Dyscountopia (3 page)

“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.”

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.