Dyscountopia (29 page)

Mr. Edd made a sucking sound through his teeth.
 
“Albert, are you sure you’re okay?
 
The Sergeant didn’t hit you on the head too hard?”

 
“No!”
 
Albert pounded his fist against his knee.
 
“I’m reading things loud and clear, now.
 
I understand.
 
The world doesn’t have to be like this anymore.
 
We don’t have to go on pretending.”

Mr. Edd shook his head passively from side to side.
 
“I like this world, Albert.
 
I think that, with a little hard work, we’ve made it into a pretty good one….”

Albert sprang to his feet.
 
“Are you nuts?” he shouted.
 
“We’ve trapped it in a concrete shell.
 
We’ve caged it like an animal – an animal that eats up lifetimes and spits out flimsy, low-cost garbage.
 
We don’t make anyone’s lives better.
 
We don’t care about providing opportunity, about helping out the little guy, about making the world a better place – that’s all just shiny wrapping paper to help us peddle more junk.
 
All we care about is the bottom line.”

“It’s not about the bottom line,” Mr. Edd insisted.
 
“We’re serving the community, Albert.”
 

“Really?” Albert sneered, stabbing his finger downward.
 
“We throw our lives away on that floor, working for peanuts while you sit up here in your fancy office, doing crossword puzzles and chatting on the phone.
 
We’re forced to eat shit and like it, working day after day to bring up
your
profits, while you smile across your desk at us with those stupid goddamn big white teeth.
 
We struggle every minute to keep our heads above water while you drown us in a sea of motivational bullshit and useless fucking memos, just because you’re scared shitless that someone might forget for one goddamn second how incredibly fucking important you are.
 
You’re the devil, Barnaby!”

Mr. Edd cocked his head sideways.
 
“You didn’t find the memos helpful?”

“No!” Albert screamed maniacally, showering Mr. Edd’s desk with spittle.
 
“No, No, No, NO!
 
I didn’t find them helpful!
 
Not one bit fucking helpful!”

 
“Well, I’m sorry, Albert, but you can’t sell produce without memos.”

“Aren’t you hearing me?” Albert cried, white knuckled as he clutched the edge of the desk.
 
“Your memos are shit.
 
Produce is shit.
 
Omega-Mart
is shit.”

Mr. Edd sucked in his breath.
 
He pressed his lips together, eclipsing his radiant smile, and narrowed his eyes at the defiant man in front of him.
 
“Is that what you learned on the Planet Pog, Albert?”

Albert’s face drained.
 
He stumbled backward and fell into his chair.
 
“H-how do you know about that?” he whispered.

“It’s part of my job to know,” said Mr. Edd.
 
“I don’t just sit here writing memos, Albert, or doing crossword puzzles, despite what you might think.”
 
Mr. Edd suddenly became aware of the crossword puzzle in front of him, and casually slipped it into his desk drawer.
 
“I listen to things, Albert.
 
I watch things.
 
I
make sure that things keep running smoothly, that the world doesn’t all of a sudden stop spinning and drift off into space.
 
I make sure that people go on believing that what we do is important.
 
I maintain order, Albert.”
 
Mr. Edd was speaking in a way that Albert had never heard him speak before, like an entirely different person was channeling through his mouth from some secret part of his brain.
 
“Look around you, Albert.
 
No disease, no famine, no war – everyone gets to vote, even if it isn’t always counted, everyone gets to have an opinion, even if no one is really listening; almost no one has to worry that the police will come into their home in the middle of the night and steal them away from their family, and everyone has some chance, even if it’s only a small one, to improve their station if they’re willing to go along with the team.
 
For the first time in history, we have a
real
civilization.”

Albert gazed into Mr. Edd’s eyes, transfixed.
 
At last he was seeing through Omega-Mart’s smiling mask.
 
It was like being on the edge of a black hole, sneaking a peek at the mysteries of the universe.
 
It was too much.
 
He looked away.

 
“Purple,” he muttered, studying the carpet.
 
“Everywhere I go, I see purple.
 
I’m sick of purple.”

“What’s wrong with purple?” Mr. Edd asked him.
 
“I like purple.
 
I love purple.
 
It’s a happy color.”
 
He pointed a finger at Albert.
 
“You know what you should do, Albert?
 
Pick up a history book.
 
Pick one up and read it, if you can find one.
 
Read about the way people used to live, the way they lived for thousands and thousands of years, from one dark age to another.
 
Then tell me if there’s too much purple.
 
Tell me if there’s anything more precious in this world than a future we can rely on to never look like the past.”

Albert shrugged feebly.

“Relax, Albert,” Mr. Edd insisted, spreading his arms.
 
“Quit struggling.
 
We’ve arrived.
 
This is the pinnacle of history.
 
In the beginning there was only God, but in the end there is only us.
 
Omega-Mart.
 
Forever and ever.
 
Because honestly, Albert, I think it’s time for us all to accept that He’s never coming back.”
 

“I’m sorry you aren’t satisfied with that, but here we are.
 
For a long time, we’ve been free to choose what kind of world we want, free to choose from the choices we’re given, and we’ve chosen this one, Albert.
 
And as flawed as it is, as unfulfilling as you might find it, I can’t imagine a better one, can you?
 
What would it look like, Albert?
 
Pog?
 
Was that your brave new world?
 
Did you feel important in that fantasy place, finally?
 
Tell me, Albert – if
this
was the planet Pog, and all of us were Pogs, what kind of Pog would you be?”

Albert flinched, but didn’t look up.
 
He stared mutely at the carpet, knowing the answer and refusing to say it.
 

Had he been a Pog living on a Pog world, he would only have been one in a sea of millions, doomed to the shame of unconditional love, just as now he was only an average human on a human planet, not even tall enough to reach the highest branches of the highest trees.
 
Whatever had once been special about him was gone, left behind on an unlikely planet in the weary universe of his lonely mind, and he was only Albert Zim -- ex-floor manager, Grid Square 717, Produce, Alpha Quadrant.
 
He let out a long, slow sigh, and deflated in his chair.

“I hate you,” he whispered.

“Oh, don’t be that way, Albert,” said Mr. Edd, rising and approaching Albert’s sad husk.
 
He placed an affectionate hand on his shoulder, and when Albert looked up he saw that the man’s smile had returned.
 
Like a warm light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, it reassured him.
 
“Come on.”

Mr. Edd lifted Albert by his arm, letting the glue gun clatter to the floor, and led him gently toward the office door.
 
“I see now that I was wrong to fire you, Albert,” he said.
 
“It didn’t really solve anything; I should have known better.
 
But now I’m going to fix that mistake – there’s an opening in one of my departments, one that I think you’ll be perfect for.”

Albert looked up at him with tired eyes and slowly nodded as he shuffled out of the room.
 
“You have a Rhinocermoose in your sewer,” he murmured.

“I know,” said Mr. Edd.
 
“We’ve tried to poison it, but it just keeps coming back.”
 

The door shut quietly behind them.

 

 

****

 

The man in the uniform knocked on the purple door.
 
The hinges were shiny and new, like they’d just been replaced.
 
The door opened.

“Mrs. Zim?
 
Delivery for you.
 
Sign here.”

The woman in the doorway took the plastic stylus from the man’s hand, obviously going out of her way not to be friendly.
 
She scribbled her name on the green plastic screen in front of her, then gave the stylus back.

“Just a minute please.”
 
The man strode quickly to his delivery truck and pulled an oblong box from the back, hefting it over to the woman and depositing it at her feet.
 
“Have a nice day, ma’am.”

As the delivery man retreated to his truck, Mrs. Zim stared sourly down at the box.
 
Stamped on the top of it, in cold, black letters, were these five words:
Home Furnishing – This End Up
.
 

“’Bout time.”
 
She lifted it up and scooted it across the floor into her apartment, then swung the door shut behind her.

Inside, she began removing the contents of the box and arranging them on a conspicuously bare spot in the middle of her carpet.
  
Panels A and B.
 
Panels C and D.
 
Panel E and F.
 
Panel G.
 
One small metal screw driver.
 
Twelve bolts.
 
Eleven nuts.
 
She turned the box upside down and shook it.
 
Nothing else came out.

“Goddamn it.”
 
Mrs. Zim walked to the kitchen and opened a drawer, resourcefully digging through the contents until she produced a twelfth nut.
 
She returned to the living room and got to work, not bothering to look at the instructions.
 
Every year she’d ordered a new futon from Omega-Mart and put it together herself.
 
There was nothing different about this one.

When Mrs. Zim was finished, she took a step back and examined the product of her labor.
 
It was cold and gray and flaccid.
 
It stood quietly in the center of her carpet, dutifully awaiting a long year of drudgery, demanding no thought from the observer; evoking no emotion.
 
Whatever it had once been, it was now simply the sum of its parts, a purely serviceable thing destined to fade instantly from human memory without leaving behind so much as a blemish.
 
It would be used until it could be used no longer, then speedily discarded.

Mrs. Zim studied it for a long while, then let out a satisfied grunt.
 
It was no work of art, but for $29.95 it was a bargain.
 
And everyone knew it.