Angel's Ride

Part 1

When Scylla, the virtual sea serpent attacked our ship with nine swaying heads, I could smell from its open jaws the putrid odor of rotting fish. It literally pulled one of the passengers, screaming, out of his seat. As special effects go, those were a little over the top, even for a guy like me. And as it turned out, my whole experience with The River Styx theme park wasn't the only thing fetid and disturbing about the year 2021.

I guess if I hadn't told the press about what eventually happened to me in the bowels of that Los Angeles underground theme park, it would never have surfaced in HyperBlogSphere, nor would it have been featured on most of the commercial networks. Nevertheless, it eventually became viral on everyone's wall screens as what we've come to call "news." But trust me-the impresarios of that techno-underworld had calculated others would talk about their shocking mishaps too, all contributing to the promotional success of the attraction.

The stories which had come out about the "ride" in those early days of its opening only added to the frenzy, the growing scandal, and ultimately, as they had hoped, its ticket sales at $500 a pop. All this morbid interest regarding The River Styx  was intoxicating to many. And though it was short lived, it had become titillating to an economically depressed and pessimistically centered public. The nation was still trying to rebound from Crash II (2016). People even now, five years later, are still sharing horrific memories about "Styx" through syndicated VideoViews and in the new multi-media Virtual BlogTell format.

No less than five documentaries were featured about the rise and fall of what one journalist called "a crossing point between thrill and lethal trauma." And you had to marvel at the technological achievements the ride was said to ooze from every mythological crevice of its endless water chasms. The Ride was touted as a "hybrid of engineering and legend, unlike the world had ever seen." But in the end, after just a three months open to the public, it was summarily shut down, its cavernous river emptied and its ghostly realm closed off. It's sealed now indefinitely. This was highly unexpected, as it was to remain a huge profit machine for the city and investors, capitalizing on its largely mysterious ambiance and secretive operations for decades. Today, it's still ironically hidden from the curious, except for people like me who got just a glimpse inside its miraculous machinations.

But I'm not alone. This included even those willing to risk their lives to go on the ride in those early days. According to inside reports, that's what could befall anyone sailing down that river of hell before its closure. And not surprisingly it was exactly those promotional tactics, developed for the ride's publicity, that accelerated a sort of urban legend about The River Styx. Today, sadly it remains, as Rolling Stone magazine covered it, a "defunct billion-dollar theme park, as cryptic and forbidden to us as the nefarious region of Hades was to the ancient Greeks."

The overarching concept of this entertainment scheme was to create jobs, if you can believe that. To stimulate the area around the outskirts of a sprawling, metropolitan LA. The city's growth had been uncontained for over a century, forever running eastward, butting up higher against the San Gabriel Mountains. There was also the accepted belief that the whole project was merely governmental intervention, and a stopgap to the monetary hemorrhaging at the onset of a cash and credit free-fall. All begun in the U.S. in 2015. One way or another, the underground park was destined to have a place in America's history for its mere ambition. Though it was actually to become more the Hindenburg, as memories attach to events.

The massive scheme ended up having more of an impact upon the Southland, sociologically, than ever economically. And particularly tragic for some. There were a good number of deaths discovered to have occurred during the ride's short duration, most uncovered by the year-long investigation carried out after its closure. These were in the beginning people who were only presumed 'missing.' But it was discovered by a governmental inquiry that it was actually the infamous marketing mystique itself, deployed by a new breed of commercial promoters, who, along with bank officials on steroids, created a strategic business plan that would have made Machiavelli proud. The whole attractive campaign rippled over the public that summer like a tsunami, pulling in among a host of the super curious, the lavishly rich, and a cadre of VIPs, Angel and myself.

Suffice it to say now that The River Styx, in retrospect, should only be viewed as a pathological ploy to turn a profit during a time of fiscal meltdown. And there are many still reeling from the litigation dance which ensued, ruining investors and turning the public against all politicians who favored it. Nevertheless, I unwittingly played a small role in the hype of the entertainment park which gave me some minor footnote in American history-and a few minutes in HD video on one of the investigative documentaries which followed. But believe me, I never wanted that kind of attention. For me, there was far more to the whole story of The River Styx than it's stupendous demise. There was also Angel herself.

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Text and e-book copyright © 2014 Califia Montalvo

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