The People's Republic of Everything

by Nick Mamatas

  “So, you don’t want the newspaper?” Musad-on-tape asked.

  It’s always strange for me to watch video. I never liked sitcoms, and always hated cartoons, because I could never tell what the characters were thinking. Live shows aren’t much better. Reading from a teleprompter doesn’t involve any thinking at all, and bands and dancers and stuff are just constantly mentally counting one-two-three-one-two-three, like that. It’s pretty unnerving. Now, Musad was just eerily confident in watching the playback, despite the armored personnel carriers rumbling down Route 25A, despite just being a little island in great big America. Barry was just confused, and starting to get real nervous. He thought of a movie, The China Syndrome, and how some guy in it is trying to do something and just gets shot ten times by a machine gun in less than a second. Dying is like exhaling and forgetting to inhale again. Just like that. It could happen. A blink that never ends. He sweated: the lip, the shoulderblades, the crease of his waist against the elastic of his boxers.

  He’s so gross.

  On the video, a gray and fuzzy Barry flails his arms and dives for the jar of beef jerky. Musad pushes him away. Barry swings and falls far short. Umer darts out from the edges of the frame and ties Barry into a full nelson, then leads him, kicking and thrashing, off the bottom of the screen.

  “Well, that’s definitive,” Adrienne said. She was just a suicide of resentment. Go ahead, summed it all up. Just go ahead.

  “I want a better hot dog, Musad,” my father said. “If you know what I mean.”

  Musad did, and handed Dad a Double Qool with Cheezy Stuff, the hot dog that comes with its own injected American, Swiss, or Pepper Jack cheese. It’s also a thrilling eighteen inches long, to hold in all that cheesy goodness.

  “Hey,” said Jake, a nervous scribble of thought, “why don’t you just break this one open and see if there’s a better or longer-lasting treaty in it, instead of eating.” My father just stared and took a very deliberate bite of the Double Qool, then another. He chewed slow too. Whiting huffed. Barry decided to walk to the corner of the store and put his back against the Big Brapp Frozen Frappucino machine. At least he wouldn’t be shot from behind. Dad clenched his teeth and pulled another tightly rolled piece of paper from the center of the dog, where the cheese would have been.

  The lights came on. My mother, loud as a volcano, declared, “Love Bug! We have to leave, right now!”

  8

  My mother wasn’t crazy. Well, crazy is relative. It’s like static on a radio; sometimes it is louder than the song. She was still thinking loud and rumbly, over the noise of her religious experience. So she was kind of crazy, I guess. No crazier than Dad, whose stoic hot dog munching was pretty much the sanest thing he could do in his situation. For Mom it was the same. Anything that got her away from all the media would probably be a good idea.

  Even driving out into a country and finding a flat glacial boulder on which to pile most of our clothes, the laptop, her microwave oven, and some photo albums, to set them all on fire.

  “Why the microwave?” I asked, because I knew that Mom wanted me to ask.

  She clutched it to herself and said, “It’s not a natural thing. The only meals that come out tasting anything like they should are meals designed to taste that way only when microwaved. So it’s a fake reality disguised as a real imitation. And it takes us away from what we need to experience, what people have done for ten thousand years.” She planted it atop a bag I’d opened. Clothes spilled out, but gave the microwave a little cushion to sink into. “Plus, I don’t like the beep that goes off when the timer counts down to zero. That isn’t natural either. It sounds almost but not quite like a bell.”

  She squirted lighter fluid over the mass in wild streaks, then stepped back and told me to step back too. She had a book of matches, but the first three didn’t take thanks to a little breeze. The fourth stayed lit long enough for Mom to ignite the corner of the book itself. She threw it onto the pile and a web of small flames flared up. The clothes didn’t burn that easily, nor did the luggage, but there was a fair amount of black smoke that stung and made me cough a lot. Geri breathed through her mouth hard, willing the fire to really flare up and consume everything. It didn’t. The only really exciting bit was when the cord of the microwave melted a bit and almost fell off, but didn’t.

  “Get back in the car,” she said, finally.

  We drove without purpose for a long while, down roads so dark that the usual horizon glare from the clusters of gas stations and motels was swallowed by the night. Both of us had floaters in our eyes from staring at the fire, but there wasn’t a lot of traffic so it was okay, except that we were running out of gas, and Mom, still on her religious high, was sure that we’d pull up, exhaust sputtering and clutch freezing, at exactly the place the universe wanted us to be.

  I guess, by definition, she was right, since every action is a caused action and there is no such thing as free will. (It’s true; I checked. Every little thing we do or think is a response and reaction to something else—minds are like the white ball in a game of pool.)

  It was a Qool Mart.

  The best part about Qool Marts is that time stands still. I guess it’s true of any convenience store, really, at least the chain stores with the bright fluorescent lights and the prepackaged miniature versions of everything. I could stare at a tiny packet of Oreos for hours, marvel at the pre-made sandwiches and the Stew in a Bubble (it comes with a fork and a straw), and all the magazines with boobs, guns, and cars on the covers. And newspapers I’ve never seen anywhere else: The Serbo-Croatian Siren, The National Bugle, and The Republican-Democrat Advocate (that last one makes me smile). There’s everything here, just not enough of it. There was even a live feed from the Qool Mart’s internal network on the security monitor, which the staff was too busy watching to greet us when Mom and I walked in. The left half of the screen was security cam footage from Port Jameson, in fuzzy, elongated, black and white; the right half was in color, and featured Qool Mart CEO Rolland Hoyt standing in front of a featureless background painted with Qool Mart’s distinctive reddish-brown color. He was speaking; no audio was being piped out of what he had just called a “renegade franchise.”

  “. . . this renegade franchise will be isolated, its assets frozen, and its communication logs heavily scrutinized. The Qool Mart family has always held that”—he raised his hands and flicked his fingers to make them quotation marks—“‘going independent’ would cause harm to our brand, to our trademarks, to our trade secrets, and most importantly, to the mutually beneficial relationships Qool Mart Co. cultivates with its franchisees.

  “To this end, we are insisting that the Qool Mart family pull together in this, the time of our greatest challenge. Please stay open, stay friendly, serve your customers as if they too were a part of your family . . . of our family. And if any franchisee has any information that could be useful in any way toward engendering a resolution to this crisis, please contact us via the internal network immediately. We’ll also be combing through the records of all employees who may have a connection to the Port Jameson store, and would appreciate the full cooperation of all our franchisees and associates to facilitate this matter.

  “And finally, we have ordered an air strike on the Port Jameson store. We’d like to make it absolutely clear that this is a private response. The US government is not a part of this operation, though it has allowed use of its air space for the event. Indeed, our insurer, Bell, Winston, and Associates, has taken care of all the incidentals, from selecting the contractors to the sale of ancillary rights for overseas markets. We will also be releasing a one-shot magazine commemorating the forthcoming tragedy, called Freedom’s Qool, which will be our periodical upsell for November of this year.

  “Peace be with you all, and good night and good service.”

  Randall Hoyt was moved off-screen by a wipe, and a black-and-white King Daniel eating a hot dog filled the screen. Mom’s face burned cold, the way yours does when you almost fall dow
n a long flight of steps, or when a car whizzes by too close. The connection to the god in her temporal lobe faltered for a moment, but then reasserted itself with all sorts of goodie-good chemicals. Everything was going to be okay. Nobody would really blow up a Qool Mart, least of all Qool Mart itself, and if it did, nobody in the store was going to be hurt. They’d get out somehow, or something would happen that would save the day. And gosh, she was right, because back at the store, Rich had just received the news about the imminent attack from Levellin Inc., the manufacturers of Stew in a Bubble, Cherry Bomb Cola, Sweet and Sour Soup Mix, and Cuebars. Levellin shares an insurer with Qool Mart, and someone at Levellin headquarters in England had just received a phone call asking for a “thumbnail guestimate on a going-present basis” about how much inventory might be lost if, say, a Qool Mart was taken out in one shot by an attack copter. Pardon me, Richard heard in his earplug, if it’s not too much trouble, could you begin to wrap up programming this evening and bring the camera outside, and beyond the parking lot as well? Thank you very much. We’re anticipating an imminent violent incident and we’d prefer that you’re not hurt and our property not damaged. Thank you very much in advance.

  My mother snapped, “Stop staring, Herb!” Then she smiled, God’s own child again. “You’re such a little daydreamer. Been through so much. Why not see if they have an ice cream you like? Or an ice pop? Whatever’s less sticky.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, whatever you want!”

  To the back of the store I went. Geri kept an eye on me and an eye on the screen, and saw Richard rush up to my father and knock a hot dog out of his hand. Arms started flailing, jaws dropped, Whiting tried to rush the counter and tackle Musad, but Umer jumped on his back, sending them both tilting over onto the display case. Lottery tickets fluttered like moths across the lens of the camera. Adrienne ran off screen toward the doors. Jake punched Richard in the side of the head, and Barry rushed into the middle of it all, trying to hold everyone apart. Then everyone seemed to turn on him. My mother couldn’t watch anymore; all the slapping and bumping was damaging her brand new world-view.

  I wasn’t ready for any more of this either. Instead of the ice cream freezer I went to the stand-up fridge that held all the milk, opened the door, and held it open by using a big gallon jug as a doorstop. Then I took out all the other gallon containers, sat on the floor, and sort of wiggled my way under the bottom shelf. It was a tight squeeze, but I was able to turn around onto my stomach and pull the gallon jugs back in. The employees and my mother were so entranced with the screen, and then, with their own dumb conversation—“Say, are you on TV?” “Well, sometimes, but maybe you saw USA Today yesterday? I’m Geri Weinberg. You’re probably thinking of the front-page article, but I have to say that all those nasty things I said I no longer agree with. You see, I’ve found G . . .”—that they didn’t notice all the jostling or even my grunting. The door closed when I pulled that first jug into the cooler after me. Qool Mart uses those great big coolers that are loaded from the back end, not the entrance, so I was able to shift onto my side and stand up, then push open the back door to the unit with my butt. I was alone in the dusty, cold, storage/ loading area at the back of the store.

  The best part was that once my mother noticed I was missing, she went so crazy that she had to be sedated. The cops were everywhere: running slow with their high beams on to see if I was walking down the shoulder of the highway, checking the little wooded areas between housing developments, knocking on doors. A few of them had even taken the two Qool Mart employees—white kids with pimples and that dumb haircut everyone has—back to the precinct for a beating, in case they were Satanists or child molesters and working with “the enemy.”

  Nobody bothered to check the storage area. I drank an orange-strawberry-banana juice from a little container that came with its own straw and pulp strainer, and waited. I had a Qool Mart all to myself, my own little nation for a change. Herbia.

  9

  In Herbia, I finally felt free. And also chilly. But I remembered hearing on TV once that in the Middle East, old Arab traders were said to drink piping hot tea under the desert sun so that their internal and external temperatures would equate, so I tried the same with some ice pops. It’s good to be king. I promised myself that I’d never be extradited. I still wasn’t happy, though.

  There was one cop car idling outside the store, but the whole place was otherwise abandoned. I’m small enough to not be seen over the counters, and I knew exactly where the junior officer in the car would be looking, and when, so I was able to just walk around the corner, through the Employees Only door, and into the Qool Mart proper, to grab some sweatshirts to use as blankets, and a few comics and magazines to keep myself busy. I also grabbed a flashlight, and a fistful of candy bars. Then it was back to Herbia, and back to my meditations.

  At the Port Jameson Qool Mart, things had not gone well. Adrienne was sitting on her butt, moaning, having tripped and fallen, her head hitting the edge of a newspaper rack. Jake’s arms were wrapped around my father’s belly, while Dad was trying to cough up yet another hot dog–based peace treaty. Richard was screaming that an attack was imminent and that something had to be done. Whiting and the two representatives of the Muslim Republic were wrapped up in one another’s limbs, and it sort of fell to Barry to handle things. He had a genius stroke and called Weinbergia.

  “Weinbergia,” said Kelly on the other end of the phone.

  “Is there anything about us on the news?” Barry asked.

  “Lemme check,” said Kelly. She shouted at the din behind her and sighed the words, “Commercial commercial reality show,” before saying, “Ah! No, you’re not. Even we’re not.”

  “Uhm—”

  “That’s bad,” Kelly explained. “They must be planning something. Uhm, let me call you back, okay?” Before Barry could say “No, wait—” or offer his eternal love or to lead an escape, she hung up.

  Then she decided to talk to me. Herb? I heard from nineteen hundred miles away. Kelly was walking up the steps, then pushing her way into my old room. It had become a mini-workshop, full of sawdust and solder—Dad had had the idea to make little garden gnomes with glowing red eyes, to sell as folk art over the Internet—but nobody was on shift at the moment.

  Herb? she thought again. Can you hear me?

  I’d never heard anyone address me directly telepathically before. Well, not and expect me to answer. Sometimes in school I’d pick up something like “Hey, dipshit! Don’t take the last lime Jell-O,” on somebody’s mind. And I wouldn’t, but I would “accidentally” poke my thumb into it instead while reaching for a pudding.

  I don’t know if you can “talk” back to me or anything, but I’ve read your little notebook . . . you know the one, you stopped keeping it a long time ago. You were eight, but you didn’t write like an eightyear-old. You described how your parents were thinking, how you could hear people in your head, and you even knew what was on people’s mind when they thought in other languages.

  I figure you’re either really creative, need some kind of mental help, or . . . you’re telling the truth.

  Can you hear me?

  Now I had to scramble for the phone. Another pair of cops had pulled up to the Qool Mart parking lot too, having gotten tired of searching the highway for me. Plus, the Scrapple Apple Pies (pork and MacIntosh, it’s like an Easter dinner and dessert in your mouth!) were unguarded. A combination of the easy instincts of the police and pure dumb luck brought the new pair of police into the store and off to different corners where they could see every inch of the shelf space at once.

  I hope you can. Something bad is going to happen. Hahaha, I said “going to.” Like things haven’t been happening already for months now, years. Damn damn, Kel, shut up. He wrote about this sort of blather in his dia—Herb, can you just ignore this part? Delete. Off the record. God, if you can hear me, can you tell me what’s going to happen? What should I do?

  The police, two young guys
whose thoughts were all coffee buzz cut by the natural soothing qualities of a Qool Mart, dawdled over the products, just as I had an hour or so before. They were grooving to logos and bug-eyed mascots, and the occasional whiff of coffee or cheese floating in the air-conditioned breeze, the way you might half-listen to the radio or a CD full of waterfalls to go to sleep. But in the back of their heads, there was a sharpness. Always ready, always watching. I couldn’t leave Herbia. No free trade for me, I was trapped behind my own borders, surrounded by belligerents with popular, if incomprehensible, ideologies. They thought I hated them, but they were the ones who hated me. All of them. Even my mother Geri. Even Dad, King Daniel I of Weinbergia. Kids are such a burden, and never quite work out the way you want them to. We’re like pets, or really nice cars—you want to show them off, take care of them, own them, get and give affection, but there is still that massive chain of obligation, one that is one-way. Kids don’t rush into burning buildings or bust up meth labs for the sake of the police, that’s for sure.

  It was getting hard to hear Kelly too, because my mother had managed to find a TV camera to put herself in front of, and now a million people were praying for me. I decided to do a kid thing. I squeezed out the back of the cooler, into the storage area, found the circuit breaker box, and flipped the big switch. There was cursing and the sound of fruit pies hitting the floor and then the flashlights went on. The cops headed to the Employees Only door to find the box while I walked back around to the cold room and slipped out under the bottom shelf of the milk fridge to the main part of the Qool Mart, claimed a calling card and a disposable cell phone in the name of Herbia, and then left the store to make a few calls.

  “Hello, may I speak with Kelly please?” I affected as deep a voice as I could, holding my chin against my collarbone and speaking through my nose.

  “Hey, is this Herb? Where are you, man?” It was one of those smelly guys from Vermont who had recently emigrated.