THE ALIEN LANDS

Six months later, in September, Cordelia and Christina spent the first day of their Third Year at Arcadia sitting outside a small Craftsman style building about a half a mile from the house. It was a piece of human architecture, a mini-house, with a metal roof, complete with windows and gables, Cordelia speculated that it might have been a staff members house at one time because of the layout inside.

The design though of the building was nothing to write home about. It seemed the attitude at the time houses were built dictated that if you only needed the bare minimum use the bare minimum and do not indulge in luxuries. It was a nice warm day outside, not unusual for August in Georgia. The windows though needed some serious updating as least in Cordelia’s opinion.

It was midafternoon. The sky was clear, blue and the smell of flowers invaded the area which made Cordelia think about her grandmother’s house on the Colonial home world. The air was silent and still. A beat up 1957 Ford pick-up truck that was rusted out was sitting in the long grass.

“This is bullshit. Knock again.”

“Why should I have to knock?” Christina asked. She released a convulsive sneeze. “I’ve been knocking for nearly an hour… for an hour…”

She sneezed again. Pollen was not her best friend.

“May the Lords of the Colonial bless you.”

“An hour. Thank you.” She blew her nose. “There in there, they just won’t open the door.”

“I’m kind of lost as to what we should do next.”

Cordelia thought for a moment.

“I don’t know,” Cordelia said. “Maybe it’s a test.”

“Do you not want to be part of the Comedy Clique? Cause I think I have what it takes to do comedy.”

“I’m not so sure.” Cordelia said. “I don’t know if I want to do this or not.”

Back in June, after the finals, all twenty members of the Second Year had been paraded through the Practical Applications of Acting room one at a time to be assigned their Disciplines. The sessions were scheduled at two-hour intervals, through sometimes it took longer; the entire process lasted a week. To say it was chaotic atmosphere was an understatement. Most of the students, and the staff, were reserved about the who idea of Disciplines. They were socially divisive, the theory behind them was week, and everyone ended up studying the same thing anyway, so what was the point? But it was tradition to have one and Director Ashman insisted that every student have one. Christina called it her kryptonite.

The P.A. Studio was transformed for the occasion. All the cameras were recording, and every prop in the studio was crammed with the latest in movie making technology. Cordelia was noticing the different technologies and started focusing on the writing side of the studio. Ashman had privately joked that he saw Cordelia as a writer/director/producer. The staff disagreed and felt that she had a future in comedy because it would be out of character for her to do so.

Professor Cole presided over the chaos. Cordelia had avoided her as much as possible when she was at Arcadia Academy during her first semester. She wasn’t as crazy about Professor Cole now as she was when she first met her. She was now able to look her in the eye without secretly hating her so much.

“I’ll be with you in just one minute!” she said brightly, busily repacking a very fine, expensive-looking collection of gadgets directors tend to use.

“So.” She snapped the case shut and secured it. “Everyone at Arcadia has an aptitude for acting, but there are variations --- people tend to have an affinity for specific choices.” She delivered this speech in an almost robotic like tone, like an assistant speaking for a powerful executive, “Acting can be a personal experience. It must do with where you come from, the life experiences you have, there are several other factors that we must consider which Professor Branch would be happy to list for you. It’s one of his specialties. I’ll tell you a secret.”

“I love secrets.”

“He likes to be a snob about it. But don’t tell him I said that, okay?”

“Cordelia, I finally saw a rough cut of A Taste of Freedom and I got to say you already have drama mastered, horror mastered. You are a natural and while it is easy for us to assign you to master drama and all the emotions and challenges that come with it, that would be too easy for you to handle.”

“Yes. Why do we have to go through all this testing? Can’t you just figure it out based on the information I provided during my audition?”

“We could in theory but what would be the fun in it? Life would not be worth living if things were easily handed to us, it would be much easier to figure things out on a trial and error basis until we get it right.”

Professor Cole placed a series of scenes on the table which were in Greek, then in Latin, then in Chinese. Cordelia had to read and perform each scene and while Cordelia felt awkward. The scenes were written in such a way as to make people laugh.

“Yes.” She said. Then she erupted in laughter, “Very good.”

Cordelia dreaded what she was doing. She was testing her for the Comedy Discipline. Cordelia hated comedy. She wasn’t a natural at it like Ingle was or some of the other kids. In fact, she was downright bad at the comedy thing, but Professor Cole was laughing her ass off at her. Cordelia was not sure if that was a good thing or a terrible thing.

“Well, you certainly have timing and that’s a good thing.” She said.

Over the next hour, she had Cordelia read scenes in several different languages, only a few of which she had barely mastered and begun to speak and read to the point where she could carry on a conversation in that language if she had no other choice. Professor Cole ran through basic scenes where the characters were forced to do something crazy and stupid while she measured how well she was handling the pressure of trying to make someone laugh. Professor Cole sighed heavily which made Cordelia think she was going to be a difficult student to figure out what Discipline to assign her too.

“You’re an interesting case,” Professor Cole said.

There was really no way to measure how much to humiliate someone, Cordelia reflected.

She was tasked with trying to put together a toy house with different bricks and colors into different configurations while she studied Cordelia’s reflection. She tried to get Cordelia to watch a comedy that was made in Spanish to gauge how she would react.

Apparently, Cordelia’s reactions didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know. She stared at her for a long time with her hands on her hips.

“Let’s try an experiment,” she said finally, with a force level of silliness. Professor Cole smiled thinly and tucked a stray strand of hair back behind her ear.

Professor Cole walked down the length of the room closing some old shutters that had not been used in years until it was dark. Then she repositioned the furniture in the room so that there would be no way you could run into something unless you did it on first.

“Now, let’s see how good you are at improv,” Professor Cole said as she led Cordelia through a series of exercises. Cordelia had no idea a group of staff members were watching in a secured location. While she thought, she did not have the gift, they were laughing their asses off at her. Some privately commented that she had the potential to be a great comic if she got tired of acting while others thought she could be the first of a new generation of comics.

The relief was almost unbearable. She did it again and this time Professor Cole started laughing. She could not help herself.

“what does this mean?” Cordelia asked.

“I think you should be one of the Comedic Disciplines. You are a natural at it.”

“Comedy?” Cordelia said in fear, “I can’t be in comedy. I suck at making people laugh.”

“That’s not true. You have great timing, you just need practice and being in the comedic discipline will help bring that side of your personality out. Would you send in the next student please and,” Professor Cole said smiling, “you are going to do better than you think you are going to do. Have confidence and faith in yourself.”

The summer dragged by in slow motion. It was really the fall, of course, in the world outside Arcadia Academy, and the Chicago that Cordelia came home to for was average, not too hot and not too cold but just perfect, typical weather for Chicago. Chicago was busy as always and even though she had only lived there one year, it was the most interesting year of her life as she had to adapt to a new culture where things were like what she had on the Colonial Homeworld but different at the same time.

She haunted her old condo like a ghost --- her parents were concerned at the dramatic transformation of their child. Cordelia used to always beg for attention but she spent most of her days reading scripts, anything on comedy that she could get her hands on. When the Alldice’s tradition of movie night happened every Friday, Cordelia requested anything that the Earthers considered funny. Ingle was busy at Yale studying the fine art of learning how wall street works. He had sent Cordelia an e-mail saying that he was going to conquer the world of stock broking with the goal of becoming a billionaire in twenty years. Cordelia sent him an e-mail back wishing him luck. Lisa was even away at school having accepted an invitation to attend Howard University.

Cordelia visited the river and recalled memories of how Ingle and Lisa would often hang with her by the river. She played some basketball at the Youth Center and to the people who would stop by was surprised at how good she was She even got into a pick-up game with several of the local gang members who tried to show her up but they couldn’t hang with her. One of them even joked that she should consider going pro to which she laughed them off but had unexpectedly made new friends. She traded e-mails with friends from Arcadia --- Christina, Damien, Casey, Molly and flipped indifferently through reading comedy screenplays getting herself ready for her third year at the Academy.

In November, Cordelia received a blue-covered envelope, which turned up by the invisible hands into the History of Comedy. It contained a hand pressed card with an impressive engraving of the Arcadia crest, inviting her to return to school at six in the evening by way of a narrow, never-used alleyway next to the Chicago Police department 18th Division.

Cordelia presented herself at the correct address at the appointed time. This late in the fall the sun set was at 3:30 in the afternoon, keep in mind that Chicago was not on Eastern Time, it was on Central time. Cordelia was surprised at how mild the temperature was for Chicago in the fall. Standing there at the entrance to the alley way, she looked around for any signs that someone from Arcadia was going to grab her. The last thing she wanted to do was run into anyone determined to convert her to become a Jehovah’s Witnesses --- cars speeding by were keeping the local patrol boys busy as she watched them issue ticket after ticket. One, a Sargent who looked like he was old enough to be her grandfather kept trying to hit on her while she was waiting for someone who was coming from the school. Cordelia had not had a sexual encounter yet and if she wasn’t in school she would seriously take the older man up on his offer, she was surrounded by the familiar transporter beam that her people gave to the folks of Earth and soon instead of having a two hundred and twenty-five pound police officer standing in front of her, she was now standing in the Maze. As heavy as her bags was she did not mind, she was never so happy to be back at Arcadia Academy.

Now it was the first day of the semester, and Cordelia and Christina were stranding in the baking hot sun outside the craftsman house. The house was where students who did Physical Comedy met on Tuesday afternoons for their weekly seminar.

When she was tested, Christina displayed some impressive vocals for someone so young. She was near certain that she was going to wind up in the Comedy Discipline. She never considered herself funny but when she did entertain people, they laughed at her. She always hated herself for that but as it turned out those experiences was preparing her for the Academy. Cordelia was there because Physical Comedy was the group that had the fewest members and the fewest incoming members, but Professor Cole was confident that Cordelia could handle it. The first seminar had been scheduled for 10:30, and Cordelia and Christina had gotten there early, but now it was almost three in the afternoon and they had been out there all day. They were hot, and tired and annoyed and hungry and thirsty. If they were going to be part of the Comedy Clique, apparently, they would have to prove it somehow.

They sat under a peach tree and once they saw them, they began picking the peaches off the trees and eating them.

“Very sweet,” Christina commented, “I see now why they choose to come out here. For the peach tree.”

“You know, what we should do is see if there are any strawberries still left. I wouldn’t mind getting some of them right now.”

“Well, we came out here but we didn’t see anything.” Christina sneezed again, “Should we go and tell Director Ashman that no one showed up for class?”

Cordelia stared at the grass. A burst of faint laughter came from inside the house. If there was a password, no one told them about it. Cordelia and Christina had spent an hour looking for hidden writing –they scanned the door, they said stupid, silly, crazy stuff, anything they could think of. Nothing they tried gained them access inside the house. Christina even tried some political humor hoping that would do the trick and even that didn’t work. Then by that time, Cordelia let out a loud-ass stinking fart that she had been holding in. At that point, Christina just started laughing.

“I had beans and franks for dinner last night.”

“Dinner’s in an hour,” Christina said.

“What are they having?”

“Homemade pizza with homemade French fries.” Christina had a perfect memory.

“I think I rather eat a cow then eat the home-made pizza. It smells so bad that my aunt’s body odor tastes better.”

There was more faint laughter.

Cordelia grimaced, but she got up on her knees expecting someone to jump out of the shadows and grab her She knew, she could sense that there was someone inside the house.

“They want us to put a show on for them.” Christina said, “Maybe that’s the test.

“Who knew trying to do comedy was so damn hard.”

“I don’t know what we should do.”

“At this point, I’m ready to break into fucking song if I think that would get us access inside the house.”

Cordelia and Christina looked at each other for a long hard minuet. They started to laugh.

“The two of us singing?” Cordelia said, “Girl I couldn’t carry a tune if my life depended on it.

“Well, we don’t know what we’re supposed to do, let’s break into song and do a musical, right here. Right now.”

“You serious?”

“Very serious. Come on. I’ll lead. We’ll do our own audition. I think if we do that they may show themselves.”

“I got a theory, it’s an alien. A dancing Alien, no something isn’t right there.” Cordelia said, “Because technically that would make me the alien.”

“I got a theory, some kid is dreaming. And we’re all stuck in his crazy nightmare.”

“I got a theory we need to work this problem out.”

They both start singing, “It’s getting eerie what’s this cheery singing all about?”

“It could be Directors. Some evil directors. Which is ridiculous because Directors have all the power, and all the money and all the boys and I will be over here, brooding, and farting.”

“Hey here’s a theory it could donkies.”

Cordelia just looks at her. Ready to start laughing out of her ass.

“I got a theory that it ---“

In a rock theme, Christina starts doing her version of an air guitar. “Donkies aren’t the slow animals that everybody supposedly they got them slow legs and big ass little noses and what is with that loud ass laugh, why do they need to laugh that loud for anyway, donkies, it must really be donkies.”

Cordelia is trying so hard not to laugh.

“Or maybe smurfs.”

“I got a feeling we will never impress these kids.”

“We shouldn’t worry about it because we’re falling over the lids. I got a feeling it doesn’t matter. They will be there when they are ready. Crazy skits, we all done those, throwing fits, sometimes that blows.” Christina joins her. “We will prove ourselves as team together. What can’t we face that’s not forever? We can handle what life throws at us. And we won’t face it and raise a fuss. We’ll face it together.”

“Except for donkies.” Christina adds in at the last minute.

Cordelia realized they were being observed: one of the older professors she had yet to meet, who specialized in comedy and making people laugh. He was called a statue by the other staff members of the academy, he was bald, very tall and had a face that said don’t mess with me or I will pick up a two by four and throw it across your face his name was Frank Chedwiggen.

Shit, Cordelia thought. They were so in trouble.

But Professor Chedwiggen started laughing, “That was the funniest thing I have ever heard. You two should consider stand up. Your timing is excellent.”

The professor walked on still laughing his ass off at the two of them.

“I don’t know what we should do Cordelia. We’ve been here all afternoon, we even singed a song together, nothing is happening and to tell you the truth, I’m hungry as hell.”

“Maybe we should try one more time to get into the house. Because quite frankly, I’m out of ideas and I don’t know what more we can do.”

“There’s not enough light and the sun is going down.

Her stomach rumbled. It was dusk now, and the sky was starting to darken. They stared back at the door. It looked worse that she thought ---- Christina’s had done everything she could but they could not get the door open. Damien was going to so kill her.

They opened the door and much to their surprise, the door opened with no resistance whatsoever.

A girl Cordelia recognized as one of the Fourth Years stood in the doorway with light beaming on her, holding a glass of soda in one hand. He looked down on Cordelia coolly. Christina was leaning at the house so hard that she started laughing.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” the girl said. “Damien went into town and got us all sonic cheeseburgers. The homemade pizza just doesn’t cut it for us. Come on in and get settled with us.”

Despite the heat, a fire flickered in the fire place.

“Eight hours, thirty minutes,” said a fat guy with red freckles sitting in a leather club chair. “I actually lost thirty dollars saying that the two of you were going to be giving up.”

“Tell them how long it took you, Billy,” said the girl who met them at the door. Cordelia thought her name was Sandy.

“Thirty hours, thirty-three minutes. Longest night of my life. Not the record, but I missed it by six hours.”

“We thought he was trying to starve us out.” Sandy poured out some more soda into everyone’s glasses and handed them to Cordelia and Christina. They then went and grabbed a two-liter pepsi from the refrigerator.

They were in a not too shabby but comfortable library lined with rugs that looked like they came from the nineteenth century and had modern light fixtures. Cordelia was amazed at how modern the house was inside. All along the wall were the latest comedy scripts, movies that were in development that they had access to as well as state of the art computers that had full internet access. The furniture was also modernized as well. On the basement level, they had their own private studio where they would film scenes and work on their craft.

There were only six of them, counting herself and Christina. Damien was there, scanning the enormous collection of scripts and acting like he hadn’t noticed hem yet. He seemed to be trying to make a serious argument about acting theory to someone, but nobody was listening or taking him seriously.

“Pee Wee, we have guest,” Sandy Said. “How about you turn around and face us and stop acting like an ass.” Cordelia couldn’t believe that someone had the nerve to talk to Damien like that. Cordelia also noticed how loud she was: Cordelia had seen her walking through the Maze from time to time and making speeches at dinner in the dining room and making everyone laugh.

Damien broke character for a bit and turned around. He was wearing a shirt that said Comics are kings.

“Hello,” he said, trying hard to break character, “Glad you could make it. Christina, whose idea was it to break into song?”

“Mine, and I talked Cordelia into singing it with me.”

“We watched you out the window,” Billy said, “You’re lucky Professor Chedwiggen didn’t see you when you farted out loud earlier. You had us all laughing our asses off.”

Sandy took a timed sip of her soda, immediately followed by a less timid one.

“There is no way to make people laugh,” Sandy said. “The key was to get us laughing and keep us laughing all day and you guys did it in ways none of us had anticipated, well none of us except me. I knew you were going to do something so different that it would have us laughing for hours.”

“The song?” Cordelia asked.

“The song, no one has ever broken out into song before to make us laugh.”

“Singing is something I really enjoy,” Christina said. “I sang in my church choir when I was growing up. Everyone said I have a good singing voice.”

“Once you get the comedy theories that we are going to learn down pack, you will be able to make anyone laugh anywhere around the world. Speaking of which, those sonic cheeseburgers smell so good. Damien if you don’t go and prepare plates for everyone I swear I’m going to make you sing He-Haw songs until we all pass out from laughter.”

Still Dazed, Cordelia followed Damien into the kitchen, which was, larger and nicer then she thought for a place of this size from the outside, it had the sense of being recently renovated with the ice maker refrigerator which was filled with sugary sodas, fruit punch, orange juice. In the cabinets were all kinds of junk food. Pop tarts, chips, cookies, the deep freezer also was filled with chicken, nuggets, fries. A teenager’s dream.

“For special occasions like this, I get my contact I told you about to go into town and buy enough burgers for everyone.”

Damien didn’t seem all that embarrassed by the fact that he’d ignored Cordelia for the past year. It was like it never happened.

“Do you have this whole place to yourself?” Cordelia didn’t want to let on how much she wanted to belong to the clique, even now that she officially belonged there.

“Pretty much. So do you, now.”

“Do all Disciplines have their own clubhouses?”

“It’s not a clubhouse,” Damien said sharply. He reached into the large bag and started taking burgers out. “Let me put these burgers on the counter. Can you reach up there to that second cabinet and grab the plastic plates?

“Sure.” Cordelia said as she opened the cabinet and reached into grab the plates. “What is it if it’s not a club house?”

“We call it the Comedy Center. We have classes here and the library isn’t bad. Sometimes Sandy hacks the computers upstairs so we can VPN to the studios to see rough cuts of movies that are going to be released in six months. Last year when Batman versus Superman came out, we hacked into the studio and saw the final cut two weeks before it came out.”

“Shut up, seriously?”

“Seriously. Only Comedy Discipline students are allowed in here.”

“What about Director Ashman?”

“Ashman never comes down here so you don’t have that much to worry about. And Rickman. You know Rickman, right?”

Cordelia shook her head.

“You don’t know Rickman, get the fuck off the planet!” Damien said, chuckling, “God, you are going to love Rickman. He’s the biggest comic in the history of the planet. Still goes on tours once every six months. Sometimes he takes us with him when he goes on tour.”

He carefully had the burgers and French fries and tots on the plates now. Damien enjoyed cooking and he enjoyed buying food for everyone.

“All the groups have places like this. The drama people have this two story house that looks like it was created during a science fiction blood fest. The singers have this place that looks like an old stadium on campus, the writers use the library and the directors have their own little building where they plan their visions.”

“Damien!” Sandy’s voice came from the other room. “We’re starving.” Cordelia was wondering how Christina was doing out there.

“All right, all right! Come on and bring your lazy behinds in here and grab a plate,” he added, to Cordelia. “Some nights I will make lasagna, I make it home made. I just didn’t feel like doing that tonight.” He smiled and laughed. “If I wasn’t feeling so tired tonight, I would have made some.”

“Foster was the real cook around here. Tall, Total bad ass, made us all look bad in front of Rickman, but at least he could cook. Grab some more two liters out of the fridge, would you?”

With a blue tablecloth and a wide assortment of silverware, some of which were going to be used for the soft serve ice cream that was resting in the freezer, the table in the library seemed out of place. Cordelia was just glad to be eating real food again. Sandy recited something from a scene she was working on for an upcoming class, it made everyone laugh out loud.

Sandy, Billy, Raleigh and Damien gossiped about classes and which teachers were sleeping with whom and who wanted to sleep with whom. They speculated endless about other students and their abilities. They played musical chairs around each other with the confidence of people who have worked together for years, who trusted and loved one another and who would have their backs together without even thinking twice. Cordelia let the chatter wash over her. She was just happy to be eating a meal alone in their own private dining room, she was starting to feel like an adult. This was it, she had been an outsider before, but now she had entered the secret life of the school. The life she wanted for so long. The real Arcadia Academy. She was happy that she was finally fitting in.

Now the conversation shifted to what each of them would do upon graduation.

“I would imagine that I would start lining up contracts to do about two movies a year.” Damien said airily. “I would then pump a little iron, grow me a beard, and be like my hero, Morgan Freeman.”

“Yea but Morgan Freeman is better looking.” Billy snorted, “Morgan can also get as many as six movies if he wants to because he’s just that damn good.”

“Please, I’d like to see you direct as many movies as Damien wants to do,” Sandy added. “Jesus fucking Christ, you are so damn self-centered. Don’t you want to entertain people?”

Damien looked puzzled. “I am entertaining people. But I want to do it on my terms.”

“You’re still going to have to work with the studio executives. Come on, besides wouldn’t you like to do something to help the ones who can’t be helped?”

“Let me put it to you straight Sandy. I am out for me. When I sign that first multi-million-dollar film deal, I am going to put that money in the bank and save it. I got plans I want to do with my life and helping poor people is not high on my list.”

“Well, I feel sorry for whatever studio ends up hiring you.” Sandy said. “I personally wouldn’t want a dick ass bastard working for me acting like he’s king shit around everyone.”

“I’m bored!” Billy bellowed. “Let’s do some slap stick.”

Everyone knew what Billy was going to do. He grabbed some items from a drawer. Slap Stick had always been his favorite form of comedy as he started performing scenes from his favorite movie, Airplane and as he performed those scenes everyone started laughing. Billy was very good at mocking various comics from the movie. The evening devolved into others going up to also take turns to perform various scenes from the movie which eventually led to poor Raleigh laughing so loud that he accidently let out a fart so bad that everyone had to run outside for air. That wasn’t the first time that had happened.

Once they calmed down, Raleigh demanded that they go back and try again. He was having the time of his life and so was Billy and on some level Cordelia admitted that she was having an appropriate time despite not having seen the movie yet Sandy was cracking up so bad that she fell on the floor in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Cordelia noticed there was some interesting chemistry between the two. Considering what Cordelia knew about Damien’s secret sexual appetite.

“Is this it? We’re full-fledged Comedy kids now?” Cordelia was disappointed that she did not watch Airplane. She thought she had read all the classic comedy scripts she had not read that one yet. “Don’t we have to be hazed or branded, I don’t know spanked?”

“Well, if it’s a spanking you want,” Billy reached and grabbed a paddle, “I can proudly give you a spanking their little lady.

“Nah, I’m good.” Cordelia said raising her hand indicating she was not interested.

“You sound disappointed,” Raleigh said.

“I am a bit disappointed. I thought there be more students,” Cordelia Said, “More of us.”

“This is it,” Damien said, “Since Foster and Kenny graduated, there aren’t that many Fifth Years. Nobody placed in that class. If we didn’t get anyone this year, Ashman was talking about merging us with the drama students.”

Billy shuddered in dramatic fashion.

“What are they like?” Christina asked. “Foster and Kenny?”

“Like God and the Devil,” Billy said. “Like Strawberries and Peaches.”

“It’s different without them,” Damien said.

“I’m happy they are gone,” said Sandy.

“Oh, they were not so bad,” Billy said. “You remember when Foster thought he could write a musical comedy that would be brought by the first studio he submitted it to? He was downstairs praying to the god of luck asking his movie to be brought.”

“His prayer to the god of luck was funny though,” Raleigh said, “Doesn’t count.”

“You just never got Foster.” Billy snorted

“I got plenty of him,” Raleigh said with surprising bitterness.

A tiny hush fell. It was the first sign of awkwardness of the evening.

“But now we have a quorum again,” Damien said quickly, “an outstanding and deadly talented group of actors and actresses here. Physical Comedy always gets the best.”

“To the best ones,” Billy said.

Cordelia raised her glass. She was having the time of her life. She could not believe it, but she finally found a place that accepted her.

“The best ones.” Cordelia said.

They all took a drink.