Episode 4: The Fire of Joy
The little girl — whose name, she told them, was Nima — clutched her spinning top and led Emil and Tom out into the grey street. With her newfound spark of wonder glowing warm inside her, she marched up to the house next door and knocked, loud and bold.
A boy answered, pale and blinking, a glowing tablet still clutched in his hand. "Nima?" he said, squinting as if he'd half-forgotten her. "What... what do you want?"
"Look what I've got, Jonas!" Nima cried, holding up her top. She gave its handle a pump and set it spinning, shimmering red and gold across his doorstep. "It's a real toy! And there's a whole shipful of them — kites, and blocks, and games! Come outside and play! All of us! Like we used to!"
The boy stared at the spinning top, and something stirred behind his glassy eyes — a memory of laughter, of friends, of sunshine. Slowly, his thumb stopped tapping. "I... I haven't played outside in..." He couldn't even remember. He looked at his tablet, then at Nima's bright, hopeful face. And he set the tablet down on the hall table. "...All right," he said. "All right! Let's play!"
And so it began. From door to door they went — Nima and Jonas, then a girl named Senna, then a small boy named Otto — each child blinking awake from the cold blue spell, each one handed a wonderful toy by Emil and Tom, each one drawn out into the open air by the simple, irresistible invitation: come and play with us, together.
Within an hour, the empty grey park at the heart of the city was empty no longer. A dozen children spilled into it — then two dozen — then more. Emil and Tom flung open the sacks of toys, and the children fell upon them with growing delight. Kites soared up into the overcast sky. Spinning tops danced and hummed. Balls flew, blocks rose into towers, jump-ropes slapped the pavement, and laughter — real, ringing, joyful laughter — filled the air for the first time in years.
And as the children played together — sharing, racing, building, giggling — the warm golden glow of wonder did not flicker and fade as it had when they were alone. It grew. It spread from child to child like a flame leaping along a fuse, brighter and brighter, until the whole park shimmered with it, and the grey clouds above seemed to thin, and a little real sunlight broke through.
"It's working!" Tom cried, bouncing with joy. "Look at them, Emil! They're playing! Really playing — together! And the wonder — it's catching, just like Santa said!"
"A fire of joy," Emil breathed, watching the glowing, laughing children. "You can blow out one little spark. But you can't blow out a bonfire."
But Mr. Vex was not about to give up his hold on the children so easily.
The giant billboards flared an angry red, and Vex's smooth face twisted with fury. "No, no, NO!" he snarled. "Playing? OUTSIDE? TOGETHER? This will not do at all!" He stabbed a button, and from across the city came a low, droning hum. Sleek silver drones rose into the air — dozens of them — each one carrying a bright, flashing screen, and they swarmed toward the park, beaming their cold blue hypnotic light down at the playing children.
"Children!" boomed Vex's voice from every drone at once. "New game! Newest game! Best game ever! Come back to your screens — RIGHT NOW! You don't need each other — you only need ME! Look at the pretty screen! LOOK AT IT!"
The drones swooped low, flooding the park with flashing light, trying to drag the children's eyes back to the screens, to break the spell of play and scatter them back to their lonely rooms. For a moment, some of the children faltered, their heads turning toward the bright, insistent glow.
"Don't look, children!" Emil called out. "Keep playing! Keep playing together!"
And here was the wonderful thing — the thing Mr. Vex, in all his cleverness, had never understood.
The children were having too much fun to care.
Nima was in the middle of the best game of catch she'd had in her life. Jonas was racing to build the tallest block-tower anyone had ever seen. Senna and Otto were tangled up in a giggling heap of jump-ropes. They were laughing so hard, and having so much fun with each other, that Vex's flashing screens simply couldn't compete. A glowing screen, however clever, is a lonely thing — and these children were no longer lonely. They barely glanced at the drones. They just kept playing, and laughing, and shining.
And the golden glow of their shared joy grew brighter and brighter — until it blazed out across the whole park like a small sun. The warm light washed over the cold blue drones — and the drones, built only for darkness and isolation, simply could not bear it. Their screens flickered, fizzled, sparked — and one by one, with sad little electronic bloops, they powered down and dropped gently to the grass, harmless and dark.
"They did it!" Tom whooped. "The joy was too strong! The children beat him — just by having fun together!"
"Impossible!" shrieked Vex from his billboard. "My screens — my drones — beaten by — by SHARING? By a game of CATCH?!"
"That's exactly it, Vex," Emil called up to the furious face. "Your screens give children everything — except each other. And it turns out that each other is the one thing they need most of all." He grinned. "You can't sell loneliness to a child who's just discovered a friend."
Far away, on the snowy planet of Yuletide, Santa Claus and his elves were gathered anxiously around the Star of Wonder — when suddenly it flickered. And then it began to glow — brighter, and warmer, and stronger than it had in years, drinking in the great wave of joy rising from the children's city across the stars.
"It's brightening!" Pip the elf cried. "Santa — the Star! The children's wonder — it's coming back!"
Santa Claus watched the Star of Wonder blaze brighter, and tears of pure joy ran down into his white beard. "They've done it," he whispered. "Those two brave travelers — they've reminded the children how to play. How to be together." He laughed — a great, booming, joyful laugh, the first in a very long time. "Ho, ho, HO! There may be hope for the universe yet!"
But back in the park, Mr. Vex was not finished. His face vanished from the billboards — and a moment later, a sleek silver craft descended from the clouds and landed at the edge of the park. The door opened, and out stepped Mr. Vex himself, pale and furious, in his shimmering silver suit, glaring at the laughing children and the two small travelers who had undone all his work.
"You think you've won?" he hissed, striding toward them. "One park? One little city? I have screens on a thousand worlds. I will simply make them brighter. Louder. More dazzling. I will make it impossible for any child to ever look away again. You've won a single battle, boy — but I will win the war. And I'll start by shutting this little party down for good."
He raised a small silver remote, his thumb hovering over a glowing button — a master switch, Emil realized, that could flood the entire city with screens brighter and more overwhelming than anything yet.
Emil stepped in front of the playing children, his heart pounding. The fire of joy had been lit — but Mr. Vex was about to try to smother it for good, across the whole world, all at once.
"Tom," Emil murmured, "whatever happens next — we cannot let him press that button."
To be continued in Episode 5...