Chapter Four
When we got closer to the end of the line, Mariola went to speak to the entrance guards and arranged for us to bypass the ticket and bag checks. She told me she had a special relationship with the park employees because she brought in so many tourists.
The guards asked other visitors in the queue to unpack bags, hand in bottles of fluid—because apparently it could contain dangerous poison instead of water—and explain their need for items that could be used as weapons. At least I guessed the latter, because I had no idea why else anyone would have a loud argument in Spanish about a bright blue umbrella.
I remembered these types of bag checks at Nations of Earth when I was little, but these days, most building entrances had sophisticated scanning and detection equipment that
