I ventured out toward the front porch of my bungalow, ready to try my hand at enjoying my time in paradise. It's amazing the things that desperation can push us to.

  The adoring crowd was hard at work on the second verse of "Lu-don't Brax My Heart," which, in my opinion, was torturing an extended metaphor about love and unquantifiable Metrics.

  But the second I walked outside, all eyes were immediately on me. Some of my most ardent admirers fell instantly to their knees—which, as far as relaxing greetings go, immediately pushed me into anxious feelings of unworthiness in a way I hadn't experienced in at least seven minutes.

  The rest of them just stared up at me with expectant looks on their faces as a smattering of badly synced stanzas of my new devotional hymn spilled out into the stiflingly perfect air.

  I knew I had to say something, but the relentless onslaught of information I'd been forced to adapt to since coming here had left me, a once-beloved gadfly, at a loss for words.

  The truth was, I had nothing in common with these people. And although everything in me was predisposed to wear this as a point of pride, in this moment I felt downright out of my depth.

  I wasn't some Prophet of Perfect Bliss, no matter what the obnoxious DJ insisted over the PA as he built the hype around my address to a level that practically set me up to fail.

  What did they want from me? The vibe in this place was somewhere between a music festival and a pagan feast. What did I, the Deacon of Disassociation, have to contribute to this suffocating atmosphere of joy?

  I thought of Blaze, my dearly departed friend, now flagged as anomalous and most likely being painfully scrubbed of data in a decontamination spa somewhere.

  If I could just manifest, for a moment, one iota of the cartoon-dog cheer that had made him so popular in this place, maybe I'd be able to sail right on out of here on a wave of positivity.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  I slackened my jaw, attempting, perhaps a tad condescendingly, to fully embody his borderline catatonic level of easygoing zen as I lifted my head to address the crowd.

  The words that came out—I'm ashamed to say—are still considered in some corners my most famous koan. For a time, they were printed on every welcome tote that was handed out in this place.

  "Let's relax-y to...the max-y."

  **

  The outpouring of enthusiasm was immediate as the crowd erupted into raucous cheers. I was, in what was becoming uncomfortably common, hoisted up by a mass of hands—Liaisons and Citizens alike—as they chanted this new mantra for all to hear.

  As they carried me away, Citizens on ziplines careened just narrowly overhead. I checked in with Meg, certain that my flawless rendition of Fun? had earned me some sort of bump in my Metrics.

  She let me down gently.

  "Afraid not. In fact, you've lost points in several categories:"

  WHIMSY: -12%

  DELIGHT: -200 Points

  [FLAGGED]: ENEMY OF EUPHORIA

  "But the good news is you're up 26% in Impishness."

  I sighed. "I guess it goes without saying that the System is going to be harder to fool than the Hedonist Hive."

  "Correct," she replied, with a hint of sadness as, right on cue, a neon liquid of some kind was poured down my throat by the aforementioned quartet.

  "It reads to me as highly unlikely," Meg continued, "that the System will reward further insincerity."

  This felt especially pointed, seeing as at that very moment I was assuring Margeaux, the Queen Bee of the group, that the bright orange torrent flooding my mouth was "awesome" and not, as it actually was, causing me to intermittently lose consciousness.

  I sighed and shut my eyes just in time to avoid the spray of a champagne bottle which had been cracked to celebrate my "record-setting" tolerance for the neon beverage that was apparently just called "Ω."

  Surely, I reasoned with myself as I tried mightily to slow down my heart rate and center my mind in a fruitless ploy to score some points, whatever this night—and the days to come—had in store, I wasn't so hopelessly devoid of good nature that I couldn't find it in me to have a little fun.

  But I was wrong.