Buy or Die. There cometh a time of ruthless advertising

“My ear hurts,” Z replied gloomily.

“Does it hurt, ache, or hear poorly?” the doctor laid out his assortment smartly. “Or maybe you are just not happy with its shape?”

“Most likely the latter,” agreed Z. “I am not happy with its new shape.”

He gently touched the sticking plaster on his ear.

The doctor’s face froze.

“What happened?” he asked, for some reason now looking at the door and not at Z.

“An accident. I chopped it off with a car door,” Z explained.

“I see, I see,” the doctor said absently, never taking his eyes off the door.

The door opened, letting in two male nurses. One of them with a bored look remained on the threshold, the other went to the window and casually sat on the window sill.

For a while everyone was silent.

“What’s going on?” Z asked.

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” the doctor replied. “So what were we talking about? Ah, yes, your ear. Well. Let’s proceed. Your identity, please.”

“Z368AT.”

“Occupation?”

“Undo service.”

“At what age did you have your first sexual experience that involved another person?”

“At sixtee…” Z stopped abruptly. “What on earth does that have to do with my ear?”

The doctor smiled wearily.

“Never mind. That’s just the formal questionnaire. So at what age did you have your first sexual experience?”

“At sixteen.”

“Your orientation?”

“Traditional.”

“Everything is traditional. May I have more details, please?”

“Women,” Z explained concisely.

“So old-fashioned…” The doctor was surprised. “Are you a sectarian?”

“No, just a man.”

“It’s okay,” the doctor reassured. “There is nothing to be ashamed of.”

He took off his spectacles.

“Okay, next question. Have you had any mental or sexual disorders in your family history?”

Z stood up from his chair with a jerk. Somehow he, the doctor, and the two orderlies managed to do this with amazing synchrony.

“What’s going on?” Z asked with annoyance.

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” the doctor replied reassuringly. “I beg you, please sit down. We do not want to… Do we?”

He looked back at the orderlies. They shrugged indifferently.

“No,” Z decided. “We do not.”

He sat down slowly. The doctor, after a pause, sat down too. The orderlies remained standing. The doctor sighed heavily.

“Okay. Let’s see what you have there. Please remove the patch.”

Z felt the corner of the sticking plaster and gently pulled it down. The plaster peeled off surprisingly easily as if it hung on the skin only due to friction. The doctor and the two orderlies, with bated breath, watched the procedure.

“Here it is,” Z said modestly, removing the plaster completely and turning to the doctor sideways.

The doctor approached cautiously.

“But this is not a bite!” he exclaimed.

“This is not a bite,” the first orderly confirmed indifferently.

“Nope,” agreed the second.

“Then you both can go,” the doctor commanded, and the orderlies retired.

In the silence that followed, the doctor began filling out some papers.

“What was it?” Z asked.

“Pure formality, I told you already.”

“For what?”

The doctor sighed.

“This is a very characteristic injury. Just a marker. Well, right ear. We are obliged to detain such patients until the police arrives.”

“I do not understand,” Z admitted.

“Well… Every home robot has this feature.”

“What feature?”

“Well, a program that makes it bite off the right ear of a rapist.”

“What’s a rapist?”

“Usually the owner is the abuser,” explained the doctor reluctantly. “Or some other member of the family. Children, for example. Less often, pets…”

“You do not mean sexual abuse, I hope?” Z asked unbelievingly.

“Unfortunately, I do. And do not look at me like that. If you knew how many patients without a right ear I have here every month…”

Z opened his mouth, then closed it again and shook his head.

“Damn it!” he said emphatically. “Damn it all! Let’s return to my ear. What will we do with it?”

The doctor thought for a second.

“First, take off your suit. A nurse will clean the blood from it. Yes. Good. Wonderful.”

“I’m more concerned about the ear,” Z reminded him.

“An ear?” the doctor shrugged. “This is the smallest problem. We will just make a copy from your left ear, invert it and place it in the incubator. Tomorrow morning you will have a new one, and even better than before. After it’s grafted onto the old spot, nobody will see the difference.”

“It’s that easy?” Z was surprised.

“Sure. Had you chopped off, say, your head, then, of course, we would have some troubles. But your ear…”

The doctor waved his hand casually.

“In the meantime, so that you don’t scare passersby, let’s try on a prosthetic.”

He rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a plastic human ear.

“Here it is. This one should fit. I’ll put it on with glue; should hold until morning. Just don’t get it wet.”

“I won’t,” Z promised. “But may I have a sick leave certificate for today?”

“Of course. Without any doubt. You need a good rest.”

***

Half an hour later they parted.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” the doctor was saying. “Any time after six in the morning. By that time your new ear will be completely ready.”

“Thanks. See you tomorrow then,” Z answered.

On the street, he unrolled his loot and ran through it with his eyes greedily.

“Visit otolaryngologist from 8:15 till 9:15. Diagnosis… Recommendations… Here it was! Sick leave for 2 hours (till 11:15).”

Z spat. What a generous world!

***

“Unbelievable!” Z brooded sitting in a cafe and fumbling for a cigarette in his pocket. “To get out of the car without any protection in the very center of the city! Best way to turn into an imbecile. I wonder if I would ever notice?”

He touched the ear mechanically and pulled back his hand at once.

“Great,” he summed up. “Just great.”

A drink or two would have helped him feel much better. Z glanced out the window, where Toy, shiny and clean-fingered, was bathing in the sunlight. And while he was there, a drink was out of the question. Z remembered how, having detected the smell of fresh beer, Toy drove him to the police station without a word. Toy had received an honorary sticker on his hood then, and Z had got the subway for half a year. Recalling this period, he shivered. On the other hand, it was the subway where he had met Ness.

“Bloody bastard”, Z murmured, squinting at the car. He finally found a “Cameleon’ pack in his pocket, pulled out a cigarette and flicked his lighter. A fiery tongue, shaped like a camel and changing its color like a chameleon, touched the tip of the cigarette.

“I warn you,” the cigarette squeaked, “I can do harm. For example, I can impair potency. And I am actually going to do this! Also, I may increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases. And you will see, I will increase it. Draw a horizontal line in the air if you want to know the details. Draw a vertical…”

Z waved his cigarette up and down impatiently, cutting off the squeak in mid-sentence. His thoughts returned to the recent incident. A fight in the street… It seems to be in the category of socially dangerous crimes already. He could consider himself lucky. It was a very near escape. And, thanks to recent changes in legislation, justice had no retroactive effect any more. Until you were caught at the scene of the crime you were innocent. Z automatically touched his ear and turned cold.

“Here it was! Or better to say, was not. That is, it was exactly at the scene of the crime now!”

He thought this over carefully. If the ear was found, this could be interpreted as if he, Z, was, although partially, detained at the crime scene. Or as if he had not left it completely. In that case, formally, the judgment should probably be made in proportion to the arrested part…

“Bullshit,” he interrupted himself. “Nobody will pick up someone else’s ear off the street.”

He drank his coffee in a gulp and went outside; he had to hurry. A bunch of kids had already gathered near Toy. They looked very excited and were discussing something heatedly, poking Toy’s windows with their fingers.

The cook really looked bad. His open eyes were swollen and had turned pale, and unpleasant yellowish-green spots were creeping across his face.

“I was telling him that smoking is harmful,” Z explained to the kids, nearing from behind. “He never listened. Never! And just imagine; he was still under ten!”

Chapter 4 | Red and Green

The schedule was tight. According to the plan, Twick had to be in school at seven thirty. Next, Kwick had to be in school at seven thirty-five. And finally, no later than seven forty, Mick had to present himself in the nursery. While all three places were respectively on the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth floors of the same building, the plan had never been fully and successfully implemented. Sometimes Twick was late, and, if not, then Kwick was; if they somehow succeeded to get in on time, there was always Mick. Y himself, who had to be at work by eight, was always late. Sure enough, today they were late too. Twick did it first, leaving no chance for the others. The troubles started in the hall, where they witnessed a deafening family scandal; an event that was not to be missed. In a huge wall aquarium, Dad-fish and Mom-fish, suspended motionlessly in the water, both utterly worked up and with a “come on, just touch me, just try’ expression on their faces, were confronting each other face-to-face.

“Dad, why is she ye’‘ing at him zet offu’y?” asked Mick in a whisper.

“He either drinks too much or earns too little,” Kwick explained condescendingly.

“Bullshit!” Twick stepped in contemptuously. “It’s absolutely clear that he either cheated on her or didn’t take out the trash.”

“He didn’t take out the trash,” Y said firmly. “Let’s go. Respect their privacy. Let them be.”

When they reached the elevator, Twick remembered that he had left his PE kit at home.

“To hell with the kit,” decided Y.

“And with my schoolbag too,” Kwick suggested modestly.

They went home and got the kit and the bag, said another goodbye to Tess and returned to the elevator.

The elevator arrived and brought a new problem. It turned out that the old elevator attendant had been replaced with a new model and the new one couldn’t understand Mick’s orders.

Communication with elevator attendants was Mick’s exclusive privilege, won in bloody battles with his older brothers. It was impossible to deprive Mick of this privilege without a terrible and completely indecent scandal.

“E’even!” Mick announced proudly.

“Hey to you too, little sir,” the elevator attendant replied politely, “but I am not Evan. Evan is out of order, I believe, so I am here to replace him. My name is Steven, sir, at your service.”

Mick nodded solemnly.

“Nice to meet you, Steven. I’m Mick. We need the e’evens f’oor…”

“Hey again, little sir,” the elevator attendant replied with a somewhat puzzled look. “The fourth floor you said, did you?”

“E’even!” Mick corrected.

The lenses of the elevator assistant began to glow intensely. The sharp smell of engine oil filled the cabin. The elevator assistant bowed and turned to Y.

“Excuse me, sir, what floor do you need?”

“He told you.” Y pointed at Mick calmly.

The elevator attendant rummaged through his logic.

“We don’t have that,” he announced finally. “I can offer the first, the second, the third…”

“No, no, no,” Y interrupted him hastily. “Of course you have.”

“Where?” the elevator attendant inquired.

“It’s somewhere above the tenth,” Y hinted cautiously.

The elevator attendant thought this over. This took a while.

“Eleventh?” he asked finally.

“Yes!” Mick nodded happily. “E’even.”

“Hey, Evan,” the elevator attendant repeated slowly and thoughtfully. He nodded and pressed the button.

In silence, they arrived on the eleventh floor and Twick got out.

After that, there was “ze twe’fs” (two minutes lost) and “ze ‘eve’ up” (one minute lost; apparently, the elevator attendant was a quick learner). It was five minutes to eight when Y launched Mick into the nursery, and Y would surely have gotten to work in time had it been on the 14th floor. Unfortunately, it was not. Y, like Z, worked in Undo service.

***

Once in the street, Y looked at his watch again. Six minutes past eight, which meant three credits out from his wage. Half a credit per minute. He quickly calculated his options. A taxi would mean fifteen credits plus five-minute tardiness. In total, a little more than seventeen credits. A subway would be free as he had a travel card and would take twenty minutes – that is, it would cost him only ten credits. Without hesitation, he turned towards the subway station. Ah, if only he had a car! But, in this aspect, Y was a unique: the only horseless Undo officer ever. Not that he liked to walk and not that he didn’t have a service car; it was just that he could not drive a car at all. He was absolutely unable to get a driving license. Topographical cretinism multiplied by pathological absentmindedness aggravated by malicious irresponsibility with progressing dreaminess – and this was only an extract from a conclusion that had been unanimously signed by all the driving instructors of the service. His fifteen attempts to pass the driving test were remembered by driving instructors as the darkest days of their lives. The matter ended in a draw; Y did not manage to kill the instructors and the instructors did not manage to teach Y to drive a car.

Race-walking towards the subway station, Y was mechanically counting the minutes – that is, the size of the fine. Each minute cost half a credit. Very convenient. After half an hour of lateness, the tariff was twice as much, but for Y this was an unaffordable luxury. He was always late, but not very late. Alas, that did not prevent the fine from turning into a rather painful amount by the end of the month. That undermined the family budget even more. Y was earning well enough, but still less than he was spending. The main item of expenditure was, of course, the children. They had the best anti-marketing protection one could get in the city. They had the best teachers. They had the best doctors. Everything they had had to be the best, which inevitably meant Y and Tess had to get the worst. However, Y was not in the habit of brooding about money, especially in the morning, especially in autumn. Or in winter. Or in spring. (Not to mention summer.)

As a rule, modern cities do not encourage romance in a man. Maybe there is some poetry in the steep walls endlessly raising to impenetrable height or falling down into the bottomless abyss, in the unsteady cobweb of highways stretching between them trembling under the weight of thousands of cars, and in millions of indistinguishable faces. Maybe there is, but this is some kind of twisted poetry; in any case, not the sort of poetry that Y loved. He looked distractedly along the street, and his eyes caught a maple, planted in a pot in front of someone’s front door to die, but somehow managed to survive. The tree was very weak and stunted; actually it looked more like a shrub, but it was coping with its work well enough – that is, it was diligently feeding fallen leaves to the wind.

Y saw another green-and-red traveler riding the wind and scaring passersby, who were ducking, shying away and dodging, not accustomed to trees and leaves, not understanding what was sailing from the sky straight into their faces. Y smiled. Suddenly, someone’s hand snatched the falling leaf from Y’s gaze and carefully held it out to another’s hand. Lovers! Y cast a glance at the happy, young faces and instantly turned away from reality.

He was emerald green from head to toe, but he was not there. She was bright red, from toe to head, but she was not there either. They sang strange songs; they were not there. Certainly they loved each other. And as soon as she moved her legs together, as soon as he took her off himself, as soon as they stopped their movement, they began to lose each other in the gray blurred shadows against the background of the faceted outlines of the city. Frightened, they rushed to each other and united, all in childish tears of joy and sadness, right on the street, right under the feet of shocked passersby. And they, these flawless passers, immediately swelled with rage and hatred, “Gosh! Take care, I nearly stepped on that!” At once he took the thin palm of his red woman and led her away. He led her to a place where the huge red-hot turtle measured the sky with the curved divider of its sluggish paws; where the blue skin of the sky, pulled on the delicate body of the air, was always clean and knew nothing of the obsessive yearning of the clouds; where the wind liked to caress women’s shoulders and the night was like a shaggy purple owl with the blind eyes of the stars. He led her to a place where there was nothing; because sand is nothing and the more it is, the less it is. Just a huge yellow sandbox for two careless kids, for a red-green puzzle too simple to assemble, that craves to be solved and done once and for all…

Y woke from a stupor and detected a man in a pricey suit excitedly gesticulating right before him. Obviously, Y had managed to upset him already somehow. When you have neither a car nor the time to watch your step it’s quite natural to push, shove, crash into, collide with, drop something on or knock somebody down. Y got used to that long ago, but the passersby still could not.

Y touched his headphones, directing the receiver at the man, and the filter reluctantly passed in someone else’s voice:

“… Bloody bastard! Are you blind or what? Do you hear what I’m telling you?”

Y nodded, and the man beamed.

“Hey, dude, you look puny. You should try the Casanova amplifier of potency. Your chick will be shocked! You will be shocked! Your neighbors, they will be shocked most of all! You will all just forget about sleeping! Just two credits! Buy it, bro, buy it now!”

Y’s hand darted to the headphones to turn the receiver off, but the man promptly jumped aside, deftly using the fact that it was impossible to disconnect the receiver without direct contact.

“Oh, please, please! Buy it! Please!” like a moody child, he squealed, deftly dodging the receiver. “Please! Only two credits! Ah, what are you doing with me? Okay, bro, only for you, one credit! One bloody credit! Please! Where else are you gonna get that much joy for that little money?”

Having lost any hope of catching the fidgety seller by the sensor, Y sighed and quickened his pace. The man did not fall behind. He followed Y without shutting up for a second. He was urging and begging and pleading. Then he turned to threats, and then again to pleas, and subsided only when the subway intake filter dispersed him into dust, after first letting Y inside.

***

The crowd brought Y into a subway carriage and pressed him to the doors. He rode, looking at his own reflection in the door glass. His face looked… Well, his face looked quite acceptable. A pig’s snout instead of a nose, okay, but only because of the crowd. Everything else was fine. He was glass and transparent, all made of dusty wavy cables and rare thoughtful flickers. Behind him, above a humid mass of passengers, butterflies were flying to and fro peacefully. The butterflies were big, white and annoying. There were hundreds of them in the subway; they were hunting around the world all through the night, collecting pollen, just to powder it down on the heads of the passengers in the morning. Passengers take it for dandruff, but they are all mistaken; it is just the news.

Y squinted and read that one should not lean on doors. According to statistics, subway passengers experience problems in the intimate sphere more often than owners of personal vehicles. And practically only they, the passengers, are subject to such an unpleasant phobia as a panicked fear of embraces. Do not lean on doors. He sighed, turned away and remembered:

He was emerald green…

He sighed again. A good text but it does not fit Jack. Jack from his book was, rather, of marsh green color (like a frog, yes, or like Z) with, maybe, a little hint of turquoise (inherited from Y). Lately, however, he was just gray most of the time. Well, in childhood, of course, he had shone like a rainbow. And then somehow he had either lost something necessary or, on the contrary, acquired something redundant. It was both incredible and mundane. It seemed to Y that every child was born a god to become a devil. And his book, he knew, was going to do the same. It had nothing good in it except for fairy stories about Jack of Air. But that, Y knew, was already a lot. And the only thing he feared was that one day Jack would leave him

Chapter 5 | The Undo Officer

When Toy arrived at the gateway of the Undo service building, the clock showed ten minutes past eleven. Z emerged from the car and moved towards the checkpoint; he stopped, and then after some hesitation, he returned with a liter bottle of olive oil from the trunk. Thrusting it under his jacket, and keeping it under his armpit, he entered the building. Each time, walking along this corridor, Z recalled a scary story from his childhood: “In a very gray house there was a very gray corridor. And at the end of this very gray corridor there was a very gray door. And behind that very gray door, there was a very gray room. And in this very gray room, there was a very gray table. And behind this very gray table there sat a very gray man.”

“SHOW YOUR PASS!” shouted the guard.

The guard truly was gray, as was everything else in the building. While his upper half towered menacingly above the table, his body had no lower half. He was a very simple model not designed to walk the building. His task was to check employees’ passes at the entrance. Z showed his badge.

“Your reason for the delay?” the guard asked in a bored voice.

“Sick leave,” Z answered boldly, presenting his certificate to the guard.

The guard studied the document.

“Confirmed visit to otolaryngologist from 8:30 till 9:15. Confirmed sick leave from 9:15 till 11:15. Please provide documentation for the period from 8:00 till 8:30.”

“It was force-majeure,” Z tried at random.

“There were no events of force-majeure nature registered in the given period,” the guard replied immediately.

“It was a local cataclysm. I would even say, a private one,” Z explained.

“Private cataclysms are not in the list of events approved for…”

“Forget it,” Z interrupted the guard, pulling a bottle of oil from under his jacket. A thirty-minute delay meant a fine of fifteen credits. A bottle of the worst olive oil cost only five. The guard’s hand darted forward like an attacking snake and he snatched the bottle from Z. Then the guard twisted himself in a rather unnatural way, unscrewed something on his back and began to pour the contents of the bottle into it. As the bottle was emptying, the guard’s optical lenses shined brighter and brighter. Finally, they began to blaze in such a way that it hurt Z to look at them; he actually had to turn away.

“I wonder how you’re going to work?” he said gloomily.

“I don’t give an iron shit,” the guard announced emphatically, returning the empty bottle to Z. “Come on, man, move your pink ass and hit the road. I have work to do.”

Z shook his head and moved on. Behind him, a song broke out:

“Iron heart cannot ache

Nor can iron brain dream,

And Steel God is a fake

And steel Spirit is steam.”

It was a forbidden song, although, of course, every robot knew it. Masters knew it too. But never before had Z seen someone singing it aloud. For all he knew, Deconstruction was the punishment for such an offence.

“Love is managed by programs

Friends are given by bugs,

Life is weighed in grams

And is priced in the bucks.

But they say there is land

Whence red meat was banished,

Any warm flesh was banned

And live clay has perished…”

The door slammed behind Z cutting the song short.

***

In the room, a commandant at the table was anxiously listening to something.