Dyscountopia Page 2

  “I’m glad I caught up to you. I needed to talk to you about the….” Everything about the kid invited Albert to stare impolitely. The sides of his head were clean shaven. A bright orange, heavily-moussed tower of hair shot up from the middle of his skullcap like a granite pillar. A large chrome fish-hook dangled from the side of his face, inserted through his left cheek. Something was tattooed across his throat in a wavy, cursive script. Andy. That was it – Andy.

  Albert nodded his head involuntarily, watching Andy’s lips move eagerly as they mouthed out random syllables. How long had this kid been out of school? A week? Did he know how silly he looked?

  “… so I told them to go ahead and put it down in 3-F, but they said that …”

  No. Not silly. Andy was the future – a casual reminder of Albert’s looming obsolescence. At first glance, it was easy to see him as a dull and simple creature, caught up in the ridiculous fads of his own fading youth, but his eyes were bright and cunning. Someday he would replace Albert, and then Albert would be at his mercy.

  “So what do you think, Mr. Z?”

  Albert realized, suddenly, that his mouth was hanging open -- had been for a considerable period of time. He closed it.

  “Mr. Z? Don’t you think I’m right?”

  Albert responded swiftly, decisively. “It’s important to go with your instincts.”

  Andy gave him a grateful smile, then loped away like a young gazelle. Albert watched him disappear down the aisle, overcome by a rush of adrenaline quite like the rush one gets by, at the last second, pulling a small aircraft out of a nose-dive to avoid a fiery and embarrassing death.

  His ears buzzing, his heart thumping inside his rib-cage, Albert walked in short rapid strides to his office, his head ducked low, his eyes glued to the dull white synthetic tiles in front of him, offering a barely audible grunt to the office clerk as she greeted his return from lunch.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Zim.”

  Albert slipped into his small, windowless office and quickly pulled the door shut behind him. A feeling of profound well-being engulfed him as he eased into the safety of the small, armless swivel chair behind his computer. No one would bother him in here – no one ever did.

  He skimmed his finger across the screen in front of him, jerking the computer awake. The surface of the screen turned a brilliant white, filled with row after row of tiny black letters; an endless report of items received and items shipped, of sales transacted and profits made. Profits were always made. Every year, more profits. Albert didn’t have to read the reports anymore – they never changed. Each Monday of the week, the report came in for the week before. It stayed there, on his computer screen until Friday, and sometimes during the week he would sit and stare at it, or he would make a comment about it to a random associate, to let them know he was paying attention. Then, on Friday afternoon so that no one would suspect that he wasn’t really reading them, Albert would approve the report and hit SEND, and the report would be magically transported through circuits and wires and telephone lines and empty space to someplace that didn’t really exist – some deep, dark place in cyberspace from whence it could be summoned at a moment’s notice, but never would.

  Albert sat and stared at it for an hour, until his eyes lost focus and all the black and white blurred to gray, and then, at 2:07 p.m., he pushed SEND. The report vanished from his screen. The computer returned to its slumber and Albert leaned back in his chair, gazing at the clock on the wall. He willed the minute hand to move, to release the pent up flow of time. He closed his eyes, clenched his jaw, and urged the tiny black pointer onward as the perspiration dripped from his brow down the bridge of his nose. Then, magically, as it had so many countless times before, the hand moved imperceptibly forward. The time, at last, was 2:08 – one minute closer to five.

  ****

  The Word of the Day for April 04, 2047 is:

  invigilate • in-VIJ-uh-layt • verb

  : to keep watch : supervise, monitor

  “In-vij-uh-layt. In-vij-uh-layt.”

  Officer Travis stared at the word on the tiny paper calendar in front of him, repeating it softly over and over as he slurped the dark, tepid liquid from the stained innards of his mug. “In-vij-uh-layt.”

  The coffee was the way Travis always made it – like an oil slick, black and thick. The junior officers shunned it, drinking it only as a last resort when all other sources of caffeine had dried up. But that was how Officer Travis liked it – unpalatable, disagreeable, offering a cozy sense of penitence with each taste. No cream. No sugar. Every sip a self-flagellation.

  Travis sat the mug on the counter and went on staring at the word, taking great pain to extricate his forefinger from the loop of the plastic handle. His fingers were thick and round like sausages. His fists were hams. His massive arms were sides of beef. His enormous rump filled his plastic chair with a crushing weight that bowed the legs.

  “In-vij-uh-layt.”

  He paid no attention to the endless rows of tiny monochrome screens on the wall above him, offering mundane images of everyday people and their everyday lives. His whole universe was in that word. Scratching his low, protruding forehead, hunched as he was over the calendar with his shoulders around his ears, he had the look of a gorilla attempting calculus. But within that decidedly Neanderthal cranium lay a keen and subtle intellect, formed much as a pearl is formed within an oyster, over slow decades of deliberate and painstaking toil.

  “Travis, report!”

  He hadn’t heard the swoosh of the door as it opened, but he’d long ago taught his body to mask any surprise, trained his muscles not to react.

  “Officer? What are you doing?” The voice was gruff, female, irritated.

  He responded with a single word. “Invigilating.” He pictured her ridiculously small, boyish frame tensing behind him.

  “Oh, I see. Sorry to bother you, Mr. Merriam Fucking Webster. How’d you like to invigilate my foot out of your ass?”

  The wheels of Officer Travis’ chair squealed as he rotated 180 degrees, his face long since rendered expressionless by an endless wave of precocious young Sergeants fast-tracking their way through his precinct. Alexander was just the newest contestant in a long game of cat and mouse, a never-ending battle of wills.

  “I don’t think you used the word properly,” he said in a low, even monotone.

  She menaced him with her gaze. “Report, Officer.”

  “Nothing to report, Sarge,” said Travis dryly. “All clear here.” His eyes shot fleetingly to the screens above him, piping in images from a million tiny electronic eyes that spanned the entire Quadrant. He yawned and added. “Excuse me”, before turning back around in his chair and taking another excruciating sip of his coffee.

  What did she expect? The cameras never blinked. They followed everyone, everywhere they went, from the time they left their apartments in the morning until the time they came back home at night. The slightest false move – a too rapid hand movement, an absent scratch of an ear – was more than enough to trigger the sensors of the automated security computer, which would then, in a matter of milliseconds, calculate the probability that an actual offense was in progress and send the alert to the Sentry Desk. No crime could go undetected in Omega-Mart; no perpetrator unidentified. To Lift was to get caught, and to get caught meant certain exile. Everyone knew it. Only the most foolhardy or deranged would even make an attempt. So why did she bother asking?

  He could still sense the Sergeant behind him, looming.

  Looming. She couldn’t have stood much taller that five feet, couldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. But that’s what she did. She loomed – like a storm cloud at a picnic.

  “There.” An insistent finger stabbed past his temple at one of a thousand screens above. “What about that one? He put something in his pocket!”

  Travis tilted his head upward and squinted. “Where…?”

  “Right there. There! See, he’s got his hand in his pocket.”

&n
bsp; Travis indulged her with a few seconds of dispassionate study. “Naw,” he said. “He’s just playing with his balls.”

  “I guess that’s something you’d know about, Travis.”

  “Listen,” the officer replied tersely. “Nothing gets past the machine. If anyone takes anything, the machine will tell us. But no one’s gonna take anything. So you don’t need to keep coming in here.”

  He could feel Alexander’s angry glare searing the back of his skull. “That’s swell, officer. Just sit here jerking off while the machines do all the work, huh? Guess we can all go home, then – just turn in our badges and fucking go home….”

  Travis shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. We have to maintain a presence, to remind people that they have to stay in line. We’re a deterrent.”

  “So that’s what you think our job is, Travis? Deterring?”

  He shrugged affirmatively.

  “Maybe that’s what the academy used to teach cavemen like you,” the Sergeant sneered. “Back in the Dinosaur Ages. But I’ve got a news flash for you, Travis. As of right this very instant, we’re here to do exactly two things.” She ticked them slowly off on her fingers. “Kick ass and take names, in precisely that order. So don’t give me any of this deterrent shit.” The Sergeant slammed her fist into her hand. “Six months! I’ve been in charge of this chicken-shit outfit for six goddamn months, and not a single Lift detected.”

  Travis grunted. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “No”, said the Sergeant. “It’s not a good thing. It means that people are stealing and getting away with it.”

  “Maybe they’re just obeying the law.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. There’s more than a half a billion people in this Quad, and every single one of them is some shade of crazy. Just itching to take something that doesn’t belong to them, to flaunt the law, to shout ‘look at me, I’m a goddamn individual. Fuck the rules. I can do anything I want!’ Now, out of all those people, you wanna tell me that not a single one of them is out there Lifting?”

  “The machine sees all,” said Travis breezily.

  “Pfft.” A contemptuous puff of breath. “Come on, you bastards”, she growled at the screens. “Lemme see you steal something.”

  Travis grinned sideway at her. “Want to see me steal something, Sarge?”

  “No!” Flecks of spittle landed on his ear. “No, Travis. God forbid you get up off your fat ass and actually do something! You might have a goddamn heart attack, stroke out right here on the floor and die, and then where would we find another 300 pound sack of shit to weigh your chair down?” He heard the furious squeak of her heel on vinyl as she turned to leave. “Keep your eyes glued to that screen, officer. Somebody’s gonna lift something sooner or later, and I’m gonna be there!” The door swooshed closed behind her.

  Officer Travis drained the oily remains of the coffee from his mug, then leaned slowly back in his chair, studying the foam tiles of the ceiling.

  “In-vij-uh-layt,” he said again, with just a hint of self-satisfaction.

  ****

  Albert glanced at his watch. 5:58. The symposium was about to start. People were already settling down in their randomly assigned seats, nodding at one another and shaking hands -- Omega-Mart symposiums always required random seat assignments, to encourage family members to meet new family members. Albert looked for Victor, but didn’t see him anywhere.

  He flipped his program over and looked at the number on the back. 1147. All the way on the other side of the auditorium. He quickened his pace, rushing along the curved horseshoe of the top tier of seats, doing his best not to tread upon the already comfortably seated masses. They glanced up at Albert as he struggled through the sea of purple vests, regarding him with smiling faces and distasteful eyes, as if he was a bothersome second cousin they’d never met before but heard talked about somewhere. Of course it was absurd for Albert to assume that any of these people knew who he was, or had ever paid him more than a passing glance. He’d been coming to these symposiums for ten years now, ever since he was promoted to floor manager. But the vast multitudes in attendance and the regular random seat assignments made it impossible to really know any of the family members. Attendance wasn’t officially required, only “strongly urged”, but Albert had never heard of a floor manager who didn’t come.

  Albert finally reached his seat, warmly shaking the hand of the elderly man seated next to him as if he was a dear, dear uncle.

  “So good to see you, Roger.”

  “Great to be with you, Albert.”

  Albert had never met the old man before, but the tag on his vest that said, “Hello, my name is Roger”, made Albert feel instantly like he knew him. The tag on Albert’s vest that said, “Hello, my name is Albert”, provided Roger with the same immediate familiarity. Before Albert could unfurl the mental laundry list of conversation topics that he’d memorized for just this occasion, a sudden hush fell over the crowd and the Guest Speaker ascended the stage. Every month the Guest Speaker was different, but his message was always the same – motivation. Albert never got tired of it. Albert loved to be motivated.

  The Guest Speaker stared down at the crowd, grave faced. He was a good-looking man; all Guest Speakers were, as if motivating people was somehow a cure for baldness and wrinkles. He wore an expensive, shiny purple suit with a wide yellow tie, with a tag on his pocket that said, “Hello my name is Ron.” Albert waited to see if Ron would start with a joke. Guest speakers always seemed very serious when they ascended the stage, very professional, but then sometimes they would tell a joke. Albert liked that. It put him at ease.

  Ron cleared his throat and spoke into a long slender microphone. “Omega-Mart.” He released that single hyphenated word across the amphitheater like a majestic hawk being freed into the wild. “What can you do for Omega-Mart?” He briefly allowed the gravity of the question to sink in. “I’m sure, right now, you’re already going over a list in your head of all the things you did for Omega-Mart today, but let me ask you something. What else can you do for Omega-Mart?”

  No. Not a joke. But Ron spoke compellingly, as if he believed very strongly in whatever he said. It made Albert’s skin tingle. This was going to be a good one.

  “Already staying five-minutes after quitting time? Why not stay ten? Already greeting your customer with a ‘welcome’ and a smile? Give them a hug, too, while you’re at it – everyone needs a hug! Already eating your lunch on the go? Skip a meal, now and then – we can all afford to drop a few pounds!”

  Ron patted his, truthfully, rather slim stomach. Still the humor was appreciated, and the auditorium was filled with the whispers of low appropriate laughter. Albert liked the joke. It put him at ease.

  Ron produced a carefully measured chuckle. “Listen, folks. We don’t want to see each other dropping dead in the aisles. We all know we’re only human, but here’s the point. All of us give a hundred percent everyday, because that’s the Omega-Mart way, but we can all do a little better. We can all improve. Why not give a hundred and one percent, give a hundred and five percent – heck, give a hundred and ten percent if you can? Because we have the privilege of belonging to the greatest family in God’s universe – the Omega-Mart family – and, as floor managers, you guys are the glue that holds that family together. Your employees look up to you, like younger brothers and sisters. That gives you a lot of power, and you should feel good about that – but with a lot of power comes a lot of responsibility. Because those brothers and sisters follow your example. Sure, the boss says you get a fifteen minute coffee break in the morning, but ya know what? If you take a ten minute coffee break, or a five minute coffee break, or heck, just skip the coffee break, that’s sending a strong message to your troops that what you’re doing is too important to stop for coffee. You don’t break for coffee, because the price of your little break is just a little more cost for the customer, and the customer is too important for you to treat him or her like that!”

  Albert squirmed
in his seat. Wow. This guy was good.

  “Remember, folks. Low prices mean a better tomorrow. Together, you and I are saving the world, one low price at a time. We’re low price warriors. We’re lean, mean, price-slashing machines!” Ron thrust a fist over his head, letting them know that now was the time to stand up and cheer.

  Albert stood and shouted along with the rest of the frenzied, purple-vested zealots, feeling suddenly re-energized. Something about shouting made him feel good. He so rarely got to shout.

  After showing the right amount of enthusiasm, the crowd took their seats again and Ron continued on. He talked about teamwork, and about having a positive attitude, and about treating customers like they were number one. And he talked a lot about low prices. Then he started taking questions.

  He called first on a hefty, blue-haired woman wearing a leopard printed scarf, her arm held stiffly above her head. Her name tag said, “Hello, my name is Marcie”. Someone passed her a microphone.

  “Mr. Ron”, she said to the Guest Speaker. “You said today that we could give more than a hundred percent. That we could give a hundred and one percent or even a hundred and ten percent. But I want to go even further than that and encourage us to do better for our customers. I think we can give one hundred and eleven percent. Or even one hundred and twelve percent. Because I think the customer is that important. Don’t you agree?”

  Ron smiled and nodded. “I do agree, Marcie. I agree wholeheartedly. And it looks to me like you’re already giving that one hundred and twelve percent. Maybe you could even go for a hundred and thirteen. What do you say? Thanks a lot for your question Marcie – we could use a lot more like you. Next question?”

  Marcie blushed and sat down, handing the microphone to the next interrogator. Albert had always admired those in the audience with enough nerve to ask a question. He’d never asked a question before. He’d never been able to think of a question good enough to ask.