Dark Matter Presents Monstrous Futures, page 33
Then, the body in front of her blinks, its corporeality bleeding into a static of cells and carbon, and vanishes.
And Evelyn is alone in the examination room, her soiled tools and the humming recording device hanging near her head. She breathes steadily for a few minutes, not wondering where the traveler’s body was off to next. She’s curious, not for the traveler’s fate, but for her own. How long does she—and the people she considers her family, her friends, her colleagues and society—how long do they have before they too are lost?
Then Evelyn moves. It doesn’t matter. Or it does matter, it’s the only thing that really matters, but she can’t fix it. She can’t stop it. She doesn’t even know what it is. She performs a quick decontamination procedure before leaving her examination room and slips out of the building.
Then Evelyn goes home and waits for the end of her whole world.
My Strengths Include Customer Service and Teamwork
By Lew Furber
11:30, OmniMart, Checkout Six.
“The Discount Shirt and Blouse Emporium just turned to sand out there,” said Meat Man, flinging—without proper situational reverence—his daily dozen packets of meat onto my conveyor belt. “Everyone inside it, too. Like that.” He stopped chewing his gum to snap his fingers, then went on open-mouthed like the horses in OmniMart’s Nutritional TV Dinners chewed apples.
“Thank you for choosing OmniMart, where all your shopping demands are our pleasure to satisfy,” I said, as I had been trained and born to say. I began beeping the packets of meat through to the bagging area. Manager Tanya once wrote in my Monthly Employee Value Report that I sounded like a yapping dog, but also that high voices caused in customers an increase in Promotional Receptiveness and Purchasing Goodwill, and that was of supreme importance. “We have a special offer on OmniMart Value Gum today, sir,” I said in my highest octave.
“It’s annoying,” said Meat Man, chewing, “because I needed a refund on these shirts.” He showed me a plastic bag full of deficient shirts.
“Can I interest you in our half-price OmniMart Value Gum, sir?”
“Guess I’ll have to go all the way across town to The Discount Shirt and Blouse Mega-Emporium now, huh.” Meat Man chewed eight times. “If it hasn’t turned into a sandcastle, too.”
He laughed and I accidentally wanted him to die.
Per the OmniMart Employee Handbook:
When an employee entertains thoughts about a customer which might reasonably terminate said customer’s furtherance of their Commercial Rapport with the Company, the employee will self-correct by application of the Employee Correction Wand (ECW) to the inside of the left cheek. If the left cheek is unavailable due to recent or ongoing self-correction, the right may be substituted.
“Our offer on OmniMart Value Gum is unmatched by our competitors,” I yapped.
“No, thanks. I’m all stocked.”
“You have an OmniPleasant day, sir.”
Meat Man left. I slipped my ECW from the pocket of my OmniMart Value Polyester Slacks. It resembled the cigarette lighter from my OmniCar, only longer and slimmer, like a pen. I charged it until it was orange-hot and applied the burner to my right cheek. The pain and return to equilibrium brought about in me a kind of shuddering ecstasy. The OmniMart Corporation’s dignity and, by extension, my own had been made whole again. I felt around the edge of the burning O inside my mouth with the tip of my tongue.
“Next customer, please.”
• • •
12:00, OmniMart, Checkout Six.
Woman In Bouffant Wig presented for purchase some defrosted OmniMart Good-For-You Lamb Legs, wet and dripping in their plastic wrap.
“The Gigaplex next door has gone too, y’know,” she said. “Turned to sand while I was parking the minivan. Like that. And the Seven Continents. Y’know, the buffet?”
I beeped the lamb legs through to the bagging area.
“Can I get a discount, honey? These were frozen when I picked them up, honest to God. It’s almost as hot in here as it is out there. You should go look. Everything’s broiling like bacon. Good day for a lamb leg BBQ, y’know?”
“A generous three percent discount has been applied, ma’am. I will have to wait for my OmniBreak to see outside.” Thank OmniMart there were no windows to distract me from my duty nor the customers from expressing the shopping demands it was my pleasure to satisfy.
“Hope you’re still alive by then, hon. And I’ll take twenty-five packets of that gum for my kids.”
“It’s half price,” I said in an octave higher than I had ever reached. Woman In Bouffant Wig flinched. I regretted it in my guts.
“In that case, I’ll take fifty,” she said, shaking my voice out of her ears. “For the kids.”
I prepared the ECW while she fumbled for exact change. I slipped off my left shoe and pressed the burner into the ball of my foot, searing an O and drawing blood with the ECW’s sharp circular edge, as the Handbook prescribed.
• • •
12:05, OmniMart, Checkout Six.
Woman in Bouffant Wig’s gum and lamb legs turned to sand in her bag before she made it past Greeter Paul, who thanked her for shopping at OmniMart. I called for Manager Tanya, per company policy, but Woman In Bouffant Wig turned to sand while she waited. Manager Tanya came and placed an orange cone next to the pile of Woman In Bouffant Wig.
• • •
13:30, OmniMart, Checkout Six.
It is essential, said the Employee Handbook, to maintain the Optimal Smile for a difficult customer.
Coupon Man wanted to know how hard it could be to swap the coupons he had collected for the OmniMart Wind-up Radio they had promised him.
“How hard could it be? How hard?” He hammered the end of his finger on the top of my register.
“How hard could it be to twist your head clean off?” I said, losing control of my larynx and the discipline I was sworn to hold there, which kept Unacceptable Customer Conversation Topics unbroached. My voice sounded like paper rubbing against paper. I tried to push it back in with cupped palms. My Optimal Smile failed.
“What? Speak up, for God’s sake.”
“How hard—” I was strangled, gasping. I couldn’t stop myself and I clawed at my throat “—could it be—” my eyes burned, spewed liquid, and I fell to my knees “—to twist your head clean off?”
Manager Tanya passed the end of checkout six as part of her Hourly Compliance Assurance Routine. My skin screamed with pleasure and fear, all the way in and all the way down.
“Your behavior is an affront to the grace of the OmniMart Corporation,” she said. It was Managerial Reprimand Number Three-Point-Three, Appendix Two, page seventy of the OmniMart Employee Handbook.
Within me, hot metal hands enclosed my heart and other offal, squeezing them through knuckles and fists into mincemeat.
“My OmniPologies, sir,” said Manager Tanya. “Your custom is valuable to us. Can I offer you a complimentary supply of OmniMart Assorted Animal Ribs?”
“How hard can it be to get a wind-up radio?” Coupon Man stomped. He turned to sand, feet up to face, gargling his indignation.
“Sweep him over there by the cone,” said Manager Tanya. “And I’m taking you off checkout. See me at the end of your OmniShift.” Reprimand Addendum One, Appendix Two, page seventy-two. She left me, shaking her head.
I had disgusted myself and my Employer. I prepared my ECW.
• • •
14:00, OmniMart, Aisle Twelve, Pet Food.
I deserved this demotion, but I prayed to OmniMart it was temporary. It was an opportunity, in that sense, for Continuing Personal Devotion. Manager Tanya had sent me to assist Stacker Gino in keeping our store’s shelf-stacking velocity within company parameters. We had one thousand cans of OmniMart Pork-Turkey-Duck Meal for Dogs and Cats to stack before three o’clock. Stacker Gino did not stack with the precision OmniMart expected of us. He was a blemish.
“Aren’t you frightened?” said Stacker Gino. He wiped sweat from his forehead and neck with the sleeve of his OmniMart fleece, contravening Rule Eight: Employee uniforms must remain pristine at all times. Failure to comply will necessitate self-correction. Stacker Gino failed to self-correct, though I spied with some envy a new double-ended ECW poking out of his pocket. A jagged rage branched up over the back of my skull and down my face into my throat. If there hadn’t been a customer leaning over our crouching forms, surveying the superb range of pet food presented on the upper shelves, I would have corrected Stacker Gino with my own ECW.
Per the OmniMart Employee Handbook:
When an employee fails to self-correct, a colleague may carry out the correction, or the employee(s) may be terminated.
“It is impossible to be frightened at OmniMart,” I said, projecting for the customer humming to himself above us. “Are you trying to damage our customers’ and colleagues’ Commercial Rapport with your negativity? What reason is there to be frightened? Is Regional Manager Pavel here?” This was a terrific prospect. It caused in me a welcome abdominal convulsion. “If you’re frightened of him, it’s because you’ve done something to deserve to be. It’s in the Handbook.”
“But the sand? And the heat? Have you seen out there? Everything’s gone. It’s a desert. Aren’t you frightened of that?”
“So, Regional Manager Pavel is not coming?”
“No one’s coming.” Stacker Gino’s face swelled red. His crying was an unbearable shame on us all.
“Pardon me,” said Leaning Customer. “Where is the canned veal?”
“The canned veal is in Aisle Forty-four, sir,” I said, soprano-like. “It would be my pleasure to take you there, if you demand it.”
“I think I’ve got it.”
“You have an OmniPleasant day, sir.”
Leaning Customer moved away, singing softly an improvised tune on the subject of canned veal.
“You see, Gino,” I said. “Even with blood coming from my mouth and shoe, I am a more attractive and trustworthy company representative in the eyes of the customer. That is why the customer approached me and not you. I am a better employee than you. That is because I am not crying. I am a good team player, also capable of working independently. I am passionate about delivering authentic Customer Joy-Experiences in a retail environment. I self-correct at the appropriate times. That is more than can be said for you. Your behavior is an affront to the grace of the OmniMart Corporation.”
Stacker Gino began to choke on the sand that had been his tongue, ejecting brownish puffs into my eyes. This complicated things. Without a tongue, I could not correct him with the ECW in the Handbook-prescribed bodily locus.
“You won’t get out of it,” I said. “There is no bearable alternative to passion.”
• • •
15:00, OmniMart, Break Room Window.
It was desert as far as the horizon, like Stacker Gino had said. The Discount Shirt and Blouse Emporium, the Gigaplex, and the Seven Continents buffet had all turned into great pyramids of sand. The sun burned red, and the plate glass of the break room window had started to melt, thickening at the bottom of the pane.
I turned back to page one of the OmniMart Employee Handbook, having reached the final page six minutes before the end of my break.
• • •
16:00, OmniMart, Customer Service Desk.
“It’s always good to look at things closely,” said Microscope Grandma. “I said to my grandsons, ‘It’s always good to look at things closely, boys,’ I said, ’cause that’s what my teachers used to say. I bought them this microscope set for their birthday—they’re twins, used to be triplets—so they could look at things closely, like my teachers used to say and like their old Grandma told ’em. Anyhow, I think it’s broken or faulty or kaput or something ’cause all they want to do is argue over that damned action dolly of their late brother’s, God rest his sandy soul. What’s boys wanting from a dolly when there’s a microscope set to be had? I don’t know. You find anything wrong with it, sugar?”
“One moment, please,” I said.
Customer Service Representatives Barbara and Nicola lay in two neat piles behind the customer service desk and, as I was the only employee left alive who had been trained in returns besides Manager Tanya, I was filling in. Manager Tanya had important company computer tasks to complete in her Office, where I would receive Rightful Punishment later. I picked up a few grains of Customer Service Representative Nicola, who always stood on the right when viewed from the customer side of the desk, and put them on a slide. Magnified through the microscope, hundreds of tiny Customer Service Representative Nicolas—all red and purple, blotchy, with blown tissues around their orifices and extremities—lay piled and dead.
“One moment, please,” I said. I left the desk to collect a handful of sand from the pile by the orange cone. I placed some of the grains on another slide and inspected them. On the clear plastic, lit white from underneath, were hundreds of Women in Bouffant Wigs and Coupon Men, dead and puffed and blown, and several thousand lamb legs and packs of gum.
“This item seems fully within expected operation, ma’am,” I said.
“May I?”
I turned the microscope around for her to inspect.
“But why,” she said, “are there dead people in my microscope?”
“Excuse me. May I?” Knowledgeable Man said over her shoulder. Microscope Grandma stood aside. Knowledgeable Man took a long look at the magnified corpses. “Ah, yes. I heard about this. It was on the television news.”
“What did you hear, sugar? What did the news people say about my microscope?”
Knowledgeable Man spluttered. He flapped his mouth like the half-dead OmniSalmon on Miriam Fish Counter’s fish counter. “It’s something to do with, uhh, well, experimentation in the field of, uhh, you know, the scientific field of, uhh, airborne methods of, uhh, meat product duplic—”
“Spit it out, son,” said Someone Else at the back of the line.
Knowledgeable Man flushed red, purple, then burst into sand.
“Now, honey,” Microscope Grandma said, “how’s about that refund?”
I tapped the necessary buttons in the necessary order on the point-of-sale screen. It rebuked me. “A Manager is required to process a refund on a single item of this value or higher, ma’am,” I said. “A Manager will arrive promptly. My OmniThanks for your continued patience.”
“Mmhm.”
I pressed the Manager Tanya buzzer under the desk. After a couple of minutes of my Optimal Smile, when no one—Manager Tanya or otherwise—had arrived, I excused myself with courtesy and headed to the Office. It was against Rule Fifteen, let alone immoral, for a Manager to ignore a summons to the Customer Service Desk.
• • •
16:05, OmniMart, Management Office.
The Office had become a tomb with OmniMart Value Roller Blinds. Manager Tanya was dead. The billion puffed and blown micro-duplicates of her corpse streamed, like a little Niagara, off her swivel chair onto the carpet tiles.
Relief cooled me. I would not receive Rightful Punishment.
But this was against Rule Twenty-one: Rightful Punishment may not be avoided under any circumstances.
Bereft, I speed-dialed Regional Manager Pavel from the desk phone.
No answer.
I collected a handful of Manager Tanya and still had a few grains left, stuck to the sweat of my palm, by the time I made it back to the Customer Service Desk. Microscope Grandma had gone, whether through impatience or transformation. I inspected my palm under the microscope. Nestled side by side in the magnified canyon of my life line were five Dead Manager Tanyas.
I picked up the Customer Service Desk phone, dialed zero. “Staff announcement: All hands please congregate at the CS Desk. Thank you.”
• • •
16:10, OmniMart, Customer Service Desk.
Four staff remained in the store, including me. We stood in a square around Knowledgeable Man’s remains in front of the Customer Service Desk. Stacker Gino, Greeter Paul, and Miriam Fish Counter each took to the microscope to identify for themselves the corpse of our Manager.
“As acting Store Manager,” I said, “I declare that we will continue at our default posts for the remainder of our OmniShifts.”
“Acting Store Manager? You?” said Miriam Fish Counter, smelling of high-quality low-cost fish.
“I am the senior staff member.”
“I’ve got my own counter.”
“But I am trained in several customer facing roles,” I said.
She exhaled hard through her nose.
“Well, we’re all on the same wage, aren’t we? Low as can be,” said Stacker Gino via a small whiteboard he should not have taken from Aisle Ninety-one, Stationery.
“I and the OmniMart Corporation have had quite enough of your insolence, Gino,” I said. I shook all over with the thrill of zeal. “This is why you cannot be the Manager.” Then, accidentally, I said, “It’s not like they’re going to pay me any more money, is it?”
Greeter Paul and Miriam Fish Counter clapped their hands to their ears. I applied my ECW’s burner to the insides of my elbows and the backs of my knees, where recent self-corrections were still teaching me to improve. The ECW opened these wounds again, and I stepped closer to redemption and a stamp on my Employee Reward Card.
“I’m a volunteer,” said Greeter Paul. “The only wages I receive and need are the customers’ satisfied smiles.”
“Well, I’m out of here. Four fifteen. End of my shift. Twelve hours here, twelve at home. Who could ask for more?” Miriam Fish Counter walked toward the automatic doors, but stopped at the sight of a fierce sandstorm, the color of OmniMart Fried Chicken, on the other side. “Maybe I’ll wait in the break room a little while,” she said. “Till this blows over.”
