The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1

by J. G. Ballard

  Three minutes later, as he accelerated down the two-mile link of straight highway to the next clover-leaf, he saw the second of the giant signs looming up into the sky before him.

  Changing down into the 40 m.p.h. lane, Franklin watched the great bulk of the second sign recede in his rear-view mirror. Although there were no graphic symbols among the wire coils covering the grilles, Hathaway's warnings still sounded in his ears. Without knowing why, he felt sure that the signs were not part of the airport approach system. Neither of them was in line with the principal air-lines. To justify the expense of siting them in the centre of the expressway - the second sign required elaborate angled buttresses to support it on the narrow island obviously meant that their role related in some way to the traffic streams.

  Two hundred yards away was a roadside auto-mart, and Franklin abruptly remembered that he needed some cigarettes. Swinging the car down the entrance ramp, he joined the queue passing the self-service dispenser at the far end of the rank. The auto-mart was packed with cars, each of the five purchasing ranks lined with tired-looking men hunched over their wheels.

  Inserting his coins (paper money was no longer in circulation, unmanageable by the automats) he took a carton from the dispenser. This was the only brand of cigarettes available - in fact there was only one brand of everything though giant economy packs were an alternative. Moving off, he opened the dashboard locker.

  Inside, still sealed in their wrappers, were three other cartons.

  A strong fish-like smell pervaded the house when he reached home, steaming out from the oven in the kitchen. Sniffing it uneagerly, Franklin took off his coat and hat. His wife was crouched over the TV set in the lounge. An announcer was dictating a stream of numbers, and Judith scribbled them down on a pad, occasionally cursing under her breath. 'What a muddle!' she snapped. 'He was talking so quickly I took only a few things down.'

  'Probably deliberate,' Franklin commented. 'A new panel game?'

  Judith kissed him on the cheek, discreetly hiding the ashtray loaded with cigarette butts and chocolate wrappings. 'Hello, darling, sorry not to have a drink ready for you. They've started this series of Spot Bargains, they give you a selection of things on which you get a ninety per cent trade-in discount at the local stores, if you're in the right area and have the right serial numbers. It's all terribly complicated.'

  'Sounds good, though. What have you got?'

  Judith peered at her checklist. 'Well, as far as I can see the only thing is the infra-red barbecue spit. But we have to be there before eight o'clock tonight. It's seven thirty already.'

  'Then that's out. I'm tired, angel, I need something to eat.' When Judith started to protest he added firmly: 'Look, I don't want a new infra-red barbecue spit, we've only had this one for two months. Damn it, it's not even a different model.'

  'But, darling, don't you see, it makes it cheaper if you keep buying new ones. We'll have to trade ours in at the end of the year anyway, we signed the contract, and this way we save at least five pounds. These Spot Bargains aren't just a gimmick, you know. I've been glued to that set all day.' A note of irritation had crept into her voice, but Franklin stood his ground, doggedly ignoring the clock.

  'Right, we lose five pounds. It's worth it.' Before she could remonstrate he said: 'Judith, please, you probably took the wrong number down anyway.' As she shrugged and went over to the bar he called: 'Make it a stiff one. I see we have health foods on the menu.'

  'They're good for you, darling. You know you can't live on ordinary foods all the time. They don't contain any proteins or vitamins. You're always saying we ought to be like people in the old days and eat nothing but health foods.'

  'I would, but they smell so awful.' Franklin lay back, nose in the glass of whisky, gazing at the darkened skyline outside.

  A quarter of a mile away, gleaming out above the roof of the neighbourhood supermarket, were the five red beacon lights. Now and then, as the headlamps of the Spot Bargainers swung up across the face of the building, he could see the massive bulk of the sign clearly silhouetted against the evening sky.

  'Judith!' He went into the kitchen and took her over to the window. 'That sign, just behind the supermarket. When did they put it up?'

  'I don't know.' Judith peered at him. 'Why are you so worried, Robert? Isn't it something to do with the airport?'

  Franklin stared at the dark hull of the sign. 'So everyone probably thinks.'

  Carefully he poured his whisky into the sink.

  After parking his car on the supermarket apron at seven o'clock the next morning, Franklin carefully emptied his pockets and stacked the coins in the dashboard locker. The supermarket was already busy with early morning shoppers and the line of thirty turnstiles clicked and slammed. Since the introduction of the '24-hour spending day' the shopping complex was never closed. The bulk of the shoppers were discount buyers, housewives contracted to make huge volume purchases of food, clothing and appliances against substantial overall price cuts, and forced to drive around all day from supermarket to supermarket, frantically trying to keep pace with their purchase schedules and grappling with the added incentives inserted to keep the schemes alive.

  Many of the women had teamed up, and as Franklin walked over to the entrance a pack of them charged towards their cars, stuffing their pay slips into their bags and shouting at each other. A moment later their cars roared off in a convoy to the next marketing zone.

  A large neon sign over the entrance listed the latest discount - a mere five per cent - calculated on the volume of turnover. The highest discounts, sometimes up to twenty-five per cent, were earned in the housing estates where junior white-collar workers lived. There, spending had a strong social incentive, and the desire to be the highest spender in the neighbourhood was given moral reinforcement by the system of listing all the names and their accumulating cash totals on a huge electric sign in the supermarket foyers. The higher the spender, the greater his contribution to the discounts enjoyed by others. The lowest spenders were regarded as social criminals, free-riding on the backs of others.

  Luckily this system had yet to be adopted in Franklin's neighbourhood - not because the Professional men and their wives were able to exercise more discretion, but because their higher incomes allowed them to contract into more expensive discount schemes operated by the big department stores in the city.

  Ten yards from the entrance Franklin paused, looking up at the huge metal sign mounted in an enclosure at the edge of the car park. Unlike the other signs and hoardings that proliferated everywhere, no attempt had been made to decorate it, or disguise the gaunt bare rectangle of riveted steel mesh. Power lines wound down its sides, and the concrete surface of the car park was crossed by a long scar where a cable had been sunk.

  Franklin strolled along. Fifty feet from the sign he stopped and turned, realizing that he would be late for the hospital and needed a new carton of cigarettes. A dim but powerful humming emanated from the transformers below the sign, fading as he retraced his steps to the supermarket.

  Going over to the automats in the foyer, he felt for his change, then whistled sharply when he remembered why he had delierate1y emptied his pockets.

  'Hathaway!' he said, loudly enough for two shoppers to staie at him. Reluctant to look directly at the sign, he watched its reflection in one of the glass door-panes, so that any subliminal message would be reversed.

  Almost certainly he had received two distinct signals - 'Keep Away' and 'Buy Cigarettes'. The people who normally parked their cars along the perimeter of the apron were avoiding the area under the enclosure, the cars describing a loose semi-circle fifty feet around it.

  He turned to the janitor sweeping out the foyer. 'What's that sign for?'

  The man leaned on his broom, gazing dully at the sign. 'No idea,' he said. 'Must be something to do with the airport.' He had a fresh cigarette in his mouth, but his right hand reached to his hip pocket and pulled out a pack. He drummed the second cigarette absently on his thumbn
ail as Franklin walked away.

  Everyone entering the supermarket was buying cigarettes.

  ***

  Cruising quietly along the 40 m.p.h. lane, Franklin began to take a closer interest in the landscape around him. Usually he was either too tired or too preoccupied to do more than think about his driving, but now he examined the expressway methodically, scanning the roadside cafs for any smaller versions of the new signs. A host of neon displays covered the doorways and windows, but most of them seemed innocuous, and he turned his attention to the larger billboards erected along the open stretches of the expressway. Many of these were as high as four-storey houses, elaborate three-dimensional devices in which giant housewives with electric eyes and teeth jerked and postured around their ideal kitchens, neon flashes exploding from their smiles.

  The areas on either side of the expressway were wasteland, continuous junkyards filled with cars and trucks, washing machines and refrigerators, all perfectly workable but jettisoned by the economic pressure of the succeeding waves of discount models. Their intact chrome hardly tarnished, the metal shells and cabinets glittered in the sunlight. Nearer the city the billboards were sufficiently close together to hide them but now and then, as he slowed to approach one of the flyovers, Franklin caught a glimpse of the huge pyramids of metal, gleaming silently like the refuse grounds of some forgotten El Dorado.

  That evening Hathaway was waiting for him as he came down the hospital steps. Franklin waved him across the court, then led the way quickly to his car.

  'What's the matter, Doctor?' Hathaway asked as Franklin wound up the windows and glanced around the lines of parked cars. 'Is someone after you?'

  Franklin laughed sombrely. 'I don't know. I hope not, but if what you say is right, I suppose there is.'

  Hathaway leaned back with a chuckle, propping one knee up on the dashboard. 'So you've seen something, Doctor, after all.'

  'Well, I'm not sure yet, but there's just a chance you may be right. This morning at the Fairlawne supermarket...' He broke off, uneasily remembering the huge black sign and the abrupt way in which he had turned back to the supermarket as he approached it, then described his encounter.

  Hathaway nodded. 'I've seen the sign there. It's big, but not as big as some that are going up. They're building them everywhere now. All over the city. What are you going to do, Doctor?'

  Franklin gripped the wheel tightly. Hathaway's thinly veiled amusement irritated him. 'Nothing, of course. Damn it, it may be just auto-suggestion, you've probably got me imagining - '

  Hathaway sat up with a jerk. 'Don't be absurd, Doctor! If you can't believe your own senses what chance have you left? They're invading your brain, if you don't defend yourself they'll take it over completely! We've got to act now, before we're all paralysed.'

  Wearily Franklin raised one hand to restrain him. 'Just a minute. Assuming that these signs are going up everywhere, what would be their object? Apart from wasting the enormous amount of capital invested in all the other millions of signs and billboards, the amounts of discretionary spending power still available must be infinitesimal. Some of the present mortgage and discount schemes reach half a century ahead. A big trade war would be disastrous.'

  'Quite right, Doctor,' Hathaway rejoined evenly, 'but you're forgetting one thing. What would supply that extra spending power? A big increase in production. Already they've started to raise the working day from twelve hours to fourteen. In some of the appliance plants around the city Sunday working is being introduced as a norm. Can you visualize it, Doctor - a seven-day week, everyone with at least three jobs.'

  Franklin shook his head. 'People won't stand for it.'

  'They will. Within the last twenty-five years the gross national product has risen by fifty per cent, but so have the average hours worked. Ultimately we'll all be working and spending twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No one will dare refuse. Think what a slump would mean - millions of lay-offs, people with time on their hands and nothing to spend it on. Real leisure, not just time spent buying things,' He seized Franklin by the shoulder. 'Well, Doctor, are you going to join me?'

  Franklin freed himself. Half a mile away, partly hidden by the fourstorey bulk of the Pathology Department, was the upper half of one of the giant signs, workmen still crawling across its girders. The airlines over the city had deliberately been routed away from the hospital, and the sign obviously had no connection with approaching aircraft.

  'Isn't there a prohibition on - what did they call it - subliminal living? How can the unions accept it?'

  'The fear of a slump. You know the new economic dogmas. Unless output rises by a steady inflationary five per cent the economy is stagnating. Ten years ago increased efficiency alone would raise output, but the advantages there are minimal now and only one thing is left. More work. Subliminal advertising will provide the spur.'

  'What are you planning to do?'

  'I can't tell you, Doctor, unless you accept equal responsibility for it.'

  'That sounds rather Quixotic,' Franklin commented. 'Tilting at windmills. You won't be able to chop those things down with an axe.'

  'I won't try.' Hathaway opened the door. 'Don't wait too long to make up your mind, Doctor. By then it may not be yours to make up.' With a wave he was gone.

  On the way home Franklin's scepticism returned. The idea of the conspiracy was preposterous, and the economic arguments were too plausible. As usual, though, there had been a hook in the soft bait Hathaway dangled before him - Sunday working. His own consultancy had been extended into Sunday morning with his appointment as visiting factory doctor to one of the automobile plants that had started Sunday shifts. But instead of resenting this incursion into his already meagre hours of leisure he had been glad. For one frightening reason - he needed the extra income.

  Looking out over the lines of scurrying cars, he noticed that at least a dozen of the great signs had been erected along the expressway. As Hathaway had said, more were going up everywhere, rearing over the supermarkets in the housing developments like rusty metal sails.

  Judith was in the kitchen when he reached home, watching the TV programme on the hand-set over the cooker. Franklin climbed past a big cardboard carton, its seals still unbroken, which blocked the doorway, kissed her on the cheek as she scribbled numbers down on her pad. The pleasant odour of pot-roast chicken - or, rather a gelatine dummy of a chicken fully flavoured and free of any toxic or nutritional properties mollified his irritation at finding her still playing the Spot Bargains.

  He tapped the carton with his foot. 'What's this?'

  'No idea, darling, something's always coming these days, I can't keep up with it all.' She peered through the glass door at the chicken - an economy twelve-pounder, the size of a turkey, with stylized legs and wings and an enormous breast, most of which would be discarded at the end of the meal (there were no dogs or cats these days, the crumbs from the rich man's table saw to that) - and then glanced at him pointedly.

  'You look rather worried, Robert. Bad day?'

  Franklin murmured noncommittally. The hours spent trying to detect false clues in the faces of the Spot Bargain announcers had sharpened Judith's perceptions. He felt a pang of sympathy for the legion of husbands similarly outmatched.

  'Have you been talking to that crazy beatnik again?'

  'Hathaway? As a matter of fact I have. He's not all that crazy.' He stepped backwards into the carton, almost spilling his drink. 'Well, what is this thing? As I'll be working for the next fifty Sundays to pay for it I'd like to find out.'

  He searched the sides, finally located the label. 'A TV set? Judith, do we need another one? We've already got three. Lounge, dining-room and the hand-set. What's the fourth for?'

  'The guest-room, dear, don't get so excited. We can't leave a hand-set in the guest-room, it's rude. I'm trying to economize, but four TV sets is the bare minimum. All the magazines say so.'

  'And three radios?' Franklin stared irritably at the carton. 'If we do ii1vite a
guest here how much time is he going to spend alone in his room watching television? Judith, we've got to call a halt. It's not as if these things were free, or even cheap. Anyway, television is a total waste of time. There's only one programme. It's ridiculous to have four sets.'

  'Robert, there are four channels.'

  'But only the commercials are different.' Before Judith could reply the telephone rang. Franklin lifted the kitchen receiver, listened to the gabble of noise that poured from it. At first he wondered whether this was some offbeat prestige commercial, then realized it was Hathaway in a manic swing.

  'Hathaway!' he shouted back. 'Relax, for God's sake! What's the matter now?'

  '- Doctor, you'll have to believe me this time. I climbed on to one of the islands with a stroboscope, they've got hundreds of high-speed shutters blasting away like machine-guns straight into people's faces and they can't see a thing, it's fantastic! The next big campaign's going to be cars and TV sets, they're trying to swing a two-month model change can you imagine it, Doctor, a new car every two months? God Almighty, it's just - '

  Franklin waited impatiently as the five-second commercial break cut in (all telephone calls were free, the length of the commercial extending with range - for long-distance calls the ratio of commercial to conversation was as high as 10:1, the participants desperately trying to get a word in edgeways between the interminable interruptions), but just before it ended he abruptly put the telephone down, then removed the receiver from the cradle.

  Judith came over and took his arm. 'Robert, what's the matter? You look terribly strained.'

  Franklin picked up his drink and walked through into the lounge. 'It's just Hathaway. As you say, I'm getting a little too involved with him. He's starting to prey on my mind.'