Going Bovine

I take a deep breath; in my head, I list five things I love about myself. “You know what, Gonzo? I want to help you find what I’ve found. Here, have a key chain,” I say, handing him one of the sunny yellow giveaways they hand out whenever you do something even remotely good, like remember to put the toilet seat down. Sometimes they give you a key chain just for showing up.

Gonzo drops my key chain present into a trash can. “Yo, cabrón, aren’t we supposed to be on the road to Dr. X?”

“Aren’t you supposed to have a spot on your lung?” I snap, and then I remember myself. “Look, Gonzo, I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt your happiness.”

“Dude, you’re not hurting my happiness. You’re just totally freaking me out.” He waves his hands in front of my face. “Look at this place, man. It’s some kind of happiness cult. It’s not real. You don’t want to stay here.”

“But I do. I feel great. No symptoms. No weird dreams. No sign of the fire giants. Gonzo, I think this might be the cure. There’s no need to save the universe, because nothing bad can happen to me at CESSNAB.”

“Bad things can happen anywhere. That’s life, amigo.”

“Well, I’ve got a new life now, friend, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop messing with it.”

I don’t want to get all worked up, so I leave Gonzo there by the Instant Satisfaction station and head for the library. I recognize the girl with the shaved head who’s behind the counter. It’s Thomas’s bowling friend. Her CESSNAB shirt has a faint line through NAB and the word POOL has been scrawled just above it.

“Can I help you?”

“Hello, friend,” I say with a big smile. She doesn’t return it, which is weird, because everybody smiles at CESSNAB. “Um, I wanted to check out a book?”

She points to the floor-to-ceiling stacks. “Help yourself. Be happy.”

“Okay, thanks. Hope the day is as special as you are,” I say, quoting the line I saw on a T-shirt here.

She snorts. “Yeah. Me too.”

The library is packed with more books than I have ever seen. I’m hoping they have Don Quixote so I can finish my reading for Spanglish class—not that I’m going back, but I would like to know how it all ends. The bottom two rows only seem to be filled with copies of Don’t Hurt Your Happiness, so I go through the next two rows and the next. It’s just more of the same, in hardcover and paperback. The whole library is stocked with copies of just that one book.

“Excuse me,” I say, hopping off the rolling ladder. “But where are the other books?”

“We don’t have any other books,” Library Girl says. She’s using a highlighter on her copy, underlining random words to make new, slightly naughty sentences. I wonder if she should be doing that but decide not to say anything.

“But … it’s a library. Right?”

She speaks slowly, like she’s talking to a little kid. “We found that a lot of the stories or words or even ideas contained in most books could be negative or hurtful or make you question your happiness or even question the concept of happiness as an ideal, and that just wasn’t working for us.” Now she gives me a big smile that reminds me of Dulcie.

“Well, isn’t that the point of books? To make you think about things? Come on. You have to have a copy of Don Quixote back there. It’s a classic.”

She whips open a drawer and pulls out a stack of papers stapled together, which she runs through until she finds what she’s looking for. “Ah. Sorry. Don Quixote. Complicated ideas and language. Some people found it hysterical, but others felt inadequate about not understanding it right away. We don’t like to induce nonpositive experience feelings in people, so it had to go.”

“Catcher in the Rye?”

“One Holden Caulfield, sixteen, very angry, very negative, visits prostitutes and says bad words.”

“Lord of the Flies?”

“Too violent.”

“Comic books.”

“Wow—out on all counts.” She ticks off the points on her fingers. “Too dark. Too scary. Superheroes have unattainable powers, and are therefore not relatable and might make kids feel bad about themselves. Also, some suggestible kids might get ideas about jumping off buildings or trying to mind-meld the weather.”

“Ha—got one,” I say. “Winnie-the-Pooh!”

She shakes her head. “Bears don’t really talk. Might confuse the little ones.”