The sign read This way, please, with a big red arrow pointing toward the entrance to the make-believe White House. Beyond the marble columns, and above the stately front door read another sign:
THE HALL OF WARTIME PRESIDENTS
The turnstile ratcheted down as Alan and I entered a grand foyer. A red carpet stretched to the end of a huge, narrow hall. Historic flags from America’s past hung from the high, vaulted ceiling.
Just inside was a video kiosk. Touch The Screen To Begin Your Adventure, read the graphic. I did as it commanded.
A perky rendition of “Yankee Doodle” played as an animated cartoon character bounded onto the screen. It was a little man with a three-cornered hat, dressed in an outfit befitting Ben Franklin.
“Hello, boys and girls,” said the character in a high-pitched voice. “Welcome to The Hall of Wartime Presidents. I’m Little George W.”
“George W. Bush?” I asked.
“George Washington, if you please,” he replied.
“Hey! You talked back to me.”
“Of course I did. I’m interactive. Ask me anything you want and I’ll answer you back.”
Alan couldn’t resist some interaction himself. “Here’s a question, Mr. W.,” he said to the screen. “Why are we here? Did that butthead Chester have anything to do with this?”
“Tsk-tsk,” said Little George. “Such language! If you want to be president, you’re going to have to watch that mouth of yours.”
“Just answer the question!” I said. “And don’t lie to us. You’re supposed to be the one who never tells a lie.”
“I don’t,” said George, “about cherry trees, that is.”
“Whatever.”
Alan put his finger in the cartoon man’s face. “Dempsey said there was something we had to see in here,” he said. “What does it have to do with war?”
“You’re going to learn how to prevent it,” said George. “It’s a little trick that all presidents know, but seldom use.”
“And what is that?”
“Something you’ll have to discover for yourself, but here’s a hint to get you started. Solve this riddle and you’ll have your answer:
I’m delicious and sweet, and I grow on a vine,
I’m green and round, no bigger than a dime.
I’m everyone’s wish at Christmastime,
What am I?”
Little George whirled his finger in the air like a wizard, conjuring up a spell. “Your destiny awaits you.” He pointed down the long hall behind him. “Good luck, adventurers!”
A splash of glitter filled the screen, then it went blank.
“What was that all about?” I asked Alan.
Alan rubbed his chin and tilted his head back. “Let’s see. Small, edible, and everyone wants it for Christmas.”
“Grapes!” I said.
“Whoever heard of wishing for grapes on Christmas?”
Alan and I started down the long hall. War photos and paintings of famous battles lined the walls. The American Civil War, World War II, Viet Nam, Iraq, and other wars were depicted. Sculptures of famous war heroes posed proudly on pedestals. Video tributes honored their bravery, on the field of battle.
The eyes of the statues followed us—a creepy effect—as we moved on to the next exhibit: the hideous machines of war.
Nightmarish weaponry that had caused unimaginable suffering and death, now lay silent, in climate-controlled display cases. Armored tanks and field artillery stood like symbolic monuments to man’s inherent barbarism. I did not linger too long in this section, choosing to look for something a little less depressing.
The walk-through ended at a row of doors on the back wall, that swung open in unison. Stepping inside, I looked up to see a night sky—or at least a simulated one. Alan and I waited for our eyes to adjust to the darkness, then ventured on.
The scene was a tranquil, cricket-chirping, summer’s evening. A peaceful river gently flowed through a cross-section of the Land of the Free: the blue Atlantic; the amber Plains; the green of the Pacific Northwest. Over the hills, distant lights shimmered from city skyscraper windows.
Suddenly, a video monitor dropped down right in front of our faces. It was Little George again.
“Hee-hee!” laughed the little cartoon. “Solved the riddle yet?”
“Not yet, little general,” said Alan.
“Here’s another hint:
It’s the only thing that can save mankind from extinction.”
“Oh, that’s a big help.”
“Listen and learn, adventurers. Enjoy the next part of your journey.”
Then the monitor zoomed back up from where it came.
On a platform by the edge of the river was anchored a wooden row boat, with room for eight passengers. The boat was old, and didn’t look very sea-worthy. The chipped wood on the side showed wide cracks in spots. There were no oars that I could see, nor any motors mounted to the stern. Basically, in the event of a breakdown, we were screwed.
Before boarding I posed in front of the height-restriction sign. These are commonly used in theme parks, on rides that might be unsafe for small children, but this one was something different. It read:
Must Be This Important To Ride!
Horizontal lines at varying heights gauged how you measured up. The lines indicated whether you were:
Potentially Important
Marginally Significant, or
Of No Use To Anyone.
The top of my head lined up with:
Acceptable, For Now.
Alan bypassed the sign and climbed aboard the floating crate. I stepped in beside him in the front row, as we were cast off down the lazy river.
On the river banks were re-creations of historical sites in American history: Mount Vernon, Boston Harbor, Independence Hall. A choir softly hummed “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the background.
Passing through the gates of the Alamo, we entered an old-time theater. Our boat stopped in front of a stage with kerosene footlights. The Presidential Seal was centered high up in the proscenium arch.
The lights dimmed, and the curtain rose to the roll of military field drums. Seated on-stage were three American presidents who served our country during time of war: Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon.
The presidents looked like wax reproductions, their likenesses extraordinarily accurate. But when I saw Mr. Lincoln’s eyes blink, I knew they were really animatronic robots.
Ward Dempsey had asked us to please remember, that Theme Farm hadn’t been professionally maintained for some years. The neglected robotics made that painfully obvious. Lincoln’s right hand would flick at the wrist every few seconds. Roosevelt’s mouth hung open. Nixon’s head twitched like he suffered from muscle spasms.
As the musical overture concluded, Lincoln began to stand up. His stovepipe hat fell off his head, and onto the stage as he leaned forward. His rickety frame wobbled and swayed, before finally standing fully upright.
Soft music accompanied Lincoln as he spoke one of his famous quotes:
“There are but two types of men who desire war: those who haven’t the slightest intention of fighting it themselves, and those who haven’t the slightest idea what it is.”
Lincoln remained standing. Roosevelt rose to his feet, the gears in his mouth now functioning properly, as he spoke:
“I have seen war. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war!”
Robot Richard Nixon then stood up and recited:
“The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.”
But just as Nixon finished, the pitch of the music dropped a few octaves, and finally slowed to a stop. All movement on the stage ceased. The presidents stood frozen, like a row of assembly line robots that had lost power.
A voice spoke to us through a small speaker inside the boat: “Remain seated, please. Permanecer sentados por favor.”
“Is this part of the ride?” I whispered to Alan.
“A malfunction, more likely,” he said.
A full minute passed with nothing happening. Finally, another humanoid robot appeared. It was a man in a dark suit, wearing sunglasses—a Secret Service agent, no doubt. He walked onto the stage with a heavy limp. His feet were fixed to brackets below the floor that we weren’t suppose to see. He leaned foreword and back with each step, like a drunken stage hand.
The agent approached the presidents, his finger pressed to one ear. “Mister Presidents,” he said, “our country is under attack!” Then he turned and walked off as clumsily as he had entered.
The robotic presidents didn’t move a solenoid or a relay, as if all their circuitry had burned out.
Suddenly, Nixon’s eyes blinked. His head turned to look at the others on stage. “We just gonna stand here?” he said.
“Hell, no!” said Roosevelt, now in motion.
Our boat slowly backed away from the stage. All the presidential heads turn toward us.
Lincoln reached down, picked up his stovepipe hat, and placed it back on his head. “Well, what are we waiting for?”
Then each robot grabbed his legs below the knee and yanked straight up. Bolts and fasteners that had secured them to the stage popped out. They hurried toward our boat and hopped into the empty seats behind us.
This was getting weird. Animatronic characters in theme park rides, that move and speak is one thing, but when they start following you around, it’s time to freak out a little.
“Man, it sure feels good to stretch your legs,” said Roosevelt.
“You trying to be cute?” I asked the robot. “You know the real Roosevelt was confined to a wheelchair during most of his presidency, don’t you?”
Lincoln reached over and slapped the back of Roosevelt’s head. “What’s the matter with you, Frank?” he said. Then Lincoln turned to me. “Sorry about that, ma’am. He’s always been that way. He was originally built to play Jefferson, but he was too much of a practical joker.”
“That’s not true!” argued Roosevelt. “Just ‘cause I put that mouse under your hat that one time . . .”
“Calm down, you guys!” said Nixon. “You’re gonna overheat.” Then he whispered in my ear, “It’s all true, of course. I’ve got it on audio tape.”
Alan kept quiet throughout this whole exchange. I think he was growing tired of all the silliness. I, on the other hand, found it stimulating.
Downstream, we passed through an opening in a stone wall, and emerged onto open waters. Suddenly, our forward motion stopped. Our propulsion was gone. Any underwater tracks we might have been anchored to gave us no direction. The little boat rocked as we drifted aimlessly.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” said Lincoln, “We’ve been known to rust in less humid conditions than this.”
“You’re not afraid, are you, Mr. Lincoln?” I asked.
Roosevelt stood up and clasped the lapels of his coat. “The only thing we have to fear, is fear—”
“Is fear itself,” interrupted Nixon. “We know!”
“Remain seated, please,” advised our invisible boat captain.
As Roosevelt sat down, Lincoln placed his hand on my shoulder. “No, ma’am, I’m not afraid. But I know what real fear is—like the sound of a cannon ball explosion at Gettysburg.”
“Or buzz-bombers flying over London,” added Roosevelt.
“Or a napalm drop in Viet Nam,” said Nixon.
Alan finally broke his silence and turned back to the presidents. “You think you know fear?” he said. “How about this: You’re going about your day—driving to work, walking the kids to school, shopping for dinner. You hear a sound overhead, and terror rattles your whole body. Death rains down from the sky, and there’s nowhere to escape from it. I’m talking about the innocent civilians, gentlemen, and the fear of being a casualty of a war that you had nothing to do with.”
Suddenly, a strong wind blew through my hair, and the little boat picked up speed. We were headed straight for a cave opening on a rocky shoreline.
After some hooting and howling, and locking elbows, we entered an enormous cavern. It was dark and dank, like an abandoned mine. Water droplets fell from the ceiling, one dabbing me on the nose. It was pretty spooky in there, but at least the water was calm.
We finally came to rest at a passenger loading dock, adjacent to a spacious area that had been chiseled out of solid rock. It looked like the inside of NORAD, the U.S. underground command center, from where missiles can be launched if we’re ever attacked by a hostile nation.
“All ashore!” said a monotone voice from our boat’s speaker. We all climbed out, the robot presidents clinking and clanking as they disembarked.
Dozens of control consoles faced a “Big Board” that covered an entire wall. It displayed video feeds of surveillance cameras from all of the major cities in the world: Paris, London, Baghdad, you name it. The chattering of teletype machines could be heard above the humming of electronic equipment. If this was a set from a movie, it was a cross between War Games and Dr. Strangelove.
Then I heard the faint sound of an explosion. Flickering lights lit up the cave wall behind the Big Board. I walked around the back and found a computer gaming console, running a video game named Retaliation.
I called to Alan, “This isn’t a missile defense bunker. It’s an arcade!”
The gamer would sit in front of a large, curved screen that showed video from the night-vision camera of a military drone in flight. The high-resolution images showed people scrambling for cover, while the player tried to nail them with computer-guided missiles. The effects were amazing! I had never seen simulated humans in a video game that looked so real.
I was so taken with the imagery that I hadn’t noticed that someone was seated at the controls. I expected to find a young gamer with eyes locked onto the brilliant screen, but it was Chester Fields, holding a joystick and grinning!
Chester launched another missile. The screen indicated that he had made a direct hit. I could feel the ground shake under my feet from the impact.
“Gotcha, you bastard!” yelled Chester.
The robot presidents were standing behind me, watching the display with awe. Roosevelt’s jaw nearly came unhinged again. “Man, if we only had one of those in Okinawa,” he said.
“It’s only a game,” said Nixon.
But game or not, what bothered me was that the objectives were not military targets, they were civilian areas: schools, city parks, shopping centers—not surprising, given the extreme violence in today’s video games.
“What’s the object of this thing, anyway?” I asked Chester.
“Terrorists!” he said. “They’re everywhere. See that school? There’s one holding the children hostage. That man in front of the movie theater, he’s got a bomb. Who knows where else those cowards might be hiding?” He launched another missile.
Boom!
People on the screen scattered as a parked car was blown up. “Oo! Just missed him,” grumbled Chester.
Alan showed absolutely no interest in the game, being more fascinated with the Big Board. “Come over here, Amy,” he said.
I stood in front of the giant, live video display.
Alan pointed up at it. “Look!”
I heard Chester launch another missile. But at the same time I heard it explode, a cloud of smoke rose from a building on one of the Big Board monitors.
“Omigod!” I said. “It’s not a game. It’s real!”
Alan and I dashed over to the gaming console. Insert coin to continue flashed on its screen.
“This is no game, is it?” Alan asked Chester.
“Who said it was?” Chester replied, walking over to a change machine. He inserted a dollar bill, and a single game token spilled into the change tray. The coin pulsed with a bright, red light.
“Those are real people down there, aren’t they?” said Alan.
“I can’t help it if they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Chester reached to insert the glowing coin to resume the game. Alan grabbed Chester’s wrist. “No more!” he demanded.
“Stand aside, hippie!” said Chester. “Our freedom is at stake.”
Alan wrestled Chester to the floor. “Our nation’s under attack, you idiot!” yelled Chester. “We have to retaliate!”
“Not at the cost of innocent lives,” said Alan.
“We can’t just do nothing!”
“We can negotiate.”
“Thousands will be killed before that happens!”
Suddenly, the game went dark. There behind the video screen, stood Mr. Lincoln with the power plug in his hand, the other robots standing behind him.
“Gentlemen,” said Lincoln. “After careful deliberation, we, the Wartime Presidents, have decided that neither of you are qualified to be Commander-in-Chief.”
Nixon stepped forward. “You, Mr. Fields. Your bloodthirsty disregard for human life is beyond reproach. And you, Mr. Freeberg, refuse to engage the enemy at the risk of civilian losses, even while your own countrymen are being obliterated.”
“Wartime decisions,” said Roosevelt, “must be made by a leader with both courage and compassion.”
“All of you had to make those decisions,” remarked Chester.
“Yes, we did,” said Lincoln, “but at enormous, personal cost.”
“100,000 civilians died when we firebombed Tokyo,” said Roosevelt. “Their blood can never be washed away.”
“Innocent Vietnamese died needlessly from war crimes,” said Nixon, “Their faces continue to haunt me.”
“Thousands of innocents died on my watch in the Civil War,” said Lincoln. “I grieve for them still. Could you live with that burden?”
Just then, a huge explosion sent shock waves through the cave, but this time it wasn’t from the video game. The sound of jets and helicopters roared over our heads. Rocks started falling from the cave ceiling. I dove under a control console. Alan crouched over me to deflect the falling debris.
“What’s happening?” I cried.
“The hunters have become the hunted,” said Alan.
“Shoe’s on the other foot now, isn’t it, Mr. Lincoln?” said Chester, hunkered under a metal office desk.
But the Lincoln robot did not answer. He made no attempt to escape the falling rock, neither did any of the other robots. Boulders fell squarely upon them. Their heads cracked open like eggshells, revealing their mechanical workings. Soon they were nothing more than a heap of twisted metal and wires.
A missile crashed through the ceiling and blasted our boat into slivers.
Then the face of Little George filled the entire Big Board. “How about that riddle?” he said.
“Can’t you see what’s happening?” yelled Alan. “I can’t think about that now.”
“Here’s your last clue:
The answer to the riddle will end war forever.”
But as Little George was about to sign off, the enormous screen exploded into a million pieces.
We were plunged into darkness, as the sounds of the attack raged on. “Stay down!” hollered Alan, still sheltering me with his body.
I covered my mouth with my hand as I coughed from all the dust in the air. But when I lowered my hand to the ground, I felt something that wasn’t there before. A dim light pierced the darkness, and I could just make out what I was feeling under me: orange shag carpeting! Alan and I were back on our bus.
The air became breathable, and the sounds of explosions faded completely away. Alan and I stood up and looked out the window to see a tornado heading away from us.
In a matter of moments, the bright sun and the blue sky had returned.
“That tornado must have just missed us,” I said.
“You might say we dodged a bullet today,” said Alan.
I didn’t know how to respond to that. Had we survived a missile attack at a theme park, or a natural phenomenon in Tornado Alley? Like everything else on this crazy trip, we couldn’t be absolutely sure what was real and what was bogus.
We quietly took our seats as Alan started the engine.
“I just figured it out!” blurted out Alan.
“Figured what out?”
“The answer to the riddle—a green vegetable that we all want for Christmas: Peas on Earth!”
“I think that’s supposed to be Peace.”
As Alan started to put the bus into gear, he hesitated, then reached for the ignition switch and turned off the engine. He stared down the road, deep in thought.
“Peace,” he said. “In my day we heard that word constantly—in song titles, in slogans, in everyday conversation. The Peace Symbol was on everything from hillsides to school book covers.”
Alan’s hippieness was showing, and I felt it was my duty to remind him that we weren’t in the 60s anymore, but I was moved by his sincerity. Maybe his generation had the right idea, just the wrong approach. From the first day I volunteered for this assignment, I had seen people taunted, mistreated, and abused. Of all the mean things we do to each other, I guess waging war is the meanest of them all.
I reached over to Alan and squeezed his hand. “Make peace, not war, Mr. President,” I said.
Alan looked at me with a melancholy grin, then started the engine again.