Multitude

by Swanson, Peter Joseph

  “That freezer off the elevator? No it doesn’t have feelings I’m sure of it. It’s very primitive back there. It’s all the simplest of machines. They were once going to modernize it so it just used gas and shrink-wrap to process the meat. But then they decided in the end not to bring it up to code. Why bother. Ice will always be the cheapest. You can never run out of ice.”

  “It’s no fun to count dead clowns unless you see a whole batch with the same mutation. Have you ever seen a clone with a shrunken head?”

  “Yes, I showed you! And it was a hoax. Do you have a life?”

  “No. It’s been so many many years ago now that I hit eighty-four and I’m still waiting for a life. I’m still waiting for my new body if they ever get it right, so I have more time to live. Life takes time. Damn.”

  “I feel like I’ve wasted my life waiting for something to happen that just isn’t going to. How old do you have to get to finally realize life isn’t fair? I blame the union. We could have had a war and pushed things more. I wasted the best years of my life being nice.”

  “The best years? All the years! Not that we had any kind of a life back on Earth. And how do we have a war? We have nothing to have a war with?”

  Billy Boy Thorn was awash in a variety of wild thoughts. He pushed his face away from the grate, feeling cold. He rubbed his arms and sides, climbed down off the scaffolding and then ran off in a rage of energy down the corridor. He paused at Deco Carpet Street to kick a vacuum cleaner in the head, his heel sending plastic brain parts out into the air. It dumbfounded the few norm moles who saw. “Wild thought!” was as good as Billy Boy Thorn could reply. He ran back to the dorm and took another hot shower.

  chapter 4: singular people

  Billy Boy Thorn woke up on the floor of the vast white meandering hall with an endless orange stripe down the middle of the endless carpet, lost, having no idea how much time had passed. He heard a door shut. “Hello?” He ran after. On a door he saw another drawing of a dragon and bat, done a little differently, in blue marker. He tried that door and it opened. He ran from room to room, all of them empty, and he didn’t see anybody. He kept walking to pursue where he thought the sound came from, not seeing anybody, but he found a large set of stairs. He went down six steps into icy cold water. He trudged through a flooded hall to a set of rusted metal stairs. He clomped up them to step out into a bright factory complex.

  Hundreds of the same man lay lifeless on rows of cots. Billy Boy Thorn paused. He didn’t know who the man was and wondered again about having seen so many Chrysalis Joys go away in so many pillars of ice. Holding his hands tight over his chest, fighting to slow his heart, he cautiously walked along the entire room of cots. Then a cot near him started to drive itself away. He followed it. After passing through several vast bright rooms, he spotted a pair of petite odd people-like creatures, looking unique from each other. They were withered and frail. They were not sprawled out on the carts but were clothed and walking amongst them, all in careful deliberate steps. He halted again. They stiffened and paused, then looked back and forth from him to the identical dead bodies. After glancing at each other in nervousness, they walked behind a cot to put it between themselves and him.

  He did the same with another cot. He tried not to notice the dead body on it, too much, even though its eyes were wide open.

  They looked hesitantly to the far door.

  He saw that they were thinking about maybe going to it. He put his hand up.

  They looked terrified.

  “Don’t run.”

  They fretfully looked into each other’s wide eyes, lost for words.

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  “Damn!” one said.

  “Damn!” agreed the other, with long gray hair twist at the nape of a deeply contoured and crinkled neck.

  He smiled to try to look gentle. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “Who are you? I’ve never seen you before. You one of the grad schoolers?”

  He shook his head. “Who?”

  They seemed to relax at that and then looked haughty. “A robber scientist? Phhh. What do you want? We haven’t seen the boss in years. Now what.”

  “I’m a cop. A billy boy.”

  They stiffened in fear, again. “A what?”

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  They looked at the dead bodies near them. “He’s not one of these.”

  “Bigger,” said the other. “Don’t come any closer! Stay back!”

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  “What are you? Why did you come to us?”

  “I’m a cop. I help people. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know where I am. I think I’m very lost. Where am I?”

  “They have cops up there?”

  The one with the gray hair twist relaxed and shrugged. “Phhh, sure why not. Somebody has to make everybody behave.”

  “You’re not shaved.” Billy Boy Thorn said of their long hair. Although it was combed and arranged, it made them seem so savage and wild to him.

  “He’s looking at us! Just looking! I’ve never had one look at us. It’s like he’s a person person.”

  “Of course I’m a person.” Billy Boy Thorn looked down at himself.

  “It talks! I never thought of them actually ever talking to me one day,” the one with the hair twist said.

  He pointed behind him. “I heard somebody up there in the hall—the long white hall. It goes on for days! Was that you up there running around? I tried to follow but I didn’t see anybody. I’ve been walking for a very long time. A whole day I think! Who are you?”

  “I don’t run around. I’m far too old to just run around. There’s always a few kids out running around, somewhere. What do you expect? Why are you running around? Who are you? Why are you talking to me? Why are you standing there and talking? Damn!”

  The other one said to her partner, “Maybe he just slipped through the stupid freezer, and they talk when they’re not dead. The freezers are stupid, remember. They don’t give them brains because they’re a hundred years old and they think they should still work anyway. You think it’s a damn clown?”

  “It is, I’m sure of it now. Look at the cheap bag he’s wearing. Phhh. And if the mold went off the rails again up in the freezer I’ll just laugh all the way to the union and tell them I told them so.”

  “The claw hasn’t broken in years. It’s supposed to get out there and get everybody, no matter how fast they hop around to try and avoid it. It doesn’t have to be too modern and smart to do that much.”

  “Penny wise pound foolish, I always tell them. We’re on such thin ice anymore that someday this whole place will collapse… in every way.”

  “Wh-who are you?” Billy Boy Thorn asked them, trying to act fearless and professional. “Are you abandoned robots? You need repair. You need moisturizer, badly. Is this the desert?”

  The petite withered humans looked at him in affront. “Robots?”

  “Damn no!” said the other.

  He asked, “Who are you?”

  “What hit you in the face?” the one with the gray hair twist asked. “A damn snowball?”

  “What?”

  “I’m Venus. Just Venus, like the marvelous planet I don’t have perfumes in my head. And this pretentious old slog is Lady Hatchet,” she pointed to the other with the hair twist. Then they all three looked at each other, uncertain and confused.

  He asked, “Is your hair made out of metal?”

  “Metal? Phhh.” Lady Hatchet sternly answered, her eyes narrowing to hard slits. “It went gray. Gray. I have gray hair. So what?”

  He tried to think. “Lady?”

  “Yes, dumb clown,” Venus said. “She insists on Lady but she wasn’t born that way. Born a damn peasant.” She was sharply elbowed by her friend for that. “Damn you.”

  “Lady? That means …” his mind hit a wall, “ah… I don’t exactly remember.”

  They turned from each other and glanced at all the silent identical male bodies sprawle
d around them, in vague disinterest. Venus rubbed her chin. “None of us are ladies if you want to get technical. The word means a woman who doesn’t have to work for a living so she just shops and does charity all day long. We are working wenches. Stuck here. If you can call this work.” She laughed bawdily.

  Lady Hatchet frowned. “Speak for yourself.”

  He murmured, “Lady… woman.”

  Venus nodded. “Yes, we’re women. I guess you’re not used to that, coming from a prison. And you know how they keep prisons this far away from polite society, so you won’t ever see the likes of us and get all the wrong ideas about things. You’re not supposed to see much of anything. How did you get past the ice and the claw? You’re not supposed to do that. I know it’s all primitive as all getup. That was so it wouldn’t wear out so much. Water and ice are supposed to be dependable. They’re supposed to make it so you can’t just traipse out of prison.”

  “No it wasn’t a prison, I’m a cop, and it was a city where I just came from. I left. I’ve been walking empty halls for a day and night. I think it was that long. I’ve lost all track of time.”

  Venus rolled her eyes. “Those halls? Those halls haven’t been used for years, just a few robots and kids, the city has become so empty. You were just going in circles, I suppose. Directly below us right here is the clown prison, so you really did go out of your way to get here. You walked full circle. Sometimes if you blokes give out a good loud cheer we can hear it from those vents over there by the floor. Creepy sounding, that is. Odd how sound can travel up so.”

  Billy Boy Thorn looked over at the vents. “You can hear us?”

  Venus said, “Sometimes. And now what do we do with you now that you’re here and not there? We better call the damn robber scientists directly and get this one out of here and on his merry little way to the deli slicer.”

  “No!” Lady Hatchet put up her hand. “Not to them! Not the robber scientists. No-no-no. We hate them. We always go through the union.”

  Venus nodded. “Yeah, we hate them. We hate them all. How’d you get here?” Venus asked Thorn. “How did you get out in the first place?”

  “There was a flood,” he answered. “I washed up the elevator. I’m worried sick that I missed perfect bliss in Elysium Grounds. What floor is this? How many floors are there yet to go until I get to heaven?”

  “Oh, a flood bath. So that’s why you don’t smell like a damn perverted goat,” Lady Hatchet said. “Usually you all come to us smelling like the oddest chemicals.”

  “Smell? Goat?” He looked blank. “I’m not quite sure…”

  “Yes, dear.” Lady Hatchet tapped the side of her nose. “Smell.”

  Venus reminded Lady Hatchet, in a low tone, “He can’t damn smell, remember? They have that part disabled to help control memories.”

  “Oh. Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten that,” Lady Hatchet admitted. “Who can imagine living without smell.” She delicately sniffed at her own wrist.

  Venus nodded. “Nothing triggers memories faster than smell and they’re trying to control all that.”

  “What’s smell?” Billy Boy Thorn asked. “Tell me and then point my way to perfect bliss in Elysium Grounds.”

  “Olfactory.” Venus explained. “Behind your damn purdy clown face. A sense all animals find rather helpful, at least in the past. Try to remember.”

  “I guess clones didn’t need it. Anyway, take him to the union? Sure. We can’t just shove him down alley B at this point.” Lady Hatchet pulled a pen out of her pocket and twisted its cap. “Hello?” she called into it as if it was hard of hearing. “Hellooooo!”

  He asked them both, “Why are you so horrible looking? What type of human creature are you?”

  “What?” Venus gasped at him.

  “I could remember if I wasn’t so confused.”

  Venus cackled. “You don’t know what we are because the damn robber scientists didn’t let you know.”

  “Our union boss doesn’t answer,” Lady Hatchet complained to her coworker, giving her pen dirty looks. “Her care attendant says she’s napping and her robot was pushed off the balcony, she did it herself in an apoplectic fit, so she doesn’t have a robot anymore. What a moody bat.”

  Venus anxiously twisted at a decorative button on her sleeve. “Well then we can’t even talk to her robot. That’s what we get for having a union president older than we are. So then, why don’t you just dial up the robber scientists directly?”

  “I’d rather eat your buttons.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, we hate them guys.”

  He asked them both, “What? What does all this mean? What are you saying?”

  “You only know what you’ve been shown in your life,” Venus explained to him, snootily, to hide her discomfort. She nervously rubbed her narrow lips and then the waddle under her chin. “And where you come from… seeing was damn believing. Huh?”

  “I tried the robber scientists, directly,” Lady Hatchet interrupted, now twisting her pen angrily. “All I get on the line is Bach played too fast. They’re impossible.”

  Venus repeated, now wincing arrogantly, “Yeah, we hate them all.”

  Billy Boy Thorn asked, “What are you talking about? And who are you creatures? Are you crazy? You look crazy.”

  “Now we’re crazy creatures,” Venus said. “I was born damn proper, squeezed out between two legs, and he calls me a creature! So… I got old. So what.”

  He asked, “Then, what happened to you? You look like you’re melting or something.”

  Lady Hatchet’s eyes widened, the skin around them looking like it was from some pale overripe fruit. “I’m an old old ooold woman, you stupid clown. And that one over there is a dinosaur. And I look fabulous for my years. One hundred and thirteen of them, damn. And we work here.” She glared at him impatiently as if that would help him understand.

  “And I look better.” Venus grinned.

  “Half of your face has slipped under your chin. I think not.” Lady Hatchet grandly gestured about the vast workroom. “I am the quintessential old lady. And the basic union worker. I am the universal worker. I don’t know why they even bother call me by any other name.”

  Venus intolerantly rolled her eyes. “That just sounded plum crazy. You? You don’t even know all the SOPs.”

  “What’s SOPs?”

  “Standard operating procedures. Of course.”

  Lady Hatchet laughed wickedly. “Who does, we just show up. This work has been all so automated. Anything left for people to do is just a courtesy anymore, I suppose. This world is just a bunch of machines making people and the people don’t know what the hell to do, not really.”

  Billy Boy Thorn tried to think. “What’s that?” A distant memory told him he probably already knew … woman.

  “What’s what?” Lady Hatchet asked. She turned to her coworker in disdain. “They give them the body of epic art but no damn brains, don’t they? What a joke.”

  He rubbed his face. “Old. Woman.”

  “Who are you?” Lady Hatchet’s eyes narrowed. “Really. You did stray through the freezer, didn’t you? You aren’t a spy. And we know you can’t be a hologram, they don’t have projectors for that king of thing over on this side. You’re just a dumb damn clown. Clone. The alpha type. I hope, now. Because I’ll toss you back on the ice if you’re a spy. I’ll do it myself so fast your butt will spin separate from your kidneys. We may be old but we have big machines!”

  “A spy?” Venus asked.

  “Are you a spy?” Lady Hatchet crossed her arms tightly.

  “No. I’m just a regular average billy boy from the city. That one over there. Er, or, down there. Subco Gibeah. A cop. A senior. An old twentyer. Sure I’m an alpha but I’m not that different from anybody else, and where is this? Do you know Subco Gibeah, the Garden City? Heaven? I’m due there soon. I might as well go there now.”

  Venus murmured to her coworker, “Well, he does have that lost look of stupid.”

  Lady Hatchet fro
wned. “Oh phhh. Innocent or dumb or a good liar?”

  “I hope he’s long forgotten what he was that brought him here to this rock in the first place. I’d hate to think what might happen if he remembers that.”

  “That would be dangerous.”

  “He’s an escaped criminal.” Venus put her hand up. “Stay back.” Then she chuckled at herself. “I suppose if you were going to murder us you would have by now.”

  “I’m a cop.”

  “Not always.”

  “Yes I was. Always. I was born that way. What is this… this…” Billy Boy Thorn asked, gaping at the many duplicate bodies lined up around him, “…place. And how do I get from here to Garden City? That’s all I really need to know. Just tell me and I’ll go. I’m entitled to my place in perfect bliss in Elysium Grounds. I’ve worked my four years. I know what’s fair! I know what is common sense and fair!”

  Venus softly laughed. “The happy humping ground in the sky?” She cackled. “It’s not real. You’re not real. Common sense and fair is not real.”

  “What? Of course it is. Of course I’m real!” He slapped his own arm. “Terribly real. I grew up in Ashdale.” He remembered the train tracks where he played as a scrawny kid and learned to be a bully, while at the very same time he was floating in a fishtank. He could look down at his small legs dangling in the water like a sleepy frog. He remembered both childhoods. He shook his head.

  Lady Hatchet said, “The freezer molds haven’t broken down in years. Everyday I’m amazed the cafeteria gets anything out of there at all. Remember the last time when the claw was all scabby. It got sick, probably from a dirty clone. It was disgusting.”

  Venus shook her head. “The claw couldn’t have gotten sick from a clone or we would have all gotten sick from it, too. And…”

  “Hello?” Billy Boy Thorn interrupted her. “There’s a person here. Me. Who are you and what are you talking about? Talk to me. I’m a billy boy, an alpha, a cop, and I just want to get out of here. Where’s heaven? Where’s Garden City? Just point the way and let me get out of here!”

  Venus walked up to him and grabbed him by the arm. Lady Hatchet said, “Careful!”