Multitude

by Swanson, Peter Joseph

  He started his shift after clomping across a bridge. “Slow morning?” a man asked.

  Billy Boy Thorn responded by nodding a mannerly hello to the decoyboy who had joined walking alongside, who was uniformed in a fresh gossamer yellow poncho.

  Billy Boy Thorn asked, “Have you seen Chrysalis Joy out yet?”

  The decoyboy looked off in thought. “Him. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in awhile.”

  “I wonder where he’s hiding.”

  “Why would you say he’s hiding?”

  Billy Boy Thorn looked about, and laughed. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

  “Why do you want him?”

  Billy Boy Thorn smiled. “He’s a good friend. I don’t know if we’re supposed to have favorite friends so much when we’re cops. I’m not sure.”

  “It can’t hurt anything, I’m sure.”

  “I wonder why I haven’t seen him in awhile.”

  The decoyboy shrugged. “Maybe he’s just always way over there when you’re way over here.”

  “I suppose that’s all there is to it. We’ll cross paths later.” After they walked a while in silence down a long dark narrow tunnel and came out at a courtyard that had broken tables pushed against one wall, Billy Boy Thorn asked, “Do you ever dream of people with wombs? Or am I damned?”

  The decoyboy stopped, stunned and alarmed. His face burned red, and then quickly clouded over. “That! You’ve been poisoned by mass hypnosis. I think we must be the same crowd that’ll take the elevator up together. Up to the true city. The eternal life. Are you going up to Garden City tomorrow to live in perfect bliss in Elysium Grounds? I am.”

  “Nope. We’re not from the same batch, I guess. But congratulations. From the bountiful shaft may all mercy flow from above to down below.”

  “Thank you for the blessing. I really appreciate it today. And tomorrow I’ll be blessed.”

  Billy Boy Thorn asked, “What did you mean by mass hypnosis?”

  “I was once taught that mass hypnosis will inflict people in the end times. The bird that is Satan, or something, and it’s trying to tempt us away from the elevator ride.”

  “We must be strong.” Billy Boy Thorn almost recalled what a bird was. He thrust his chin out, looking stiff and stupid, and not realizing it. “Strong for heaven and country! From the bountiful shaft may all mercy flow from above to down below.”

  “Yeah.” The decoyboy said. “Ignore the mass hallucinations. We can all laugh about it later when we have all the answers in perfect bliss in Garden City. There, we’ll have the whole picture and won’t have to worry all the time, not anymore.” He paused and grinned. “So,” the decoyboy asked, starting over. “Slow morning?” He laughed.

  “Slow morning.” Billy Boy Thorn chuckled. They entered another narrow tunnel. “Where’s your big party before you go up? They better give you one, being the privileged class.”

  “Oh, you bet! At the compound under Parkay Street 6. It’s a really grand lottery hall. They say I might go up sick with a hangover after what those jealous norm moles are gonna do to me. I hope I’m not so tired I miss the elevator.”

  “A billy boy will toss you in if you are. You can sleep all the way up. We don’t care about that. There’s no rules against going up unconscious. Just as long as we see you get outta here.”

  “Good.” He sighed in relief. “Then I’m not worried. I was getting worried that something could happen and I might miss my elevator somehow.” He laughed very nervously as if he still wasn’t sure.

  Billy Boy Thorn slapped the man’s back. “Not a chance.”

  “Great!” They stepped out into a wide street flanked in fake shops, concrete balconies and loud showy news panels.

  “We all worry too much, don’t we?” Billy Boy Thorn wondered if the calm he saw around him in the streets was all part of some plot where everybody acts too normal before they all fly crashing into the walls and go crazy, and then a nurse at pillplace blames him for it all, wagging an ugly rubber finger in his face like a mixing spoon. “What’s a mixing spoon?”

  “I don’t know?” The decoyboy shrugged. “What’s it for?”

  “I dunno. Food? Is that even possible?”

  The decoyboy scrunched up his face. “Why would food need a mixing spoon? You just eat it. You are listening to the devil today! Just listen to the news. That will occupy your mind for now. I wonder where the war is today. I hope we win soon.”

  Billy Boy Thorn lied, “It was something I heard on the news. Yeah! They were being used in the war, or something. Mixing spoons. I may have gotten it wrong. It’s good to always think about the war. Thank God for the war so we have something to keep us present tense.”

  “Oh, then never mind. Billy boys are always too busy doing their job to properly memorize the news. Pity. You miss out on so much.” The decoyboy nudged Billy Boy Thorn’s arm. “Do you ever wonder why we decoyboys seem to just naturally fall into step with you cops?”

  “You like our company,” Billy Boy Thorn stated, and then quietly thought about how for some reason the seasoned twenty year old cops were naturally on the verge of the wildest wild thoughts, ever.”

  “Billy boys are a superior breed of men. You need that for cops.”

  “Are you sure that wasn’t just a wild thought?” Billy Boy Thorn asked. “Superior to what?” He thought about how he’d been so scrawny in a past life, until he remembered that thinking about past lives was illegal.

  “Superior to norm moles. Who else.”

  Billy Boy Thorn laughed. “Cops are so boring, shooting and thought correcting. I bet decoy school was a lot more fun than billy boy school. Anything has to be better than that workout. Some cops just dropped dead from it. But you guys are the best for keeping things shipshape. You guys are as great as an ice pick lobotomy.”

  “Sure. But you got a gun.”

  Billy Boy Thorn smiled big. “That is hard to beat, isn’t it?”

  The decoyboy shrugged. “Our jobs are all the same, I bet. Sure you can chase down the strongest norm mole and toss him into the elevator if he’s too rotten to go to heaven, himself, wanting to be damned like anything. But I bet we both have some fun that’s our own. We have to accept our advantages as they are.”

  Billy Boy Thorn asked, “Do you remember where you were when you had your school lessons? Do you remember being underwater?”

  The decoyboy looked offended. “Why would I ever have lessons underwater? That’s for being born. Being born and having lessons are entirely separate different things.” Then he rubbed at the sides of his neck where his gills had long healed away. “Oh that’s right. I forgot. So, people learn better underwater with a radio. Whatever works. I’m not a teacher. I really don’t care about that old stuff. That’s the past. I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”

  “But do you remember it or do you just remember the lessons?”

  “There’s too much on your mind.” The decoyboy pushed at him. “Too much that could get you into trouble. That’d be a crying shame. If I can make the elevator ride with my crazy head, anybody can.”

  The main news came on. “In sports, the winners will certainly get extra points and take that elevator ride up early! An elevator all the way up! Maybe the lottery players will ride up on their big fat coattails! Twenty to twenty! Twenty to twenty! Buy the lottery everyday and maybe win an early ride! If you don’t play you may be damned. Don’t forget the 12 numbers. Keep them always in your head!”

  Billy Boy Thorn nodded in approval. The games had gotten uneven and predicable. Curiosity had threatened to putter. But now this toss-up would keep his job easier for him as people fought over it and threw in their worthless opinions. The violent games kept everybody distracted and moral.

  The screens started to play complicated montages of the most glorious images of hundreds of men speeding on neon green gyro bikes, looping round and round upside-down and back again. It was recorded from the weightless room at the bottom of the c
ity well that was a humongous silver bubble where top and bottom was irrelevant. There was no gravity dead center in the great space and nobody knew how it actually worked. Billy Boy Thorn felt his heart tug, wanting to someday train for the gyro bikes, but his busy schedule didn’t allow it. There were no wild thoughts for him to police, there. A stern professional guidance counselor was on hand to race off the diving board, grab, drag away, and arrest anyone breaking the law, which were just traffic laws. Gyro bikes didn’t have a brain and so they could actually crash into each other, for real.

  “You look sad.” The decoyboy made a mocking face. “Don’t worry—it’s just sport and that’s only for the common man. Leave it to the norm moles.”

  Billy Boy Thorn smiled sadly. “But doesn’t it look like a lot of fun?”

  The decoyboy frowned. “A lot of hurrying to nowhere. Round and round. Just going in circles.”

  “Admit it, it looks amazing! And all of life is circles anyway. Small little circles.”

  The decoyboy said, “It takes three years to train to even enter the bubble. Only twentyers get in, so okay, it has to be something.”

  “But doesn’t the gyro bike work by merely leaning forward on the bar?” Billy Boy Thorn asked, knowing the device well but still wanting to talk all about it.

  The decoyboy answered, “It doesn’t have a gyroscope for nothing. The training is for safety. One accident could wipe out a whole bunch of guys. They say one of the hardest rides is just getting there from the garage. You have to go down a long spiral ramp. All of them ride there together in a tight formation. It’s all a game of riding as one huge team. A mistake usually causes a chain reaction. It keeps everybody very present tense! Has there ever been an accident?”

  “Yeah.” Billy Boy Thorn grinned as his eyes went wide with the recollection of a lopped off leg floating through the air. “It was very exciting. It kept everyone very legal remembering every detail. It took awhile to grow that man a new leg. I think it had to finish in heaven.”

  “That’s nice.” The decoyboy pointed to an image of a man riding near. He was quickly gone but then seen again farther away, racing up one side and down the other as part of a complicated weaving pattern, becoming one detail in a vast neon green kinetic traffic sculpture. He recited, “The world’s true fine arts always comes from the most official of state sports.”

  “Hey!” Billy Boy Thorn spotted something odd in the background. “What’s that?” He stepped closer to the screen. A long black box floated by sideways.

  “Another elevator, a secular type. Who cares, let’s go. You have a beat to walk and norm moles to scare holy.”

  Billy Boy Thorn didn’t budge. “Why would it do that? Why do elevators float sideways like that through the room? Who uses them? I’ve never been on one. Why don’t we use such elevators in this fine city?”

  “Who cares? Those types of elevators pass through that place from time to time for no reason. It’s not important and we don’t need them here. We don’t need to be looking at it. Not if it will just confuse you.”

  On the screen, an image of a man stepped out of an elevator with a single eyeball camera gloved in his palm, his palm over his face. “What’s that?”

  “Just another recorder. The place is full of them. You need recorders to catch the riders for all of us to watch here on the TVs. How do you think we can watch it on a screen here unless somebody gives us eyes over there? Don’t be stupid.”

  “Is that who he is?” Billy Boy Thorn doubted. “Just recording?”

  “How do you think you’re standing here watching the screen without somebody recording it over there?”

  “But look!” Billy Boy Thorn bristled, noticing that the man’s body shape looked like his own. When he pulled away his camera, the man’s face was his own. “It’s me!”

  “Let’s go,” the decoyboy urged him with a nudge. “So what.”

  “He looks just like me. It is me!”

  “So what. Just an optical illusion from his eye to yours, and you got looped and confused. It happens.”

  “That’s me in there!”

  The decoyboy chuckled. “But it can’t really be, can it, so my explanation is the only one to make sense. The image somehow looped from his eye to yours and you think it’s you.”

  “That makes no scientific sense at all. It was me!”

  “People always say that.” The decoyboy became angry. “It’s just your superstitious imagination at work again, trying to land you in a third rate pillplace with a broken-down red nurse. I’ve really heard enough of voodoo science today. Up to my ears! Let’s go! I’m tired of watching what I can’t be doing!” As if the decoyboy had been loud enough to have been heard to the ends of the city, the look-alike on the screen quickly swam back towards the elevator box, as if alerted, covering his face, pulling his legs to his chest, kicking back inside. Other men appeared and proceeded to push the box away. The montage changed to another angle. A song about heaven started to blare.

  Feeling spooked, Billy Boy Thorn stomped away leaving the decoyboy far behind. A voice went through his head that wasn’t his. “Religion is the first resort of scientists.” He shook it away. It was illegal to think about it that way.

  Screams of joy erupted from a cage below while men jumped up in glee. “We won the elevator up! We won it up, early!” Billy Boy Thorn became present tense and smiled with pride for them. The city was good, again. All lottery winners were heroes and any win caused stampedes back into the more expensive saloons on blind faith, alone.

  The news came on with the latest cafeteria vending machine’s menu order, “Cracker chips, cracker meat, cracker press, meat chips, cracker meat, meat cards, meat press, cracker tags, squares, Subco chips, Gibeah meat, meat crackers, meat tags and pork thumbs.” Memorizing the order of them in order to order, in order to eat, was tricky and kept the mind focused and from going wild.

  A vent kicked on from above and as warm air blew on him Billy Boy Thorn suddenly felt melancholy. On the carpet concourse, the mob looked soft and bored. He worried that someday he’d call an alarm and nobody would move. He wondered how he’d cart off an entire room full of people to a pillplace, all at once. He leaned against the wall and waited for his beat to finish then went to a dorm he hadn’t been to in awhile. It was important to keep up variety. He logged some numbers on his wrist, dropped his uniform as a yapping bin rolled up and ate it. He shuffled through the dorm to the hot showers and then the sinks to spray his teeth and shave everything but his eyelashes. He finally realized there was music playing through the steam hiss. The words to the song were transparent and didn’t command his attention. Instead he felt speed. He was flying across a landscape of glass buildings in a black-market criminal car he had stolen. Criminal Car? Wild thought. He wondered how he could ever know about something so wild. He scowled in the mirror, not quite recognizing himself. He looked too tall, too handsome, too strong… too perfect. On some distant place he was a scrawny loser. Billy Boy Thorn violently shook his head and then brought himself to the present tense with an ice-cold splash of water and a few hard slaps to his temples.

  A norm mole walked up behind him. Billy boy Thorn jolted with fear. The man’s eyes were bright yellow, the color of plague. There were no diseases of the body here in a modern city. In fact he didn’t even know what it meant and wasn’t supposed to. That made physical disease a wild thought. “Get yourself to pillplace,” Billy Boy Thorn ordered the man.

  “Why?”

  “Have you looked at your eyes? They’ve gone out of code.”

  The man looked at himself and jolted in horror. It was obvious it caused a flood of wild thoughts strong enough to remember an ox.

  Billy Boy Thorn tried to smile in assurance. “Just a pill will fix you up. I’m sure that’s all it’ll take and your circulation will be back in circulation.”

  “I’ll be destroyed!”

  “Nonsense and never fear.” Billy Boy Thorn pushed the man out the door to the street and in th
e right direction. “That’s where there’s a pillplace that’s open right now. The others are all closed. Go that way! That way! Bye now, you’ll be fixed up as good as new! That way!”

  Utterly irritated by the gruesome sight of yellow eyeballs, Billy Boy Thorn hurried to where the dark street ended. He climbed up the scaffolding to the vent. All was quiet but then after hearing something that sounded like far away coughing and squeaky carts wheeling in, overhead, an echoed conversation picked up between the same pair of high-pitched voices like from the day before.

  “I’m not going to the union meeting tonight if Mack has his talk about safety procedures again. He’s such a bore when he has those talks and I know what a damn fire is. I know what it means to be sucked out into space. Well, at least I’ve heard about it all enough times.”

  I wonder how many safety meetings we’ve sat through over the years? Hundreds? Thousands?”

  “At least Mack could make some effort to make it fun. Blast a few clowns into space and then see what they look like for it.”

  “Oh, phhh. I wish you wouldn’t worry about Mack so much. At least he doesn’t press moral issues with these damn clones. At least the union is matter of fact with him. He’d rather pretend to be mountain climbing than talk about moral firewalls. I’m so tired of that old junk.”

  “Clowns.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Damn clowns. Clones, clowns, same snot. Speaking of the dirty damn things down there, clone city, there hasn’t been a big gory murder spree lately. What’s going on with those little weenies. I hear they’re all turning into damn fish.”

  “Do these slabs of meat look like fish to you? Clown forbid they start tasting like fish. Bad enough how they smell like the same vodka we wash the floor with. Damn.”

  “I’ve filed a quad-zillion of these damn clowns so far this evening. We shouldn’t have taken the day off. Look how it piled up. I’m taking my break. How many have you filed from the freezer into alley B?”

  “I don’t count. I let the freezer count. I’ve got more important things to think about, and the freezer has feelings too.”