Dyscountopia Page 5

  Seconds ticked by. One. Two. Three. Four.

  “Errrm,” said Albert finally. “How is you … ah, … how’s the wife and kids for you?” He desperately hoped that Mr. Edd had kids.

  Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.

  “Ha!” A single syllable escaped Mr. Edd’s throat, loosely approximating a laugh. He clapped a firm hand on Albert’s shoulder and left it there, looming in closer. “How long’s it been, Albert? Two months? Three months? Things are always so busy around here.”

  “Not long enough,” is what Albert was thinking. But despite his reservations, he couldn’t help loving the man that stood in front of him; his warm manner, his unmatched smile, his perfect posture. Albert fought the urge to collapse against his pressed white shirt and bury his face in his chest. He smelled so much like soap.

  “Well, ya gonna make me stand up all day, Zim, or ya gonna have a seat?” Mr. Edd teased him sometimes. Mr. Edd liked to tease people.

  Albert wanted to tease him back, but was much too afraid, so he quietly allowed Mr. Edd to plop him down into a smallish pleather arm chair. Mr. Edd returned to his own chair behind his desk, sitting up straight and true like a golden retriever who thought he’d just heard someone at the door.

  “Now, Albert,” he said, placing his elbows on his desk and making a perfect tent with his fingers. “Why are you here?”

  Albert placed his hands in his lap and shifted uncomfortably. “Well, sir, when I came to work this morning, there was a note on my d—.”

  Mr. Edd interrupted him. “Albert, you know what a family is, don’t you?” His smile could have lit up all of Alpha Quadrant.

  “Well, yes, I think so. It’s—.”

  “And you know what it means to be a part of the Omega-Mart family.” It was a statement.

  “Well, yes, I think I—.”

  “It means that you and I are family, Albert. You know you can talk to me, don’t you, Albert?”

  Albert’s throat suddenly went dry. “S-sure, Mr. Edd. I—.”

  “So why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”

  “W-well I don’t think there’s really anyth—.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about the commotion at the symposium last night?”

  Albert shook his head rapidly. “Oh, no, sir! Not a commotion. Just a question – a silly question.”

  “Hmmmm.” For just a fleeting moment, Mr. Edd looked like he was going to stop smiling, and Albert held his breath. Mr. Edd reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a single, crisp white sheet of paper, carefully examining the little black letters printed on its surface. “It says here ‘commotion’. That’s what it says here.”

  “Oh, er, well … it wasn’t supposed to be a commotion, Mr. Edd. It was supposed to be a question. A silly question ….”

  “Now, Albert, there are no silly questions. Let’s hear it.”

  “Sir?”

  “The question.”

  The blood drained from Albert’s cheeks. “Oh, no, sir. It really isn’t necessary. The Speaker’s answer was more than, um, adequate….”

  “Albert?”

  “Yes?”

  “The question.”

  Albert wrung his hands. “Oh, well, uh. Just, I, er … about Javier’s teeth.”

  “Javier’s having trouble with his teeth, is he?” The name rolled off Mr. Edd’s tongue like he and Javier were old friends.

  “Er, yessir. But the Speaker cleared up any—.”

  “And you thought maybe we could help Javier out, is that right?”

  Albert nodded slowly.

  “Like with some kind of dental plan, maybe, is that right?”

  Albert nodded again. “I did, but—.”

  Mr. Edd sighed. “Albert, you know that low overhead is the essence of providing quality goods to our valued customer at low, low prices….”

  “I know, Mr. Edd.”

  “And that, in order to live in a world where everyone can reap the benefits of low prices, we all have to make certain sacrifices. You can’t pay out millions of dollars in dental insurance and keep on selling bananas at 7 cents a pound, now can you?”

  Albert didn’t answer right away. He studied the face of the other man carefully – the delicate, perfectly sculpted lines of his mouth and nose, the amused, unwavering expression of his eyes, expertly molded to inspire devotion and demand compliance. It was the plaster cast of a father’s face; tender, self-assured, hollow.

  “What good are bananas if you’ve got no teeth to eat them with?”

  The question propelled itself from Albert’s lips automatically, as if Javier was speaking through him. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought he might have said it with a Spanish accent.

  Mr. Edd didn’t flinch. He didn’t hesitate. His smile didn’t waver. “What good are teeth if you can’t afford groceries?”

  Albert should have known that he’d already lost this match, even before he walked in the door. In fact, he did know; but some deep, primeval part of him had suddenly shrugged itself awake inside him and seized control of the helm, steering him toward the brink. Like it or not, Albert Zim was going for a ride.

  “Just a minute ago, you said we were all family, didn’t you?” Albert asked. “Isn’t Javier a part of that family, too, Mr. Edd?”

  “Yes, Albert, but—.”

  “Well if someone in my family was having a problem with their teeth, I’d help them fix it.”

  The period at the end of that sentence was an important punctuational moment for Albert Zim. It marked the end of his life as he knew it.

  Mr. Edd’s smile vanished, and Albert’s heart dropped into his shoes – he would sooner have been single handedly responsible for the destruction of entire worlds than for the end of that smile. Albert could hear the fabric of the universe tearing apart around him, could feel the carpet coming out from under his feet.

  And then Mr. Edd’s smile resurfaced, exploding across his face like the Big Bang smearing matter across the universe. And Albert remembered to breathe.

  “What are we going to do with you, Albert?”

  Albert wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to answer or not. “Send me back to work?” he ventured.

  “Ha!” Another monosyllabic laugh escaped Mr. Edd’s throat. “That would certainly be the easiest way to deal with all this commotion, wouldn’t it? And I’m all for taking the easy way – you know me, Albert. But that wouldn’t be fair to you.”

  “It wouldn’t?”

  Mr. Edd shook his head solemnly. “You’ve outgrown this job, Albert. That’s clear to me now, and if I was a better supervisor I would have seen it sooner. It’s my fault and I apologize.”

  “Oh, no! No need to apologize, sir!” Albert was like a rabbit on a railroad track watching a 50,000 watt light bulb bear down on him. He didn’t know what was coming, but he knew it was gonna hit hard.

  Mr. Edd held up his hands. “No, Albert, I’m really very sorry. And I promise I won’t let anything like this happen again. In, fact, I’m going to make some changes around here to ensure that it doesn’t.”

  Albert swallowed. “Y-you’re not going to ship me off to Home Furnishings, are you?”

  Mr. Edd looked amused. “No, Albert. Nothing at all like that.” He leaned back in his chair, placed his hands behind his head and let out a deep, satisfied breath, as if he’d felt a heavy weight slip suddenly from his shoulders. “Albert, you’re fired.”

  Mr. Edd might as well have told Albert Zim that he was going to be turned into a toad. Fired. Albert’s brain struggled to wrap itself around the concept, millions of neurons triggering all at once to give meaning to that one little word.

  “P-pardon?”

  Mr. Edd nodded. “Yes, that’s right, Albert. I’m afraid you’ve just been fired.” He rose to his feet and strode across the room, placing a compassionate hand on Albert’s shoulder as he lifted him gently from his chair. “Now you mustn’t let this make you feel inadequate in any way, Albert,” he said, leading him out of th
e office. “Just look at it like an adventure. An opportunity to broaden your horizons; to see what else is out there.”

  But there was nothing else out there. Albert knew that. Everybody knew that. Everything that was, everything that existed, was under those fluorescent lights.

  “Watch your head, Albert,” Mr. Edd warned soothingly, beckoning him through a low, narrow doorway at the end of the hall.

  A sign above the door read: FIRING CHAMBER.

  Albert hesitated. “Wh - where are we going?”

  “Just step inside – there you go. We need to get a few things out of the way before we finalize your dismissal.” Mr. Edd ushered Albert into a circular, mint-green metal room that smelled like new paint, with a single reclining chair in the center like a dentist’s chair. Albert heard the clang of a metal door as it shut behind him, and turned to see the smiling features of Mr. Edd through a three-inch thick plastic porthole, distorted like a fun house mirror. There was a loud metallic groan and a thud as the locking mechanism slid into place, and Albert reached reflexively for the doorknob only to find that there wasn’t one there. Overhead, the voice of Mr. Edd crackled down at him through an intercom system.

  Squawk. “Just relax, Albert. This is mostly just a formality. Now, look – I’ve got to read you a little bit of legal mumbo jumbo here before you go. You might want to buckle up.” Squawk.

  The metal floor trembled beneath Albert’s feet.

  Squawk. “The Omega-Mart Corporation will not be held liable for any injuries sustained during the firing process….” Squawk.

  A loud rumble filled Albert’s ears and the whole room started to quake. He fell to the floor and scurried to the chair like a frightened mouse, his eyes bulging wildly from their sockets.

  Squawk. “As a willful employee of Omega-Mart you have assumed all implied risks of early dismissal under Secret Clause 4125 – B of your employment contract ….” Squawk.

  Albert could barely hear the sound of Mr. Edd’s voice past the roaring between his ears. He buckled himself to the black pleather cushions, clutching the arms of the chair.

  Squawk. “Omega-Mart hereby revokes all rights and privileges bestowed upon Mr. Albert Zim as a representative of the Omega-Mart family and requests that he be removed from Omega-Mart property with all due diligence – have a nice flight, Albert.” Squawk.

  The last thing that Albert Zim saw before the floor sprang up beneath him, forcing him back in his chair, was the smiling face of Mr. Barnaby Edd. The entire room rushed upward with a thunderous explosion and a blinding flash of light, pulling his flesh back from his muscles, his muscles back from his bones as it rose higher and higher, faster and faster – impossibly fast; a spherical metal capsule speeding up through a vertical metal tube like a giant bullet through the barrel of a 300 story gun, with Albert trapped inside.

  FOOMP!

  The capsule exploded into the sky -- that glorious blue sky that Albert hadn’t seen in decades. Digging his fingers into the arms of his chair and screaming himself hoarse, he watched through the porthole as the vast concrete landscape of the roof stretched out in all directions below him, dotted with mammoth-sized air ventilators and the sad, patchwork constructions of exiled Roofers. The dark gray sphere of the world faded into the distance, growing smaller and smaller until the blackness of space surrounded him, sprinkled with tiny white stars. He vomited. Then he passed out.

  ****

  The Sergeant sat stiff and upright in her chair, her head flung awkwardly back against the headrest, her eyes gazing up at the array of tiny monitors, displaying its small slice of the world in various unsatisfying shades of green. Behind her, she heard the “swoosh” of the automatic door, and the approaching uneven clopping of painful footfalls against vinyl.

  The Sergeant’s lips moved. “Look at them.”

  “What about ‘em?” Officer Travis’ tone was level and distant.

  “They don’t even know we’re watching.”

  “You kicked me in the balls, Sarge.”

  “You should have worn your protector.” Travis could only see the top of the Sergeant’s head above the seat, but he imagined there was a look of immense satisfaction on her face. There wasn’t. Her face was empty.

  “I did. You kicked me hard.”

  “You should have been ready for it.” She shook her head. “You men are a real mystery – you spend all day thinking with your balls, but can’t be bothered for five seconds to protect them properly. You’re like turtles strolling through the wilderness without their shells on; how did you ever manage to evolve this far?”

  “Speaking of our continued struggle for existence,” said Travis. “Officer Wadsworth’s gonna be okay. But his dentist says thank you.”

  “Who?”

  “Wadsworth! That sorry piece of meat you left back there on the mat.” There was an edge to his voice now. “What do you care anyway?” he growled. “You get a big thrill outta bullying people that are weaker than you, don’t you? Shaming them onto the mat and then taking them down, just to show off how mean you are? Well, lemme tell ya somethin’, Sarge. You’re mean. You’re real mean, okay? You’re just about the meanest person I know.”

  “Sorry”, she whispered softly.

  The response took Travis by surprise. His heart turned to playdough. “Awww, hell, Sarge. Don’t sweat it. The pressure gets to all of us now and --.”

  She cut him off. “No. I mean, I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening to you… I’m watching the monitors.”

  Travis felt his various parts coming unglued. He puffed out his stomach, ready to commit entirely to the final mad, raging monologue of his career and possibly his life. Then, as if someone had suddenly thrust a pin between his ribs, the oxygen hissed out of him. His tone was pure defeat.

  “Anybody look like they’re gonna rip something off?”

  The Sergeant ignored the question. “Look at them”, she muttered, her eyes sparkling in the dull light of the screens. “What keeps them in line?”

  Travis searched the monitors overhead. She could have been talking about any one of the thousands of screens filled with sluggish mid-afternoon shoppers, standing in mute obedience, waiting for a turn to hand over their money. He shrugged.

  “I dunno. Us, I guess. Gotta pay for what ya take, ‘cause we’re mean people. We’re the kind of people that go around kicking each other in the b--.”

  “No”, interrupted the Sergeant. “Not us. There’re billions of them. They can do whatever they want. What keeps them in line?”

  Travis was growing uncomfortable with the increasingly philosophical direction of the conversation, and more so with the notion that Sergeant Alexander seemed to be talking to a ghost in the room, rather than to him.

  “Dunno,” he said with purposeful ignorance. “I guess you just stand behind the guy in front of you, because that’s what he’s doing. What else can you do?”

  “What else can you do?” the Sergeant mumbled.

  “Yeah, what else?”

  “What else…?”

  “You gonna keep repeating everything I say, Sarge?”

  The Sergeant grunted. “Don’t you think that one of them, just one for Christ’s sake, would finally get sick and tired of standing in line, have the goddamn scrotal fortitude to grab something and run?”

  Officer Travis watched her knuckles turn white as she gripped the arm of her chair. “No,” he said, carefully. “Most people aren’t crazy, and the ones that are have sense enough to act normal. Most of them, at least.” He began backing toward the door. “Look – I just remembered I have something else to do. I just came by to accept your apology. So… apology accepted. I’ll be in the scooter compound.” And he left.

  Sitting alone in the dark, Sergeant Alexander stared at the monitors a very long time before her senses returned and she realized, irritated, that Officer Travis had accepted an apology she’d never offered.

  ****

  “Zim?”

  “What?”

  “Zim?”


  Albert felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see a mysterious message floating above him.

  CHEWING GUM

  Black letters on a pale white forehead; and below, two droopy wrinkled blue eyes, staring back at him as if waiting for him to explode.

  “Where am I?” he wasn’t lying in a metal capsule, in a pool of his own vomit, like he expected to be. He was sitting up. It was god-awful hot.

  “You were talking about Pogs. Do you remember?”

  Pogs. Right. Pogs. He looked back into the eyes and tried to focus on the man behind them – a man as droopy and wrinkled as the eyes he belonged to. He might have been sixty or seventy years old, but Albert suspected he wasn’t really more than fifty; that the added years had been heaped upon him by the capricious bulldozers of fate. He wore a towel draped over his head and his cheeks and nose were slathered in a thick layer of white face cream.

  “BeautyMax Ultra, Dry Skin Formula – only $8.95 a bottle,” Albert mumbled. It was a bargain and everyone knew it.

  A rough hand shook him by the shoulder. “Snap out of it, buddy.”

  Albert focused on the hovering face again, on the broad forehead and the two words written there – tattooed in black ink.

  “Chewing gum.”

  “Awww, would you forget about that? That was all just a mistake. Now tell us about the Pogs.”

  Albert suddenly realized that the two of them weren’t alone. A dozen other men and women were crowded around them, their curious faces also covered in the same white cream, their heads wrapped in towels and frayed scarves, each one with a tattoo on their forehead, similar in style to the first man’s, but all indicating a different item – BATTERIES, HAIRBRUSH, TOOTHPASTE, BREATH MINTS, CRAYONS, PANTY HOSE, RUBBER BANDS, ULTRA-THIN CONDOMS, BRITNEY SPEARS’ GREATEST HITS, GOLF BALLS, BASEBALL CARDS.

  Albert cringed. Roofers – former Omega-Mart citizens convicted of Lifting and banished to the roof, each with the object of their shame tattooed forever on their forehead. He felt the floor beneath him with his hands. Concrete. He was on the roof. The scorching sun gazed down upon him like the all-seeing eye of God almighty.