Brave New Worlds
Page 35
"You know," Pretty Alice noted, "you speak with a great deal of inflection. "
"I'm sorry," said the Harlequin, humbly.
"No need to be sorry. You're always saying ‘I'm sorry. ' You have such massive guilt, Everett, it's really very sad. "
"I'm sorry," he said again, then pursed his lips so the dimples appeared momentarily. He hadn't wanted to say that at all. "I have to go out again. I have to do something. "
Pretty Alice slammed her coffee-bulb down on the counter. "Oh for God's sake, Everett, can't you stay home just one night! Must you always be out in that ghastly clown suit, running around annoying people?"
"I'm—" He stopped, and clapped the jester's hat onto his auburn thatch with a tiny tinkling of bells. He rose, rinsed out his coffee-bulb at the spray, and put it into the dryer for a moment. "I have to go. "
She didn't answer. The faxbox was purring, and she pulled a sheet out, read it, threw it toward him on the counter. "It's about you. Of course. You're ridiculous. "
He read it quickly. It said the Ticktockman was trying to locate him. He didn't care, he was going out to be late again. At the door, dredging for an exit line, he hurled back petulantly, "Well, you speak with inflection, Too!"
Pretty Alice rolled her pretty eyes heavenward. "You're ridiculous. "
The Harlequin stalked out, slamming the door, which sighed shut softly, and locked itself.
There was a gentle knock, and Pretty Alice got up with an exhalation of exasperated breath, and opened the door. He stood there. "I'll be back about ten-thirty, okay?"
She pulled a rueful face. "Why do you tell me that? Why? You know you'll be late! You know it! You're always late, so why do you tell me these dumb things?" She closed the door.
On the other side, the Harlequin nodded to himself. She's right. She's always right. I'll be late. I'm always late. Why do I tell her these dumb things?
He shrugged again, and went off to be late once more.
He had fired off the firecracker rockets that said: I will attend the 115th annual International Medical Association Invocation at 8:00 PM precisely. I do hope you will all be able to join me.
The words had burned in the sky, and of course the authorities were there, lying in wait for him. They assumed, naturally, that he would be late. He arrived twenty minutes early, while they were setting up the spiderwebs to trap and hold him. Blowing a large bullhorn, he frightened and unnerved them so, their own moisturized encirclement webs sucked closed, and they were hauled up, kicking and shrieking, high above the amphitheater's floor. The Harlequin laughed and laughed, and apologized profusely. The physicians, gathered in solemn conclave, roared with laughter, and accepted the Harlequin's apologies with exaggerated bowing and posturing, and a merry time was had by all, who thought the Harlequin was a regular foofaraw in fancy pants; all, that is, but the authorities, who had been sent out by the office of the Ticktockman; they hung there like so much dockside cargo, hauled up above the floor of the amphitheater in a most unseemly fashion.
(In another part of the same city where the Harlequin carried on his "activities," totally unrelated in every way to what concerns us here, save that it illustrates the Ticktockman's power and import, a man named Marshall Delahanty received his turn-off notice from the Ticktockman's office. His wife received the notification from the gray-suited minee who delivered it, with the traditional "look of sorrow" plastered hideously across his face. She knew what it was, even without unsealing it. It was a billet-doux of immediate recognition to everyone these days. She gasped, and held it as though it were a glass slide tinged with botulism, and prayed it was not for her. Let it be for Marsh, she thought, brutally, realistically, or one of the kids, but not for me, please dear God, not for me. And then she opened it, and it was for Marsh, and she was at one and the same time horrified and relieved. The next trooper in the line had caught the bullet. "Marshall," she screamed, "Marshall! Termination, Marshall! OhmiGod, Marshall, whattl we do, whattl we do, Marshall omigodmarshall. . . " and in their home that night was the sound of tearing paper and fear, and the stink of madness went up the flue and there was nothing, absolutely nothing they could do about it.
(But Marshall Delahanty tried to run. And early the next day, when turn-off time came, he was deep in the Canadian forest two hundred miles away, and the office of the Ticktockman blanked his cardioplate, and Marshall Delahanty keeled over, running, and his heart stopped, and the blood dried up on its way to his brain, and he was dead that's all. One light went out on the sector map in the office of the Master Timekeeper, while notification was entered for fax reproduction, and Georgette Delahanty's name was entered on the dole roles till she could remarry. Which is the end of the footnote, and all the point that need be made, except don't laugh, because that is what would happen to the Harlequin if ever the Ticktockman found out his real name. It isn't funny. )
The shopping level of the city was thronged with the Thursday-colors of the buyers. Women in canary yellow chitons and men in pseudo-Tyrolean outfits that were jade and leather and fit very tightly, save for the balloon pants.
When the Harlequin appeared on the still-being-constructed shell of the new Efficiency Shopping Center, his bullhorn to his elfishly-laughing lips, everyone pointed and stared, and he berated them:
"Why let them order you about? Why let them tell you to hurry and scurry like ants or maggots? Take your time! Saunter a while! Enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the breeze, let life carry you at your own pace! Don't be slaves of time, it's a helluva way to die, slowly, by degrees. . . down with the Ticktockman!"
Who's the nut? most of the shoppers wanted to know. Who's the nut oh wow I'm gonna be late I gotta run. . .
And the construction gang on the Shopping Center received an urgent order from the office of the Master Timekeeper that the dangerous criminal known as the Harlequin was atop their spire, and their aid was urgently needed in apprehending him. The work crew said no, they would lose time on their construction schedule, but the Ticktockman managed to pull the proper threads of governmental webbing, and they were told to cease work and catch that nitwit up there on the spire; up there with the bullhorn. So a dozen and more burly workers began climbing into their construction platforms, releasing the a-grav plates, and rising toward the Harlequin.
After the debacle (in which, through the Harlequin's attention to personal safety, no one was seriously injured), the workers tried to reassemble, and assault him again, but it was too late. He had vanished. It had attracted quite a crowd, however, and the shopping cycle was thrown off by hours, simply hours. The purchasing needs of the system were therefore falling behind, and so measures were taken to accelerate the cycle for the rest of the day, but it got bogged down and speeded up and they sold too many float-valves and not nearly enough wegglers, which meant that the popli ratio was off, which made it necessary to rush cases and cases of spoiling Smash-O to stores that usually needed a case only every three or four hours. The shipments were bollixed, the transshipments were misrouted, and in the end, even the swizzleskid industries felt it.
"Don't come back till you have him!" the Ticktockman said, very quietly, very sincerely, extremely dangerously.
They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardioplate crossoffs. They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stiktytes. They used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks. They used cops. They used search & seizure. They used fallaron. They used betterment incentive. They used fingerprints. They used the Bertillon system. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery. They used Raoul Mitgong, but he didn't help much. They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology.
And what the hell: they caught him.
After all, his name was Everett C. Marm, and he wasn't much to begin with, except a man who had no sense of time.
"Repent, Harlequin!" said the Ticktockman.
"Get stuffed!" the Harlequin replied, sneering.
"You've been late a total of sixty-three
years, five months, three weeks, two days, twelve hours, forty-one minutes, fifty-nine seconds, point oh three six one one one microseconds. You've used up everything you can, and more. I'm going to turn you off. "
"Scare someone else. I'd rather be dead that live in a dumb world with a bogeyman like you. "
"It's my job. "
"You're full of it. You're a tyrant. You have no right to order people around and kill them if they show up late. "
"You can't adjust. You can't fit in. "
"Unstrap me, and I'll fit my fist into your mouth. "
"You're a nonconformist. "
"That didn't used to be a felony. "
"It is now. Live in the world around you. "
"I hate it. It's a terrible world. "
"Not everyone thinks so. Most people enjoy order. "
"I don't, and most of the people I know don't. "
"That's not true. How do you think we caught you?"
"I'm not interested. "
"A girl named Pretty Alice told us who you were. "
"That's a lie. "
"It's true. You unnerve her. She wants to belong; she wants to conform; I'm going to turn you off. "
"Then do it already, and stop arguing with me. "
"I'm not going to turn you off. "
"You're an idiot!"
"Repent, Harlequin!" said the Ticktockman.
"Get stuffed. "
So they sent him to Coventry. And in Coventry they worked him over. It was just like what they did to Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was a book none of them knew about, but the techniques are really quite ancient, and so they did it to Everett C. Marm; and one day, quite a long time later, the Harlequin appeared on the communications web, appearing elfin and dimpled and bright-eyed, and not at all brainwashed, and he said he had been wrong, that it was a good, a very good thing indeed, to belong, to be right on time hip-ho and away we go, and everyone stared up at him on the public screens that covered an entire city block, and they said to themselves, well, you see, he was just a nut after all, and if that's the way the system is run, then let's do it that way, because it doesn't pay to fight city hall, or in this case, the Ticktockman. So Everett C. Marm was destroyed, which was a loss, because of what Thoreau said earlier, but you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and in every revolution a few die who shouldn't, but they have to, because that's the way it happens, and if you make only a little change, then it seems to be worthwhile. Or, to make the point lucidly:
"Uh, excuse me, sir, I, uh, don't know how to uh, to uh, tell you this, but you were three minutes late. The schedule is a little, uh, bit off. "
He grinned sheepishly.
"That's ridiculous!" murmured the Ticktockman behind his mask. "Check your watch." And then he went into his office, going mrmee, mrmee, mrmee, mrmee.
Is this Your Day To Join The Revolution?
by Genevieve Valentine
Genevieve Valentine's first novel, Mechanique: a Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, is forthcoming from Prime Books in 2011. Her short fiction has appeared in the anthology Running with the Pack and in the magazines Strange Horizons, Futurismic, Clarkesworld, Journal of Mythic Arts, Fantasy Magazine, Escape Pod, and more. Her work can also be found in my anthologies Federations, The Way of the Wizard, The Living Dead 2, and in my online magazine Lightspeed. In addition to writing fiction, Valentine is a columnist for Fantasy Magazine. She is a finalist for the 2010 World Fantasy Award.
The Tupolev ANT-20, completed in 1934, was one of the largest fixed-winged aircrafts ever built. It featured remarkable engineering features that outshone any other airplane of the 1930s. Big and fast, it was loaded to the gills with wonders: an in-flight film projector, its own printing equipment, a darkroom, and most importantly, the radio broadcasting unit known as the "Voice from the Sky. " It was no ordinary airplane. The ANT-20 was the jewel of Stalin's propaganda machine.
Propaganda doesn't have to be evil. But it exists to convince people—and those who use it are often willing to skew the truth or obscure it entirely in order to create an influential product. In the past, propaganda was an important part of the war efforts of many countries, from Nazi Germany to the United States. But in the future, who knows how propaganda might be used?
Our next tale is the story of a new kind of propaganda, filled with a message so large it has changed the living fabric of a nation. But is the message true?
In this grim new world, there's no way to know. And even if it's not, who's brave enough to ask?
When Liz left her building, Disease Control workers were standing on the corners, handing out pills and little paper cups of Coke.
"Do you need one?" the old lady asked, holding up a handful of paper masks stamped with ads for Lavender Fields Sterile-Milled Soap. Liz pulled out the one she kept in her bag, and the lady smiled.
The TV in her subway car showed "What You Can Do on a Date. " the young man and woman went to the fair twice—once where he screwed everything up, and again where he helped her into the Ferris Wheel and handed her a paper mask before he put on his own.
The movie closed with swelling music and a reminder in cursive: ARE YOU DUE FOR A DATE? CHECK WITH YOUR DOCTOR.
Liz worked the reception desk on the sixth floor of the Department of Information Affairs.
"That Greg's a lucky man," said Mr. Randall, the District Manager, when he came in every morning. "Too bad I didn't get matched with you first!"
Liz chuckled, because a District Manager's jokes were always funny.
Above her, on a loop, the introduction video played for anyone coming into the Department. It showed a woman on the street overhearing pieces of information she didn't know how to report; it reviewed the details of filing a claim as a man in a mechanic's jumpsuit signed in at the desk, took the elevator to the eighteenth floor, shook hands with a smiling agent.
"What do you know that we should know?" the narrator asked at the end, right before the two actors turned to the camera and the man in the jumpsuit said, "More than I thought, that's for sure!"
Liz couldn't see it from where she was sitting, but she didn't need to. She'd seen the film during orientation; the last time anyone at the Department suggested she had anything anyone needed to know.
Greg waited outside her building for their scheduled date, and when he saw her coming, he smiled.
Greg had been studying for a job at Disease Control, before the Bang. His viable sperm knocked him out of line for any Sector-C jobs; he answered phones at a law office. They had been matched three years ago, and had been evaluated "Above Average" Sweethearts three years running by the Society Council. Their chances of marriage had been rated by the doctors as close to 80%.
Greg was gay as a Maypole, but they made do.
When she was just far enough away, she called, "Hello, darling. " (You never knew when the Society Council was monitoring. )
He smiled. "Hello, honey. How was your day?"
"Some concern over Disease, I think. Someone from Film Production signed in this morning; they might be making a new film about how the Disease is going. "
Greg whistled. "that's no good. "
She shook her head. "I just don't understand the delay—we've been wearing the masks for weeks already, they should have delivered a new movie by now. "
"They should have," Greg said, frowning.
Liz patted her boyfriend's arm and dropped the subject; every once in a while, the government wasn't above a little mistake.
They hit up The Shindig at the three-Screen. The tag line had caused a little scandal ("Vane and Murray spark more fireworks than the Bang!"), but it was just a romantic musical. Liz liked the dancing. Greg liked Joe Murray.
The cashier stamped their tickets. "Please don't forget to get them stamped on the way out or the purchase is ineligible for reimbursement from the Department of Society," he droned.
Once they were in their seats, Greg put his arm around her like all the other guys had done to their dat
es. (You never knew who was a Society Council inspector. ) "Is there a plan for after this?"
"Well, if you really enjoy Joe Murray, we can go to a Society hotel if you want, after. "
He looked over, understanding. "Due for the doctor?"
She smiled thinly. "We have a year left before they re-match me. " She thought about Mr. Randall finding out and filing a request, and shuddered. "I'd rather stick it out with you. "
Greg nodded, and when the movie titles came up, he held her hand.
Murray and Vane were in the middle of their meet-cute dance routine when the film stuttered, pixelated, and blinked out.
"Refund!" someone shouted before the screen was even black.
The screen flared back to life, with the title: YOU ARE BEING LIED TO.
"So, no refund?" asked Greg. The people near them laughed.
The screen cards kept flashing. THERE ARE NO PATHOGENS. THERE IS NO DISEASE CONTROL.
THERE IS NO DISEASE.
Now no one was laughing.
Someone got up and ran out of the theatre.
Liz craned her neck, trying to see what was happening in the projection booth.
The screen cut to a grainy shot of a computer screen; a shadowy figure sat beside it, typing and talking to the camera.
"We are John Doe," it said—its voice had been distorted, like film played at halfspeed—"and we have tuned the network. We have proof the Disease is a lie. "
Now people were beginning to murmur. Some got up and scurried for the exit like it was a Security Department trap. It probably was.
Liz hoped this kid was lying. She thought, annoyed, about the stupid paper mask she wore three days a week when the Pathogen Alert was high.
The computer screen showed a mail exchange with the header DAMAGE CONTROL TO INTERCEPT INFORMATION LEAK.