How We Got in Town and out Again

by Jonathan Lethem

  How We Got in Town and out Again

  When we first saw somebody near the mall Gloria and I looked around for sticks. We were going to rob them if they were few enough. The mall was about five miles out of the town we were headed for, so nobody would know. But when we got closer Gloria saw their vans and said they were scapers. I didn’t know what that was, but she told me.

  It was summer. Two days before this Gloria and I had broken out of a pack of people that had food but we couldn’t stand their religious chanting anymore. We hadn’t eaten since then.

  “So what do we do?” I said.

  “You let me talk,” said Gloria.

  “You think we could get into town with them?”

  “Better than that,” she said. “Just keep quiet.”

  I dropped the piece of pipe I’d found and we walked in across the parking lot. This mall was long past being good for finding food anymore but the scapers were taking out folding chairs from a store and strapping them on top of their vans. There were four men and one woman.

  “Hey,” said Gloria.

  Two guys were just lugs and they ignored us and kept lugging. The woman was sitting in the front of the van. She was smoking a cigarette.

  The other two guys turned. This was Kromer and Fearing, but I didn’t know their names yet.

  “Beat it,” said Kromer. He was a tall squinty guy with a gold tooth. He was kind of worn but the tooth said he’d never lost a fight or slept in a flop. “We’re busy,” he said.

  He was being reasonable. If you weren’t in a town you were nowhere. Why talk to someone you met nowhere?

  But the other guy smiled at Gloria. He had a thin face and a little mustache. “Who are you?” he said. He didn’t look at me.

  “I know what you guys do,” Gloria said. “I was in one before.”

  “Oh?” said the guy, still smiling.

  “You’re going to need contestants,” she said.

  “She’s a fast one,” this guy said to the other guy. “I’m Fearing,” he said to Gloria.

  “Fearing what?” said Gloria.

  “Just Fearing.”

  “Well, I’m just Gloria.”

  “That’s fine,” said Fearing. “This is Tommy Kromer. We run this thing. What’s your little friend’s name?”

  “I can say my own name,” I said. “I’m Lewis.”

  “Are you from the lovely town up ahead?”

  “Nope,” said Gloria. ‘We’re headed there.”

  “Getting in exactly how?” said Fearing.

  “Anyhow,” said Gloria, like it was an answer. “With you, now.”

  “That’s assuming something pretty quick.”

  “Or we could go and say how you ripped off the last town and they sent us to warn about you,” said Gloria.

  “Fast,” said Fearing again, grinning, and Kromer shook his head. They didn’t look too worried.

  “You ought to want me along,” said Gloria. “I’m an attraction.”

  “Can’t hurt,” said Fearing.

  Kromer shrugged, and said, “Skinny, for an attraction.”

  “Sure, I’m skinny,” she said. “That’s why me and Lewis ought to get something to eat.”

  Fearing stared at her. Kromer was back to the van with the other guys.

  “Or if you can’t feed us — ” started Gloria.

  “Hold it, sweetheart. No more threats.”

  “We need a meal.”

  “We’ll eat something when we get in,” Fearing said. “You and Lewis can get a meal if you’re both planning to enter.”

  “Sure,” she said. “We’re gonna enter—right, Lewis?”

  I knew to say right.

  The town militia came out to meet the vans, of course. But they seemed to know the scapers were coming, and after Fearing talked to them for a couple of minutes they opened up the doors and had a quick look then waved us through. Gloria and I were in the back of a van with a bunch of equipment and one of the lugs, named Ed. Kromer drove. Fearing drove the van with the woman in it. The other lug drove the last one alone.

  I’d never gotten into a town in a van before, but I’d only gotten in two times before this anyway. The first time by myself, just by creeping in, the second because Gloria went with a militia guy.

  Towns weren’t so great anyway. Maybe this would be different.

  We drove a few blocks and a guy flagged Fearing down. He came up to the window of the van and they talked, then went back to his car, waving at Kromer on his way. Then we followed him.

  “What’s that about?” said Gloria.

  “Gilmartin’s the advance man,” said Kromer. “I thought you knew everything.”

  Gloria didn’t talk. I said, “What’s an advance man?”

  “Gets us a place, and the juice we need,” said Kromer. “Softens the town up. Gets people excited.”

  It was getting dark. I was pretty hungry, but I didn’t say anything. Gilmartin’s car led us to this big building shaped like a boathouse only it wasn’t near any water. Kromer said it used to be a bowling alley.

  The lugs started moving stuff and Kromer made me help. The building was dusty and empty inside, and some of the lights didn’t work. Kromer said just to get things inside for now. He drove away one of the vans and came back and we unloaded a bunch of little cots that Gilmartin the advance man had rented, so I had an idea where I was going to be sleeping. Apart from that it was stuff for the contest. Computer cables and plastic spacesuits, and loads of televisions.

  Fearing took Gloria and they came back with food, fried chicken and potato salad, and we all ate. I couldn’t stop going back for more but nobody said anything. Then I went to sleep on a cot. No one was talking to me. Gloria wasn’t sleeping on a cot. I think she was with Fearing.

  Gilmartin the advance man had really done his work. The town was sniffing around first thing in the morning. Fearing was out talking to them when I woke up. “Registration begins at noon, not a minute sooner,” he was saying. “Beat the lines and stick around. We’ll be serving coffee. Be warned, only the fit need apply—our doctor will be examining you, and he’s never been fooled once. It’s Darwinian logic, people. The future is for the strong. The meek will have to inherit the here and now.”

  Inside, Ed and the other guy were setting up the gear. They had about thirty of those wired-up plastic suits stretched out in the middle of the place, and so tangled up with cable and little wires that they were like husks of fly bodies in a spiderweb.

  Under each of the suits was a light metal frame, sort of like a bicycle with a seat but no wheels, but with a headrest too. Around the web they were setting up the televisions in an arc facing the seats. The suits each had a number on the back, and the televisions had numbers on top that matched.

  When Gloria turned up she didn’t say anything to me but she handed me some donuts and coffee.

  “This is just the start,” she said, when she saw my eyes get big. “We’re in for three squares a day as long as this thing lasts. As long as we last, anyway.”

  We sat and ate outside where we could listen to Fearing. He went on and on. Some people were lined up like he said. I didn’t blame them since Fearing was such a talker. Others listened and just got nervous or excited and went away, but I could tell they were coming back later, at least to watch. When we finished the donuts Fearing came over and told us to get on line too.

  “We don’t have to,” said Gloria.

  “Yes, you do,” said Fearing.

  On line we met Lane. She said she was twenty like Gloria but she looked younger. She could have been sixteen, like me.

  “You ever do this before?” asked Gloria.

  Lane shook her head. “You?” />
  “Sure,” said Gloria. “You ever been out of this town?”

  “A couple of times,” said Lane. “When I was a kid. I’d like to now.”

  “Why?”

  “I broke up with my boyfriend.”

  Gloria stuck out her lip, and said, “But you’re scared to leave town, so you’re doing this instead.”

  Lane shrugged.

  I liked her, but Gloria didn’t.

  The doctor turned out to be Gilmartin the advance man. I don’t think he was a real doctor, but he listened to my heart. Nobody ever did that before, and it gave me a good feeling.

  Registration was a joke, though. It was for show. They asked a lot of questions but they only sent a couple of women and one guy away, Gloria said for being too old. Everyone else was okay, despite how some of them looked pretty hungry, just like me and Gloria. This was a hungry town. Later I figured out that’s part of why Fearing and Kromer picked it. You’d think they’d want to go where the money was, but you’d be wrong.

  After registration they told us to get lost for the afternoon. Everything started at eight o’clock.

  We walked around downtown but almost all the shops were closed. All the good stuff was in the shopping center and you had to show a town ID card to get in and me and Gloria didn’t have those.

  So, like Gloria always says, we killed time since time was what we had.

  The place looked different. They had spotlights pointed from on top of the vans and Fearing was talking through a microphone. There was a banner up over the doors. I asked Gloria and she said, “Scape-Athon.” Ed was selling beer out of a cooler and some people were buying, even though he must have just bought it right there in town for half the price he was selling at. It was a hot night. They were selling tickets but they weren’t letting anybody in yet. Fearing told us to get inside.

  Most of the contestants were there already. Anne, the woman from the van, was there, acting like any other contestant. Lane was there too and we waved at each other. Gilmartin was helping everybody put on the suits. You had to get naked but nobody seemed to mind. Just being contestants made it all right, like we were invisible to each other.

  “Can we be next to each other?” I said to Gloria.

  “Sure, except it doesn’t matter,” she said. “We won’t be able to see each other inside.”

  “Inside where?” I said.

  “The scapes,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  Gloria got me into my suit. It was plastic with wiring everywhere and padding at my knees and wrists and elbows and under my arms and in my crotch. I tried on the mask but it was heavy and I saw nobody else was wearing theirs so I kept it off until I had to. Then Gilmartin tried to help Gloria but she said she could do it herself.

  So there we were, standing around half naked and dripping with cable in the big empty lit-up bowling alley, and then suddenly Fearing and his big voice came inside and they let the people in and the lights went down and it all started.

  “Thirty-two young souls ready to swim out of this world, into the bright shiny future,” went bright shiny Fearing. “The question is, how far into that future will their bodies take them? New worlds are theirs for the taking—a cornucopia of scapes to boggle and amaze and gratify the senses. These lucky kids will be immersed in an ocean of data overwhelming to their undernourished sensibilities — we’ve assembled a really brilliant collection of environments for them to explore — and you’ll be able to see everything they see, on the monitors in front of you. But can they make it in the fast lane? How long can they ride the wave? Which of them will prove able to outlast the others, and take home the big prize — one thousand dollars? That’s what we’re here to find out.”

  Gilmartin and Ed were snapping everybody into their masks and turning all the switches to wire us up and getting us to lie down on the frames. It was comfortable on the bicycle seat with your head on the headrest and a belt around your waist. You could move your arms and legs like you were swimming, the way Fearing said. I didn’t mind putting on the mask now because the audience was making me nervous. A lot of them I couldn’t see because of the lights, but I could tell they were there, watching.

  The mask covered my ears and eyes. Around my chin there was a strip of wire and tape. Inside it was dark and quiet at first except Fearing’s voice was still coming into the earphones.

  “The rules are simple. Our contestants get a thirty-minute rest period every three hours. These kids’ll be well fed, don’t worry about that. Our doctor will monitor their health. You’ve heard the horror stories, but we’re a class outfit; you’ll see no horrors here. The kids earn the quality care we provide one way: continuous, waking engagement with the datastream. We’re firm on that. To sleep is to die — you can sleep on your own time, but not ours. One lapse, and you’re out of the game — them’s the rules.”

  The earphones started to hum. I wished I could reach out and hold Gloria’s hand, but she was too far away.

  “They’ll have no help from the floor judges, or one another, in locating the perceptual riches of cyberspace. Some will discover the keys that open the doors to a thousand worlds, others will bog down in the antechamber to the future. Anyone caught coaching during rest periods will be disqualified — no warnings, no second chances.”

  Then Fearing’s voice dropped out, and the scapes started.

  I was in a hallway. The walls were full of drawers, like a big cabinet that went on forever. The drawers had writing on them that I ignored. First I couldn’t move except my head, then I figured out how to walk, and just did that for a while. But I never got anywhere. It felt like I was walking in a giant circle, up the wall, across the ceiling, and then back down the other wall.

  So I pulled open a drawer. It only looked big enough to hold some pencils or whatever but when I pulled, it opened like a door and I went through.

  “Welcome to Intense Personals,” said a voice. There was just some colors to look at. The door closed behind me. “You must be eighteen years of age or older to use this service. To avoid any charges, please exit now.”

  I didn’t exit because I didn’t know how. The space with colors was kind of small except it didn’t have any edges. But it felt small.

  “This is the main menu. Please reach out and make one of the following selections: women seeking men, men seeking women, women seeking women, men seeking men, or alternatives.”

  Each of them was a block of words in the air. I reached up and touched the first one.

  “After each selection touch one to play the recording again, two to record a message for this person, or three to advance to the next selection. You may touch three at anytime to advance to the next selection, or four to return to the main menu.”

  Then a woman came into the colored space with me. She was dressed up and wearing lipstick.

  “Hi, my name is Kate,” she said. She stared like she was looking through my head at something behind me, and poked at her hair while she talked. “I live in San Francisco. I work in the financial district, as a personnel manager, but my real love is the arts, currently painting and writing—”

  “How did you get into San Francisco?” I said.

  “ — just bought a new pair of hiking boots and I’m hoping to tackle Mount Tam this weekend,” she said, ignoring me.

  “I never met anyone from there,” I said.

  “ — looking for a man who’s not intimidated by intelligence,” she went on. “It’s important that you like what you do, like where you are. I also want someone who’s confident enough that I can express my vulnerability. You should be a good listener—”

  I touched three. I can read numbers.

  Another woman came in, just like that. This one was as young as Gloria, but kind of soft-looking.

  “I continue to ask myself why in the heck I’m doing this personals thing,” she said, sighing. “But I know the reason — I want to date. I’m new to the San Francisco area. I like to go to the theater, but I’m really open-minded. I was
born and raised in Chicago, so I think I’m a little more East Coast than West. I’m fast-talking and cynical. I guess I’m getting a little cynical about these ads, the sky has yet to part, lightning has yet to strike—”

  I got rid of her, now that I knew how.

  “—I have my own garden and landscape business—”

  “—someone who’s fun, not nerdy—”

  “— I’m tender, I’m sensuous—”

  I started to wonder how long ago these women were from. I didn’t like the way they were making me feel, sort of guilty and bullied at the same time. I didn’t think I could make any of them happy the way they were hoping but I didn’t think I was going to get a chance to try, anyway.

  It took pretty long for me to get back out into the hallway. From then on I paid more attention to how I got into things.

  The next drawer I got into was just about the opposite. All space and no people. I was driving an airplane over almost the whole world, as far as I could tell. There was a row of dials and switches under the windows but it didn’t mean anything to me. First I was in the mountains and I crashed a lot, and that was dull because a voice would lecture me before I could start again, and I had to wait. But then I got to the desert and I kept it up without crashing much. I just learned to say “no” whenever the voice suggested something different like “engage target” or “evasive action.” I wanted to fly a while, that’s all. The desert looked good from up there, even though I’d been walking around in deserts too often.

  Except that I had to pee I could have done that forever. Fearing’s voice broke in, though, and said it was time for the first rest period.

  “ — still fresh and eager after their first plunge into the wonders of the future,” Fearing was saying to the people in the seats. The place was only half full. “Already this world seems drab by comparison. Yet, consider the irony, that as their questing minds grow accustomed to these splendors, their bodies will begin to rebel —”

  Gloria showed me how to unsnap the cables so I could walk out — of the middle of all that stuff still wearing the suit, leaving the mask behind. Everybody lined up for the bathroom. Then we went to the big hall in the back where they had the cots, but nobody went to sleep or anything. I guessed we’d all want to next time, but right now I was too excited and so was everybody else. Fearing just kept talking like us taking a break was as much a part of the show as anything else.