The Last Log Entries at the Philadelphia Office of the Centers for Happiness Control

by Luc Reid

+0 Days
Outbreak of Happiness, probably variant 115, reported in an insurance sales office and adjoining Ethiopian restaurant near Baltimore Avenue at Springfield. Victims have been quarantined and premises are being burned to prevent further spread. We expect full recovery of all affected individuals and an end of this incident within a few days, when the Happiness has run its course.

+1 Days
Three separate reports of Happiness in immediate vicinity, apparently contracted and spread by looters who broke into the restaurant during the early stages of the fire. Two victims have been collected and successfully quarantined, but one is still loose.

Affected individuals in quarantine are showing unusually severe symptoms, including embracing, vivacity, and in those most badly affected, dancing.

+2 Days
Fourteen confirmed reports throughout West and South Philadelphia, and numerous unconfirmed. This strain appears to be new after all and is proving especially virulent, with symptoms now including laughter until weak, cheek-kissing, acrobatic feats, and in one case spontaneous dissolution of an inoperable brain tumor. We have dubbed this new strain “variant 206.”

News reports have created a state of panic. A state of emergency has been declared and the National Guard mobilized.

+3 Days
Happiness now running rampant through Philadelphia, with confirmed cases of variant 206 as far afield as Baltimore, Detroit, and southern Connecticut. Civil order has broken down: uncountable grudges have been ended, stately areas have been decorated with flagrantly unseemly colors, and dancing is now everywhere. Epidemic control personnel have taken to the street in Happiness-proof suits and are attempting to stop the spread of the disease with flamethrowers.

+4 Days
Happiness-proof suits appear to be ineffective against 206; flamethrowers have been co-opted for marshmallow roasting. Cases now being reported throughout the United States and in 16 foreign countries. We have barricaded ourselves in the cafeteria and are holding off the pestilential carnival that has erupted outside using medical-grade automatic weapons. We may not last much longer.

+5 Days
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The Information Age

by Trent Walters

A holographic movie poster levitated, advertised The Meltdown, made half of New York simmer and boil.  Lyssa Vanmaher observed from an outdoor café, sipping a double double espresso  She flickered through the response statistics on her contact lenses. If she asked Jasper not to get the viral upload? “94% chance he’d still go.”  If she told Jasper she’d marry him? “67% chance he’d still go.” If she knocked him out with a tire iron, stuffed him in her trunk…? “89% chance he’d escape and still go.”  Bastard!

“Who are you mumbling about?”  Jasper leaned into her space, kissed her nose from across the wrought-iron table.  He grinned.

“Inconsiderate jerks.”

He draped his coat over the back of his chair and seated himself with a whuff, which made Lyssa tingle irrationally.  Jasper stretched his hands toward hers, open.  “Marry me?”

Lyssa flicked a tableside button, canceling out sound waves from entering or leaving their table.  She opened her mouth, closed it again.  She said, “What’s the point.”

“We’re in love.”  He held his hands out a beat longer before withdrawing.  “I’m in love.”

“Eventually, I wouldn’t be married to you.  You wouldn’t be you.”

“Can’t step into the same river twice.”

“Drop the clichés.”  Her face relaxed.  “Help me get something out of my trunk.”

“We’ve talked this to death.  If you won’t marry, a date. Before I go.”

Lyssa swept back her hair.

“A kiss?”

NY continued to bubble, bubble, and toil.

“A hug?”  Jasper stood, scraping the chair’s iron legs across the cement.  His fingers arched upon the table like flying buttresses. Lyssa froze as his forearms bulged with the scent of violence.

Jasper shrugged into his coat, drank her in, left.

Alyssa’s lens monitor belatedly informed her: His body language boded not violence but impotence.  It never ceased to amaze her how differently men and women viewed the same events.   She stood, she sat.  New York’s boiling cauldron semi-hypnotized her.  How did one violently cook a thing for weeks?  There had to be a loop.  Nothing goes on forever.  Once she spotted the loop and broke the illusion, she could go.

Night fell.  Waiters rolled up, asked if she would like a refill. They took it out of her credit chip.

The sun arose.  The loop didn’t appear.  Maybe it followed the pattern of entropy.  Everything decays, comes to an end, breaks down.  She’d just wait for that to happen.