Dyscountopia

  Pogs, thought Albert. Pogs, not squirrels. In his head he was surrounded by Pogs, all standing around him in a circle on their hind legs, distracted by the Doctor’s tête-à-tête with the darkness.

  “… none of your business what he’s paying me…. Pro bono, okay? Fucking Latin. Look it up….”

  “…smother him and take his shoes, huh? Is that the kind of reputation you want…?”

  “…something called professional pride. Ever hear of it? It’s what separates us from the animals…. “

  “…no. I didn’t call you an animal… I know you can use tools and have a 5000 word vocabulary. Bullshit! You’re drunk…”

  “…well, I’m sorry, but you are. You are. You’re a fucking CHIMP, okay?!”

  Time passed -- seconds, minutes, hours; it was impossible to tell -- before Albert awoke with a start and a cold, clammy hand gripped firmly over his mouth. A hovering blackness blotted out the stars above him. Albert screamed, but the cry reverberated uselessly back down into his throat, denied by the immovable hand.

  The blackness leaned forward, face to face with its helpless victim.

  Bobo.

  The chimpanzee put a finger to his lips, the universal sign for ‘shhhhhh’.

  Albert smelled alcohol on his breath, which somehow made the encounter even more unnerving. He tried to nod at his inebriated captor, but the back of his head was pinned firmly to the concrete, making any communication impossible.

  Bobo relaxed his grip and melted into the night. Albert listened after him, holding his breath. Soft whispers filled the darkness. Sharp, shapeless sentences without words. Somebody was out there.

  The Doctor?

  Albert looked for him. The old man lay breathing softly by the glowing embers of the fire, only feet away. Albert belly crawled to him, pulling himself with his elbows across the cold, hard roof.

  Whispers again from the dark, more animated now. Many different whispers, all at once.

  Albert pressed his lips to the Doctor’s ear and again smelled the odor of cheap booze. “Doctor?”

  He didn’t stir.

  “Doctor.” A whisper forced through clenched teeth.

  Zayus groaned. “Eh? What? Lemme alone. Sleepin’.”

  “I hear voices. Somebody’s out there.”

  “Yeah…? Who?”

  “I don’t know who. Not me. Not you. Not Bobo because he doesn’t talk.”

  The Doctor cracked an eyelid, mildly alert. “Right. Right.” He thought better of it and shut his eye again. “Don’t worry about them. Back to sleep.” He relaxed again into unconsciousness.

  Albert shook him roughly by the arm. “Them? Them who? Who them? Mayor McCheese’s men?”

  “Don’t think so”, said the Doctor. “Moonlighters, probably. Just Moonlighters.”

  “What?”

  An abrupt snore.

  Albert shook him again. “What’s a Moonlighter? Do they eat people?”

  Both of Dr. Zayus’ eyes popped open this time, fixing irritably on Albert. “Don’t be ridiculous, Zim. Moonlighters are just average people like you and me. Honest, hardworking citizens who supplement their income by sneaking up on unwary travelers in the moonlight, cutting their throats, and making off with their valuables.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  Zayus shrugged and forced back a phlegmy cough. “Lots of people Moonlight for a little extra dough. It isn’t anything to be ashamed of.”

  Albert stared quizzically down at him. “Have you done it?”

  The Doctor dragged himself up on one elbow and squinted into the night. “You know, I think my neighbor is a Moonlighter. I wonder if he’s out there….”

  Albert was struck cold. “They’re…. They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so.” The Doctor settled back down and shut his eyes, resting the back of his head on his hands. “Not unless they have their own genetically enhanced commando super-chimp.”

  Bloodcurdling screams, pregnant with horror and ridiculous amounts of pain, suddenly ripped through the night – high pitched cries like the screeching of a thousand cats all being slowly strangled to death at once. The agonized howls filled Albert’s senses, projecting vivid images of unspeakable human torment and suffering onto the unwilling screen of his delicate mind. Albert wanted to clap his hands over his ears but his arms were lead weights. He wanted to retch but his stomach was hiding in his shoes.

  And then it stopped.

  Albert tried not to whimper, tried to sniff back the tears in his eyes.

  “See?” said the Doctor. “Problem solved.”

  ****

  Almost a year had passed since she’d heard anything on the other side of the wall – a tire squeal, a gunshot, a screaming voice – anything but silence. The unbearable quiet of the night hounded her, gnawed at her bones, forced her to flee her apartment or face madness.

  She met him at a small café in Beta Quadrant, dressed in a ridiculous blue-sequined party dress that was three sizes too big, cinched in at the waist. He ordered the cheeseburger; she, the McRib. When she’d first seen him sitting alone at the hardened plastic table-and-chair assemblage, already sucking on a strawberry shake and being extra careful not to get any of it on his Ollie the Otter tie, her first impulse was to keep walking. She moved past him unnoticed to the side exit, only stopping as her hand fell upon the door rail. It was the loneliness that stopped her; the all-to-familiar emptiness of the world beyond the glass.

  She ate in large bites, tearing at her food so that she wouldn’t have to speak to him. He talked endlessly, about television and bowling and politics. He didn’t much resemble his picture on the web. That man had seemed humble and sophisticated and intelligent.

  “Let me tell you why I should be President,” he said.

  “This is what I’ll do someday when I’m the CEO of Omega-Mart,” he said.

  “Being a floor manager of a whole grid square is a big job,” he said.

  Strange how people got instantly more boring when you added sound.

  After dinner, he took her to the tree museum. She hadn’t been there since she was a small child, brought there by a father she didn’t know anymore. Just like clockwork, Silly Tie Man finally began to feign interest in her, asking insipid questions and making what she supposed he thought were clever remarks about her appearance, apparently convinced that a string of snappy one liners that he’d heard on TV, when combined with an army of musty papier-maché mock-ups of extinct vegetation, made a lethal combination for getting into a woman’s pants. To call him pathetic would have been an insult to pathetic people. She consoled herself with the knowledge that, if she’d wanted to, she could easily kill him and hide him in a stand of dusty firs nearby, then stage a daring escape. By the time they found his body she’d be – where? Where would she be? Where could she go?

  Instead, she let him put his arm around her, endured the stink of his rotten breath as he talked on and on about – what? Toys, she thought. What kind of grown man worked with toys?

  The museum itself was a sad place; an old, empty place that everyone had long ago stopped going to. It smelled like wet dog and old people. It was stuffy and hot. The docent, an ancient, stooped over man in a gray sweater, sat on a stool in the corner and eyed them like a predator, waiting to ensnare them with his encyclopedic knowledge of dead, trivial things should they be careless enough to wander too close. They avoided him. It was time to leave.

  She took Silly Tie Man by the hand and led him out as he watched her in uncertain anticipation, like a dog hoping for a table scrap. She hoped never to see him after tonight – he was an idiot. But for now, she needed him.

  She had sex with him that night in his tiny apartment. It was brief, awkward, uncomfortable. She waited impatiently, counting to twenty until his low, even breathing told her that he was asleep. Then, quietly so as not to wake him, she rested her head against his ribs and placed her ear to his heart, listening. She stayed awake through the ni
ght, savoring the warmth and the sound of another human object next to her.

  She was gone in the morning when he awoke, and so, too, was his Ollie the Otter tie.

  It didn’t matter. He had lots.

  ****

  When Albert awoke the next morning, the loser in an epic all-night battle not to fall asleep, he found no other sign of the previous night’s blood-bath than a hung-over and cranky chimp. After a cold breakfast of dry cereal and bananas (the latter for Bobo), the companions resumed their journey.

  As was his habit, the Doctor passed the time by spouting crude comments and ridiculous claims, in an effort to illicit any response at all from Albert.

  “…and that’s why Bigfoot was responsible for the assassination of JFK. It’s the only logical conclusion when you follow the paper trail, when you look at who really had the most to gain. Hair-raising stuff, huh? You know, the truth is always easy to spot, Zim, because it makes everyone so uncomfortable. People shy away from it like that poor kid in gym class who never learned to use deodorant.”

  “Couldn’t we talk about something else?”

  “Sure. Did I ever tell you how midgets are secretly in charge of Hollywood?”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about anything at all.”

  The Doctor looked exasperated. “You know, Zim, you really need to relax that sphincter muscle. I’m telling you this now as your doctor. You’re gonna blow a gasket if you don’t chill out. You gotta do something to shoot off some steam every once in awhile – pilates, coitus, cannabis, yoga, colonic irrigation, a good movie – something. You gotta uncork your chi, gotta rearrange the Feng Shui of your subconscious mind.”

  “I used to like going to the movies,” Albert said wistfully. “I don’t think I ever did any of those other things, though.”

  “Just as well,” snorted the Doctor. “You can’t do any of them properly up here, anyway.”

  “Aaaaaa, eeeeee, aaaa, aaaa, oooo! Pbbbbbbbbb.” The Amazing Bobo interjected himself into the conversation, pointing urgently to a small area of raised concrete in the distance. He turned and made a beeline for it, his knuckles pounding heavily against the hard paved surface. As they moved closer, Albert could see that it was a square metal vent, at least twenty feet across, covered in a mesh of thick metal cords. The mesh had come loose in one of the corners where the metal had rusted away. The foul, rotten egg odor of sewage blasted up into their faces.

  Bobo inhaled with delight.

  The Doctor grinned. “Whew! Smell that, Zim? That’s a billion tons of the finest low-cost pre-packaged food products that Omega-Mart has to offer, excreted back into the universe from whence it came. That’s the unmistakable smell of human consumption, my friend.”

  Albert wrinkled his nose. “It stinks.”

  The Doctor held up an index finger. “In point of fact, Zim, some very interesting psychological studies have been done to suggest the average individual actually likes the smell of raw sewage, though, when asked, he invariably denies the fact.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Further, the study suggests the degree to which he denies it is directly proportionate to how much he likes the smell.”

  “You’re a jerk.”

  “Ooooo. Ooooo. Aaaaaa. Aaaaa. Eeeeee! Eeeeee!” Bobo interrupted their bickering, waving his hands frantically in the air as he ambled over to the loose corner of the mesh and lifted it up. He turned to his companions and stared at them impatiently.

  The Doctor turned to Albert and waved him by. “After you,” he said.

  Albert slowly approached the chimp and peered down into the abyss. Just below his feet, beneath the rim of the shaft, a small concrete ledge jutted out in front of him, just big enough for a single man to stand on. There was no railing. A rusty metal ladder extended down from the ledge, disappearing into the cold metal chasm.

  The Doctor leaned over Albert’s shoulder and spat into the void. The foamy gob of sputum plummeted down, down, down, then vanished. Bobo made a few quick signs to the Doctor, then bared his teeth and held his hands up to his ears, splaying his fingers out wide.

  “What’s he saying?” Albert asked.

  The Doctor furrowed his brow. “Beware the Rhinocermoose.”

  “What the heck is a Rhinocermoose?”

  Zayus shrugged. “Hell if I know, Zim. But if you see anything that looks like one, be sure to stay out of its way.”

  Albert sank slowly to the hard concrete, then scooted carefully to the rim of the pit and dangled his legs over the side. With a silent prayer, he slid awkwardly under the mesh, the frayed strands of wire scratching his arms and neck as his feet searched desperately for the ledge. He clutched the rim of the shaft until his knuckles turned white, letting go only when he was sure the ledge was solid.

  The Doctor hung his head over the edge. “Keep going, Zim. Get onto the ladder. Then we’ll follow you.”

  Albert looked down. He could see nothing through the darkness, but he knew the shaft must be very, very deep to take him all the way to the sewers below Omega-Mart. If he fell, he’d have a long time to think about it before he hit the ground. He vomited into the pit.

  “Maybe he really doesn’t like the smell,” the Doctor whispered to the chimp above.

  Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Albert steadied his legs and forced his feet to find the rungs of the ladder. He inched his way down until his hand was grasping the top rung, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the wall in front of him.

  “Alright,” he called shakily. “Come on.”

  There was a pregnant pause, then the Doctor’s voice.

  “No, you first, Bobo. I insist.”

  Another pause.

  “No, really. After you.”

  More silence.

  “Well, how ‘bout if I just take my bananas and go home, then?”

  Albert heard a frantic scrambling above him, followed by a rain of pebbly concrete chunks. Bobo’s head suddenly appeared next to Albert’s face, hanging upside down over the ledge.

  “Ooooo,” said the chimp, and his padded hand appeared clutching a red plastic flashlight. Albert recognized the model – the ZipCo Deluxe Rechargeable LED Hand Torch with three different beam settings, a plasti-grip handle, and a built-in compass. Only $2.97. It was a bargain and everybody ….

  “Oooooop!” The chimp rattled the light impatiently.

  Albert took the flashlight and clicked it on. The bulb flickered for a fraction of a second, then illuminated. Albert directed the beam below him. Just as he expected – more darkness. Bobo stretched his rubbery lips against his teeth and pointed down. Albert cautiously descended the ladder.

  “Just keep your eyes in front of you,” the Doctor shouted from above. “It’s only a ladder, like any other ladder, only it’s a thousand feet long. Nothing to worry about. If we watch our step and don’t get ahead of ourselves, we’ll be waist-deep in a river of shit by dinner time.”

  Albert didn’t need any urging to be careful. He gingerly made his way down, one rung at a time, encased in a bubble of light from the flashlight that dangled by a plastic strap from his wrist. More than an hour passed with only the sound of their feet ringing against metal. The sky became a small, round patch of blue above them, and then that, too, disappeared. The smell of human feces grew more powerful, but Albert’s nose was gradually growing used to it – not that he liked it, or anything.

  “So, tell the truth, Zim,” Doctor Zayus’ voice echoed down through the shaft. “You made it with the gopher, didn’t you?”

  Albert scowled upward. “You’re supposed to be a professional. I told you my story in confidence.”

  “So?” said the Doctor. “There’s nobody here but me and Bobo. And Bobo’s not gonna tell anyone, arya Bobo?”

  “Eeeep.”

  “Now, tell us, Mr. Zim,” the Doctor said in his most intellectual baritone. “What’s gopher pooty like?”

  Albert’s face flushed. “You’re disturbed.”

  Zayus laughed. “Says the man who
thinks he spent the better part of a year on a planet populated by rodents.”

  “Lots of people believe that there’s intelligent life on other planets,” Albert insisted angrily. “Scientists even.”

  “And to think,” said the Doctor. “I’ve wasted all my time looking on this planet.”

  “You’re a bitter old man,” grunted Albert.

  “I’m entitled.”

  “What makes you so special?”

  “I’m not,” said the Doctor. “You’re entitled, too. You got shot into space – that makes you an honorary member of the OMFMC.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Omega-Mart Fucked Me Club.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” said Albert. “It was a misunderstanding. Omega-Mart is a great organization; it rescued the world from chaos and united it under one roof, selflessly introducing billions of people to the benefits of low prices.”

  “And introducing itself to truck-loads of money.”

  “That’s how it works,” snapped Albert. “We all contribute to society by pursuing our own interests, by being smart consumers. There’s nothing wrong with making a lot of money, if you work hard for it. With a competitive spirit and a can-do attitude, the Omega-Mart family was able to build a better future.”

  “Ha!” the Doctor snorted. “Better for who? I just spent the last 10 years wiping my ass on a 20 year old collection of Encyclopedia Britannicas. I’m halfway through W.”

  “Whose fault is that? We all have the chance to make something of ourselves. We all choose whether or not to be productive members of society – to live by the rules. You made your choice.”

  The Doctor chuckled. “Wow – you’re something, Zim. Just when you peel back one layer of bullshit, you find another one right underneath it. You’re like a great big bullshit onion. Is there an ounce of innovative thought buried in there somewhere?”

  “I guess civil responsibility isn’t something a Roofer would understand.”

  “I can’t believe you’re defending them, Zim,” said the Doctor. “You of all people. When you said you had a message for the people of Omega-Mart, I thought maybe you were going to strap some dynamite to your chest, or at least take a couple hostages. You sound like an Omega-Mart customer service rep; you gonna ask for your old job back?”