Dyscountopia (25 page)

The officer quietly considered his book, apparently taking the hint.
 
The Sergeant returned to the task at hand, methodically working the oil into all the nooks and crannies of her weapon.

Travis cleared his throat.
 
“Did you know that the bloodhound is the only animal whose testimony is admissible in a court of law?”

“That’s it.”
 
Alexander turned on him, leveling her weapon at his face.
 
“Just one more piece of animal trivia.
 
See what happens.”

Travis gazed coolly down the barrel of her gun.
 
“It takes forty minutes to hard boil an ostrich egg,” he said blandly.

Alexander’s finger tickled the trigger.

A sudden alarm blared above their heads and the panels lit up like a Winter Day parade. The main viewer sputtered and illuminated, showing an image of a janitor on a bicycle, peddling wildly through a maze of refrigerators, deep freezers, and washing machines.
 
A nearby printer whirred into action, spitting pages into the Sergeant’s waiting hand.

“Playland…,” she muttered rapidly, considering the tiny letters in front of her.
 
“Threat-Con Orange…
 
Model 742 Duffy Little Big Man Dirt Bike.”

She folded the pages neatly in half and thrust them into the pocket of her uniform. She snatched the book from Travis’ grip and flung it across the room.
 

“Saddle the scooters and assemble the team,” she cried exultantly.
 
“We’ve got a perp.”

****

Albert glanced over his shoulder.
 
The relentless green shuttle was there, pursuing.

Albert pedaled faster.
 
The shuttle increased its speed, the hum of its electrical engine tickling Albert’s ear drum as it grew in intensity.
 
He pedaled as fast as his legs would rotate, knowing it was futile, knowing that the taxi could easily outrun him, knowing that whoever sat inside the shuttle was toying with him and that soon the vehicle would overtake him, dash the bicycle to pieces and crush him under those spotless whitewalls.

Faster.
 
Faster.
 
Faster.
 
And yet the gap did not widen between Albert and the assassin taxi.
 
Sweat cascaded from his receding hairline, dripping into his eyes and burning them.
 
His cholesterol choked arteries threatened to burst at the seams.
 
Unwavering, the taxi maintained its precise distance from the bicycle’s back tire.
 
Seven and a half feet.

Albert swerved left.
 
The taxi swerved left.

Albert swerved right.
 
The taxi swerved right.

His aching calf-muscles spasmed and seized.
 
His feet slipped free and the pedals spun wildly, gashing his shins.
 
The bicycle slowed.

The taxi decelerated.

Desperately, Albert’s feet sought purchase.
 
He regained his footing and pedaled with all his strength.

The taxi accelerated.

With that final spurt of energy, Albert’s muscles ceased responding to his commands.
 
He slumped breathless over the handlebars.
 
His legs dangling uselessly as the bicycle drifted, slower and slower.
 
The taxi compensated, maintaining a precise distance of seven and a half feet from Albert’s back tire, stopping behind him as the bike came gradually to a halt.
 
In a final act of defiance, Albert thrust the kickstand to the floor and stood up on wobbly legs to face the thing.
 
It hummed merrily at him, patiently waiting for the chase to resume.
 

Albert approached it hesitantly, peering through the porthole window, into the back seat.
 
Empty.

He walked round to the other side and the doors came silently open, inviting him to enter.
 
A scrap of purple cloth drifted down from the opening, landing lazily at his feet.
 
A decapitated otter.

Albert stooped to one knee and plucked up the scrap, recognizing it.
 
He peered into the calm, welcoming depths of the open shuttle, took a step forward, then again stepped back, sensing danger.

“Victor?”

He considered the scrap of cloth in his hand.

“Victor…”

He whispered again the name of his friend, knowing somehow that he was dead.
 
The taxi had gobbled him up, masticated him to nothingness.
 
With its capricious, shiny green maw, Omega-Mart had devoured its own devoted son; like a mighty titan swallowing its children one by one.
 
Doctor Zayus, Victor, Bobo*.
 
And how many more would die?
 
And how many others had died before now?
 
It wouldn’t stop until it killed them all; if not their flesh, then their souls.

It had been killing Albert slowly for a long time now.
 
It had murdered all the best parts of him and left behind a cheap salesman, a bean counter, a human abacus.
 
In another place and time what might he have been?
 
He could have created something maybe, given form to his imagination.
 
But his hands were never shown how to create.
 
His mind was never taught how to imagine.
 

All around him, the dreadful moaning of the damned echoed in the early morning darkness – phantom futons and cryptal credenzas formed of the broken teeth, tissue, bones, and dreams of those who came before him, creaking and snapping as they settled in the cool after-hours twilight; begging for acknowledgement, for accountability, foreshadowing the fate that lay in store for him.

His eyes fell to his bicycle, and Albert suddenly realized his crime.
 
LPT would come for him, were probably looking for him right now.
 
Albert had seen enough cop shows to know that.
 
They would seal the exits to Home Furnishing, surround him, hem him in.
 
They were good at what they did.
 
There would be no escape.

Albert lifted his eyes to the happy green shuttle, Omega-Mart’s agent of death.

“I recognize you,” he said to the guilty object.
 
“You owe me a trip home.”
 

(
*
Bobo was at home in his armchair at that very moment, working on his last banana, reading a twelve year old copy of Teen Weekly
.)

 

 

****

 

“Alright.
 
Look alive, people.
 
When he sees you, there’s no telling how he’ll react.
 
He’ll probably shit his pants and throw up his hands right away, but he might be a runner, maybe even a fighter.
 
Some of these guys kick and scream and bite when they’re cornered, so don’t conserve ammo.
 
Remember, he ain’t yours ‘til he’s glued.
 
Got it?
 
Good – now take your places.”

At Officer Travis’ order, the LPT strike force rushed forward into the aisle, a single cohesive mass of plastic armor and thumping boots, like human putty filling the gap between two towering walls of waffle irons and toaster ovens.
 
Sergeant Alexander looked on without expression, fighting a nervous stomach.

“Nice speech,” she quipped to Travis.
 
“You stay up all night writing that one?”

Travis shrugged.
 
“Can’t help it if I’m cursed with lots of experience.”

A barely perceptible wince.
 
“Remind me to kick you in the dick later,” she replied.
 

She stood firmly in the center of the aisle, her back straight as an arrow, her feet spread wide and rooted to the floor, struggling to appear confident.
 
What was she afraid of?
 
Did she doubt her ability?
 
Someone as young as her didn’t get to where she was without a rare sort of tenacity.
 
But God did not exist, she had always felt, unless he existed to spite her.
 
Like all others she was a victim of chance; there would always be some unknown variable outside her control.
 
If the wind did not blow her way today, no amount of training would prevent her from hitting a glass ceiling that could never be shattered, all her hopes and dreams from coming unraveled. So far chance had been kind.
 
It had certainly played its tricks on her, but had failed, for whatever purpose, to expose her frailty to the world.
 
As long as those around her saw her as fearless, ruthless, unbreakable, she could continue to play the part.
 
In all likelihood, this would be Albert Zim’s last day under the roof.
 
But if today wasn’t the day that unmasked her, then how many days would pass before it inevitably happened?

No, she told herself.
 
This kind of thinking was for losers.
 
Only two objects existed in the world today, diametrically opposed – herself and Albert Zim.
 
By the end of the day, one of them would be broken.

 
“Subject approaching our position.”
 
Travis stood behind her, studying the screen of his tiny handheld tracking unit.
 
Like every piece of inventory at Omega-Mart, Albert’s bike was equipped with a microscopic locating chip, set to activate upon the unlikely event of a theft.
 
“Five hundred meters…,” he warned.
 

Through the semi-fluorescent gloaming, Alexander fixed her distant gaze on the opposite end of the aisle.
 
The suspect would be rounding the bend any second.
 
She held an open palm above her head.
 
“Get ready!”
 

“Four hundred meters….” The men shifted nervously.
 

“Don’t fire until I give the order!”
 
she cried.

“Three hundred meters…. He’s nearing the turn.”

Alexander bit deep into her lip.

“Two hundred meters….”

In her minds eye she conjured a vision of the approaching target, a colorless face on a colorless screen.
 
Even as she’d glimpsed his fleeting image in the viewing room, she’d been struck with the uncomfortable notion that she’d seen him before.
 
Who was he?
 
What was he to her?

Nothing, she told herself.
 
A criminal.
 
A target.
 
A prize-winning fish.
 
Only the next tiny step on the staircase of a soaring career.
 
A means to an end.
 

And yet, where she should have felt nothing for this stranger but cold indifference, she found herself hating the man, as if he stood in the midst of a gathering crowd, pointing his finger at her, accusing her of all the dark things of which she knew she was guilty but could only face in the long, lonely, luminous nights that seemed to never end.
 
He knew her secret, even if he didn’t know he knew it, and so he had to suffer.

“Here he comes.”

The Sergeant became vaguely aware of the blood that trickled from her lip at the precise second that Albert Zim appeared around the corner.
 
Upon seeing the daunting human road-block before him for the first time, Albert did not falter, as all felt sure that he would.
 
He did not slow his pedaling.
 
He did not veer from his course.
 
He did not cry or scream or throw up his hands.
 
He only pedaled faster, his legs working round and round in a blur, his head bent forward against all logic.
 
The image was too insane not to be terrifying, and Alexander felt a flutter in her chest as she felt the men around her hesitate.
 
A tickling hum filled her ears, followed closely by the screech of white-walls on vinyl as a small green shuttle rounded the corner behind the madman, hurrying to close the gap between itself and that kamikaze bicyclist.
 
Seven and a half feet.

“Now, that’s something I haven’t seen before,” Officer Travis mumbled over her shoulder, and it suddenly dawned on her, too late, that Albert Zim was not going to stop.
 
She could already see the man’s insane red-cheeked rictus, like death’s head descending on her, delivering God’s vengeance for her unrepented sins.

“Fire, fire, FIRE!”
 
The words flooded from her mouth before she even remembered to say them.
 
In response, hot glue sprayed from the barrels of the assembled arsenal, splattering – splot! splot! splot! – against the shuttle’s spotless plexi-glass windshield, missing Albert Zim completely as he threw himself sideways from the seat of his stolen bike and hit the floor with a jarring thud, rolling aside at the last second as the bike disintegrated under the shuttle’s spinning tires.
 
Unable to correct its course in time, the shuttle exploded into the mass of human flesh and shiny rubberized plastic that choked the path ahead.

Screeeeeeeeeee!
 
Scaruuuuuuunch!

Bodies and objects went flying in all directions.
  
The shuttle vaporized a hapless floor scooter and jerked sideways into the shelf, disappearing under an avalanche of kitchen appliances.
 
All four tires screamed and smoked as it struggled to extricate itself, and the shaken bystanders were enveloped in a thick, foggy haze.

Blinking through the smokescreen, Alexander picked out the rising form of Albert Zim fifty feet away, bruised and addled but determined to be free.
 
She took shaky aim with her glue gun and fired, sending a steaming globule sailing through the air to explode at his feet, sticking the soles of his shoes to the floor and spattering hot glue on his bare arms and face.
 
Gritting his teeth against the searing pain, Albert leaned forward and tore at his laces.

“Don’t do it, punk!” the Sergeant shouted amidst the cries of lost and panicked officers, but even as she took aim again and fired, Albert leapt forward out of his boots and ducked the sticky projectile, darting through the fray.
 
He tugged a bent scooter up from the floor, then quickly mounted it and sped away, drawing wavy zig-zags down the aisle.

Sergeant Alexander took a deep breath, aimed, then squeezed the trigger a third time – a perfect shot.
 
The projectile caught the scooter’s single tire, instantly fixing it to the floor as the machine decelerated from 60 to 0 kilometers per hour in a tenth of a second.
 
Now a victim of the immutable laws of physics, Albert continued to travel forward, launching through the air and sailing twenty feet before he disappeared into a forest of standing lamps with a loud crashing of aluminum and glass.
 
Her weapon raised in a fighting posture, Alexander rushed to the position where she’d last seen the fleeing suspect, backed up by Officer Travis and few others who’d managed to regain their wits.
 
But by the time they’d cleared the distance, the only evidence of Albert’s presence was a tangle of bent lamps and smashed bulbs.
 
Albert Zim had escaped.

 

****

 

Fipfipfipfipfipfipfipfipfipfipfip.

Randall Johnson, Custodian 1
^st
Class, navigated the Z-Class 38C Turbo-matic Ride-able Wax-O-Maton deftly through the spacious aisles of Alpha Quad Sporting Goods, scooting it slowly across the floor like a hockey rink Zamboni, sweeping a swath of polished goodness in his wake.
 
He watched with satisfaction as the two enormous blue rotating disk-mops twirled in front of him, scattering dust and debris away beneath the shelves, to be hidden for all eternity from the sight of man.
 
It was true what everyone said – floor maintenance was the good life.
 
He could just lean back in his seat, listen to the forbiddenly semi-erotic lyrics of Lulu Fontaine in his plastic ear-bud, and watch the world go by.

“
Baby, baby, oooo, oooo.
 
Baby, baby, oooo, yeah
.”

Randall hadn’t always felt that way about floor maintenance.
 
When he’d graduated from the Custodial Academy at sixteen and been handed his first mop by a sour-faced, heavily moustached gentleman wearing a name-tag that said “Hello, my name is Zeke”, he’d thought his short life was already over.
 
But with a lot of hard work and stick-to-it-tiveness, Randall had climbed his way up through the ranks and eventually earned his Z-class heavy equipment license.
 
With his outstanding test scores, he was able to pick any job in the fleet.
 
But he didn’t even have to think about it – the 38C Turbo-matic Ride-able Wax-O-Maton was the only machine for him.

Fipfipfipfipfipfipfipfipfipfipfip.
 
Brrrrrrrrrrrump.

Randall powered down the Wax-O-Maton, swung his leg over the seat, and hopped to the floor, working his stiff joints.
 
He snatched a comic book from a nearby rack and pushed his way into the Men’s room.
 
He didn’t hurry in there; he had plenty of time to finish his rounds before Alpha Quad went back into full swing.
 
He read his borrowed comic book cover to cover, sang along to Lulu Fontaine, and dreamed of someday being promoted to Head Custodian.
 
Fifteen minutes later, he emerged from the men’s room and repeated, word for word, the famous last words of Dr. Robert Zayus.

“Oh, shit….”

A long polished trail led away across the floor to the west.
 
The Wax-O-Maton was nowhere to be found.

 

****

 

High atop the shelves of Automotive, Sergeant Alexander stood erect and determined, peering through her police-issue 20x magnification rubber-finished waterproof monocular, like a sea captain scanning the horizon for enemy vessels.
 
“Where the hell is he, Travis?
 
I don’t see him.”

Fipfipfipfipfipfipfipfipfipfipfip.
 

Nursing a strained neck, Officer Travis grumbled something inaudible under his breath.
 
He’d managed to recover his Uni-scooter, dented but functional, from the

wreckage of the mangled lamps.
 
It was parked at the bottom of the ladder now, next to the Sergeant’s own scooter.

“What’d you say, Travis?” the Sergeant shouted irritably.
 
“I can’t hear you over that damned machine.
 
For Christ sake, call maintenance and tell them to shut down until we’ve got the perp in custody, will you?”

“They won’t like it, Sarge,” Travis told her.
 
“Only a half-hour until Alpha Quad-
fipfipfipfip
.
 
And they-
fipfipfipfip-
to do, same as-
fipfipfipfip
.”

“What?”

 
“I said-
fipfipfipfip-
won’t like it!”
 
Travis cried.