The Subliminal Man

by James Graham Ballard

  That evening Hathaway was waiting for him as he came down the hospital steps. Franklin waved him across the court, then led the way quickly to his car.

  “What’s the matter, Doctor?” Hathaway asked as Franklin wound up the windows and glanced around the lines of parked cars. “Is someone after you?”

  Franklin laughed somberly. “I don’t know. I hope not, but if what you say is right, I suppose there is.”

  Hathaway leaned back with a chuckle, propping one knee up on the dashboard. “So you’ve seen something, Doctor, after all.”

  “Well, I’m not sure yet, but there’s just a chance you may be right. This morning at the Fairlawne supermarket… “ He broke off, uneasily remembering the huge blank sign and the abrupt way in which he had turned back to the supermarket as he approached it, then described his encounter.

  Hathaway nodded slowly. “I’ve seen the sign there. It’s big, but not as big as some that are going up. They’re building them everywhere now. All over the city. What are you going to do, Doctor?”

  Franklin gripped the wheel tightly. Hathaway’s thinly veiled amusement irritated him. “Nothing, of course. Damn it, it may be just autosuggestion; you’ve probably got me imagining-“

  Hathaway sat up with a jerk, his face mottled and savage. “Don’t be absurd, Doctor! If you can’t believe your own senses what chance have you left? They’re invading your brain, if you don’t defend yourself they’ll take it over. completely! We’ve got to act now, before we’re all paralyzed.”

  Wearily Franklin raised one hand to restrain him. “Just a minute. Assuming that these signs are going up everywhere, what would be their object? Apart from wasting the enormous amount of capital invested in all the other millions of signs and billboards, the amounts of discretionary spending power still available must be infinitesimal. Some of the present mortgage and discount schemes reach half a century ahead, so there can’t be much slack left to take up. A big trade war would be disastrous.”

  “Quite right, Doctor,” Hathaway rejoined evenly, “but you’re forgetting one thing. What would supply that extra spending power? A big increase in production. Already they’ve started to raise the working day from twelve hours to fourteen. In some of the appliance plants around the city Sunday working is being introduced as a norm.

  Can you visualize it, Doctor-a seven-day week, everyone with at least three jobs?”

  Franklin shook his head. “People won’t stand for it.”

  “They will. Within the last twenty-five years the gross national product has risen by fifty percent, but so have the average hours worked. Ultimately we’ll all be working and spending twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No one will dare refuse. Think what a slump would mean-millions of layoffs, people with time on their hands and nothing to spend it on. Real leisure, not just time spent buying things.” He seized Franklin by the shoulder. “Well, Doctor, are you going to join me?”

  Franklin freed himself. Half a mile away, partly hidden by the four story bulk of the Pathology Department, was the upper half of one of the giant signs, workmen still crawling across its girders. The airlines over the city had deliberately been routed away from the hospital, and the sign obviously had no connection with approaching aircraft.

  “Isn’t there a prohibition on subliminal living? How can the unions accept it?”

  “The fear of a slump. You know the new economic dogmas. Unless output rises by a steady inflationary five percent the economy is stagnating. Ten years ago increased efficiency alone would raise output, but the advantages there are minimal now and only one thing is left. More work. Increased consumption and subliminal advertising will provide the spur.”

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “I can’t tell you, Doctor, unless you accept equal responsibility for it.

  “Sounds rather quixotic,” Franklin commented. “Tilting at windmills. You won’t be able to chop those things down with an ax. “

  “I won’t try.” Hathaway suddenly gave up and opened the door. “Don’t wait too long to make up your mind, Doctor. By then it may not be yours to make up.” With a wave he was gone.

  On the way home Franklin’s skepticism returned. The idea of the conspiracy was preposterous, and the economic arguments were too plausible. As usual, though, there had been a hook in the soft bait Hathaway dangled before him-Sunday working. His own consultancy had been extended into Sunday morning with his appointment as visiting factory doctor to one of the automobile plants that had started

  Sunday shifts. But instead of resenting this incursion into his already meager hours of leisure he had been glad. For one frightening reason he needed the extra income.

  Looking out over the lines of scurrying cars, he noticed that at least a dozen of the great signs had been erected along the expressway. As Hathaway had said, more were going up everywhere, rearing over the supermarkets in the housing developments like rusty metal sails.

  Judith was in the kitchen when he reached home, watching the TV program on the handset over the cooker. Franklin climbed past a big cardboard carton, its seals still unbroken, which blocked the doorway, kissed her on the cheek as she scribbled numbers down on her pad. The pleasant odor of pot-roast chicken-or, rather, a gelatine dummy of a chicken fully flavored and free of any toxic or nutritional properties-mollified his irritation at finding her still playing the Spot Bargains.

  He tapped the carton with his foot. “What’s this?”

  “No idea, darling, something’s always coming these days, I can’t keep up with it all.” She peered through the glass door at the chicken-an economy 12-pounder, the size of a turkey, with stylized legs and wings and an enormous breast, most of which would be discarded at the end of the meal (there were no dogs or cats these days; the crumbs from the rich man’s table saw to that)-and then glanced at him pointedly.

  “You look rather worried, Robert. Bad day?”

  Franklin murmured noncommittally. The hours spent trying to detect false clues in the faces of the Spot Bargain announcers had sharpened Judith’s perceptions, and he felt a pang of sympathy for the legion of husbands similarly outmatched.

  “Have you been talking to that crazy beatnik again?”

  “Hathaway? As a matter of fact, I have. He’s not all that crazy.” He stepped backward into the carton, almost spilling his drink. “Well, what is this thing9 As I’ll be working for the next fifty Sundays to pay for it I’d like to find out.”

  He searched the sides, finally located the label. “A TV set? Judith, do we need another one? We’ve already got three. Lounge, dining room, and the handset. What’s the fourth for?”

  “The guest room, dear; don’t get so excited. We can’t leave a handset in the guest room, it’s rude. I’m trying to economize, but four TV sets is the bare minimum. All the magazines say so.”

  “And three radios?” Franklin stared irritably at the carton. “If we do invite a guest here how much time is he going to spend alone in his room watching television? Judith, we’ve got to call a halt. It’s not as if these things were free, or even cheap. Anyway, television is a total waste of time. There’s only one program. It’s ridiculous to have four sets. “

  “Robert, there are four channels.”

  “But only the commercials are different.” Before Judith could reply the telephone rang. Franklin lifted the kitchen receiver, listened to the gabble of noise that poured from it. At first he wondered whether this was some offbeat prestige commercial, then realized it was Hathaway in a manic swing.

  “Hathaway!” he shouted back. “Relax, man! What’s the matter now?”

  Doctor, -you’ll have to believe me this time. I tell you I got on to one of the islands with a stroboscope, they’ve got hundreds of high speed shutters blasting away like machine guns straight into people’s faces and they can’t see a thing, it’s fantastic! The next big campaign’s going to be cars and TV sets; they’re trying to swing a two month model change-can you imagine it, Doctor, a new car every two months?
God Almighty, it’s just-“

  Franklin waited impatiently as the five-second commercial break cut in (all telephone calls were free, the length of the commercial extending with range-for long-distance calls the ratio of commercial to conversation was as high as 10: 1, the participants desperately trying to get a word in edgeways to the interminable interruptions), but just before it ended he abruptly put the telephone down, then removed the receiver from the cradle.

  Judith came over and took his arm. “Robert, what’s the matter? You look terribly strained.”

  Franklin picked up his drink and walked through into the lounge. “It’s just Hathaway. As you say, I’m getting a little too involved with him. He’s starting to prey on my mind.”

  He looked at the dark outline of the sign over the supermarket, its red warning lights glowing in the night sky. Blank and nameless, like an area forever closed off in an insane mind, what frightened him was its total anonymity-“Yet I’m not sure,” he muttered. “So much of what Hathaway says makes sense. These subliminal techniques are the sort of last ditch attempt You’d expect from an overcapitalized industrial system.”

  He waited for Judith to reply, then looked up at her. She stood in the center of the carpet, hands folded limply, her sharp, intelligent face curiously dull and blunted. He followed her gaze out over the rooftops, then with an effort turned his head and quickly switched on the TV set.

  “Come on,” he said grimly. “Let’s watch television. God, we’re going to need that fourth set.”

  A week later Franklin began to compile his inventory. He saw nothing more of Hathaway; as he left the hospital in the evening the familiar scruffy figure was absent. When the first of the explosions sounded dimly around the city and he read of the attempts to sabotage the giant signs, he automatically assumed that Hathaway was responsible, but later he heard on a newscast that the detonations had been set off by construction workers excavating foundations.

  More of the signs appeared over the rooftops, isolated on the palisaded islands near the suburban shopping centers. Already there were over thirty on the ten-mile route from the hospital, standing shoulder to shoulder over the speeding cars like giant dominoes. Franklin had given up his attempt to avoid looking at them, but the slim possibility that the explosions might be Hathaway’s counterattack kept his suspicions alive.

  He began his inventory after hearing the newscast, discovered that in the previous fortnight he and Judith had traded in their

  Car (previous model 2 months old)

  2 TV sets (4 months)

  Power mower (7 months)

  Electric cooker (5 months)

  Hair dryer (4 months)

  Refrigerator (3 months)

  2 radios (7 months)

  Record player (5 months)

  Cocktail bar (8 months)

  Half these purchases had been made by himself, but exactly when he could never recall realizing at the time. The car, for example, he had left in the garage near the hospital to be greased, that evening had signed for the new model as he sat at its wheel, accepting the sales- man’s assurance that the depreciation on the two-month trade-in was virtually less than the cost of the grease job. Ten minutes later, as he sped along the expressway, he suddenly realized that he had bought a new car. Similarly, the TV sets had been replaced by identical models after developing the same irritating interference pattern (curiously, the new sets also displayed the pattern, but as the salesman assured them, this promptly vanished two days later).

  Not once had he actually decided of his own volition that he wanted something and then gone out to a store and bought it!

  He carried the inventory around with him, adding to it as necessary quietly and without protest analyzing these new sales techniques, wondering whether total capitulation might be the only way of defeating’ them. As long as he kept up even a token resistance, the inflationary, growth curve would show a controlled annual 10 percent climb. With that resistance removed, however, it would begin to rocket upward out of control…

  Then, driving home from the hospital two months later, he saw one of the signs for the first time.

  He was in the 40 mph lane, unable to keep up with the flood of new cars, had just passed the second of the three clover leafs when the traffic half a mile away began to slow down. Hundreds of cars had driven, up onto the grass verge, and a large crowd was gathering around one of the signs. Two small black figures were climbing up the metal face and a series of huge gridlock patterns of light flashed on and off, illuminating the evening air. The patterns were random and broken, as if the sign was being tested for the first time.

  Relieved that Hathaway’s suspicions had been completely groundless, Franklin turned off onto the soft shoulder, then walked forward through the spectators as the lights blinked and stuttered in their faces…, Below, behind the steel palisades around the island, was a large group of police and engineers, craning up at the men scaling the sign a hundred feet over their heads.

  Suddenly Franklin stopped, the sense of relief fading instantly. With a jolt he saw that several of the police on the ground were armed with shotguns, and that the two policemen climbing the sign carried submachine guns slung over their shoulders. They were converging on a third figure, crouched by a switchbox on the penultimate tier, a ragged bearded man in a grimy shirt, a bare knee poking through his jeans.

  Hathaway!

  Franklin hurried toward the island, the sign hissing and spluttering, fuses blowing by the dozen.

  Then the flicker of lights cleared and steadied, blazing out continuously, and together the crowd looked up at the decks of brilliant letters. The phrases, and every combination of them possible, were entirely familiar, and Franklin knew that he had been reading them unconsciously in his mind for weeks as he passed up and down the expressway.

  BUY NOW BUY NOW BUY NOW BUY NOW BUY NOW

  NEW CAR NOW NEW CAR NOW NEW CAR NOW

  YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

  Sirens blaring, two patrol cars swung up onto the verge through the crowd and plunged across the damp grass. Police spilled from its doors, batons in their hands, quickly began to force back the crowd. Franklin held his ground as they approached, started to say: “Officer, I know the man-“ but the policeman punched him in the chest with the flat-of his hand. Winded, he stumbled back among the cars, leaned helplessly against a fender as the police began to break the windshields, the hapless drivers protesting angrily, those farther back rushing for their vehicles.

  The noise fell away abruptly when one of the submachine guns fired a brief roaring burst, then rose in a massive gasp of horror as Hathaway, arms outstretched, let out a cry of triumph and pain, and jumped.

  “But, Robert, what does it really matter?” Judith asked as Franklin sat inertly in the lounge the next morning. “I know it’s tragic for his wife and daughter, but Hathaway was in the grip of an obsession. If he hated advertising signs so much why didn’t he dynamite those we can see, instead of worrying so much about those we can’t?”

  Franklin stared at the TV screen, hoping the program would distract him.

  “Hathaway was right,” he said simply.

  “Was he? Advertising is here to stay. We’ve no real freedom of choice, anyway. We can’t spend more than we can afford; the finance companies soon clamp down.”

  “You accept that?” Franklin went over to the window. A quarter of a mile away, in the center of the estate, another of the signs was being erected. It was due east from them, and in the early- morning light the shadows of its rectangular superstructure fell across the garden, reaching almost to the steps of the French windows at his feet. As a concession to the neighborhood, and perhaps to allay any suspicions while it was being erected by an appeal to petty snobbery, the lowest sections had been encased in mock-Tudor paneling.

  Franklin stared at it numbly, counting the half-dozen police lounging by their patrol cars as the construction gang unloaded prefabricated grilles from a couple of trucks. Then he looked at
the sign by the supermarket, trying to repress his memories of Hathaway and the pathetic attempts the man had made to convince Franklin and gain his help.

  He was still standing there an hour later when Judith came in, putting on her hat and coat, ready to visit the supermarket.

  Franklin followed her to the door. “I’ll drive you down there, Judith,” he said in a flat voice dead voice. “I have to see about booking a new car. The next models are coming out at the end of the month. With luck we’ll get one of the early deliveries.”

  They walked out into the trim drive, the shadows of the great signs swinging across the quiet neighborhood as the day progressed, sweeping over the heads of the people on their way to the supermarket like the dark blades of enormous scythes.

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