After ten minutes in Rainforest Cafe, the place went bananas. The sky darkened and lightning flashed. The animatronic animals started seizing. The air filled with howls, squawks, and trumpeting elephants. And I lost my shit.

I thought back to all the fake nature that I’ve visited, all the way back to the Enchanted Tiki Room. I wondered if these places were bad. Fake nature can be used for all kinds of things, right? Education. Art. Religion. Entertainment. Solace. Marketing. But how does it affect us? Does it hijack our primitive wiring? Hearken us back to original biomes? Remind us of places that no longer exist? That never existed? And why was the Rainforest Cafe trying to spook the fuck out of me?

I turned to my wife. “This place is a portal to hell. We gotta get out of here.”