Dyscountopia (10 page)

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“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.

“Yellow sun,” he mumbled, blinking upward.

“Whadja expect?” asked the man.
 
“I think you got a better look than I did.”

Albert shielded his eyes.
 
“What do you mean?”

“You got fired.
 
Fired into space.
 
We watched you go!”

Albert remembered looking down at the roof.
 
At the Roofers below.
 
“And then I crashed here….
 
On the roof.”

The man shook his head.
 
“No, man.
 
We watched you go.
 
Up, up, and away – helluva show.
 
And then you disappeared into the wild blue.
 
That was eight, nine months ago now, maybe more.
 
And then, about 30 minutes ago, you came crashing back down again.
 
Made a big goddam racket.
 
We all came running and found your space-pod in a helluva goddam mess and you sitting here and talking about Pogs and a message for Omega-Mart and a bright new future of change or something-er-other.”

Albert’s head was spinning like a top.
 
“I don’t remember any of that.
 
Did I say anything else?”

The man nodded.
 
“Yeah.
 
You said, ‘My name is Albert Zim of Omega-Mart.
 
Take me to your leader’.
 
What the hell happened to you up there?”

Albert rubbed his temples and looked behind him at the pile of smoldering metal that used to be his space capsule.
 
“I don’t know.
 
I don’t remember.”

But he did remember.
 
He remembered something.
 
He had a message.
 
The message was important, but it wasn’t for them – they were already lost.

The man leaned over and pulled down Albert’s eyelid with his thumb, staring into his pupil.
 
“Well, you don’t have a scratch on you.
 
Must be some sort of post-traumatic stress-induced amnesia or something,” he mumbled.
 
“I think I read about that in a medical journal somewhere.
 
Come on.
 
Let’s get him up.”
 

The Roofers lifted Albert up by his arms, balancing him on unsteady feet.
 
Their leader introduced himself.
 

“My name is Doctor Zayus, Doctor Robert Zayus.”
 
He shook Albert’s limp hand.
 
“Welcome to the roof.”
  

Albert quickly broke off the handshake, instinctively repulsed by the outcast’s touch.
 
“I don’t have time to talk,” he said urgently, stabbing a finger downward. “I have to get down there right away.”

The Doctor grinned.
 
“Funny, that’s exactly what I said when I first got here.”
 
There came a murmur of agreement from his gathered comrades.

“You don’t understand – I
belong
down there,” Albert explained.

“Yep,” said the Doctor knowingly.

“I can save the world.”
 
Albert’s head was spinning faster now.
 
The heat of the sun was stifling.

Dr. Zayus scratched his bearded chin.
 
“I don’t think I ever went that far.
 
You sure you’re okay?”

Albert stumbled forward, wobbling like a newborn calf.
 
“I really have to go.”
 

The Doctor grabbed his shoulder.
 
“You can’t go wandering alone out there, Zim.
 
You’ll die.”

“But I have to get back inside.” Albert made a futile attempt to shrug him off.
 

Dr. Zayus stepped in front of him, clutching him by both arms.
 
“You don’t understand, Zim.
 
You can’t.
 
There’s no way back.”

Albert shook his head furiously.
 
“But I have to…”
 
He was blind-sided by a not-too-gentle smack across the face.

“You’re delirious, Zim,” said the Doctor firmly.
 
“Snap out of it.
 
We need to get you out of the sun.
 
Okay?”

Albert nodded slowly.

“Good.
 
Now come with me.”
  

The Doctor unwrapped the towel from his own head and draped it over Albert’s, shading his dazed companion’s brain from the sun’s cruel rays as he pulled him along gently by the arm, steering for some unseen point on the horizon.
 
The world around them was a gray concrete sea, dead and empty except for a handful of giant, boxy metal ventilators scattered in the distance – Omega-Mart’s only lifeline to the outside world.
 
Albert could see the world curving away from him at every measurable angle, could feel himself walking the infinite arc of the planet as if he was treading on the outside surface of a massive rubber ball.
 
No walls surrounded him, no roof but sky stood between him and the sun above.
 
Not long ago, Albert would have feared this place like hell on earth, but it seemed almost familiar to him now.
 
He’d grown used to being outdoors, to walking under the sun.
 
But not this sun.

A gentle breeze brushed Albert’s lips, and he drank it in like cool water.
 
The air up here was fresh and sweet, not like the flat, tasteless stuff that made its way in through Omega-Mart’s air vents, continuously sanitized and sterilized for the germaphobes below.
 
As Albert tilted back his head, letting the wind wash over his face, he fixed his eyes on a single bird circling lazily in the sky above him.
 
He squinted at the bird, shielding his face until he could just make out the dark colored feathers, the long fleshy neck, the pink, naked head.
 
He watched it intently, wondering what kind of bird it was.
 

Several minutes passed and the bird floated in front of the sun, disappearing from view.
 
Albert’s eyes drifted sideways, almost unconsciously, to the face of the man walking next to him and those two ignominious words.
 

CHEWING GUM
.

The Doctor snorted.
 
“Get a good look?”

Albert looked away.
 
“Sorry…”

They walked on in awkward silence as Albert struggled to keep his eyes focused politely ahead of him.
 
But they insistently flickered back to the man’s forehead.

CHEWING GUM
.

 
“Just go ahead and stare if it makes you happy,” Dr. Zayus grumbled.
 
“Why don’t you tear open my soul and take a good look in there, too.
 
I used to eat my own scabs when I was a kid.
 
And
I’m a chronic masturbator.
 
Happy?”

“Sorry.”
 
Albert looked away again, embarrassed.
 
He turned his attention to the group around him.
 

The Roofers were a miserable looking lot, dressed in mismatched, badly stitched clothing with crooked seams and sloppy finishing; T-shirts with upside down logos, caps with their bills sewn cock-eyed, discolored jeans with one pant leg longer than the other – things unfit even for the bargain rack.
 
He turned his eyes absently back to the Doctor, examining the faded red lettering on his dingy white T-shirt that read,
I’m with Stuppid
.
 
The arrow beneath it pointed directly to Albert.

Dr. Zayus stopped in his tracks and gestured toward the horizon.
 
Albert’s eyes followed the aim of his bony index finger, falling on the outline of several low, misshapen lumps in the distance.

“Rooftown,” grunted the Doctor. “Home, sweet home.”

As they drew in closer, a squadron of tiny huts came into focus, constructed from empty milk jugs, rubber tires, and cardboard boxes, covered with blue plastic tarps; all huddled together in small, unregimented clusters, like a rag-tag army of silent, immobile blue hunchbacks.
 
Narrow streets traced enormous S’s through the settlement, snaking this way and that to avoid the random hovels that sprang up wherever a wayward architect had the urge to stack some debris and stretch a tarp.
 
There seemed to be no zoning laws in Rooftown and only one rule of urban development – that no two streets should run parallel to one another.

The Doctor led Albert along one of these streets, passing a long trickle of aimless, sad-eyed men and women.
 
It had never occurred to Albert that so many people had been arrested for Lifting, that so many were so sick.
 
Many of the shacks they passed had children playing out front; dirty, snot-nosed boys and girls with unmatched shoes and high-pitched voices that chased each other through the streets and shouted obscenities.
 
Albert wondered dazedly how many of them were actual Lifters and how many instead were first generation Roofers, born to Lifter parents, forced to live out the rest of their days in exile for the sins of their fathers.