Building Utopia

A reflection on escapism

The year is 2020. The setting is our one-bedroom apartment because we’re not allowed to leave. The mood is moody because I’m pregnant. The Zooms are frequent because the entire company is remote. In fact, our whole life is virtual now. We’re cooking with friends, we’re showering the baby, we’re toasting Thanksgiving drinks, all to the laptop’s unblinking camera eye. 

There’s also noise. Music. Somewhat off-kilter, somewhat sweet. An organ. It’s playing a tune, a carousel waltz. Then water splashing. Laughter. A cash register opening. A bell ringing. A scream. It’s a happy scream. Then an alert, a little blip of a sound. New message: Mini Suspended Coaster 1 has broken down. More splashes, some shrieks. And into pixelated oblivion, I begin my work.

During the pandemic, I beat forty levels of RollerCoaster Tycoon on my iPhone. A game I played as a child on our family desktop computer and stumbled upon in the App store as an adult in an unthinkable April, locked down, decades later. I kept playing the game through summer, then fall, then winter. I built parks and parks and more parks. 

The premise is simple. You’re given objectives to complete and, if achieved, unlock a new park with a different goal of increasing difficulty. “Achieve a park value of at least $200,000 at the end of October, Year 2.” “Have at least 1,200 guests in your park at the end of October, Year 3 with a park rating of at least 600.” “Achieve a monthly income from ride tickets of at least $8,000.” “Have at least 2,000 guests in your park. You must not let the park rating drop below 700 at any time!”

This goes on for eternity. Diamond Heights. Paradise Pier. Whispering Cliffs. Butterfly Dam. You inherit old parks with broken rides and no bathrooms. You start from scratch with land impossible to build on. You take loans. You run promotions. You hire workers. They mop vomit until the pavement’s clean. I’m not ashamed to admit I looked up scenario guides for especially challenging parks. I browsed the r/rct archives on Reddit. I thought fondly of strangers who asked the same questions literal years prior. My people. 

When I feared the world might end, this is how I spent my time. Building log flumes and buying cotton candy stalls and dragging mechanics or dancing tiger mascots across my phone screen with my index finger. Increasing the price of umbrellas when it rained. Planting digital gardens, watching them wilt and bloom and wilt and bloom. Watching grass grow wild until Handyman 4 marched over, conjuring a lawn mower out of thin air like it was something he kept in his pocket. I loved watching him fix my little world’s little problems. 

Let me be clear, there were other things I did to keep myself busy. Mostly: worry, panic, refresh Instagram, Facetime my entire contact list, take pictures of my CSA delivery, doom scroll, protest, share the size of my fetus in relation to assorted fruits and vegetables or household objects, imagine what her face would look like, bet if she would come early or late or right on time, brew coffee, walk around our neighborhood, look at “THANK YOU HEALTHCARE WORKERS” signs in the windows, donate money, avoid election coverage, watch it against my will, keep watching because I couldn’t look away, start a puzzle, finish a puzzle, send my dad screenshots of CDC guidelines, ask Seif to massage my feet, cry sometimes, roll from my bed to my work laptop to my desk and reemerge hours later with four empty glasses and two dirty plates, read think-pieces on collective grief, grow actual human bones inside of my uterus, look up: “braxton hicks contractions”, “pitocin side effects”, “foley balloon”, “membrane-sweep”, Slack my team, wonder if and when I’d go on an airplane again, spiral, stream Folklore, stream Evermore, swab my nose, swab my throat, build my rollercoasters, sleep. 

I feared life would never resume, never have a semblance of normalcy. I was wrong. Then, in 2020, I thought the news could never get worse. It did. It does. But we mostly go on living our regular lives and honking our horns and texting our, “Sorry! Thought I responded” texts. So much suffering, right here, on display, in my hand, and no ability to change anything at all. Or even formulate thoughtful sentences about it before something else comes into the frame. A bullet grazing an ear. The implications. 

On the cusp of motherhood, afraid of almost everything, I built amusement parks as a means of control. To escape. To challenge myself in a way that mattered to absolutely no one. To drown out the news. To breathe through nausea and heartburn and fatigue. It gave me some small purpose and so much permission to disassociate. The ability to speed up or slow down time—to stop it entirely—push pause. There I was on the couch, two hearts beating in my body, ignoring all of my text messages so I could virtually repair broken benches for fake people. 

I guess I’m considering how we cope with the unknown. Or the paralysis of watching the world burn in every direction. Or how intense the present feels as it happens, and then what it becomes, the thing we polish the past into.

This morning, in 2024, I couldn’t stop thinking about the upcoming election. Then my daughter, Yasmeen, wanted to dance to “Pink Pony Club” three times in a row. Her definition of dance is me holding her in my arms as I bounce and sway. She hangs on me with her head on my shoulder. It requires energy. She feels so big now. Speaks in full sentences. Snaps me into the present. Makes me play. 

In the game, at the end of your allotted time, a box appears to inform you whether you’ve failed or achieved your objective. If you win, all the little people in your park stop what they’re doing, turn, and clap. Balloons float into the air when they let go. You share a brief moment together. This is the very best part. 

Wish you were here,

Elizabeth