Suddenly They Heard Footsteps

by Dan Yashinsky

  He began to show me around the shop. “This is the Malum One, our entry-level system. We have the Gabriel, which is a laptop, and the Paradise 1000 for heavy-duty business use.” He went on and on in a pleasant, low voice, using words that always sound like an invocation in some ancient tongue even though we hear every day: RAM and ROM, hard drives and softwares, processors and microchips, megabytes and websites, modems and monitors and memory. He used that word a lot, and it was the only one I understood. He ended his spiel by saying, “Human memory is, unfortunately, a frail vessel. You lose important files, forget to save data, and let feelings corrupt your hard drives. With Eden Memory Systems, all that has changed. We’ve just made remembering a whole lot easier, safer and more reliable. You can start with a Malum One and upgrade from there. Come on,” he said, still smiling—I think he must have realized I didn’t know much about computers—“Are you ready to take your first megabyte?”

  To tell you the truth, it was starting to sound pretty good to me. I’ve often thought remembering is one of the harder things humans have to do. I’ve got a pretty feeble memory myself: especially for facts and figures, like, Did the French beat the English in the Hundred Years War, or did the English beat the French, and was it a Two-Hundred-Year war? Not to mention the terrible things from our own war, and my mother’s stories, and what I did to my first girlfriend, and what my second girlfriend did to me. Remembering has never been easy, at least for me. Anything that could help us remember better was worth the price. In fact, how did we ever get along without the damn things? I reached for my wallet to get my credit card to place my order.

  Just then I remembered something. Something about Malum, his entry-level system. Malum. Something from my high school Latin class. Malum. We used to say, “Latin is a dead language, as dead as dead can be; first it killed the Romans, and now it’s killing me.” Malum. Something from that dead tongue was sending a strong signal. Malum. Malicious… malignant… malevolent. Malum. Maladroit… malapropos… Les Fleurs du Mal. Malls. Malum. All of a sudden, I remembered: Malum was Latin for apple!

  Then I remembered something else. A story. A very old story about a smooth-talking serpent selling sweet fruit to an unsuspecting customer in a place of great abundance. And here I was, with this computer salesman trying to get me to take a megabyte of his Malum… in a mall! I began to think—if I switched to an Eden Memory System I would no longer call things to remembrance from within myself but by means of his electronically powered, binary-coded digital database. This was no modern miracle machine for remembering; it was a diabolically clever method to microsoften human memory into megaprocessed mush! Diabolical? Oh, my God! Now I knew who he really was! Possessed by a crazy courage, I pointed my credit card at him and uttered his true and eternal name straight to his face: “Satan!”

  Nothing happened. He just stood there smiling. Oi, did I feel like an idiot. I was sure he’d punch my lights out, or call the mall security guard, or have me charged for slander. But just then he gave a little bow, looked up, and said, “Oui. C’est moi.”

  Wouldn’t you know he’d be bilingual!

  “I’ll be damned,” I said.

  “At your service,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to do. Should I put him under citizen’s arrest, or run through Wal-Mart screaming, “The Devil’s in Don Mills!”? Have you ever gotten on an elevator with a famous rock star or politician, and you have a million questions, but by the time you open your mouth the door opens and they step off? That’s what it was like now. I’d never met anyone this famous before, and I was bursting with questions.

  “You can’t be real!” I said. “Nobody even believes in you any more.”

  “That’s fine,” he replied. “I still believe in you. And there are a few of you who still believe. Some weapons designers, assistant ministers of defence, poets, storytellers, dancers… Besides, I prefer to operate incognito.”

  “But why here? Why Don Mills Plaza?”

  “It’s the perfect global headquarters for my takeover operation. Nobody will ever guess it’s me,” he said.

  I was about to point out that I had guessed, but then I remembered the old saying: Discretion is the better part of valour. And besides, don’t they say that the Devil’s favourite ruse is to pretend he doesn’t exist? It occurred to me I’d better check my brakes before driving home. You know the proverb: ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if the Lord don’t take me, the Devil must.

  “How the hell did you get into electronics? What exactly are you selling?” I asked him.

  “Same ol’ same ol,’” he said. “Business as usual. I’m just peddling what I’ve always sold. In fact, I’m moving more product than ever. I’ve found a real market niche. I sell innocence—or the next best thing: forgetfulness. You humans are always trying to crawl back into paradise, back to that nice world of binary-coded right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and evil, off and on. This world is just too complicated sometimes. I understand this. That’s why I came up with my Eden Memory System. Now you can double-click on data and pretend you’re getting wisdom. You can double-click on memory and is it my fault you start forgetting what makes things worth remembering in the first place. You humans are the ones who buy it; I just market the stuff.”

  It was his smile that made me so mad. I looked the Devil in his cathode-bright eyes and said, “I’ll be damned if I help you develop your diabolical dominion of duplicity one double-click at a time! I’ll never buy your computer! I’d rather do my own remembering, even if I’m not that good at it!”

  Actually, what I said was, “I’ve got to go now. Thanks for showing me the shop. I don’t think I’ll get one today.” I turned to leave, but before I could cross the threshold I heard him whisper in my ear, “Do you like games?”

  Damn him. I do like games.

  “I’ve got a great new game in the back room. Nobody’s played it yet. Would you like to play it with me?”

  I followed him to a door at the back of the shop. We entered a beautifully decorated room. It had thick carpets, real wood panelling, recessed lights. And in the middle was a game. Its name was emblazoned with fiery letters on the side: SOULRAIDER.

  “What stakes are we playing for?” I asked the Devil.

  “The usual ones,” he said.

  We stepped up to the game and began to play. It was the most exciting game I’ve every played. There were mazes and chases, aliens and treasures, a girl warrior in a bikini with laser bazookas, adventures and flashing lights and non-stop beeps, levels and more levels. I was dodging, shooting, attacking, escaping—I was completely lost in the game. Then I noticed that his last video creature had cornered my last video creature. I twisted and turned, I fired my weapon. Kabam! Kaboom! Kaplooie—I missed. He didn’t. His creature blew my creature to kingdom come. I turned to him and said, “Just let me play one more level!” But the screen went dark, a little voice sang, “That’s all, folks, and the game was over.

  He gave me a moment to catch my breath, then he asked, “How did you like it?” He sounded like he really wanted to know, like he was market-testing a new product instead of the oldest game in the world.

  “Not bad,” I told him. Then I realized what had happened. “Hey, have you just won my eternal soul?”

  He nodded.

  “How come I feel the same as before?” I demanded.

  “Oh, very few of you notice much difference at all,” he said.

  I looked around and saw that this room wasn’t so fancy after all. The carpet was threadbare, the panelling was fake, a couple of bulbs had burned out in the ceiling. The Devil was wearing a cheap aftershave, which I’d smelled on the subway many times before. All of a sudden I really wanted to get back downtown.

  Before I left I asked him one more question. “Now that you’ve won my eternal soul, what are you going to do with it?”

  For the first time, he looked puzzled. “Not much,” he said, “but then, what did you do with it before you lost it?”

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sp; I turned and left. Just at the threshold I looked back. The Devil was still standing next to Soulraider. He looked lonely.

  I got in my car and headed over to the Don Valley Parkway and drove downtown. The brakes were fine.

  It was a long time before I got back out to the suburbs, but I did drop in to the Plaza just the other day. Eden was gone, but I wasn’t surprised to see he’d opened a dozen new stores throughout the mall, and every one of them was selling memory machines. My fortunes had improved a little since my last visit, so I decided to buy myself a computer. I didn’t really need one, but what the hell, everybody else was using them. When I got hungry I went up to the food court and bought a nice, fresh glazed doughnut. When I bit it I remembered something. An old story. A story about how the Devil had come here in the first place. The trouble was I couldn’t remember all the details. Remembering can be damned hard sometimes. I couldn’t recall if he was the hero or the villain of the story. Was he the Prince of Darkness or the Bringer of Light? Purveyor of Slander or Revealer of Hidden Truth? The Master of Evil or the loneliest mall rat in the world? And was he kicked out of heaven or was it like that verse in the song?

  God sent an angel down,

  God sent an angel down,

  God sent an angel down.

  Amen, amen, amen.

  MR. GLOBUS AND LAUGHING BOY

  This story is an update of “The Devil’s Three Golden Hairs of Wisdom,” in the brothers Grimm.

  PART ONE

  MR. GLOBUS WAS RICH. He was very rich. He was very, very, very, very, very rich. He owned the biggest multi-inter-transnational corporation in the world. His company made handheld remote-controlled electronic channel changers. He also made the televisions that had the channels you could change with his handheld remote-controlled electronic channel changers. He also built the malls that had the shops that ran the ads that were shown on the televisions that had the channels you could change with his handheld remote-controlled electronic channel changers. And every one of his malls was filled with the same shops selling the same things and the same fast food outlets selling the same hamburgers. “My name and my fame,” he claimed, “came from making everything the same.”

  He and his wife had everything money could buy, but they had no children. He said he was too busy running the business to be a father, but his wife wanted a baby more than all their fancy things. One day she finally became pregnant. When he heard the news, Mr. Globus ordered his chief manager to design the biggest computer, the biggest forecasting program and the biggest database in the world. He wanted to be able to predict his child’s future.

  Meanwhile, far from the big city, out where the poorest people lived, beyond the last suburb and past the last mall, at the edge of the forest and not far from Wild River, so far away they only got one channel, there was a family living in a little shack and they were very, very poor. The husband was in a wheelchair. He used to work in one of Mr. Globus’s factories, but then he was injured, and then he was laid off. They had twelve children, some their own and some street kids they’d adopted, and now the wife was pregnant with the thirteenth. The old grandmother lived with them, too. There wasn’t much laughter during the woman’s pregnancy. She would touch her belly and sigh, wondering what would become of a child born to poverty and hunger.

  But when the time came for her child to be born, something happened. If it hadn’t happened, as my own grandmother used to say, how could I tell you a story about it?

  When the baby was born, he laughed. His little face was all scrunched up with grins and chuckles. Instead of crying, he giggled. Instead of bawling, he smiled. The neighbours came over to marvel at this merry child, and they laughed when they heard him cackle with glee. Then Granny came over. She’d been sitting in her rocking chair watching a black-and-white television, which only got one channel, and she hobbled over to the cradle, picked up the baby and said, “We’ve got ourselves a Laughing Boy, and that’s rare at the best of times. That’ll be his name from now on because he’ll never lose his laugh, no matter what happens to him. And when he’s eighteen, he’s going to marry the daughter of the richest man in the world, who was born tonight under these very stars.” The whole family jubilated with their newborn Laughing Boy. Granny kissed the baby, shuffled back to her rocking chair and her television, and sang softly to herself: “One channel’s all I need, the Book of Lives to read…”

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Globus gave birth that same night to a baby girl. She was a wriggly, squiggly, bebopping, boogiewoogie baby. Her mother laughed with joy and said, “You’re a real Dancin’ Girl, you are, and that will be your name!”

  When Mr. Globus heard the news, he immediately called the chief manager and yelled, “Run the program! I want to know what my daughter’s future will be!”

  The chief manager keyed in the question: WHAT IS THE DESTINY OF DANCIN’ GIRL? He waited and waited, but no answer came. Then the huge computer began to whir and shake, the mouse began to smoke, the screen began to flash and fizz. Just before the hard drive squeaked, he heard a voice begin to speak: “One channel’s all I need, the Book of Lives to read… Dancin’ Girl will never stop dancing. And when she’s eighteen she’ll marry the poorest boy in the land, a Laughing Boy who was born tonight under these very stars…” Then BOOM! The computer blew up.

  “What’s the answer?” said Globus.

  “Boss,” said the chief manager. “The system crashed. I think someone hacked into the program!”

  “That’s impossible! It’s the best system money could buy!” yelled Globus. “You’d better tell me something about my daughter’s future. Or else!”

  “Well,” said the chief manager, “there is a little data… but I’m not sure you’re going to like it. The hacker says your daughter will be dancing her whole life… but the bad news is, she’ll marry the poorest boy in the land, who was born tonight under these very stars, some kind of a laughing boy.”

  “You’re fired!” yelled Mr. Globus. “That’s the stupidest prophecy I’ve ever heard!” But just to be on the safe side, he decided to search and destroy that little boy. He’d kill that little upstart before he became a start-up.

  He went by himself because he didn’t trust anyone else on such an important mission. He didn’t go out as the richest man in the world. He disguised himself as a travelling salesman, switched his Lamborghini for a Chevy, and started peddling disposable diapers in every city, town and village throughout the land. And everywhere he went he asked for news about babies who were particularly merry. One day he pulled up to a gas station away out where the poorest people lived, at the edge of the forest and not far from Wild River, so far away they only got one channel. “I’m selling plastic diapers,” he told the man at the pump. “You know of any babies born recently?”

  “Yep,” said the man. “But folks around here are too poor for those use-’em-once, throw-’em-away things you’ve got. We’ve got to make things last as long’s we can. But now that you mention it, there was a baby born not long ago. The people live down that road with about twelve other kids, an old woman, the dad in a wheelchair, and just about the giggliest little baby you’ll ever see!”

  Mr. Globus drove his Chevy right up to the shack where the poor family lived. He knocked on the door, and a woman opened it. She was holding a baby boy. When the baby saw Mr. Globus standing there, he started to laugh.

  “Hello, madam,” he said. “I’m a travelling diaper salesman, and I was wondering if you’d like to buy some disposable diapers?”

  “Nope.” she said, “Can’t afford them. Ever since my husband got laid off, we can’t afford anything fancy.”

  “What a handsome little boy you have,” said Globus. “May I ask when he was born?”

  She told him, and it was the same night as his own baby girl. This was the child he’d been searching for. But how could he get it away from the mother and father?

  “Say,” he said, “this might just be your lucky day. I’ve been looking for a baby to advertise my d
iapers. What do you say to a fee of $100,000 and a lifetime supply of plastic diapers? Just let me borrow that fine-looking baby of yours for an ad campaign. I’ll take good care of him, don’t worry.”

  “Nope,” said the woman, “no deal.”

  Her husband wheeled up and shook his head.

  But then Granny spoke up. She’d been sitting in her rocking chair drinking a cup of tea and watching a black-and-white television (it only got one channel) and she said, “Take the money and give him the baby. You’ve got twelve other kids to think about. Besides, he’s our Laughing Boy and no harm will come to him. We’ll see him again for sure.” Then she went back to her show and muttered to herself, “One channel’s all I need…”

  And so the woman handed over her newborn son, Mr. Globus gave her the money and a note guaranteeing a lifetime supply of disposable diapers; she cried, he smiled, the door closed, the deal was done. He had the baby. He tossed Laughing Boy into the back seat and drove straight down to Wild River. He parked the Chevy, took the baby out, and put him down on the riverbank, and picked up a big rock. “You’ll never marry my daughter!” he screamed, as he held the rock over the little boy.

  Just then the baby giggled. Laughing Boy chuckled and chortled, snickered and gurgled, cackled and cooed, and laughed out loud. Even Mr. Globus couldn’t hurt a baby who was having that much fun. “Hmmm,” he growled, “I’ll just let the river do the job for me.” He put the baby in a green plastic garbage bag, tied it shut, and tossed it out into the middle of the river. Mr. Globus watched the bag float downstream. Then he got in the car and drove back to the city, straight to the headquarters of Globus Incorporated. Just to celebrate, he fired 10,000 workers and watched his stock go up 10 percent.