Dyscountopia (19 page)

“It wasn’t like that,” said Albert.
 
“It was a misunderstanding.
 
Omega-Mart is a great organization; it rescued the world from chaos and united it under one roof, selflessly introducing billions of people to the benefits of low prices.”

“And introducing itself to truck-loads of money.”

“That’s how it works,” snapped Albert.
 
“We all contribute to society by pursuing our own interests, by being smart consumers.
 
There’s nothing wrong with making a lot of money, if you work hard for it.
 
With a competitive spirit and a can-do attitude, the Omega-Mart family was able to build a better future.”

“Ha!” the Doctor snorted.
 
“Better for who?
 
I just spent the last 10 years wiping my ass on a 20 year old collection of Encyclopedia Britannicas.
 
I’m halfway through W.”

“Whose fault is that?
 
We all have the chance to make something of ourselves.
 
We all choose whether or not to be productive members of society – to live by the rules.
 
You made your choice.”

The Doctor chuckled.
 
“Wow – you’re something, Zim.
 
Just when you peel back one layer of bullshit, you find another one right underneath it.
 
You’re like a great big bullshit onion.
 
Is there an ounce of innovative thought buried in there somewhere?”

“I guess civil responsibility isn’t something a Roofer would understand.”
 

“I can’t believe you’re defending them, Zim,” said the Doctor.
 
“You of all people.
 
When you said you had a message for the people of Omega-Mart, I thought maybe you were going to strap some dynamite to your chest, or at least take a couple hostages.
 
You sound like an Omega-Mart customer service rep; you gonna ask for your old job back?”

“I’m not saying that Omega-Mart is perfect,” Albert protested.
 
“I used to think so, but I don’t anymore.
 
But you make them sound like monsters.
 
I suppose if it was up to you, there wouldn’t be any rules.
 
Everything would just be chaos.
 
People would be free to do whatever they wanted, take whatever they wanted, go around stealing bananas to bribe chimpanzees whenever they felt like it.”

“Yeah, that’s right!
 
And we’d all be screwing gophers and chipmunks and squirrels, too.
 
You’d fit right in, Zim.
 
Hell, you’d be President!

“Yeah?” Albert shouted.
 
“Really?
 
How clever!
 
I have an idea -- why don’t you go take a flying f- .”
 

Albert’s foot slipped from the ladder, cutting short his artful rebuttal.
 
He plummeted down through the empty void, screaming into the darkness -- a shrill, panicked scream that rose from deep in the pit of his stomach, elevating to a crescendo of glass-shattering terror, then dying gradually on bewildered lips.
 

“OoooOoooEeeeeEeeee.”
 
Bobo squealed in amusement, hopping down to the ground beside him.
 

Stunned and disoriented, Albert glanced around in the dim light.
 
He wasn’t falling, he realized.
 
He was sitting on a concrete floor with his legs splayed uncomfortably around him, trembling.
 
He’d fallen from the bottom rung of the ladder.

“Shut up,” he grumbled, scowling up at the chimp.
 
He rose unsteadily to his feet, rubbing his bruised backside.
 
He was standing in a low-ceilinged tunnel, deep within the sewer of the world, beside a slow-moving stream of putrid, black sludge.
 
The air was cold and smelled like shit.

Albert shivered.
 
“It’s cold in here.”

“And it smells like shit,” said the Doctor.

Bobo peered into the river and breathed in deeply, smiling.
 
He wrapped his long, clammy fingers around Albert’s wrist and tugged with unnerving strength, leading him on a long, circuitous route through the damp innards of the planet, pursuing his own enormous shadow as it bobbed up and down in the artificial light like some demented prehistoric hunchback desperate to evade them.
 
 
They zig-zagged left and right through the subterranean maze, following countless tributaries of human excrement until they arrived, ultimately, at the gut-wrenching source.

“That’s a lot of poo,” the Doctor noted, observing the foul smelling river that flowed at his feet.

It was an understatement.
 
The river was at least a hundred feet wide; a slow moving channel of thick, stinking, nightmarish filth.
 
The two men followed it as it oozed its way toward the center of the earth -- one mile, then two, then three, trailing behind their hairy australopithecine guide.
 
Finally, Bobo came to a stop at a small metal door with a string of faded blue letters on its filth encrusted surface, spelling out the word UTILITY.
 
Some unknown person had returned to that lonely spot to add another letter, scratching a severe ‘F’ in front of the ‘U’.

F
UTILITY

Albert shuddered at the ominous message, forced to wonder when was the last time anyone had entered that alien landscape, and what had been their purpose, and what had become of them.
 
Bobo pushed open the door.

Stepping slowly through the entrance, Albert had the peculiar sensation of stepping into outer space.
 
Even in the darkness, he could feel that the room was cavernous.
 
He moved forward and clicked twice on the flashlight button, widening the beam to fill the void around him.

Doctor Zayus sucked in his breath.
 
“Wow, look at all this great stuff!”

The floor was littered with relics of the past.
 
A defaced Volkswagen, tattooed with the vulgar calligraphy of a less modern age, peered at Albert through shattered headlights.
 
The severed head of a plastic drive-thru clown laughed silently in his direction, vomiting colored wires onto the floor.
 
A battered toy wagon, its delicate frame half-eaten by rust, cowered at his feet.
 
The artifacts huddled in the light around Albert like hobos at a trash-can fire, longing for human warmth.
 
Within their midst dwelled all the things that lives were made of; chairs and tables and bicycles and bathtubs, lawnmowers and refrigerators and washing machines and vending machines.
 
And doors, old doors, a hundred different doors, all a different shape and a different size, all a different color and not one of them Omega-Mart purple.

Bobo picked up a deflated rubber basketball and attempted to dribble it without success.
 
Doctor Zayus bent down and lifted a tattered panama hat with a hole in its crown, placing it on top of his head with a satisfied grin.
 

“What do you think?”

Albert didn’t answer.
 
He was staring at the floor, transfixed by something he saw there.
 
It was small and dusty and flesh-colored, the naked plastic corpse of an orphaned child.
 
Her jet black pupils were fixed on Albert’s face, her expression a mask of perpetual humiliation.
 
Albert recognized her.
 
He had loved her once.

Her name was Oopsie Wetserself, and there were two things she could do.
 
First, she could talk to you like you were her mommy when you pulled the string on her chest, warn you that she was going to release her bladder.
 
Second, she could relieve herself in a tiny wet puddle at your feet, letting go the rubber bladder inside her otherwise empty plastic shell.
 
She did so without apprehension or shame, for wetting herself was Oopsie’s entire purpose.
 
It was her reason for being.

And Albert had loved her for it.
 
His eyes would follow Oopsie back and forth across the room as he pretended to play with his rubber football, watching her float through the air in his sister’s arms, regarding him with cool indifference.
 
Albert would have given anything to just once pull that cord on Oopsie’s back and have her talk back to him.
 
But Albert wasn’t her mommy, and Oopsie knew it.
 
He couldn’t be her mommy.
 
It was forbidden.
 
Boys played with footballs.
 

He leaned down now, as if in a trance, and lifted the dolly to eye level.
 
Pieces of Oopsie fell away as he pried her from the ground; the years had reduced her fragile frame to the consistency of an egg shell.
 
Gently, Albert’s finger sought the cord on Oopsie’s back and pulled; a moment of hesitation, and then he let go.
 
The cord retracted slowly into the shattered body.

“
I have to go pee-pee in the potty chair
.”

Brown, mildewy water issued forth from Oopsie’s underparts, soaking Albert’s pant-leg.
 
And then, in response to that final exultant release, Oopsie’s body crumbled, shattering to dust at his feet.

Albert considered the objects around him.
 
How many more memories dwelled like ghosts inside these dead things? he wondered.
 
How many more had been tossed away like garbage in favor of a newer, more cost efficient product?
 
What was left to remind us of who we were, when we threw away the past?
 

 
“Where did the world’s soul go?” he whispered.

The Doctor’s answer echoed through the chamber.
 
“The world never had a soul, Albert.
 
We were supposed to be the world’s soul.”
 

Albert sniffed and wiped his sleeve across his face, suddenly aware that he was crying.
 
He cleared his throat and took control of his voice.
 
“Where’s Bobo?”

The Doctor shrugged.
 
“I thought he was right beside me.
 
He must have gone on ahead.”

Albert shone the flashlight back and forth around him, looking for any sign of the missing chimp.
 
He moved cautiously forward.
 
“Bobo!
 
Bobo!”
 
His cries reverberated from unseen walls.

“Bobo?” This time it was just a whisper.
 
The beam of light fell on a tiny figure ahead; squat and compact, an immobile feathered goblin staring back at Albert through shining dead eyes.
 
Albert froze.

The Doctor stepped ahead of him into the light, casually stooping and scooping the little gremlin up, holding it at arms length.
 
“An owl,” he said with a grin.
 
“Stuffed.”

A strong smell invaded Albert’s nostrils.
 
Chemicals and old mothballs.
 
He lifted the Zipco Hand-torch higher, shedding light on the undead menagerie gathered around him – a wolf, a deer, an alligator, a fox, a mountain goat – animals that Albert knew only from pictures, assembled together in lifeless harmony, adorned with plastic name tags.
 
They were ragged and misused, missing eyes and ears and tufts of hair, toppled willy-nilly in eternal rigor mortis.
 

“It’s a whole museum exhibit,” said the Doctor.
 
“Look – a zebra.
 
Oooh – and a cheetah.”

But Albert had turned his attention to a hairy, stocky figure standing hunchbacked beside an aardvark, leaning forward on its knuckles.
 
It wasn’t wearing a name-tag.
 

“Bobo?”

The chimp stirred slightly in the shadows, slowly raising an elongated index finger to his puckered lips.
 
His eyes were trained on something in the darkness.
 
Albert followed the chimp’s gaze with his flashlight.