Ellison Wonderland

by Harlan Ellison

  Earth was being infiltrated. But there wasn’t any sinister invasion or displacement afoot. That was ridiculous. The only reason these aliens were on Earth was to live.

  When I thought the word “alien” I looked at Da Campo. He appeared to be the same as anyone of Earth. These “aliens” were obviously exactly like us, physically. Physically.

  Why were the aliens on Earth to live? Again, simple.

  Why does a man who works in New York City go out to Westchester after 5:00 every day? Answer: the city is too crowded. He goes to the suburbs to live quietly.

  “Is — uh — Drexwill crowded, Da Campo? I mean, are there a lot of people here?”

  He nodded again and muttered something about serious over population and why didn’t the stupid Faenalists use their heads and bring things under control and wasn’t that what he was paying his Allotments for.

  The escalator was coming to another floor, and Da Campo made movements toward the exit side. He stepped off, and I followed. He gave me a quick glance to make sure I was following, and strode briskly away.

  All around us people were coming and going with quiet purpose.

  “Da Campo — ” I began, trying to get his attention. His nonchalance and attitude of trying to brush me off were beginning to terrify me more than all the really strange things going on around me.

  “Stop calling me that, you fool! My name is Helgorth Labbula, and if you refer to me again with that idiotic name I’ll leave you here and let you fend for yourself. I’m only taking my time to get you to an Auditor because they might construe it as my fault that you wandered into the Suburb Depot.” He glared at me, and I bit my lip.

  We kept walking and I wondered what an Auditor was, and where we were going to find one.

  I found out quickly enough. Da Cam — er, Helgorth Labbula spotted a tall, hard–looking man in a deep blue version of the universal short jacket and tight pants, and hailed him.

  The Auditor walked over and Da Campo talked to him in soft tones for a moment. I watched as the man’s eyes got wider and wider, as Da Campo’s talk progressed.

  “Hey!” I yelled. They both looked up, annoyed.

  “I hate to say anything,” I said, “but if I’m right, you’re talking about me, and I don’t like this cold–shoulder routine, not one little bit.” I was sick of all this rigamarole, and me stuck somewhere a million miles or more away from my office, and everyone acting as though I’d done it on purpose and I was a nuisance.

  “Now talk in English so I can understand, will you?”

  The Auditor turned cool gray eyes on me. Stiffly, as though he were unaccustomed to speaking the language, he said, “You have stumbled into something by chance, and though it is not your fault, dispensation must be arranged. Will you please come with me.”

  He stated it, didn’t ask it, and I had no choice.

  We took a few steps, and the Auditor turned to stare back at Da Campo who was watching us balefully. “You, too,” the man in the blue tunic said.

  “But I have to be at — ”

  “You will be needed for a statement. I’m sorry, but it’s official.”

  “What am I paying my Allotments for, if you Auditors can’t handle a little thing like this?” He was getting angry, but the Auditor shrugged his shoulders, and Da Campo trudged along behind us.

  We came up off one of the escalators, into the light of triple suns. Three of them. Burning all at once. Triple shadows. That was when I realized how far away, more than a mere million miles, and how strange, and how lost I was.

  “How — how far from Earth are we?” I asked.

  The Auditor answered absently, “About 60,000 light–years.”

  I gawked, stopped dead in my tracks. “But you toss it off so lightly, as though it were around the block! And you don’t live that differently from us! I don’t understand!”

  “Understand? What’s to understand?” snapped Da Campo with annoyance. “It was a fluke that discovered Translation, and allowed us to live off Drexwill. But it didn’t change our culture much. Why shouldn’t we take it for granted? We’ve lived with it all our lives, and there’s nothing odd or marvelous about it.”

  “In fact,” he added, glaring at the Auditor, “it’s a blasted bother sometimes!”

  His tossing it off in that manner only made it worse for me.

  I thought of the distance between me and my office, realizing I hadn’t the faintest idea how far away it was, but knowing it was further than anything I could ever imagine. I tried putting it into mundane terms by remembering that the nearest star to Earth was only four light–years away and then trying something like:

  If all the chewing–gum wrappers in the world were laid end to end, they’d stretch from Earth to —

  But it only made things worse.

  I was lost.

  “I want to go home,” I said, and realized I sounded like a little boy. But I couldn’t help it.

  The Auditor and Da Campo turned to look at me at the same time. I wished I had been unable to read what was in their eyes.

  But I could. I wished I hadn’t been able to, really.

  They hurried me down a street, if street it was, and I supposed that was what it was, and into a bubble–like car with a blue insignia, that sat by the curb. It ran on a monorail, and in a few seconds we had left the Depot behind.

  We sped through the city, and oddly, I didn’t marvel at the fantastic architecture and evidences of great science, though there were enough of both. From the screaming ships that split the morning sky to the cone–within–helix buildings rising on all sides.

  I didn’t look, because it was so restful for the first time in my life not to have to worry about offices, and commuting, and bills, and Charlotte’s ashtray fetish, or any of the other goddam bothers I had been heir to since I was able to go out and earn a living. No treadmill. No responsibility.

  It was good to lie back in the padded seat and just close my eyes. Even though I knew I was in deep trouble.

  We drove for a while, and then something occurred to me.

  “Why don’t we just Translate where we’re going?”

  The Auditor was looking out the window abstractedly, but he said, “Too short a jump. It only works in light–year minimums.”

  “Oh,” I said, and sank back again.

  It was all so logical.

  Something else popped into my mind. The sheet of liabilities under my desk blotter.

  “Uh — Da Campo,” I began, and shrank back at the scathing look he turned on me.

  “The name is Helgorth Labbula, I told you!”

  The Auditor smiled out the window.

  “Want to tell me a few things?” I asked, timidly.

  Da Campo sighed once, deeply, “Go ahead. You can’t be any more trouble to me than you have already. I’m twenty kil–boros late already.”

  “What was that in your garden?”

  “A plant, what do you think?”

  “But — ”

  He seemed about to explode with irritation. “Look, Weiler, you grow those runty little chrysanthemums and roses, don’t you? Well, why shouldn’t I be entitled to grow a native plant in my garden? Just because I’m living out there in the sticks doesn’t mean I have to act and live like a barbarian.”

  The Auditor looked over, “Yes, but you were warned several times about growing native plants in Suburb Territory when you signed the real estate release, weren’t you, Helgorth?”

  Da Campo turned red.

  “Well, that’s — what I mean is — a man has to have some —” He stuttered into silence and looked at me with wrath.

  “How come we never saw any smoke from your house?”

  “We don’t use imbecilic fuels like coal or gas or oil.”

  I didn’t understand, but he cleared it up with the answer to my next q
uestion. I said, “Why don’t you ever go out, or show lights at night, and why do you pull those drapes?”

  “Because the inside of our house isn’t like yours. We have a Drexwillian bungalow in there. A bit cramped for space we are,” he said, casting a nasty look at the Auditor, “but with regulations what they are, we can’t expect much better. We have our own independent heating system, food supply, lighting system and everything else. We pull the drapes so you won’t see when we turn on all the units at once. We have to inconvenience ourselves, I’ll tell you.

  “But at least it’s better than living in this madhouse,” he finished, waving a hand at the bustling city.

  “I rather like it,” I said.

  The Auditor glanced over at me again, and for the second time I read his eyes. The message hadn’t changed. I was still in trouble.

  “We’re almost there,” he said.

  The car slowed and came to an easy stop before a huge white building, and we got out.

  Da Campo held back and spoke to the Auditor again in tones that indicated he wanted to leave.

  “It will only take a short time. We need your statement,” the Auditor told him, motioning him out of the car.

  We walked up the wide, resilient steps.

  After a wearying progression through the stages of red tape, statements, personnel, and official procedure which reminded me strongly of Earth, we came to an office that seemed to be the end of the road.

  Da Campo was uneasy and kept damning me with his eyes when he wasn’t looking at his watch.

  We were ushered in, and the Auditor saluted the pale–faced man behind the desk. “The Head Auditor,” said the blue–uniformed man, and left us. I noticed that the official had gray eyes, like Da Campo and the Auditor. Was that a dominant on Drexwill?

  “Sit down, won’t you?” he said, amiably enough.

  Da Campo blurted, “I really must be going. I’m quite late for my work and if you don’t mind I’d like to — ”

  “Sit, Helgorth, I have something to say to you, too.”

  I was grateful they were speaking English.

  The Head Auditor crossed long arms and glared at Da Campo across the desk.

  “You know you’re partially to fault here.”

  Da Campo was indignant. “Why — why — what do you mean? I gave him a perfectly logical story, but he had to go and stumble into the Suburb Depot. That wasn’t my — ”

  “Quiet! We leave you commuters pretty much alone. It’s your lives and we try not to meddle. But there are certain regulations we have to keep enforced or the entire system will break down.

  “You knew you weren’t to grow any native plants out there. We warned you enough times so that it should have made an impression. Then to boot, you became a recluse out there. We ask you to make certain advances to your neighbors, strictly for purposes of keeping things on a level. But you wouldn’t even go shopping!”

  Da Campo started to protest, but the Head Auditor snapped his fingers sharply, causing the man to fall silent. “We checked your supply requisitions through Food Central, and we were going to drop you a memo on it, but we didn’t get to it in time.”

  The pale–faced man tapped his fingers on the desk, “Now if we have any more trouble out of you, Helgorth, we’re going to yank your Suburb Ticket and get you and your wife back into one of the Community Towers. Is that clear?”

  Da Campo, suitably cowed, merely nodded.

  I thought of the fantastic system they had devised. All Earth turned into a suburban development. Lord! It was fantastic, yet so simple and so obvious when I thought about it, my opinion of these people went up more and more. This explained all sorts of things I’d wondered about: hermits, bus lines that went nowhere, people disappearing.

  “All right, you can go,” I heard the Head Auditor say.

  Da Campo got up to leave, and I turned to watch him, “So long, Da Campo, see you at home tonight,” I said.

  He looked at me strangely. The message hadn’t altered. “So long, Weiler. I hope so,” he said, and was gone.

  I half–knew what he meant.

  They weren’t going to let me go back. That would be foolish. I knew too much. Strangely, I felt no fear.

  “You see our predicament, don’t you?” asked the Head Auditor, and I swung back to look at him. I must have looked at him in amazement, because he added, “I couldn’t help knowing what you were thinking.”

  I nodded, reaching for a way to say what I wanted to say.

  “We can’t let you go back.”

  “Fine,” I smiled a bit too eagerly. “Let me stay. I’d like to stay here. You can’t imagine how fascinated I am by your planet.”

  And it was then, right in that instant, that I recognized the truth in what I’d said.

  I hated Earth.

  I hated the nine–to–five drudgery of the closed office and the boring men and women with whom I did business.

  I despised my wife, who wanted More. And Better. And More Expensive. I realized how I’d been fooled by her flippant and sometimes affectionate attitude. I was a faceless thing to her. A goddam man in a gray flannel suit.

  I despised the trains and the vacuum cleaners and the routine. I despised the lousy treadmill!

  I loathed, detested, despised, abhorred, abominated and in all hated the miserable system. I didn’t want to go back.

  “I don’t want to go back! I want to stay. Let me stay here!”

  The Head Auditor was shaking his auditing head.

  “Why not?” I asked, confused.

  “Look, we’re overpopulated now! Why do you think we use the Suburbs out there? There isn’t room here for anyone like you. We have enough non–working bums on our hands without you. Just because you stumbled into one of our Depots, don’t assume we owe you anything. Because we don’t.

  “No, I’m afraid we’ll have to — er — dispense with you, Mr. Weiler. We’re not unpleasant people, but there is a point where we must stand and say, ‘No more!’ I’m sorry.” He started to push a button.

  I went white. I could feel myself going white. Oh no, I thought! I’ve got to talk!

  So I talked. I talked him away from that button, because I suppose he had a wife and children and didn’t really like killing people. And I talked him away from the killing angle entirely. And I talked and talked and talked till my throat was dry and he threw up his hand and said . . .

  “All right, all right, stop! A trial, then. If you can find work here, if you can fit in, if you can match up, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t stay. But don’t ever expect to go back!”

  Expect to go back? Not on your life!

  Then he shooed me out of the office, and I set about making a place for myself in this world I’d never made.

  Well, I’ve done pretty decently. I’m happy, I have my own apartment, and I have a good job. They’ve said I can stay.

  I didn’t realize it, all those years, how much I hated the rush, rush, rush, the getting to the office and poring over those lousy briefs, the quiet nagging of Charlotte about things like the ashtrays, the constant bill collectors, the keeping up with the Joneses.

  I didn’t realize how badly I wanted out.

  Well, now I’m out, and I’m happy. No more of that stuff for me.

  Thanks for listening. Thought I’d get it straight, as long as you needed the story to open my charge account. I’m here and I like it, and I’m out of the suburbanite climbing–executive rush–rush class. At last I’m off that infernal treadmill.

  Thanks again for listening. Well, I’ve got to go.

  Got to get to work, you know.

  Current crazes fascinate me. Though I couldn’t operate one to save my life, the hula hoop was an entrancing little path to dislocation of the spine and ultimate madness, and I watched with not too much lasciviousness as the pre–
adult vixens of my acquaintance shimmied and swirled in the use of same. The telephone–booth–stuffing trend seemed to me abortive, and I was not at all surprised when it faded in lieu of the “limbo” acrobatics at voodoo calypso parties. Mah–jongg, Scrabble, ouija boards, Lotto, TV quiz shows, pennies in kids’ loafers, bongo boards, snake dances, panty raids, rumble seats, trampoline classes, croquet, Empire–line dresses, day–glo shirts, stuffed tigers in car back windows, Billy Graham and Fabian (no relation) — all of them awed and bemused me, as I watched the world swallow them whole, digest them and infuse them into the daily scene. Trends knock me out, frankly: Whether it be painting by the numbers or making your own full–scale skeleton of a tyrannosaurus, I think the most imaginative, and auctorially–useful fad of recent years has been the one aptly called

  Do–It–Yourself

  Madge retina–printed her identity on the receipt, fished in her apron for a coin, and came up with a thirty–center. It was a bit too much to give the boy, but she already had it in her hand, and there were appearances to keep up, in spite of everything. She handed it across, and took the carton.

  A migrant tremor of pleasure swept her as she was closing the door; the messenger boy was assaying her figure. It had been years, oh longer than that, since a young man had done that. Perhaps it was the new wash; she closed the door firmly and blanked it, patting her hair. Yes, it was the blond rinse, that was it.

  Abruptly, she realized she had been standing there, staring at the box in her hands, for some time. With mild terror.

  Madge Rubichek, she chided herself, you contracted for this, and now it’s here, and it’s paid for, so what are you making faces like that for? Go in and sit down and open it, you silly goose!

  She followed her silent instructions. In the kitchen, with the late afternoon operock program from Philly weirdly jangling in the background — they were doing the new two–beat La Forza del Destino with alto sax accompaniment — she took a paring knife — my, how infectious that sort of teenager’s music was! — to the thick, white scotchseal of the carton.