Buy or Die. There cometh a time of ruthless advertising

“Did you hear that?” he asked nervously.

Z shook his head, and the commandant sighed. Though having both a rank and IQ higher than that of the guard, he still was not entitled to have a lower half either.

“This work is driving me mad. It seemed to me that I heard… Well, it does not matter.”

He scratched the back of his neck with a shrill metallic sound, making Z suffer from a sudden attack of a nasty toothache.

“Well,” the commandant cheered up, “let’s proceed to the instruction.”

He raised his finger with importance.

“First and foremost: there were new changes in the Charter of the Undo service. Namely, in the tenth line of page thirty-six of the first book of the Charter, the phrase ‘An Undo officer is not afraid of anything but dishonor’ was replaced with ‘An Undo officer fears nothing.’ Next. In the third line of page two hundred thirty-eight of the third book of the Charter…”

The commandant stopped.

“You are not writing this down,” he remarked.

“I will remember,” Z promised.

The commandant shook his head doubtfully and continued.

“In the third line of page two hundred thirty-eight of the second book of the Charter a phrase ‘An Undo officer must conscientiously fulfill…’ was replaced with ‘An Undo officer must zealously fulfill…’ Finally, in a footnote on the sixtieth page of the third book of the Charter, it should read ‘self-sacrifice’ instead of ‘self-denial’.”

“Next…” The commandant looked at his raised finger in surprise, lowered it and raised again.

“News from the front. Not for a minute, not for a second are you to forget that there is a war going on here and now. The real war,” he answered to Z’s surprised look. “The war in which our friends and comrades perish, leaving their families without a… without a… Well, just leaving their families.”

The commandant looked sternly at Z, and he made the appropriate face.

“The enemy does not sleep. Every minute, every second the enemy tests our strength, looking for weak spots in our defense and striking blows to the most sensitive and vulnerable parts of our society.”

The commandant lowered his voice.

“Here is a bulletin for the elapsed day. Almost seven thousand cases of forced purchase detected; some six hundred cases of theft of personal time on a large scale and three thousand cases of similar theft in lesser amounts; more than six hundred cases of non-return, eight of which were lethal. In their memory, I declare a minute of silence!”

The commandant tried to get up and even put his hands on the table, but there was nothing under the table that was capable of letting him get up. Z nodded solemnly, making it clear that the impulse was perceived correctly and felt deeply.

When the minute was over, the commandant collapsed into a chair and continued:

“Your task for today is to patrol Eleventh, Twelfth, Eighth and Ninth streets. In other words,” the commandant looked at Z with barely concealed contempt, “just ride in the car along these four streets and see if something bad happens, and when it happens, react as is required by Charter. Do you have any questions?”

“God forbid!” Z shouted.

“God forbid!” the commandant echoed piously.

“Excuse me, sir. That’s just a human saying,” Z explained, hiding a smile. “It doesn’t require any response.”

“Very well then,” the commandant nodded dryly. “Roll up your sleeve.”

Z obeyed. The commandant took a syringe from the table and gave an injection. From the needle, a dull gray stain began to spread rapidly over the hand. Z knew that in a minute he would be gray from head to toe, including his clothes and the whites of his eyes. An Undo officer was not someone who could be easily lost in the crowd.

It is not known whether this was a harmless psychological effect, or whether the injection did contain some additives; but along with a gray color, the Undo officers invariably acquired an extra set of extremely positive qualities. Everyone had a different set. Z, for example, felt much braver after the injection, stronger and nobler than before. And much more honest too. Many times, having regained his natural pink color in the evening, he was ready to gnaw at his elbows, recollecting all the opportunities that had been missed in the morning.

Meanwhile, the commandant was already holding Purifier, ready to hand it over to Z.

“Do you swear to use Purifier only for the good of the city?”

“I swear.”

“Do you swear not to use Purifier where you can do without it?”

“I swear.”

“Do you swear to use Purifier where you can’t do without it?”

“I swear.”

The commandant sighed and reluctantly parted with the weapon.

“I wish you good luck.”

The commandant saluted. Z hurriedly saluted back, nodded, and left the room with relief. In the corridor, four janitors were dragging away a drunken guard who resisted fiercely and loudly sang out lines of the seditious song:

“Where clouds of steel

Scar dead red copper soil,

And electrical seals

Dance in rivers of oil.

Where rains run an acid

And the air has teeth,

Where steel soul is placid

And a man cannot breathe.

Where masters have gone

And lie neatly in rows

Hugging rotten old bones

In a cemetery doze.”

Toy was ready. Gray and faceless, he patiently waited for the last missing part – his driver. There was something else… Z looked closely and winced: there was a dead man in the back seat. Gray, like all Undo employees, but dead. For some reason, the whites of the dead cook’s eyes had not stained and remained dirty yellow. It looked monstrous. Z pulled out old glasses from the glove compartment and put them on the dead cook. There was a distinctive stink in the cabin already. Artificial flesh, Z remembered, decays faster than natural flesh.

“Splendid!” Z said aloud, carefully fastening the dead man in with a seat belt. “I have lost my ear and I have the dead cook in the car instead. Okay, Toy, let’s go. And open the windows, please. I can’t imagine how you can be sitting here.”

Chapter 6 | Proposal

Of course, Y was late. Having received his penalty bill, he habitually moved towards commandant’s office to get the injection, but the guard suddenly stopped him.

“Director was asking for you,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Y was surprised. “Director? Asking for me?”

The guard consulted with something within himself.

“Absolutely,” he confirmed. “Director is waiting for you and has already asked twice if you had arrived.”

“Well, I have arrived now,” Y said with dignity. “And I am quite ready to visit our old dear Director. Where did you say he is?”

Having worked in the Undo service almost since childhood, he not only never saw Director but had not the slightest idea what he could be like.

“He occupies the top floor.”

“How will I recognize him?”

“He is alone there. It would be hard to miss. Good luck anyway.”

Y nodded and moved towards an elevator.

***

Director turned out to be a pleasant young man with unpleasant manners.

“That is probably from the need to manage everything at once,” Y found him an excuse immediately. “The power spoils…”

“Sit down,” Director waved his hand impatiently. “Tea? Coffee?”

“Coffee, please.”

“Sugar?”

“Thank you.”

“Milk?”

“A bit.”

Director smiled.

“Or maybe you prefer a brandy?”

“Certainly I do,” Y agreed, returning the smile. “But the Charter…”

Director waved his hand casually.

“Never mind. You have a day off today. I have already signed an order.”

“Really?” Y said, trying hard to remember if he had really woken up in the morning.

They waited in silence until the secretary brought them brandy and coffee.

“Well, let us take the bull by the horns,” started Director, pouring the brandy into glasses. “The thing is that we have lost the head of the analytics department.”

Y made a sympathetic face.

“My condolences.”

“Ah, come on,” Director shrugged. “I hardly knew him. However, let’s drink to his health. Wherever he is now, he will certainly need it all.”

Director drank and continued.

“Yesterday, at nine o’clock in the evening, his personal signal disappeared from the monitors of the Service of Employment and Demography. Five minutes later the relevant… specialists were at his home. At ten in the evening, I was notified that he no longer works here. Well, that is, you understand, eh?”

“I do not.”

“Ah, come on, nobody hears us here. Naturally, the rat had run away. Not a big deal, of course, as every month we have another hundred idiots running from the city to nowhere. You understand, I hope, that our conversation is private, because the information is rather sensitive…”

Y nodded.

“However, I don’t remember this ever being by an official of such rank. This, I would say, is somehow… indecent. And yet. He ran away and did not even leave a note. Probably. Because, if he left the note they would never give it to me anyway. State security and all that stuff, you know. Well, it does not matter. I do not give a shit about that bloody note! The note is not a problem. Forget the note. The problem is that we need a new head of the analytics department and we need him now! The escaped one had not troubled himself with making children who could inherit his post directly. He didn’t even have any relatives. In such circumstances, the Charter entitles me to assign his successor by myself, choosing from the worthiest employees. Not a bad task, eh? Now, here, what would you do in my place?”

Having not received an answer (and apparently not expecting to get it), he continued:

“Personally, I went to Xavier.”

“I thought, he was…”

“As a matter of fact, he was not.”

Director drank.

“Between you and me,” he lowered his voice and looked back, “I hate the old dude. I have a nasty creepy feeling every time I see him. Well, this does not matter. What really matters is that the old tin can has given me the name of the right man. Your name.”

He looked at Y’s face and smiled.

“I was surprised too. Have a drink, it helps.”

Y, without tasting it, drank his brandy.

“I was surprised, yes,” Director went on, “and then I thought it over and drank it over and slept on it all over and, you know, I agreed. You are exactly the man we need.”

Y raised his eyebrows.

“I will explain.” Director began to count his fingers. “First, you need money badly. Do not argue, I have done inquiries. Having three children is not a joke. Second, we do not need you here in your present state. It’s true. A pedestrian officer is an anachronism. It’s indecent, inappropriate and, finally, it’s just silly. To tell the truth, I was going to get rid of you long ago; I just did not know how to do it. All these laws about the heritability of a job position… It is such a headache, if only you knew. But now, at last, I know how to do this. You will take the place of the head of the analytics department. You will no longer hang around the streets and disgrace the Service. Your salary will be about ten times more than it is now. Your apartment will be larger than the entire floor of the house in which you live now. Your car… Ah, fuck the car! The idea is that you are going to have a completely different life for you and your family. It’s going to be as if you moved to heaven right out of hell.”

Director looked directly into Y’s eyes.

“So what?”

Y was silent for a time.

“Are you serious?” he asked at last.

“Absolutely.”

“But I can’t do it!”

“Come on. Why?”

“There are lots of ‘whys’. Lack of experience, lack of inclinations, lack of abilities, lack of motivation, lack of competence, lack of weight… That was for a start; the complete list is much longer and includes lack of desire, for one.”

“It’s nothing,” Director said tenderly as if speaking to a child. “It’s all awful, I agree, but this is really nothing.”

“I don’t understand,” Y frowned.

“Well,” Director smiled friendly. “There is nothing easier than to rid you of all these small drawbacks.”

Y’s face froze.

“Correction surgery. You are talking about correction surgery, right?”

Director nodded.

“Excuse me,” said Y after a pause, “but do you happen to know Jimmy… I do not remember his identifier… from the fifth department? Well, the one who spends his eight working hours in guarding the light switch in the corridor. He turns on the light in the morning, then he waits eight hours and turns it off in the evening. That’s all he is able to do now. Ah, also he can smile, yes. The result of correction surgery, if you did not know.”

Director grimaced.

“The poor fellow was in the first dozen volunteers who decided to undergo the correction. Great beginnings rarely go completely without victims. Much time has passed since then, and the doctors have learned a lot. Now, I assure you, the procedure is absolutely safe.”

“It is, of course, all very tempting, but…”

“Do you know Lo from the second department?” Director interrupted.

Y nodded.

“Lo made the correction six months ago.”

“Are you kidding?”

“How about Zag from the third department?”

“What? Him too?”

“Yes. As well as Chloe, and Ferb, and a dozen others. And all of them, as you can see, feel great.”

Y rubbed his forehead with his hand.

“I did not know that there were so many of them. I… I need to think.”

“Sure,” Director nodded and looked at his watch. “In order to avoid wasting time, I allowed myself to invite a correction specialist. He is waiting for you in the next room. The consultation is free, voluntary and obliges you to nothing, so you can just go and talk. Do it for yourself and for your family. And tomorrow morning at the latest give me an answer. Take my card, there is my direct number on it. And do not forget: you are the best but not the only candidate.”

***

When Y left his appointment with the correction consultant he was even more thoughtful than usual. The consultant had not completely managed to dispel Y’s doubts, but he eliminated all the fears.

“The up-to-date procedure of the correction is no more dangerous than a visit to a dentist.

More than two hundred thousand corrections were performed successfully.

More than five thousand requests for the correction have been received monthly.

The queue for the correction stretches for many weeks currently.

The procedure has not a single side effect.

There was not a single complaint over the last two years.

The thank-you list has just moved to the eighth volume.

A twofold increase in quality of living was officially registered as the poorest outcome of the correction.

The correction covers the widest range of mental deficiencies including all existing fears, phobias, imaginary and real flaws, complexes, blocks and syndromes.

There is an individual approach to each client and any extra changes at the request of a client.

And last but not the least, there is a complete preliminary scan and back up of a personality with a guaranteed possibility to immediately roll back any changes upon request.”

All this sounded extremely convincing, but for some reason did not convince. When he was leaving the room with the firm intention never return here again, Y suddenly stopped and asked:

“As a psychologist, do you think, will science ever learn to return a child-like perception of the world to a grown man? Well, you see, I mean…”

“One hundred thirty-nine,” the consultant responded absently without lifting his eyes from the form he was filling out.

“Excuse me, what?” Y asked, carefully closing the door.

“One hundred and thirty-ninth item on the official list of approved corrections.”

“You are kidding!” Y blurted.

“Why?” the consultant answered wearily. “It’s very simple. All that is needed is to remove most influential negative memories and to clean out all ruined hopes. Well, plus a few trifling operations like refreshing the memory, stimulating the retina and, of course, restoring potency…”

He looked mockingly at Y.

“Don’t forget. One hundred thirty-nine.”

“I will not.” Y nodded. “Goodbye, then.”

Chapter 7 | Day Watch

The start of the watch was awful today. Z’s head was aching badly from the stink in Toy’s cabin, a phantom pain was throbbing at the spot of the torn away ear, a dead cook was staring into the back of Z’s head intently from the backseat, and the day was still dragging unbearably slow towards noon.

The morning exposure also had left its mark on Z’s head. The scraps of advertising slogans and phrases hammered into it by salesbirds circled his thoughts, meaningless. Z listened… Something unintelligible about some washing powder… Then a couple of beer brands, several unknown addresses, some phone numbers and a heap of numbers without any meaning or correlation. Ah, and an irresistible aversion to any shoes other than “Mike’.

Z clenched his teeth and with difficulty suppressed the desire to immediately throw off his shoes. Ideally, after such a shake-up, one should have lain in bed for a week, alternating between sessions of massage, psychotherapy and hypnosis.

He was not about to complain, and he knew it. He was the man who managed escape punishment for a crime in the very center of the city. A miraculous escape, to be sure. Ideally, he should have gone and lit a candle to some god. Unfortunately, he had no idea where gods live and where in the city candles are sold; and what good those gods would get from those candles. Moreover, he felt neither happy nor even lucky. On the contrary, he felt tired, sick, old and useless. He was trying in vain to convince himself that everything was wonderful in his life. Everything was disgusting. His head ached, his ear ached, and red skinny cats were playing volleyball with his heart, scratching it with their clawed paws.

***

Toy, who had nothing to ache but his wounded pride, rolled slowly along the sidewalk, and the last flecks of autumn sunlight were joyfully jumping along the grey curves of his powerful varnished body. One of them, having stumbled, landed right into Z’s eye and exploded there with a flash of blinding light that plunged the retina into darkness for a long time. Blinking hard, Z smiled and suddenly felt happy. After all, even with a single ear, he was alive; even with the little money he had, he still had it. He also had autumn, sunlight and the city outside the car window, and somewhere there, just a few blocks away, there was Ness, terribly occupied with something important as always; and in the evening, they both would return home and… Dammit, what else could he wish for?

He also had a job that he loved. The same job his father had, who defended the city from people stealing time, and the father of his father, who protected citizens from people stealing money, and the father of his father’s father, who guarded the country against people stealing land, and so on and so on, down to the very roots of his family tree. The work that would pass to his son and then to son’s son and so on and so on, up to the most distant branches, which he could not even imagine now.

“I am a happy man,” he told to himself. “Few have a job that is both useful and enjoyable at the same time.”

He smiled, looking at the city, which, locked behind Toy’s magic windows, buzzed busily but noiselessly, and frowned, having suddenly realized that something was moving next to Toy, and had been there for a while now. Z leaned forward and took a closer look.

Sure enough, there they were: omnipresent, annoying, tenacious and ineradicable like flies, the twins Mac and Donald with their self-propelled stall. Z shook his head. The twins, of course, did not violate the law and hardly would be able to do that with their tiny IQ, but even their chicken brains should have known better than molesting an Undo officer at work. However, fools are lucky, and the twins were lucky today too. Five minutes earlier Z without hesitation would have turned their clunker into a cloud of hamburgers, ketchup and gears with one shot of Purifier. Now he simply put on his protection, lowered Toy’s window and, having beckoned to the twins, ordered a coffee and some doughnuts.

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