Read Online Dyscountopia by Niccolo Grovinci - Free Book Online Page A

‘cause we’re mean people.   We’re the kind of people that go around kicking each other in the b--.”
    “No”, interrupted the Sergeant.   “Not us.   There’re billions of them.   They can do whatever they want.   What keeps them in line?”
    Travis was growing uncomfortable with the increasingly philosophical direction of the conversation, and more so with the notion that Sergeant Alexander seemed to be talking to a ghost in the room, rather than to him.
    “Dunno,” he said with purposeful ignorance.   “I guess you just stand behind the guy in front of you, because that’s what he’s doing.   What else can you do?”
    “What else can you do?”   the Sergeant mumbled.
    “Yeah, what else?”
    “What else…?”
    “You gonna keep repeating everything I say, Sarge?”
    The Sergeant grunted.   “Don’t you think that one of them, just one for Christ’s sake, would finally get sick and tired of standing in line, have the goddamn scrotal fortitude to grab something and run?”  
    Officer Travis watched her knuckles turn white as she gripped the arm of her chair.   “No,” he said, carefully.   “Most people aren’t crazy, and the ones that are have sense enough to act normal.   Most of them, at least.”   He began backing toward the door.   “Look – I just remembered I have something else to do.   I just came by to accept your apology.   So… apology accepted.   I’ll be in the scooter compound.”   And he left.
    Sitting alone in the dark, Sergeant Alexander stared at the monitors a very long time before her senses returned and she realized, irritated, that Officer Travis had accepted an apology she’d never offered.   
     
    ****
     
    “Zim?”
    “What?”
    “Zim?”
    Albert felt a hand on his shoulder.   He looked up to see a mysterious message floating above him.
    CHEWING GUM
    Black letters on a pale white forehead; and below, two droopy wrinkled blue eyes, staring back at him as if waiting for him to explode.
    “Where am I?” he wasn’t lying in a metal capsule, in a pool of his own vomit, like he expected to be.   He was sitting up.   It was god-awful hot.
    “You were talking about Pogs.   Do you remember?”
    Pogs.   Right.   Pogs.   He looked back into the eyes and tried to focus on the man behind them – a man as droopy and wrinkled as the eyes he belonged to.   He might have been sixty or seventy years old, but Albert suspected he wasn’t really more than fifty; that the added years had been heaped upon him by the capricious bulldozers of fate.   He wore a towel draped over his head and his cheeks and nose were slathered in a thick layer of white face cream.
    “BeautyMax Ultra, Dry Skin Formula – only $8.95 a bottle,” Albert mumbled.   It was a bargain and everyone knew it.
    A rough hand shook him by the shoulder.   “Snap out of it, buddy.”
    Albert focused on the hovering face again, on the broad forehead and the two words written there – tattooed in black ink.
    “Chewing gum.”
    “Awww, would you forget about that?   That was all just a mistake.   Now tell us about the Pogs.”
    Albert suddenly realized that the two of them weren’t alone.   A dozen other men and women were crowded around them, their curious faces also covered in the same white cream, their heads wrapped in towels and frayed scarves, each one with a tattoo on their forehead, similar in style to the first man’s, but all indicating a different item – BATTERIES, HAIRBRUSH, TOOTHPASTE, BREATH MINTS, CRAYONS, PANTY HOSE, RUBBER BANDS, ULTRA-THIN CONDOMS, BRITNEY SPEARS’ GREATEST HITS, GOLF BALLS, BASEBALL CARDS.  
    Albert cringed.   Roofers – former Omega-Mart citizens convicted of Lifting and banished to the roof, each with the object of their shame tattooed forever on their forehead.   He felt the floor beneath him with his hands.   Concrete.   He was on the roof.   The scorching sun gazed down upon him like the all-seeing eye of God