She had trained one of the things to carry her, so she would always sit tall and have her hands free. I couldn't speak. Somewhere beyond the trees carts rumbled.
"Hello my love,” she said. I was hemorrhaging memory, a continual stream; and all of it about her—how she spoke, how she smelled, how she always went too far, and how I wished that I'd gone with her too all those years ago.
"We're going south, to find the Bears, get us some of that writing. Want to come?” I still could not speak. “It's perfectly safe. We've bought along something else for them to eat."
I think that word “safe” was the trigger. I did the giggle of embarrassment and fear. I drank sweet water and then followed. We found writing, and here it is.
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Department: Plumage From Pegasus: Till Human Voices Shake Us, and We Frown by Paul Di Filippo
"Advertisers have a new way to get into your head ... audio technology that sends sound in a narrow beam ... Court TV recently installed the audio spotlight in ceilings of bookstores to promote the network's new murder-mystery show. A voice, whispering, ‘Hey, you, can you hear me? Do you ever think about murder?’ was beamed towards customers as they browsed...."
—"The marketers have your ear,” Jenn Abelson, The Boston Globe, 4/24/07.
* * * *
I was hoping the therapist could help me.
I had begun hearing voices, and was worried.
Only in certain situations, however. And the voices hadn't counseled me to do any harm yet, to myself or others. In fact, their messages were rather perplexing. Nonetheless, I needed to clear this matter up.
Doctor Loverso was younger than I, always a mildly disconcerting fact to encounter in such professional relationships. He resembled Leonardo DiCaprio with a wispy mustache and less facial baby fat. We exchanged handshakes, and I took a seat. Dr. Loverso picked up a steno pad and pen.
"Now, Mr. Oster, please describe your problem to me."
"Well, Doctor, I'd guess, from what little I've read, that I'm experiencing your run-of-the-mill auditory hallucinations. Voices that aren't mine, that have no source, and which seem to originate right in my ears."
"How often does this happen?"
"Only infrequently, and always when I'm in some public setting, like a mall or store or urban plaza."
"And what do these voices tell you?"
"That's the bizarre thing. I thought that in such situations, unbalanced people tended to hear comments related to the environment and their personal lives. Orders to indulge in inappropriate behavior, old grudges dug up, that sort of thing. But these voices don't get into that territory at all. Instead, they say things like, ‘Litter hurts everyone.’ Or ‘I bet you're wondering how to get your wash whiter.’ Or, ‘Have you checked your tire treads lately?’ Or, ‘Anita Shreve does it again!’ Doctor, I don't even know anyone named Anita Shreve! It's driving me crazy—if I'm not already. Please, can you help me?"
I waited with a grim expectancy that was shattered by the doctor's sudden loud laughter!
Indignant, I got to my feet. “If you can't take my predicament seriously, Doctor, I'll just be going—"
"No, no, please sit back down! It's just that you're the first patient to come to me with this problem. When I read about it in all the medical journals, I thought it seemed ridiculous. But now that I've encountered a real-life instance of it, I can see how serious it is. Although it still has its ridiculous side."
Reluctant but curious, I sat back down. “What can you mean, Doctor?"
"You're not going crazy. You're merely the unwitting victim of some new advertising technology."
Doctor Loverso explained then all about the audio spotlight. I began to curse.
"But that's horrible! It's an unwarranted intrusion into one of the last bastions of privacy a person has."
The doctor shrugged. “I'm afraid we'll all have to get used to it, Mr. Oster. That's modern life. Now, I suggest that just to prove to yourself what's happening, you visit a store where this has occurred before, and verify what I've told you."
The nearest Borders was just a few blocks away from Dr. Loverso's office, and I recalled having experienced some voices there. So off I went.
At the store, I tracked down the manager and demanded to know if they were using the audio spotlight.
He was a Greek-looking fellow whose name tag proclaimed him A. Eolus. He had the virtue of at least looking embarrassed when I confronted him.
"Yes, yes, I confess. We were using this damn audio spotlight, but no more. It is a disturbing tale. Shall I tell you?"
"Please."
"Well, first you must know that I was against it from the start. I figured it would hardly be effective, since so many people have their ears stoppered up with iPod earbuds these days. But my bosses would not listen to me. So the madness commenced.
"We began with a campaign for the new Jonathan Lethem novel, You Don't Love Me Yet. Can you guess what happened? People began breaking down in tears inside my store! Cellphones came out by the dozens, as people called their lovers and spouses to give and seek emotional reassurance. I understand the divorce rate in this city has since risen by several percent."
I began to think that my own troubles involving the audio spotlight had been minimal.
"Then,” continued Mr. Eolus, “we switched to some publicity for Bernard Goldberg's Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right. Same tactic, running the title over and over through the audio spotlight, directly into people's unsuspecting ears. The chaos in the store was incredible! People tried to shy away from anyone on their left, but began pushing and shoving people to their right. Fights, yelling, the police—It was madness, I tell you!"
"Didn't your bosses learn their lesson after that?"
"Not at all! They had a contract with the audio spotlight people and obligations to many publicists. We couldn't remove these infernal gadgets. So they tried a third time, with Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat."
I winced, and Mr. Eolus nodded sagely.
"Yes, yes, you can picture it, I see. Screams of fear, people clutching to bookcases for support, afraid to walk for fear of falling off some impossible edge of the world into space! I saw sights of abject horror I hope never to see again."
"I don't hear the audio spotlight now. I assume the Friedman incident caused you to stop using the device...?"
"No, it took one more time. You see, the audio spotlight takes its input by CD, and one of our new clerks thought she was programming the music system for the store. She inserted The Very Best of Donna Summer. Sir, do you know what the very first song is on that accursed album?"
"Not—"
"Yes, sir, yes! ‘Love to Love You Baby'! Sir, I am a family man. I do not indulge in pornographic movies. But what I saw happen that day in my poor store completely undid all my adult years of visual chastity! It took three fire trucks with much cold water delivered through large hoses to stop the orgy. The store is only now finished with renovations."
Full of sympathy, I shook Mr. Eolus's hand. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Eolus. I wish you good luck in the future with any new advertising technology."
After I left the store, I happened to pass by another venue still using the audio spotlight.
It was a branch of Blockbuster, and they were advertising a Tarantino film:
"Kill Bill, Kill Bill, Kill Bill...."
I hurried on.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Short Story: 'The New York Times’ at Special Bargain Rates by Stephen King
Last year, while he was promoting the volume of Best American Short Stories that he edited, Mr. King said that F&SF was “still the gold standard when it comes to short fiction in the United States.” He then went on to admit that he had just added a story to our pile of submissions, so it was patently obvious he was just buttering up your ol’ editor. Well, it worked. The flattery is the only reason this story appears in our pages. Forget that it's virtually a perfect ex
ecution of the sort of story at which The Twilight Zone excelled; we bought this one just because of the egoboo.
Would-be authors seeking to gain their way into our pages by means of such flattery are advised to accompany their praise with stories that rival this one.
She's fresh out of the shower when the phone begins to ring, but although the house is still full of relatives—she can hear them downstairs, it seems they will never go away, it seems she never had so many—no one picks up. Nor does the answering machine, as James programmed it to do after the fifth ring.
Anne goes to the extension on the bed-table, wrapping a towel around herself, her wet hair thwacking unpleasantly on the back of her neck and bare shoulders. She picks it up, she says hello, and then he says her name. It's James. They had thirty years together, and one word is all she needs. He says Annie like no one else, always did.
For a moment she can't speak or even breathe. He has caught her on the exhale and her lungs feel as flat as sheets of paper. Then, as he says her name again (sounding uncharacteristically hesitant and unsure of himself), the strength slips from her legs. They turn to sand and she sits on the bed, the towel falling off her, her wet bottom dampening the sheet beneath her. If the bed hadn't been there, she would have gone to the floor.
Her teeth click together and that starts her breathing again.
"James? Where are you? What happened?” In her normal voice, this might have come out sounding shrewish—a mother scolding her wayward eleven-year-old who's come late to the supper-table yet again—but now it emerges in a kind of horrified growl. The murmuring relatives below her are, after all, planning his funeral.
James chuckles. It is a bewildered sound. “Well, I tell you what,” he says. “I don't exactly know where I am."
Her first confused thought is that he must have missed the plane in London, even though he called her from Heathrow not long before it took off. Then a clearer idea comes: although both the Times and the TV news say there were no survivors, there was at least one. Her husband crawled from the wreckage of the burning plane (and the burning apartment building the plane hit, don't forget that, twenty-four more dead on the ground and the number apt to rise before the world moved on to the next tragedy) and has been wandering around Brooklyn ever since, in a state of shock.
"Jimmy, are you all right? Are you ... are you burned?” The truth of what that would mean occurs after the question, thumping down with the heavy weight of a dropped book on a bare foot, and she begins to cry. “Are you in the hospital?"
"Hush,” he says, and at his old kindness—and at that old word, just one small piece of their marriage's furniture—she begins to cry harder. “Honey, hush."
"But I don't understand!"
"I'm all right,” he says. “Most of us are."
"Most—? There are others?"
"Not the pilot,” he says. “He's not so good. Or maybe it's the co-pilot. He keeps screaming, ‘We're going down, there's no power, oh my God.’ Also ‘This isn't my fault, don't let them blame it on me.’ He says that, too."
She's cold all over. “Who is this really? Why are you being so horrible? I just lost my husband, you asshole!"
"Honey—"
"Don't call me that!” There's a clear strand of mucus hanging from one of her nostrils. She wipes it away with the back of her hand and then flings it into the wherever, a thing she hasn't done since she was a child. “Listen, mister—I'm going to star-sixty-nine this call and the police will come and slam your ass ... your ignorant, unfeeling ass...."
But she can go no further. It's his voice. There's no denying it. The way the call rang right through—no pick-up downstairs, no answering machine—suggests this call was just for her. And ... honey, hush. Like in the old Carl Perkins song.
He has remained quiet, as if letting her work these things through for herself. But before she can speak again, there's a beep on the line.
"James? Jimmy? Are you still there?"
"Yeah, but I can't talk long. I was trying to call you when we went down, and I guess that's the only reason I was able to get through at all. Lots of others have been trying, we're lousy with cell phones, but no luck.” That beep again. “Only now my phone's almost out of juice."
"Jimmy, did you know?” This idea has been the hardest and most terrible part for her—that he might have known, if only for an endless minute or two. Others might picture burned bodies or dismembered heads with grinning teeth; even light-fingered first responders filching wedding rings and diamond ear-clips, but what has robbed Annie Driscoll's sleep is the image of Jimmy looking out his window as the streets and cars and the brown apartment buildings of Brooklyn swell closer. The useless masks flopping down like the corpses of small yellow animals. The overhead bins popping open, carry-ons starting to fly, someone's Norelco razor rolling up the tilted aisle.
"Did you know you were going down?"
"Not really,” he says. “Everything seemed all right until the very end—maybe the last thirty seconds. Although it's hard to keep track of time in situations like that, I always think."
Situations like that. And even more telling: I always think. As if he has been aboard half a dozen crashing 767s instead of just the one.
"In any case,” he goes on, “I was just calling to say we'd be early, so be sure to get the FedEx man out of bed before I got there."
Her absurd attraction for the FedEx man has been a joke between them for years. She begins to cry again. His cell utters another of those beeps, as if scolding her for it.
"I think I died just a second or two before it rang the first time. I think that's why I was able to get through to you. But this thing's gonna give up the ghost pretty soon."
He chuckles as if this is funny. She supposes that in a way it is. She may see the humor in it herself, eventually. Give me ten years or so, she thinks.
Then, in that just-talking-to-myself voice she knows so well: “Why didn't I put the tiresome motherfucker on charge last night? Just forgot, that's all. Just forgot."
"James ... honey ... the plane crashed two days ago."
A pause. Mercifully with no beep to fill it. Then: “Really? Mrs. Corey said time was funny here. Some of us agreed, some of us disagreed. I was a disagreer, but looks like she was right."
"Hearts?” Annie asks. She feels now as if she is floating outside and slightly above her plump damp middle-aged body, but she hasn't forgotten Jimmy's old habits. On a long flight he was always looking for a game. Cribbage or canasta would do, but hearts was his true love.
"Hearts,” he agrees. The phone beeps, as if seconding that.
"Jimmy....” She hesitates long enough to ask herself if this is information she really wants, then plunges with that question still unanswered. “Where are you, exactly?"
"Looks like Grand Central Station,” he says. “Only bigger. And emptier. As if it wasn't really Grand Central at all but only ... mmm ... a movie set of Grand Central. Do you know what I'm trying to say?"
"I ... I think so...."
"There certainly aren't any trains ... and we can't hear any in the distance ... but there are doors going everywhere. Oh, and there's an escalator, but it's broken. All dusty, and some of the treads are gone.” He pauses, and when he speaks again he does so in a lower voice, as if afraid of being overheard. “People are leaving. Some climbed the escalator—I saw them—but most are using the doors. I guess I'll have to leave, too. For one thing, there's nothing to eat. There's a candy machine, but that's broken, too."
"Are you ... honey, are you hungry?"
"A little. Mostly what I'd like is some water. I'd kill for a cold bottle of Dasani."
Annie looks guiltily down at her own legs, still beaded with water. She imagines him licking off those beads and is horrified to feel a sexual stirring.
"I'm all right, though,” he adds hastily. “For now, anyway. But there's no sense staying here. Only..."
"What? What, Jimmy?"
"I don't know which door to use."
> Another beep.
"I wish I knew which one Mrs. Corey took. She's got my damn cards."
"Are you...” She wipes her face with the towel she wore out of the shower; then she was fresh, now she's all tears and snot. “Are you scared?"
"Scared?” he asks thoughtfully. “No. A little worried, that's all. Mostly about which door to use."
Find your way home, she almost says. Find the right door and find your way home. But if he did, would she want to see him? A ghost might be all right, but what if she opened the door on a smoking cinder with red eyes and the remains of jeans (he always traveled in jeans) melted into his legs? And what if Mrs. Corey was with him, his baked deck of cards in one twisted hand?
Beep.
"I don't need to tell you to be careful about the FedEx man anymore,” he says. “If you really want him, he's all yours."
She shocks herself by laughing.
"But I did want to say I love you—"
"Oh honey I love you t—"
"—and not to let the McCormack kid do the gutters this fall, he works hard but he's a risk-taker, last year he almost broke his fucking neck. And don't go to the bakery anymore on Sundays. Something's going to happen there, and I know it's going to be on a Sunday, but I don't know which Sunday. Time really is funny here."
The McCormack kid he's talking about must be the son of the guy who used to be their caretaker in Vermont ... only they sold that place ten years ago, and the kid must be in his mid-twenties by now. And the bakery? She supposes he's talking about Zoltan's, but what on Earth—
Beep.
"Some of the people here were on the ground, I guess. That's very tough, because they don't have a clue how they got here. And the pilot keeps screaming. Or maybe it's the co-pilot. I think he's going to be here for quite a while. He just wanders around. He's very confused."
The beeps are coming closer together now.
"I have to go, Annie. I can't stay here, and the phone's going to shit the bed any second now, anyway.” Once more in that I'm-scolding-myself voice (impossible to believe she will never hear it again after today; impossible not to believe), he mutters, “It would have been so simple just to ... well, never mind. I love you, sweetheart."
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