Mind Messengers
Harry opened his eyes to darkness. He could vaguely makeout the digetal red numbers that marked the time above the door. He closed his eyes for a better view as the numbers came into focus on his inner eye lid.
Four A.M.? Was something wrong? The sleep program shouldn't have woken him now, although he had felt oddly about the newly installed system from the start. Something not quite right in the workings, though he couldn't have told a customer represenative if pressed to define the problem. And no point thinking for them now, not unless they had the same trouble with their new systems.
He cocked his head. Cooing night sounds whispered inside, another aspect of the package deal he hadn't liked, off peak messages groomed to help him succeed, subliminal suggestions, designed to help him with his next promotion.
He shifted, his back aching from hours on a flat mattress he wasn't supposed to feel. Rose pedals, the program had promised. It felt like a bed of nails. His movement woke his wife. Her eyes blinked out of REM sleep and instantly looked puzzled, vesitages of her sleep program flicking off with each blink. Her head turned, her smooth face crinkling with a frown. Her program had been set for beauty sleep and even startled awake she had something tender about her.
``What is it, Harry? Why are you awake?''
The note of rising panic was typical of her at such times. She disliked coming out of pre-set patterns. She said it left her -- well-- shaky, as if she had to reassemble reality from shards.
``Are you ill?'' she asked.
``I don't think so,'' Harry mumbled, though he did feel a bit queazy, his stomach tightening the way it did before important meetings at work. ``I can't sleep.''
``I don't understand.''
``It's all the noise inside my head. Ever since I got the new program installed it's sounded louder.''
``You need an adjustment,'' Marge said. ``Think up a service representative. Someone'll be here in the morning.''
``Maybe that's it,'' Harry said, recalling the distrust he had felt for the greasy-fingered fellow who had come to install the program.
``Or it could be a problem with the transmission,'' his wife went on, not falling into her morning gossip mode for lack of an option. ``Judith once had the wrong message in her head for a week and nearly went crazy until the company straightened out. Carol used to ge two and three messages over lapping all day long, and she...''
``I'll think the company up in the morning,'' Harry said. ``They'll straighten it out.''
Yet the flaw might have been him. All the time he had gone over the program selections for the upgrade, he had been thinking in terms of less, not more. He had grown tired of having company every waking moment of his life, no privacy from the constant hurang the law allowed the companies to broadcast over the wake time hours, and at night, he felt cheated when the program channelled his REM sleep into socially accepable dreams, as if he nor any human alive today could be trusted with the responsiblity of random dreams.
``Harry?'' his wife said, sitting up now, her frown cutting a deep ridge between her eyes. ``There is something wrong, isn't there?''
``Not wrong,'' Harry said. `Just... disturbing. I was wondering what it would be like to have the whole progam shut off.''
``Shut off?'' his wife said, her voice taking on a grating sound. ``How would we live?''
``How did people live before there was a program?'' Harry asked.
``I don't know and I don't want to think about it,'' his wife said, falling back to her pillow, her eyes closing tightly in an effort to return to sleep. But the wakeful progam had already kicked in and her eyes popped open again. ``What has brought on all this crazy talk, Harry?'' she asked in a way that said she was afraid to find out the truth.
``I don't know,'' Harry said. ``It just came to me one day.''
``Well, put it out of your head, Harry,'' Marge said. ``Life's complicated enough without making it worse. God! I can't imagine what people did before the program? Used some sort of E-mail, I suppose, or called people on the telephone. Believe me, Harry. It's much better just to think about what you want and have it delivered to your door. No muss. No fuss. Just the bill at the end of the month.''
``It's not the convience I mind, Marge,'' Harry said. ``It's all the people that come with it. All last week, I had a hard time sorting my own thoughts out from the commericals. One day at work I found myself humming the slogan for a feminine hygine product through the whole office. I didn't know what the giggling was about until Bob pulled me aside.''
``Those things happen, Harry,'' Marge said. ``That's the price you pay for modern conveniences.''
``I'm sure you're right, but I'd like the option to live without if for a while.''
``You are crazy!'' Marge huffed and turned away from him. ``Don't you know how lonely you would feel if you didn't have all that going on in your head.''
``Maybe,'' Harry said, unable to close his eyes. ``But I'd like to try.''
***********
He must have dozed, jolting awake only as the morning program shifted into gear, soap operas, game shows, weather and traffic reports rushing into his head with all the madness of a hurricane. His eyes popped open, transfering the images to the ceiling where they danced and swayed as he waited for the morning announcer and the official time.
It came and Marge woke, the rings around her eyes hinting of her own troubled sleep and the struggle she had had shifting back to sleep program after his escopade over night. She eyed him cautiously as she threw back the covers and slipped out of bed, her night gown clinging to her small frame like loose wet skin.
``You feel better this morning?'' she asked as he followed her into the temperate air, their early thoughts turning on the heat ahead of them. It felt like a warm bath, swirming around him legs and chest until he felt faint.
``I suppose so,'' he lied, staring at his oval face in the mirror. Even that seemed changed, the haggard expression not quite justified by lack of sleep. His black eyes had lost their humanity and stared back, haunted, hunted and humiliated without a clear idea as to why.
``Are you going to have the program checked?'' his wife asked from across the room, hesistating there as if afraid to venture too close.
``Yes, today, first thing,'' he assured her. ``But I won't go through the service people.''
She frowned again and warily titled her head. ``Then what will you do, Harry?''
``Our office has a consultant,'' Harry said. ``I'd trust his opinion before I would the company itself. He recommended the program. He might know of some adjustment.''
A weak smile lifted the ends of Marge's pale lips. She looked relieved and touched his arm as she paraded off to the bathroom where her shoulder had already started, adjusted to her current body temperature. Harry skipped the shower and breakfast, swallowing down a quick cup of tepid coffee. That part of the program seemed unaltered. It still knew he liked luke warm coffee.
He stepped out into the hall. The elevator doors opened in expectation, recieving him with a bright ``good morning'' from its mind transmitter. The light came on for the first sub basement without him being conscious of the mental command. When the doors opened again, the nearest belt blinked its okay for him to mount. On he climbed, suddenly borne away on the moving sidewalk, aware as it came up into the daylight and the glass tubes in which they were contained in this part of the city. Elsewhere he knew they went outside, though only in those neighborhoods where local gangs had broken the tubing so frequently it was pointless to keep them maintained.
Around him, the faces of the other pedestrians seemed tranquil. Some even had their eyes closed as they traveled, reading the morning suplement on the inner side of their eye lids, or watching the latest video from Japan. All knew the transit authority would alert them to their stop.
A cologne commerical came into Harry's head, filling his lungs and nostrils with a pine scent so strong he nearly choked. His howl drew open the eyes of several nearby pedestrians, all of them frowning -- and perhaps a little startled by his exclamation. He closed his eyes and reoriented himself.
Don't panic. It's only a smell.
And it wasn't real anyway, just mental stimulation. At least that's what he remembered from his kindergarten class, when the program became a serious lesson rather than an expensive baby sitter, when the visions shifted from baby games to history, geography, reading and -- product recognition. But in all this time, he never remembered it being so strong -- smells so vivid that it squelshed reality. No external smell ever seemed so sweet.
He concentrated on the faces of those around him as they slipped back into their incurious mode, packed off and shipped to their destination like some product unorderable on the mind market. He paid particular attention to one woman whose purple eyebrows and matching lipstick struck him oddly humorous, no more outragious than the plaid pattern on those around her, or the striped pattern that marked some of her male counterparts.
The humor touched off something in the back of his head, that small and secret compartment he'd kept private since he was a child, where only he could go, where only his own thought echoed when he thought them.
Today, however, the space seemed uncomfortably cramp, the thin membrane walls pressing in with the outragious volume of the new program, as if it constantly needed room in which to expand and sensed this tiny treasure of his.
Somewhere on the other side, the alarm pinged, announcing his arrival. He opened his eyes and saw the familar silver platform and the blue circled C that was logo for his place of employment. He slipped off the moving track and onto the rising escalator, other almost familiar faces around him doing the same, each dressed roughly as he was with the nearly uniform grey tunic and bright blue and silver logo name patch above their right breast. Above and around him glass and steel swirled as he rose, the busy activity of the early shift reminding him of bees in a hive, their thoughts buzzing in his head with production quotas and stock quotes.
The narrow platform stopped at his floor and he stepped off into the hustle and bustle of business as usual, grim faces passing on either side without noticing him. He stopped at the first door and peeped in. Odd lights flashed out at him from an innumerable collection of eletronics and glass, tubes rising with frosted colored enteriors all the way to the ceiling, humming an equally odd tune that seemed to resonant in Harry's head. The smells of the room shifted with the colors, and though they seemed familiar, he could not draw up names for any of them, as if each was a hybrid drawn from things he knew and cared for. One smell reminded him of strawberriers. Another of malt liquer.
A balding figure in a green tunic stumbled out from one of the aisles, scratching a patch of hair near his ear with a long forefinger, his expression thoughtful and puzzled.
``Hey, Billy!'' Harry hissed in a low voice designed to reach only that man and no others. These research boys were a queer lot and the less people from other departments disturbed them, the better things went all around. But Billy had always been different, a more socialable egg head with a real sense of humor, always coming out of this part of the building with a self-deficating humor that made him the hit of the lunch crowd.
The man turned, his expression shifting to something annoyed, though he forced a smile despite this.
``Hello, Harry,'' he said as he crossed to the door. ``What brings you doww to our bit of hell, eh?''
``I got a problem,'' Harry whispered, glancing around the room and hall, though no one seemed to pay them much mind. ``With the program.''
Now Billy's mouth twisted into a look of disbelief. ``That's one of the hotest new programs on the market,'' he said. ``You got a real deal on it, believe me.''
``It's not the price,'' Harry said, spotting another techy coming out of the world of tubes. ``I was sort of hoping you might be able to shut it off.''
``What?'' Billy said in a horrified whisper of his own, nervously glancing back towards the other techy and anyone else who might have overheard. ``Are you crazy? I don't want to hear no pychotic talk like that. It could mean both our jobs if anyone else heard.''
``Lose our jobs?'' Harry said, frowning, not quite able to make out this new twist. ``Why would that happen?''
``You don't know?'' Billy said, gripping Harry's arms. The fingers pinched flesh as he propelled him down the hall. ``I didn't think there was anyone that naieve any more. Our jobs would only be the start. We'd likely get arrested, too.''
``For wanting silence?''
``Look, friend,'' Billy whispered. ``There are laws against fiddling with the genic code.''
``I didn't know it was that complicated,'' Harry said. ``I thought it was just a matter of a switch or something.''
``A genetic switch,'' Billy said, then stopped, his eyes narrowing into two slits, the blue suspcious orb studying Harry in the bright hall light. ``Is this some kind of loyalty test, dreamed up by your brain people upstairs?''
Harry shook his head. ``No test that I know of.''
But Billy grinned, the strain of it pulling at the corners of his mouth. He might have been an android for all the humanity the face displayed.
``You tell your boss I passed this one,'' he said, then slapped Harry's shoulder and turned to leave.
``But...''
``Don't,'' Billy warned with his finger pressed over his mouth and glance around the hall. ``Go to work. We'll talk later.''
Harry's shoulders sagged and he moved on, keeping back the mental note to call in customer service. All this talk of job loss and legality bothererd him. He pondered who else he could turn to, then gave up, stepping onto the internal walkway that took him to his office.
Yet even as he stepped into the doorway of his secretary's glass enclosure, the pain hit him -- a dull thud from behind his eyes that blurred his vision, pain rolling around in the empty space where his thoughts should have been.
His secretary, dressed in a skimpy green tunic with the breasts nearly explosed, glanced up sharply at his arrival, her thin brows folding down over aqua blue eyes. On any other day the sight would have warmed Harry's bone, but today she seemed like another unwanted commercia, her voice raking over him as harshly at the voice of the announcer.
``Is something wrong, Mr. Burns?'' she asked.
``Wrong? Of course not. Why do you ask?''
``Your face seems...'' she mumbled, catching a warning hint of his mood.
He glanced around and saw a reflection of his face in the tranlucent glass wall, his brow folded down over his eyes in a sign of obvious pain.
``It's northing. It's just a headache,'' he said.
``Should I call the company doctor?'' she asked.
``Dcotor?'' he asked, suddenly alarmed, Billy's vague warnings working up into him. ``Why would I need the doctor?''
``It could be something serious,'' she said, sounding concerned, though Harry had always wondered about her, how someone in such a lowly bureaucratic position as his had deserved such a looker as her. Generally her kind went to one of the many VPs, unless of course, she was a spy. Upper management was notorious for keeping an eye on their middle-level workers and not always using mind sweeps or office ease-dropping devices.
Yet in truth, she was right. In an age when almost every known household ailment had been cured, a headache implied some deeper, more serious matter that neither aspirin nor sleep could cure.
``I'll be all right, really,'' he said, and pushed on passed her and into his own office, where the narrow walls gave him a sense of privacy he mind could not, paper print out strewn from a half dozen useless printers-- the company insisting on hard copy to every thing despite redunant electical and mental storage facilities. He felt like a primative stock executive, scrolling through the pages and pages and pages of numbers he only barely understood. He sat down behind his desk, the seat corforming itself to his shape, responding to some preset transmission code in the new program. No more concious commands, ordering the chair to respond. Or the desk to open. Or the phone to come on line.
How much was there going on in his head that he didn't know about? Why was it important to keep such details suppress when he had nothing better to think about than the droning voice of commerical mind messages? Maybe he could have Billy change things back to the old program, if that wasn't also deemed as gene manipulation. A lot of these daily details would be less automatic, and maybe then, he would feel a little less useless -- and lonely.
Several times his secretary made pointless trips in, staring at him intently each time, her expression growing more and more puzzled. His boss came, too, and went, though seemed as oblvious to Harry's mood as his secretary was conscious of it. Old man Diller seemed preoccupied with the latest advertising campaign.
``It's not working,'' he grumbled as he glanced over the lastest print out of impact study numbers. ``We're just not getting people to think enough about our line of products.''
Harry nearly blurted out his own thoughts on the matter, wondering if there weren't others suffering the same malaise as him, with information bubbling over in his head, utterly out of control, mingling and melting into mental impressions none of the corporate sponsors intended.
But to suggest such a thing to Diller boardered on treason. The campaign on been on the drawing board for months. Only Harry seemed cool to it, refusing to contribute his soul to a project he felt appalled by. As it was, he stared at Diller's bald head, mixed and crazy messages foaming in his head, confusing dog food advertisements for restuarant reviews and cat lietter for an acne cure.
He hardly noticed Diller going or new clients coming, their high pitched voices rising and falling with the rhythm of internal conflict, more like added versions to the commericals than people seeking help. They wanted him to sell their products. He assured them he would and shooed them out. But their number seemed as endless as the already overburned mental network, and their ideas nearly as crazy as those that pounded on the inside of his head.
Around noon time, his secretary buzzed him, sending a sharp mental call that said a delivery had come.
``A delivery?'' he said and rose from his desk where he had struggled to nap, hoping to trigger the nighttime sleep aspect of the program that now seemed quiet in comparison to what went on now, his head throbbing from the assault-- almost to the point of driving him utterly insane. ``What kind of delivery?''
``I think maybe you should see for yourself, Mr. Burns,'' she said, and disconnected the mental connection, releaving him of one small voice in the cochophony of sound.
He pushed himself back up from the desk and slipped into the outer office to find himself face to face with a caged bear, and behind the bear another delivery had dropped case after case after case of industrial paint, while a third delivery man just then was getting a signature for gold tipped gold clubs.
``What the devil is going on here?'' Harry asked.
``Precisely my question, Mr. Burns,'' he secretary said. ``They say you ordered it.''
``What? I never...''
``That's what I thought at first,'' his secretary said. ``But it's all here.'' She tapped the official manefest with the tip of her sharp red nail, his green form unmistakably authentic.
Harry stared as yet another delivery man came and another, each bringing in an item more aburd and expensive than the last, the pile growing into the largest collection of white elephant material he had ever seen.
``Perhaps it's some kind of joke,'' he suggested. But his secretary shook her head solumnly.
``The government regulates mental orders too well for anyone to risk that kind of gag,'' she said. ``Maybe it has something to do with that headache of yours? Would you like me to call a doctor?''
``No,'' he mumbled and eased back into his office, reaching for the video phone, more conventional and less effiecent than a mental message. But just then, Harry didn't trust his mind to deliver his message accurately or to the correct person. He highlighted the laborabory icon and clicked twice.
Bill appeared on the screen and grew instantly annoyed.
``What do you want now?'' the man asked sharply with a clear note of fear in his voice.
``I need your help,'' Harry said. ``I'm in trouble.''
``With your program again?''
``Yes,'' Harry said weakly.
``Have you thought of calling in a service representative?''
``I'm afraid of them.''
``Why? You have something to hide?''
``No, nothing like that,'' Harry said. ``It's their program. I'm afraid how much worse if could be if they try to fix it.''
``What would you have me do?''
``Take a look at me. See if you can detect something wrong with me or the program.''
Bill stared for a full moment into the screen, the eyes seeming to bore into Harry's head, his grim twisted mouth ready to tell Harry to get lost. But he nodded instead and vanished with a sigh. ``I'll be there in a minute,'' the fading voice said.
Harry sat down in his chair, unable to keep his hands from shaking as he closed his end of the connection, his thoughts now struggling to find their way through the maze of contending voices. When Bill finally arrived, Harry had folded down onto the desk top, face hidden by his arms.
``Harry?'' Bill said, drawing up Harry's reddened eyes, beseiged eyes that bore all the terrible markings of a man on the verge of madness.
``I'm losing it, Bill,'' he muttered. ``I can't take one more minute of this.''
``All right, all right,'' Bill said. ``I'll help you. But damn it, you'd better not tell anyone what I did, or we'll both find ourselves in a work camp.''
``I won't say a word,'' Harry said, rising to greet the man.
``Fine,'' Bill said, casting a glance around the room. ``Is there some place more private we can go?''
``Private?''
``Somewhere we won't be interrupted.''
``I suppose we could use the bathroom, but I don't under...''
``Shush!'' Bill said. ``Just follow me.''
He closed the door behind Harry and pushed the privacy tag in place. Not that anyone would intrude or against persistant attack, the door would resist intrusion, but it seemed enough to ease Bill's tense face as he leaned back against the door like a truant child. Out from an inner pocket he produced a phial containing clumps of white powder.
``Open your hand,'' he said.
Harry pushed his nervous hand forward, palm up, as Bill tapped out some of the previous contents, the grains rolling into the cracked flesh like sand. Bill repeated the procedture into his own free hand than bent his head and touched the powder with the tip of his tongue, his head recoiling with an expression of distaste, nose crinkling back as tears streamed down from the corners of his eyes.
He glanced up at Harry who hadn't moved.
``Well?'' Bill said. ``What are you waiting for?''
``I don't understand,'' Harry said. ``What is it?''
``Just do it, damn it, and don't ask questions,'' Bill snapped and dipped his tongue again, repeating the same violant reaction as previously. ``It's a cure,'' he snorted. ``Do it or you'll have deliveries all day.''
Harry lowered his face to his hand, easing his tongue towards the hard white grains, hestantly touching the nearest. Fire spread across his tongue and his head jerked back in spasm as he fought the ranging flames, eyes spouting liquid the way Bill's had.
``Watch it!'' Bill shouted and grabbed Harry's hand, folding closed the fingers around the precious powder before it spilled from the palm. ``That stuff costs a fortune. You don't want to waste it.''
``It tastes...''
``Like a chemical plant, I know,'' Bill said. ``That's just the price you have to pay for silence. Do another dose quick, or you won't get rid of the voices.''
Harry's fingers folded open again with the exaggerated pattern of an expanding leaf of firn.
``Do it, quick,'' Bill said, and Harry eased his tongue down, more hesitantly than before, barely touching the next grain as the fire connected-- once more tearing through his head. He coughed and wheezed and fell back against the toilet stall, the autmatic mechanizm asking for his credit number.
``Be quiet, will you!'' Bill hissed. ``This isn't safe, even here.''
``Safe?''
``The law, man,'' Bill barked. ``Don't tell me you're that naieve?''
``This -- is illegal, too?'' he asked, nodding his head towards the remaining grains, suddenly aware of the dimming racket, the high pitched thought patterns fading first, then slowly, less painfully, the lower register, until he could hear the echo of his own thoughts bounding off the sides of his now empty head.
``You're damned straight it's illegal,'' Bill said, though now he smiled, his bright blue eyes glinting as he studied Harry's face. ``But it works well, wouldn't you say?''
``It's amazing,'' Harry said. ``Where did it all go?''
``Suppressed,'' Bill said. ``It's a prescription headache drug that has the side effect of turning down the volume.''
``I can get this?'' Harry said.
``Not from any legal distributor,'' Bill said. ``The minute the authorities discovered this side effect, they banned it. They didn't mind its addictive qualities. Hell, most of the medications sold over the counter these days are just as addictive, but no manufacturer in its right mind would want a prescription that could shut off their commericals, too.''
``Then where did you get it?''
``Around,'' Bill said evasively. ``Where there's a market, there'll be something to sell. Lot's of people want to turn off the head stuff for a while. It's a growing trend amoung the up and coming crowd. That's why the authorities turned up the volume and promoting new programs. The higher level of transmission gets through on the lesser doses. You have to take two grains to make it all go away, which of course makes you twice as likely to get hooked with frequent use.''
An acute sense of loneliness struck, like a stab of pain for which he couldn't quite account, making him afraid to think too much or explore all this new-found space. For most of his life, there had always been voices and sounds there keeping him company. Now, he swam in a barren void, trying to get his bearings. It wasn't totally unpleasant and yet...
``So this is what people felt like before the program,'' Harry whispered in awe.
``Prehistoric thinking,'' Bill said, pushing the phial back into his pocket before releasing the latch on the door.
``It sort of scares me,'' Harry said.
``It will the first time, but you'll get used to it.''
``I don't feel like I will,'' Harry said, following Bill back out into the office where the air seemed cooler and his breathing less constricted. ``I feel a little panicky.''
``That's the drug,'' Bill said. ``Everybody gets a little -- well, paranoid. That'll pass, too, if you don't use too much or keep on it too long. The idea is to get relief for a while.''
``But what happens if I want it quiet all the time?''
Bill stopped, his eyes taking on the annoyance Harry had seen in them earlier. ``Don't talk crazy,'' he said. ``It's one thing to want to escape for a while, it's quite another to drop out altogether. The program is part of civilized society. You have to live with it, friend, otherwise you wind up a savage.''
***********
Almost as soon as Bill vanished, Harry's boss arrived, his bald head and round face like a projectile aimed angrily at Harry's heart, behind him, a smaller, apparently frightened man in a blue suit, obviously a client.
``Did you forget our appointment?'' the boss asked, leaning across Harry's desk, his large, fat-fingered hand splayed flat on the desk-top.
``I must have...'' Harry said, casting a glance towards his calandar. But the screen did not change at his mental command, but stared back at him blankly in dull green.
His boss frown, deep furrows forming across his rounded forehead. ``What's the matter with you, are you ill?''
``Ill?'' Harry mumbled. ``I suppose I feel a little out of sorts.''
``All right, order up a doctor, we'll reschedule the appointment,'' the man said, signalling the client away, while raising one suspecious brow at Harry. ``You've not been yourself lately, missing appointments and ordering strange merchantise. I want it stopped. Do you hear me?''
``Yes, Mr. Thaxton.''
``Good,'' the man said and marched from the room, leaving empty space inside and outside of Harry. Pale thought rose from some suppresed place, drab little imitations of what had once been there, scurying out like shy mice, nervously peering into the open after years of being hid.
``You look terrible,'' his secretary said from the door. Harry thrust his shaking hands under the desk. ``Do you want me to call a doctor now?''
``No, no, I'll be all right,'' Harry said, somehow relieved when the woman vanished and her stare ceased. She seemed to read something from his face. Yet the silence made him wish her back. Even her annoyance was better than being so alone.
And yet, the voices weren't totally gone. If he bent his attention he could just catch their whisper behind the veil of drug, screaming at him like ghosts, accusing him of all sorts of trecherous and deceitful acts, bargain basement sale items battering at the silence like bullets.
He bent his head into folded arms on the desk and closed his eyes, and slipped into something that might have been sleep. When he woke he found his secretary shaking his arm.
``Mr. Burns?'' she said, her hooked nose and crooked mouth shaping the words at his vulnerable ears. He lifted his head. The veil had eased from around him, he could hear the rising volume of voices coming through-- vague, shadowy images becoming more and more distinct. ``Are you all right?''
A strange bliss came over him, his whole interior bubbling with the satisfied pleasure of reunitifictation, the images and voices like old friends coming back to him from the dead. He linered over one or two of the more familiar items before realizing they would likely be waiting at his door when he got home.
``Yes, yes, I'm fine now,'' he assured the woman and sent her out again, then gathered up his own things and stuffed papers indiscriminately into his brief cast, uneven edges poking out dispite its being closed. He hurried out, through the now-vacant outer office and into the hall, where people flowed out of their offices and down towards the moving sidewalks far below, all of them perfect in appearance like mirror images of each other disquinished by minor detail of face or skin color, height or sex. Harry followed along, aware of raised eyebrows cast in his direction. He stopped at Bill's floor and found the man just exiting his office.
``Harry?'' the man said, pinching the flesh on his upper line while yanking him into the lab. ``What's gotten into you. You look a wreck?''
Harry examined himself on the inner glass of the door, seeing the ghostly image of a rather tattered self, one with wrinkled suit and fluffed out hair, and eyes that looked swollen and scared.
``As if you didn't know,'' Harry said, yanking himself away from the image. ``That drug you gave me nearly killed me.''
``Shut up about that!'' Bill hissed, his face transformed into a mask of panic as he stared around the lab then out into the hall to guage if anyone had overheard.
``I'm sorry,'' Harry said in a lower voice. ``But it was so terrible....''
``What was terrible?'' Bill asked, turning his annoyed attention back towards Harry. ``What on earth are you talking about?''
``The drug -- the side effects-- I thought I was going crazy.''
``Harry, it's a mild high. Sure there's a little paranoia. But it goes away.''
``Mine didn't.''
Bill studied Harry's face for a time, his expression growing more and more concerned, mouth settling into a grim, concerned downward set. ``I've heard of this before but never met anyone who had it,'' Bill finally said.
``Had what?''
``A negative reaction to the drug.''
``I don't think I should do it again,'' Harry said. ``I mean there's something wrong about turning things off so abruptly. I was looking more for it to fade away slowly-- so I could get used to it.''
Bill shook his head slowly. ``What you need is a better cure,'' he said.
``I thought you said there wasn't one.''
Bill's upper lip lifted in a sly smile. He winked and patted Harry's shoulder gently. ``There is always something available if there's a market,'' he said in a hushed voice. ``But you don't want to talk to openly of such things, even to your friends.''
``More illegal things?''
``The most illegal and therefore most effective,'' Bill said. ``Come along.''
``Where are we going?''
``To dark and dangerous places,'' Bill said, pinching Harry's arm again as he led him out of the lab and down the hall, and out through the maze to the street. This time they avoided the moving walk and made a mental note for a cab. The robot driver unsealed the doors. Coffee was waiting. So was a screen with the current news. Bill flicked the image off and sat back, his head against the rear cushion as he stared at the roof of the cab.
``Where are we going?'' Harry asked. He had not been privy to Bill's mental instructions, but noted the movement in an unfamilar direction, where the moving sidewalks ceased and the ancient unmoving kind began, though even these were in desperate need of repair, curbs cracked and lined with trash. A few drunked bodies made up part of the overall liter, while others moved from alley to alley like zombees, their grim faces bruised by one drug or another. The few who still acknowledged the world glanced up at the passing cab, their brows folding downward with puzzled oblivion, as if they didn't recogize the machine.
``To some acquaintences of mine who might be able to help you with your problem,'' Bill said.
``Down here,'' Harry said, unable to keep from staring out at the strange world. He knew of such places of course from the routine nightly crime reports that filtered through his head. Police at constant war with residents of undertown, though their raids were largely symbolic-- and few respectable people came or went from this place or needed rescue.
There was always the unspoken threat in the back of people's minds that they could wind up here someday themselves if they failed to meet quotas or keep their jobs. Few took it seriously, but children cried at night over it, and the memory never truly faded from the overall impression of what made a man successful or a failure.
The cab stopped in the middle of that world, after blocks and blocks of desolation and filth, pulling up to the crumbling curb in front of an equally crumbling motel -- the marque of which had lost the majority of its letters, though the outline of the original name remained from years of polution, spelling out ``The royal alms.''
``Here? You want to get out here?'' Harry said, the panic of childhood leaping into his forebrain with both booted feet. Yet oddly enough, it was the loudest sound. The growing sensations of the program he had noted earlier were faint again-- though not in the same way the drug had done. This time it was as if a hand had settled over a hidden speaker, muffling the sound. He mentioned this to Bill and Bill laughed as the cab pulled away, leaving them stranded.
``Of course,'' he said. ``You need the right program for this place.''
``I don't understand,'' Harry said.
``None of these people want dishwashers or three-d TVs. But if you listen hard enough, you can get their message.''
Harry tilted his head like a deaf man attempting pick up a subtle sound. It was there. A hushed voice whispering in the back of his brain, starkly different from the sound he'd grown used to his entired life, almost soothing -- if soothing was the right word -- beyond senuious, a half sung chanting of a single word.
Dope!
He reeled back off the curb from the shock of it, as the message grew in strength, his program tuning it in clearer as he focused upon it.
``They advertise dope here?'' Harry asked.
``No, that sound isn't coming from any central sourse. Not the way the commericals do in our part of town. It's them,'' Bill said, his hand making a sweeping gesture towards the people on the street. ``It's their collective thoughts reverberating along the channels. It blocks out the corporate messages. They live and breathe it, and since most of them started up on top with programs like ours, they're tuned in -- and only the operation can tune them out again.''
``Can't anybody do anything?''
``Why should they?'' Bill asked.
``Isn't it illegal?''
``Everything down here is illegal. But to stop it, the police would have to round up every junkie and remove every program, and that would cost too much to bother about. It matters little that the commericals don't reach anyone down here. No one can afford to buy.''
``Why did you bring me here?'' Harry asked sharply. ``Are you trying to tell me if I live here I can avoid the mind voices?''
``Good God no,'' Bill said. ``You couldn't live here. Even if you managed to avoid being utterly brutalized by these people, looking for their fix, you couldn't survive the message. It's seductive and self perpetuating. After a while, hearing that voice, you would think of nothing else but dope, too.''
``Then why am I here?''
``You said something about being rid of the program,'' Bill said in a voice not much different from the whispering one in Harry's head, still glancing over his shoulder as if expecting to be overheard.
``Yes, I did,'' Harry said. ``But not with that stuff you gave me-- in fact, after what I experienced, I'm not sure it wouldn't be wiser to contact my service agent and have them adjust it.''
``They wouldn't adjust it, they would adjust you,'' Bill said.
``What do you mean?''
``The program isn't the problem, it's you, Harry. Something in you is rebelling against it.''
``That's crazy! I've had the program since I was....''
``I know. We all have. But some of us reach a certain level and react, pushing the messages away-- something clicking in us, telling us that the whole rotten system is screwed on wrong. Once the authorities realize this is happening to you, they'll want to do a brain wipe and start all over.''
``A brain wipe?'' Harry shouted, his voice echoing through the cavern of street, sounding back like a brand new mental commerical aimed straight at him.
``Shush, will you!'' Bill hissed. ``I said it was safer here, not safe. The police may not come in here openly, but they come here to spy.''
``Spy on who?''
``On people like us who come here for drugs and other things.''
``But I thought you said people don't ordinarily come down here.''
``Ordinary people don't. But lots of extraordinary people do, people coming to get their kicsks or buy their grains for the program. Some come to get the operation; some come, get the operation and stay here.''
``The operation?''
``It's what we're here to see about, Harry,'' Bill scolded. ``So just get yourself together, boy. We don't need you blurting out like that at the wrong time. You got me?''
Harry nodded, though felt a lump in his throat that he couldn't swallow away, and a dryness that he would have liked to cure with some alcohol. He thought about a nice cool beer, but nothing came of it. Though Bill did start up the decaying steps and into a dingy-windowed bar.
Inside, the air took on the same thick texture, smoke and sweat and the smell of booze curling up under the dim hanging lamps. A oval bar filed the center of the room, dank and dark figures slumped along it, half drained glasses gripped in their fists. In the center of the oval, a boney woman squirmed in what have been taken for dance, her nipples painted in dayglow green -- like wobbly eyes staring at Bill and Harry as they entered. No one else did -- except perhaps for the casual glance of the bored bartender near the far end of the oval who lazily wiped at the bar top with a dirty blue rag.
Billy smiled and lifted his hand slowly, in gesture that jolted the bartender's memory, returning Bill's smile with a nearly toothless grin of his own.
``Why, it's Mr. Loekle,'' he said in a snarly kind of voice. ``Didn't figure you to be here tonight. Friday's your normal night, isn't it?''
``I brought a friend, Carl. Is -- he here?''
``A friend?'' the bartender said, the grin fading into a look of doubt. ``I don't know if Marco would want to see a stranger. If you get my drift.''
``Oh, Harry's all right,'' Bill said, slapping Harry's shoulder with a vigor that nearly knocked him over. ``I can vouch for him.''
``I guess it'll be all right,'' the bartender said, tilting his head towards a door at the rear of the room. ``You know the way.''
Indeed Bill did, shuffling along between bar stools and the wall and the gurgling, sad-faced figures who looked up now as they passed, their gazes distant and drowning, as their eyes acted as guages to how much they drank, all of them well beyond the half way point, all with some aspect of misery that horrified Harry.
But the door frightened him more, with deeper darkness waiting behind it as Bill pushed it open, one lone lamp glowing from a single round table at the rear of a small square room. It cast a dim light on a chair beside it and the slumped, big-bellied figure seated in it, though the face and features remained hidden by its shadow.
``Ye-ah?'' a croaking voice asked from out of that darkness, a match sparking, revealing gnarled nose and unshaven jaw, and pinched grey lips puckered around a cigarette, the orange glow of its end instantly replacing the extinquished flam. It caught in the figure's dark eyes, giving them a malevolent gleam. ``Can I help you, bo-oys?''
Bill paused, his previous hurried step suddenly drawn to a halt a few yards from the seated figure. Harry felt a shiver run through the man, as he studdered out a reply.
``My fr-friend here needs to g-g-get fixed,'' he said, neriously glancing around towards the corners of the room. Harry caught movement in the dark, a clicking sound or maybe laughing, he couldn't tell.
``He do-es?'' the figure said, sucking on the cigarette, its light competing with the light of the lamp, giving shape to the wrinkled face and hands.
``If it`s n-n-not too m-much trouble,'' Bill said.
``Y-ou say he ne-eds the fix,'' the figure said. ``Wh-at do-es he say?''
``T-Tell him, H-H-Harry,'' Bill said, pushing Harry forward into the faint circle of light, the hands shaky and moist.
``I want the noise to stop,'' Harry said. ``At least I thought I did.''
``Hey, hey,'' the seated figure said in what seemed to serve him as a laugh or cough. ``Do-esn't every-body? Su-ch peo-ple. Do-n't like what they he-ar in their he-ads. I can a-range the op-eration. But it's gonna cost you -- in Cash.''
``Cash?'' Harry said, drawing the figure's dark eyes for the first time, the orange glow of the cigarette shimmering like pupils at their center. ``Where on earth am I supposed to get cash?''
Life elsewhere revolved around credit. Harry had, of course, seen money. It was still printed, though more as ritual than necessity -- the government insisting on the ancient art as if to provide a solid foundation to its ever shifting ecconomy. But money rarely changed hands, most always pressed under glass as part of some educational display on finance.
``If you have go-od cre-dit, there are ways,'' the figure said, grinning out of the darkness, the lamplight illuminating two rows of small yellowed teeth, the smell of nicotine rising with each slow exhaling breath. ``At not a bad con-version rate, either.''
``My credit is fine,'' Harry said, slightly resentful. ``The question is what am I buying?''
Or was his credit okay, he wondered, trying to calculate the worth of all those odd items sitting on the rug of his secretary's office, white elephant items he hadn't had time to send back in his rush to leave. Most of it had been useless junk, though even junk had a way of adding up.
``I'm not guar-anteeing any-thing,'' the figure said, leaning forward now, his dark eyes catching the light so that it looked as if something had started to glow inside of them. He took a long drag on the cigarette and exspelled the smoke in Harry's direction. ``I won't be re-responsible for any -- side damange.''
``Bill?'' Harry asked. ``What is he talking about?''
``These things are pretty tricky, Harry.''
``What things? I don't understand what either of you are talking about.''
``It's the operation,'' Bill said. ``To remove the program.''
``What?''
``That's wh-at it takes th-ese days,'' the dark figure in the chair said. ``Used to be we could wo-rk it out with drugs. But they've got-ten tricky. Now we've got to cut.''
``And you can't just go to any hospital for that,'' Bill said. ``They're not allowed to do that kind of surgury. So it's all done in a backroom somewhere, and not always under the more sanitary conditions or with the best equipment.''
Harry stared at Bill, the smooth face less perfect or assured than it had appeared at work, a shaken man with a gaze not too different from those cluttering the gutter outside, a hungry, panicked expression showing like a caged animal deep in the eyes.
What had Bill said about over use of the grain? Addiction? Was that the thing the others outside had become addicted to, buying silence with their lives? A sudden realization came into Harry's mind, less a message from the advertisers than something long part of his thinking process, an understanding about the nature of the world, where the order of one world confronted the chaos of another, in a nose to nose, toe to toe battle for the souls of beings like himself. There was no middle ground, no safe zone where people could exist without giving into one power or the other. One either accepted the world of the program and lived with its dictates or fell into the abyss outside, where life was longing for one particular drug.
Silence? No, that was the excuse, the hook which drew people in. Somehow, it was the other effect -- what Bill had called a side effect -- that made them crave it, that shaking, panicky reaction that Harry had found so unacceptable.
Bill licked his lips, with a sharp, knowing glance at the figure in the chair, some message passing between them -- the end of some compromise or deal.
``But it'll be all right, Harry,'' Bill assured him. ``Plenty of people do this every day.''
``Why?'' Harry asked.
``For the quiet,'' Bill said. ``Why else?''
But the the panic in Bill's voice alarmed Harry. If it was so easy-- if surgury could cure people, why did so many people not take that path? Silence? No, obscurity, disheritance, hibernation, exile. Without the program, Harry could not go back -- not to wife or job or his old life. How would he survive among people who thought what they wanted and received it as a matter of routine?
``I think not,'' Harry said softly. ``I think maybe I should go home and forget all this foolishness.''
Angry fires flaired into the eyes of the figure in the chair, as they cast an accusing glance at Bill.
``You said he was ready,'' the man said.
``He was. Or I thought he was.''
``Well, he doesn't seem that way now,'' the man said. ``And you don't get your stuff until he signs the papers.''
``Harry,'' Bill said, drawing out the name into a kind fo wail. ``You said you wanted to be rid of the noise. Well here's your chance.''
``No,'' Harry said. ``I thought I did. But I don't. I just wanted my old program back, the one that didn't intrude on me so much. But I can see that I need an adjustment, not surgury. So why don't you let me out of here so I can go home.''
The man in the chair coughed, clearing his throat in a way that stiffened Bill.
``It's not that simple any more,'' Bill told Harry. ``You've seen things you shouldn't have, and now you can't just go back. You might say the wrong thing to the wrong people.''
Harry shook his head, trying to clear the images that came into it now, visions of violant acts with himself as their subject, while around him, out of the shadow, grey, stern-face figures moved, like stone coming to life from the walls, their hefty hands flexing fingers slowly as they advanced.
``What is this?'' Harry said. ``I didn't see anything. I don't know anything. And I don't want to know any more. Just let me out of here and you'll never hear from me again.''
``We can't rely on that,'' Bill said, his face oddly contorted now, looking as if it belonged more to this place than it had the research offices of the corporation uptown, an odd greenish light showing in his eyes, glowing there like fire.
``Just let me go,'' Harry whispered. ``I promise.''
``The only way anyone would believe your promise is if you went through the operation,'' Bill said. ``Then if you talked, you would be just a liable as us.''
``But I don't want the operation.''
``How do you know if you haven't tried it?''
``The drug was enough. It told me all I wanted to know.''
But now, Bill and the other silent figures came on towards him, each with flexing fingers and determined expressions, each looking tough enough to hurt Harry if they wanted.
Behind Harry, someone moaned. A twisted face floated up from the floor, eyes crossed, a vague impressions of a woman's face showing somewhere in its groteque mask.
``Help me,'' she said, clutching at his legs with all the tenderness of a crab's claws, the nails broken and black and bloody.
``Is this what happens to people after the operation?'' Harry demanded.
``No,'' Bill said, pausing, glancing pitifully at the woman. ``Not always. Most of the time you walk out just as normal as you came in.''
``Normal? You mean without the voices in your head.''
``That's what most people want when they come here,'' Bill said.
``But where do they go afterwards, even when they don't wind up like this? Not back up top? You can't survive up there without the program.''
``There are pl-aces,'' the man in the chair said. ``Peo-ple live like th-ey used to.''
``And the government allows it? I thought you said this was all illegal?''
``The government can't be everywhere, Harry.''
``I don't believe it,'' Harry said. ``There has to be more to it than this. You brought me here for a reason. You get something out of this. That means there's something none of you are telling me, something I ought to know.''
``Don't be so sus-picious,'' the man in the chair said. ``We're ju-st trying to give you wh-at you want.''
``I want to go home,'' Harry said. ``I want to keep my program and live life normally with my wife.''
``I already told you, Harry, that's impossible,'' Bill said. ``You came and now you've got to go through with it or...''
``Or what?'' Harry said.
``Or we make you go through with it.''
Harry felt ill and weak, but kept Bill back with the heal of his hand. ``First you tell me a few things,'' he said. ``What's in this for you? Why the pressure for me to take the operation willingly?''
Bill cast a dark glance towards the man in the chair, who nodded slowly and sucked on his cigarette.
``Te-ll him,'' the man said. ``It do-esn't make a dif-ference if he knows.''
Bill looked uncomfortable, his normally smooth face taking on the a used apparenace, as he glanced at the seated man, then at Harry.
``There's a market for the program,'' he said.
``What?''
``It's not a gene thing. It's mechanical. At least the device they install inside us when we're young is. It gets reprogrammed from time to time, but the mechanics hardly ever change.''
``But why would anyone need to buy used ones? Can't they get their own?''
``Well,'' Bill said with yet another glance at the man. ``They don't quite go in with the same message, if you get my meaning.''
``Mind control?'' Harry said, a great horror begining to rise up inside of him.
``It is wh-at th-ey do now,'' the man in the chair said.
``Is it?'' Harry asked, glancing at the tip of the cigarette as it glowed orange like another eye staring at him from out of the darkness. ``Or do you have your own agenda, one that starts with kids?''
``Look, Harry,'' Bill said, trying to sound reasonable and failing, his voice too thick with self pity and the obvious need of some drug. ``It doesn't matter what gets done with the devise. You'll be free of it. No one will be able to control you the way they have in the past. That's what you want, isn't it? To be free of the voices?''
Harry shook his head. It was cluttered up now with his own terrible thoughts, a cocophony of disorder to which the other thoughts-- even with the new program -- could not compare.
``If it's such a great and glorious answer to everything why haven't you done it?'' Harry asked sharply.
Real and deep horror grew into Bill's dark eyes, a horror that told Harry more than any of his words. The operation wasn't so simple as they made out and its victims didn't mostly turn out okay, but wound up mostly like the ones on the street, graveling beasts who could not think for themselves. Maybe it was the hell of being alone all the time that did it, being disconnected from society in a way that could never be reconnected, leaving them empty and wanting, like ruptured vessles needing to be filled, but unable to hold anything-- even their own thoughts.
Harry's hands moved, nearly of their own volution, the heals striking Bill square in the chest, sending the sagging man stumbling back into the path of the advancing stone-looking men in the shadows.
``Hey!'' Bill cried as he fell, but Harry had already plunged passed him and the men and the shadow of the clutching woman and through the door to the bar, where dust and shadows and dead men greeted him, like pieces of one large incomprehensiable jigsaw puzzle-- pieces that didn't quite fit together and never would. The gazes from the bar followed him as he moved, while behind him, the stone men appeared, a shouted command rising from the dark room, saying: ``st-op him!''
Harry exited to the street, where the air felt better though stank, strange smells of what might have been cooking or trash, spilling out from open, unshaded windows, where more, half-dead faces looked up at he passed, hollowed eyes of the hopeless who he knew and they knew him as brothers and sisters under the same cloak of the disappointed and disillusioned. Only they had taken the plunge when he had not.
His feet pounded the cracked pavement, kicking up bits of glass, paper cups and fast food wrappers as if dust, his shoes never meant for this kind of headlong plunge, their fabric coming undone with each pounding step. He could hear the breath of the stone men, their huffing, heavy breathing nearly heating the hairs on the back of his head. He could feel their clutching fingers reaching forward for him. He twisted right, crossing over the gutter into the street, pot holes and sprawled humans littering the black top like a obstical course, gnarled women like the one in the bar, accompanied now, but even more dismal beings lacking eyes and arms and legs and fingers, all of them moaning out, their minds broadcasting requests for credics and the over powering single word: Dope!
``Harry! Please!'' Bill's voice weakly rose from the dusky street behind him, a failing wail of the breathless man dying, though Harry was instantly struck with an potent mental call: Please, they'll kill me if you don't come back.
``They'll kill me if I do,'' Harry shot back, shouting the words over his shoulder as he found a slanting street that rose on an angle -- it's surface seeming slightly better than the one he was one.
As he climbed, the store fronts and houses took on a better appearances, less pealing paint, fewer broken windows, with glowing doorbells and curtains clinging around each-- not quite up to Harry's living standards, but better, and he felt better and hurried his step, the breath of the stone men gone as was Bill's desperate cries.
Slowly, the world grew around him again, with the appearance of the first -- it somewhat delapated -- moving sidewalks. He hopped aboard it, the belts moaning under his weight, trudging ahead far slower than he could have jogged. But he was breathless and appreciated the rest, staring back the way he'd come, seeing nothing of pursuit, or of the ugly world out of which he'd climbed. It seemed all a nightmare, one from which he was gradually waking. Taller buildings appeared as he hopped from the aging walk to one slightly newer, and then to another even more up to par. Now, there were others moving around him, normal people, dressed in normall clothing, eyeing him and his torn attire as if he was the oddity here. He struggled to pull himself together, but he could not take the stains from his jacket or repair the torn fabic.
Then, as if noticing it for the first time, he heard the voices again, the familiar -- and seemingly not so loud now -- melodies and slogans of the commerical world.
His uproarious laugh drew even more attention from those on the other moving belts, but he didn't care. His thoughts were caught on other things, like what kind of soup the machines at home should have waiting when he got there, or which cleaners should take his clothing, or how much he loved this old world despite its imperfections. He shivered, like a dog shaking off a recent rain, then slowly closed his eyes, listening to the voices lull him into blissful normalness again.