Dyscountopia

  “I’m not making you do anything!” Albert hissed, spewing rage. He glared at the Doctor through a foggy red haze, balling his hands into tight, angry fists. He was tired of being ridiculous, insignificant, impotent.

  “Albert”, said the Doctor, so gently that Albert could barely hear him past the blood pumping in his ears, “I’ve never been as close to death as I was just ten seconds ago. I don’t know about you, but when I heard that thing breathing outside, and I knew that I was only inches from dying, I had a moment of clarity. I had a spiritual awakening. I finally understood what my purpose was here on earth. Do you want to know what it is?”

  Albert relaxed his fists. Like the final half-hearted thrumming of a rainstorm against a metal shed, his rage wavered and died.

  “What?” he whispered sulkily.

  “To not get eaten by a fucking Rhinocermoose! Plain and simple. That’s all it’s about.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Now let’s make like a tree.”

  Albert shook his head. “I won’t go back.”

  “Then I’ll go without you.”

  “Then go.”

  Albert stood waiting for the Doctor’s response, but all that followed was silence and the faint rippling of water. The light floated away down the pipe. There was the soft squeal of metal hinges, then the light turned a corner and vanished.

  “Doctor?” Albert whispered desperately. But the Doctor was gone.

  Albert stood helpless, listening to the sound of emptiness and his own heartbeat as the seconds ticked by in the pitch black.

  “Dr. Zayus?”

  Albert was alone.

  His heart pounded. The sound of his own heavy, erratic breathing filled his ears. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He felt like he was being suffocated, buried in a tomb of human excrement. Alone.

  Slowly, quietly, Albert waded back the way he came, guiding himself along the wall with trembling hands.

  “Doctor!?” He shouted despite the danger.

  His finger tips fell on the metal grate, already ajar. He slipped quietly through it and felt his way down the passage, searching for the glow of the Doctor’s light. Nothing.

  His toe caught something solid and he stumbled forward, expecting to go head first into the water. But instead his hands found dry concrete. Stairs.

  Albert proceeded on all fours, inching his way out of the water to the top of the stairs, like a blind man looking for his lost cane. Behind him came a series of splashes and heavy breathing. He panicked and jumped to his feet, dashing headlong into the darkness, falling backward with a cry as he ran directly into something very solid. He lay on his back, his arms and legs sprawled out around him, thrashing at the feculent air above him like an up-ended turtle. He manage to flop over on his belly and scuttle forward, feeling his way ahead until his palms came up against the object. He rose to his feet, running his hands along it, feeling its rough, leathery, well-muscled exterior; and, just as cold, unforgiving, bone-crushing realization caught him in its vice-like grip, he heard a soft snort and felt a warm puff of breath on his face that smelled like eternity without a toothbrush.

  Albert stood perfectly still, eyes fixed in the direction of the unseen abomination, waiting to be shredded like a block of cheese and wondering how much it would hurt on a scale from one to ten. Then came a sudden flash of yellow, searing his retinas, and the tunnel around him flooded with light. Before him, blinking and confused, stood the Rhinocermoose, its head lowered in a ferocious display of horns and antlers, poised just inches from his abdomen.

  WHOMP!

  It was the sound of a tattered, size 9, canvass sneaker impacting against an immense, wrinkled gray rump. The Rhinocermoose reared up, enraged, and turned to face its assailant. Squinting sidelong into the beam of light, Albert watched the hazy form of Dr. Zayus emerge defiantly from the shadows. The Doctor stepped forward and boldly met the icy stare of the fearsome beast, uttering his immortal last words.

  “Oh, shit….”

  The Rhinocermoose dipped its angry head downward and then, in one perfect lethal motion, caught its horn under Dr. Zayus’ rib cage and tossed him into the air. The Doctor met the ceiling with a sickening crunch, then flopped to the ground with a resounding thud, very definitely dead. The flashlight clattered to the floor next to Albert’s foot.

  Albert picked up the light and ran for his life.

  He dashed through the passageway at a full run, flailing his arms and screaming like a madman. He ran until he was out of breath, until his sides hurt, until his throat was on fire. And then, when he couldn’t run anymore, he walked, shuffling his aching feet until his legs collapsed and he was forced to crawl on his hands and knees. For miles and miles the passage went on, without any exit to the left or right, and Albert clawed his way along it, groaning and frothing at the mouth, until his hands and knees were bloody, desperately trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and the monster that pursued him. When he could go no farther he collapsed in a heap and lay there, gasping for air and fighting to stay conscious. The flashlight rolled from his hand and clattered against the wall. The bulb flickered, then extinguished. Darkness.

  ****

  Darkness. The Amazing Bobo sat eating a banana. He swallowed the soft, mushy paste in his mouth and wondered absently if the Doctor, or his simple-minded friend, had managed to evade the Rhinocermoose, and if they had, if they would ever find their way out of the tunnels again. It wouldn’t be easy – the Rhinocermoose was a deadly adversary, as Bobo well knew – but at least they had the flashlight. Next time I’ll remember to bring a spare, Bobo thought with dismay. Now he’d have to find his way out in the dark, and that was always tricky. The important thing was to keep a level head, and never to panic. Just like he’d been trained.

  Bobo listened quietly until he was sure that the coast was clear, then hopped down from the ladder and felt his way back along the passage. Seventy-two paces to the door and turn right. One-hundred and eight paces to the stack of tires, turn left. Years of rigorous training had instilled in Bobo a photographic memory, a tool that had aided him more than once on recon missions during the Rhode Island War for Independence, and later the Second French Canadian Invasion of 2028. After he’d been someplace once, he never forgot the way. That’s why they called him The Amazing Bobo.

  The chimp fondly remembered those days of glory. Rhode Island had been a cakewalk; the Islanders never had the stomach for a real fight and Bobo’s platoon cut through them like soft butter. But FCI2 was a different story – everyone thought it was just going to be good for a laugh, but those Canucks turned out to be a ruthless bunch of bastards. Chemical weapons, dirty bombs, biological warfare – nothing was beneath them. There were no more records left to tell us where the Rhinocermoose had come from, or whose bright idea it was, but Bobo still remembered. Unspeakable abominations were spawned by those scientists in Quebec, whose years of experimentation finally found fruition in the ultimate killing machine -- a monster that combined the stalwart dependability of a Canadian with a Frenchman’s utter disdain for everything that wasn’t exactly like itself. And so the Rhinocermoose was born. But such a beast wasn’t easily controlled; a fact that managed to elude the Canadians until it was too late – casualties were high on both sides. A quick truce was settled on and everyone went home and tried to forget the whole thing, leaving the border to the whim of that nightmarish creature. What a snafu.

  “Eeeeep!” Bobo’s toe snagged a rogue toaster and he pitched forward, catching himself on his knuckles. Never drop your guard – that’s another thing he had learned at the academy. And there was something else. Something about never leaving a man behind. The chimp stopped and looked over his shoulder, and it seemed for a brief moment that he might turn around.

  Nah, screw it, he thought. I got my bananas.

  ****

  “Babbert?”

  “Huh?”

  “Babbert?” Lucy was sitting next to him, sipping a gooma smoothie. Ahead of them, the sun d
ipped lazily toward the crimson plain. There was a ringing in his ears.

  “Lucy, what are you doing here? Where am I? Is this Pog?”

  The little rodent shook her head.

  “Am I dreaming?”

  Again, she shook her head. “Gooma flashback,” she said. “It happens.”

  “Then you aren’t real…,” Albert muttered. “This place isn’t real.”

  Lucy shrugged.

  Albert turned back to the sunset. He recognized it. He had seen that same one before. The ringing in his ears grew louder, now a sharp squeal.

  “Lucy, what’s going on? How did I -- ?”

  But Lucy’s attention was elsewhere. She stood up on her hind legs, scanning the plain around her with keen interest. Albert shook her gently by the shoulder, trying to recapture her attention.

  “Lucy, I -- .” The squeal in Albert’s head intensified, drowning out the sound of his own voice. He tried shouting louder, but couldn’t break through the noise. Seemingly unaware of Albert’s struggle, Lucy looked curiously over her shoulder at nothing.

  Then it dawned on Albert that the noise wasn’t just noise. There was a message in it – an important message that he’d heard once before but couldn’t remember. The message was garbled, disjointed, as if Albert was a malfunctioning radio receiver collecting bits and pieces of a half-formed transmission. He clenched his fists and tried to concentrate.

  “Hold this, Babbert.” Lucy handed him her smoothie, then reached up and twisted his right ear. It rotated clockwise like a radio dial and the squeal increased in pitch, higher and higher so that Albert could feel the blood pulsing in his brain. It reached a perfect crescendo then transcended to silence, soaring beyond the range of the human senses. The message formed seamlessly in the forefront of Albert’s mind – so flawless that he wondered how words could ever describe it. Every muscle in his body relaxed.

  “There,” said Lucy with a satisfied smirk. “Better.”

  Albert closed his eyes, exulting in the glow of that perfect message, grinning like an idiot. “I have to go back,” he mumbled. “Back to Omega-Mart.”

  “I know.” Albert felt the tickle of whiskers on his cheek, the tiny puffs of Lucy’s fruity breath in his ear canal. “You’re almost there, Babbert. Wake up.”

  Albert opened his eyelids. Black. He’d gone blind.

  No. Not blind. He was in the sewer, in the bowels of the earth, in the dark. He fought the urge to close his eyes again, to retreat back into his dream, back to Lucy. Where was the flashlight? He felt the ground for it and his fingers closed around the handle.

  Click. He pushed the button. Nothing.

  Click. Nothing again.

  Albert let the flashlight drop with a clatter and struggled to his hands and knees, scooting slowly through the darkness in a half-waking daze. Where was the Rhinocermoose? Why hadn’t it chased him? Maybe a single bony psychotherapist was enough to sate its bloodlust for one day. Albert imagined that razor sharp outgrowth of fused hair and keratin sinking into him, piercing his own body as he was simultaneously ripped to shreds by those glistening, blood-drenched antlers. He didn’t care anymore. He was tired, and a Rhinocermoose horn through his liver seemed better to him than an eternity of going mad in a dark sewer.

  Then, out of the blackness, a new sensation overtook him. He yearned to live. He yearned to go home. He yearned to see his wife again, and his dad, and even Mr. Edd. He yearned to once again be under those magnificent fluorescent lights. Albert scuttled along the grimy passage, faster and faster, covered in muck and filth, ignoring the pain of his hands and knees; like a lowly cockroach, driven by the purest of all instincts – to survive.

  And then, salvation. His hand fell upon a metal bar, and above it, another. A ladder. With a surge of adrenaline, Albert scrambled up the rungs, up through the pitch black; not knowing to where he was going, only that up was the right way. Beautiful up. Glorious up. Forever up. No other ladder on earth could have reached as high as that never-ending ladder, that miracle ladder that resurrected him from the pits of hell, promising to return him to the land of the living. Up and up and up and up and up and CLANG!

  Albert slipped down a half-dozen rungs, his elbow hooking the ladder by mere happenstance to save him from an unthinkable fall. His skull threatened to rip apart at the seams, throbbing at the temples with short, intense bursts of pain. He’d hit his head on something. A door. It had to be a door.

  Albert forced his way back up the ladder, slowly and carefully, his head spinning as spots of colored light danced in front of his eyes. He reached above him and felt around the metal hatch. There was a handle. He pulled it.

  WHOOOOSH! A burst of brisk, clean air hit Albert in the face. He pushed the hatch open and pulled himself up, laying his hands flat on the cool, clean smooth floor that surrounded his waist and lifting the rest of his body through. He rolled to one side and lay still on the floor, fighting to catch his breath.

  There came a whir and a click from the darkness, and Albert was bombarded with red light. He was lying in a stark, narrow room with smooth walls and an oval-shaped door. He stood to his feet and slowly shuffled to the door. There was a small panel next to it, with a speaker and a red plastic button. Albert pushed the button.

  “Please choose from the following list of commands,” said a woman’s soft voice from the ceiling. “You do not have to wait to hear the entire list of commands. You may make your selection at any time. If you would like to open the door, please say ‘open door’. If you would like to call an associate, please say ‘call associate’. If you would like to initiate the decontamination process, please --.”

  “Open door,” croaked Albert.

  “I’m sorry. I did not understand you. Please choose from the following list of commands. If you would like to open the door, please say ‘open door’. If you would like to call an associate, please say ‘call associate’. If you would like to -- .”

  “Open door,” Albert gasped again, pleading with the ceiling.

  “You chose ‘initiate decontamination process’. If this is correct, please say ‘yes’.”

  “No,” said Albert. “No, no, no.”

  “Decontamination process initiated.”

  Behind him, the hatch in the floor closed automatically. Albert heard a loud ‘pop’, and the room was engulfed in orange foam, spraying down from the ceiling through plastic sprinklers.

  “Open door. Open door. Open door!” Albert shouted raspingly. The foam burned his eyes and filled his mouth with a chemical taste. “Call associate, call associate!”

  “Oxygen evacuation begins in five, four, three….”

  “Open door. Open door!” Albert was on his knees, sobbing and shouting at the ceiling. “For the love of Christ, open the door!”

  “Two, one. Oxygen evacuation initiated.”

  Albert suddenly experienced the uncomfortable sensation of trying to breath in a vacuum. His lungs collapsed. His life-force seeped from his body, oozing out through his fingers and toes. He fell over backward and writhed on the floor, gulping futilely for air as his eyes swelled from his head. He tried to call out, but no noise escaped his lips. His vision narrowed. Darkness closed in. And then -- a clunk, and a metal whine.

  SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. Oxygen flowed back into Albert’s lungs. He lay on his back for minutes uncounted, sucking in the beautiful fresh air. Then he leaned up on his elbows and shielded his eyes. White, fluorescent light poured in from the open doorway.

  A man in purple coveralls stood just outside the door, a mop in his hand, his mouth hung open. Albert must have been a horrid sight, covered in human excrement and orange foam; his clothing torn and bloodied. Albert forced himself to a sitting position and took a deep breath, fixing his gaze on the man in front of him.

  “My name is Albert Zim of Omega-Mart,” he gasped. “Take me to your leader.”

  The mop clattered to the ground as the man disappeared from the doorway, his heavy work boots clip-clopping rapidly on the tile f
loor as he fled the scene. With a groan, Albert leaned back on his hands and pushed, using all of his energy to scoot his way out the door. He found himself in a room full of metal lockers, surrounded by over-sized push brooms and mop buckets. Steadying himself against the wall, he struggled to his feet and stumbled to the lockers, tossing them open and searching inside. He produced a pair of purple coveralls from one of the lockers and proceeded to strip off his filthy clothes, crawling inside the stiff, heavy fabric and zipping up the front. Then he washed his face in one of the mop buckets. He knew he had to keep moving. His greeting had obviously not been well-received, and the Guardians of Merchandise would surely be coming for him. He would have to escape, then find a way to make himself heard, and understood.

  Albert grabbed a broom and wobbled out of the custodial closet, using the handle as a crutch. He made his way warily down the hall, searching for the exit.

  “You there!” a loud voice barked from the end of the hallway. A large man dressed in purple rubber body armor was bearing down on him with extreme purpose. Albert tried to compose himself; he stood up straight and began, with a lame whistle, to sweep the floor around him.

  “Stop right there, sir.”

  Albert looked up with wide, innocent eyes. “Who, me?”

  The Guardian loomed forward, then took a hesitant step back. Albert smelled like a toilet that desperately needed to be flushed.

  “Ahem. I need to identify you, sir,” said the Guardian, holding a plastic scanner out with one hand and covering his mouth and nose with the other.

  “Of course,” said Albert guiltily. He reached out and pressed his thumb to the scanner.

  “Stay right there, sir.” The Guardian stepped back a few more paces, careful not to turn his back to Albert, and studied the read-out of the scanner. He wrinkled his forehead, then looked up at Albert with a wholely dumbfounded expression. “It says that you don’t work here.” He shook the scanner in bewilderment. “But everyone works here.”