what's missing is the vital part of true horror. The helplessness of most of the main cast who get killed off one by one usually. And for most people here, it doesn't even feel like a real life horror story because they're so absorbed in their own thoughts and joy to even realize that there's dead bodies being dragged away by janitors constantly all over this park from the very public pathways we have been walking on. It's a different kind of horror than the usual kinds when it comes to us. We can go confront the villain right now. Someone has pinned down where he's hiding when he isn't greeting guests by now. However, we can't afford to just go for him when we don't know what he's capable of or how he can use this park against us in battle. If all of us here learn the full layout of the park from experience, we can turn the tables on him that much more easily and make it impossible for him to escape what he deserves. This method is extremely risky but it's our best bet. If we know what we're doing, we can cleanly end up and the horrors of this park in under a hour. The horror this park classifies as is a truly twisted and cruel horror.
I don't know what to call it. Complacency horror? Who knows. But either way, nothing says capitalism is pure evil quite like this theme park that kills all of it guests or at least, mostly succeeds in doing so that has overpriced food, lots of merchandise, and so on. I bet the employees who work here don't get paid enough and aren't allowed to form a union. This place is a cesspool of suffering with profit seen as a secondary goal. The cruelty is the point. This park is like a siren from ancient myth. It lurers in victims with its beauty and charm and once they're close and entranced enough, it kills them." My thoughts hang in the air as we continue to the restaurant. Once we get there, Carlos complains: "Do we really have to eat here?!" Bray nods: "It would look suspicious if we just kept eating foods we packed for ourselves. As Swift told us before we came to this park during the meeting to plan out how to proceed here, amusement and theme parks often don't allow outside food and drink. People still do and it's lightly enforced but as we saw earlier with the incident at the train station in this area, we may up against some enforcers who are trained to kill on sight. So we shall dine here to increase our chances of not having our covers blown." I add: "We can handle the food poisoning. During lunch, we saved people by having spells cast that secretly took care of whatever was in the foods other guests were eating that would have induced food poisoning. Usually, food poisoning is caused by undercooked meat and things of that nature. But the food here is well cooked and never undercooked so it's probably a dangerous substance behind the food poisoning. Rat poison, some other kind of poison, whatever it is.. It's bad news."
Dominic suddenly has something in his beep. He pulls it out and widens his eyes after waving it around: "Swift, I know you recognize this device. See what it says?" I nod: "So.. You've had this device on you at all times.." "Yes. It may not be as advanced as what we have in BRAINS but it still works. You want to know what's really behind the food poisoning? Radiation. The liquid we drink to prevent food poisoning symptoms so happens to double as a way to be temporarily impervious to the effects of even gamma ray radiation. And the spells we used earlier to save others from food poisoning were purification spells." Barla replies: "Wait.. If all the food here is full of radiation, where did all of it come from?" Dominic moves the device towards the ground: "I knew it. This park was built over the site of a nuclear power plant that melted down OR nuclear explosion caused by a nuclear bomb.. Given how deep that death coaster we went on goes, there must be a lot of dirt between the radiation and where we're standing. What a nap causation. Matt must have bought this land because the radiation made it really cheap. No one wants to buy radioactive property. Who in their right mind would?" I sigh: "Radiation, huh? Just great. Some radioactive elements take decades to break down into less dangerous isotopes or other elements. The radiation must have been put in this area. Fresh radiation would have caused devastating effects on this park and everyone in it by now otherwise. Not even Matt would subject himself to constant exposure to freshly released radiation. This park has clearly been around for much longer than it's been since The Shadow was split up and he somehow get his hands on a fragment of that villain.
So I'm certain I'm right about this." We go inside the restaurant. It's known as Captain Bungus's Galactic Eatery. It looked so cool but we kept our guards up even while enjoying the delicious food and casting purification spells to keep it all safe to eat. We have to keep the magic we use limited to spells that don't use a lot of mana to avoid detection by Matt. It's already enough of an effort to suppress our auras and power levels and such. As well as disguising our appearances. By now, our names are semi well known in the known multiverse after everything we've been through. If Matt found out we're here, he would turn things up and have his subordinates hunt us down. We helped defeat The Shadow and Matt may have inherited some of that villain's powers by absorbing the shard of them he got his hands on. The Shadow was powerful and troublesome. They orchestrated countless acts of evil, eventually leading to using a future version of a friend of ours. A clown who knows how to make food and is a fire elemental named Fluffy Afro. Future Fluffy Afro messed with countless timelines under the name Gorganan. In the final battle with him, The Shadow attempted to take control of him just as he came to his senses and sacrificed himself to help turn the tables. To prevent The Shadow from causing more problems, they were split into multiple fragments, some of which were further split into far smaller fragments. There are several other villains out there with fragments but they haven't made their real moves just yet. After we were done eating at the restaurant, we explored the rest of Techtopia. The designers of the park must have really liked taking inspiration from Cedar Point because we found ourselves next riding a space themed bobsled roller coaster.
I never got to ride Disaster Transport but I did get to ride this attraction. It was called Space Odyssey. Inside, the queue was themed to some kind of generation space ship like the one in the documentary style scenario video of if a neutron star came to the Solar System and destroyed Earth and scientists figured out when it would over 70 years before it happened. Throughout the queue, beautiful space music played, almost relaxing us into a false sense of security in a park designed to kill its guests one way or another, making sure no person's body leaves the park alive. It was hard to resist the calming effect of the music but our experience kept our senses of caution alert and active. But once we reached the station with the intention to have a second dinner later in the back of our minds, the music quieted down in comparison to all of the chatter and other noises. As we prepared to board the bobsleds, a gentle voice began to speak: "You are now joining us for a journey wandering and floating aimlessly in space. There is no set destination. There is only the floating in the midst of the cosmos." They go on about the safety instructions as we buckle up and what not. Once that's all done, it wasn't long until we were off for a chaotic experience as was expected from a bobsled coaster. A bobsled coaster's track is made out of wooden or steel tubes. Basically, a water slide without the water but with lift hills, breaks, and a bobsled vehicle. Things went smoothly in a ordinary but thrilling layout along a course that showed projections of space, giving off the illusion that were really just drifting through space, being carried along by solar wind that somehow is present even so deep out in space away from any star.
We passed star after star as we continued riding the bobsled coaster. But then, the twist of death came. The music from before returns but takes on a much more haunting and dark tune than before as the voice from earlier twists into something malevolent: "This odyssey will now end in your deaths. Goodbye." Cosmic horrors appear from out of nowhere along with a legion of other nightmares. Serial killers, chainsaw wielding people with pumpkin heads, killer clowns, you name it. They speak in unison: "There's no escape!" The bobsled cars come to a stop and the horrors come for us all. Bray erects a barrier immediately before teleporting us all out of the cars along with the other passengers. Barla smirks: "This place is so dark that we can fight for real this time! Hell yeah!" Dominic adds: "Not a nap causation for once! I managed to take a glance at the security footage for indoor dark roller coasters like this one and it's no better than what Swift is used to seeing from security footage of places this dark. We must refrain from killing any of them but we can still knock them out." I speak: "I have a better idea, no need to fight. It's time to reveal something I've been working on for forever during spare time. We can hold our current positions. Let me handle these horrors. I have an ace move that I can use now. It's still far from perfect. I can only use it for 15 seconds a day but against these horrors, I'm confident that will be enough. I have gained knowledge and experience in the worlds of dreams and nightmares. I am a writer. I am Twisted Land's creator. My imagination only gets stronger over time.
My focus grows. My resolve strengthens. Step one.. Artist's Eye: both of my eyes! Step two: focus. *focuses* I am dead set on my objective here. My mind is not occupied with anything else at the moment. Step three: the reveal.. This will take a few moments." I build up my focus, imagination, and so forth with an emphasis on a clear mind. "It is time for my newest ability to emerge in full! Artist's Eye: Evolution! I've waited 2 or 3 years for this!" Green markings appear around both of my eyes as they glow a neon pink as opposed to regular pink normally when I use regular Artist's Eye. "This ability requires no magic. It is fueled by my own mind and my very energy. Not even Matt can detect it. It is something beyond the sight of someone with a fragment of The Shadow. It is also where 2 of my most prominent abilities intermingle and shows why I was once called the Artistic Knight before I became a dark knight. I understand a significant amount about the mind and nervous system. The brain is full of neurons which are composed of axon hillocks, axon terminals, myelin sheath, the axon, and more. Information passes from one neuron to the next. There are many neurons in the brain. The nervous system goes throughout the body with the midbrain and spinal cord being 2 of the most important parts of it. The mind is complex with thoughts, feelings, memories, and more. The human brain can hold over a terabyte of information. That's over 1000 gigabytes or 1 million megabytes. I have spent so many hours being creative and thinking creatively. It is time. The speech doesn't need to be any longer. I will peer into the minds of our foes and entice them to sleep.
Foes before us.. *I pull out Graceful Protector from my inventory* With Artist's Eye: Evolution and my sword, I shall send you into unconscious dreams! Artist's Technique: Banishment to the Dream Realm! There, you will experience a dream so joyful that you won't so easily wake from it! But when your employer or someone else notices that your presence is missing, you will wake from your dreams only for the positive energy in them to flood your minds to end you several days from now! GO TO SLEEP!" I focus on my sword with Artist's Eye: Evolution and when I'm ready, I slice through the air and creative energy fueled by my swordsmanship and the power of my blade does its magic. The horrors fall asleep, now tormented by the positivity of pleasant dreams for they are beings of evil with murderous intent. As Bray teleports us to the heart of Techtopia again, I feel a headache come on from using that ability and my eyes strain a bit. But it was worth it. So damn worth it. We part ways with the people we saved from death and I left behind enough creative energy to put to sleep whatever janitors go inside that coaster to try to get our supposedly dead bodies. After that, we went on the rest of the Techtopia attractions and then set out for Winterville. We returned to the Techtopia station and waited for the train to Winterville. Once on the train, we watched as the futuristic utopia faded behind us in favor of a frosty wonderland with Christmas/wintery music playing on the train's speakers instead of the sci fi music it was just playing. The train's narrator speaks as usual and we soon approach the Winterville train station which looks like a rectangular igloo or snow fort.
By the time we hop off the train, conversation has shifted away from what I did and the attractions we went on. My friends were nearly killed several more times but we made it through. Now, Winterville is open to us to explore to the fullest. But despite the fresh smell of hot chocolate, something truly cold was brewing. Death is at every turn here as well. The pink splatters in the area's snowy ground confirmed this. That's not caused by food coloring. That's snow covered in fresh blood. To be continued..
Known park info so far: Pleasure Street: The World Fountains, magic wand store, Swiss bookstore, Norwegian style boutique, ancient Egypt restrooms, Oktoberfest Bierhaus, The Shrine(Japanese building), Italian style bakery with pizza, breads, and sweet treats, and French style Candy Corner & Ice Cream Parlor amongst other specialty stores, Thrill Plaza: The Deco Palace, center beautiful fountain, several shops, and Alva Towne Unamusement Park & Harmony Lake Railroad main station above TDP, Hotel Of Happy Dreams: indoor steakhouse, outdoor multi genre foods restaurant by pool and 2 slides, Safari World, water park Atlantis: The Plummet, kids area Candy Town, Techtopia: Expedition Observable Universe looping LSM launched roller coaster, Escape From Space Prison, Captain Bungus's Galactic Eatery, sci fi restrooms with killer toilets or alien cyborgs, Space Odyssey bobsled coaster, several omnimover dark rides, other dark rides, Asteroid Blasters, Fuzzy Aliens: The Musical, & Hyperdrive Rocket Racers, Winterville, Dynamite Town, ScreamZone, Not So Scary Land, Toon Mountain, Forgotten Castle, Alva Towne Boardwalk, Lakeside Beach, Mysterious Jungle, The Studio, and Riverbank Settlement.