Authors: Niccolo Grovinci
The Doctor waved him on.
“Tell him
how
stupid, Zim.”
Albert shuffled his feet.
“This is silly.”
“Tell him, Albert.
Or spend the rest of your life on the roof with me.”
Albert sighed.
“Very, very stupid.
Okay?”
The chimp dropped to the ground and wobbled awkwardly over to Albert, waving his hands wildly in the air to keep balanced.
He tugged gently on Albert’s sleeve and beckoned him to follow.
Albert looked to the Doctor for help.
“Well don’t just stand there,” said the Doctor.
“Follow the chimp, Zim.”
****
Single file, they crossed the roof, passing the hours in sweltering silence.
Bobo didn’t lead them in a straight line, Albert noticed, but in a long meandering zig-zag pattern that took full advantage of the shade created by Omega-Mart’s sporadically placed air ventilators.
The huge, cube-shaped monstrosities moaned and rumbled as they sucked in oxygen for the citizens below, providing clean fresh air with the added comfort of never having to go outside.
“Couldn’t we find a way in through one of those?”
Albert asked, pointing.
Bobo’s hand made a rapid slicing motion through the air.
“Nope,” the Doctor translated.
“He says you’re welcome to try, but the fan blades will chop you to pieces.”
Albert moved closer to the Doctor and whispered in his ear.
“Do you think he’s still mad at me?”
The Doctor nodded solemnly.
Albert fell silent again, trailing behind the disgruntled chimp and scanning the horizon.
In every direction, the roof was exactly the same; boundless, like an infinite concrete skillet under a searing, relentless sun.
Albert wore a wide floppy hat now to protect him from the rays, and a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses loaned to him by the Doctor.
A thick layer of face cream covered his cheeks and neck like vanilla frosting -- after the completion of Omega-Mart’s roof, sunscreen manufacturers had quickly gone bankrupt, but the Roofers had found the beauty product to be a passable substitute.
“Is it always this hot on the roof?” Albert asked.
“No,” the Doctor replied, shaking his head.
“It gets
really
hot in the summer.
You know, Zim, people used to waste a lot of time worrying about global warming, arguing what to do about it.
And then Omega-Mart discovered the solution; just build a roof over the whole planet and turn up the AC.
Simple.”
The Doctor laughed.
“If God would have thought of that, he could have finished the Earth in five days and got a nap in before Sunday.”
Albert tried to ignore him.
He’d never been a religious man, but joking about God always made him uncomfortable.
It made him especially uneasy here, in this open place, where God seemed to be watching his every move.
“Don’t worry,” said the Doctor, reading his mind. “He can’t hear us up here; and even if he could, where would he send us that was any warmer than this?”
Night came finally, and the scorching sun was replaced by a cold, lonely moon.
The travelers made camp on the leeward side of an enormous trash heap, out of the reach of the rising hot wind that blasted their faces like an enormous hairdryer.
After a short meal of Vienna sausages roasted over a trash-fire, Albert fell asleep searching in vain for the man in the moon.
When he was very, very young, camping with his father in the last of the remaining parks that had not yet been roofed, he had always looked for the man in the moon just before drifting off, and he had always found him.
But that night Albert could not find him.
He fell exhausted into a broken slumber, stirred by the low, sharp whispers of the Doctor over the crackle of a dying fire.
It seemed to him that, in the shady recesses of his half-waking dream, a mute and hunch-backed figure stood listening just outside the glow of the flames.
“…what you’re complaining about.
You’ve worked for less, and shittier jobs, too….”
“…doctor-patient confidentiality.…who says I’m not a real doctor…?”
“… a planet full of squirrels or something….glad you find mental illness amusing….”
Pogs, thought Albert.
Pogs, not squirrels.
In his head he was surrounded by Pogs, all standing around him in a circle on their hind legs, distracted by the Doctor’s tête-à-tête with the darkness.
“… none of your business what he’s paying me…. Pro bono, okay?
Fucking Latin.
Look it up….”
“…smother him and take his shoes, huh?
Is that the kind of reputation you want…?”
“…something called professional pride.
Ever hear of it?
It’s what separates us from the animals…. “
“…no.
I didn’t call you an animal… I know you can use tools and have a 5000 word vocabulary.
Bullshit!
You’re drunk…”
“…well, I’m sorry, but you are.
You
are
.
You’re a fucking CHIMP, okay?!”
Time passed -- seconds, minutes, hours; it was impossible to tell -- before Albert awoke with a start and a cold, clammy hand gripped firmly over his mouth.
A hovering blackness blotted out the stars above him.
Albert screamed, but the cry reverberated uselessly back down into his throat, denied by the immovable hand.
The blackness leaned forward, face to face with its helpless victim.
Bobo.
The chimpanzee put a finger to his lips, the universal sign for ‘
shhhhhh
’.
Albert smelled alcohol on his breath, which somehow made the encounter even more unnerving.
He tried to nod at his inebriated captor, but the back of his head was pinned firmly to the concrete, making any communication impossible.
Bobo relaxed his grip and melted into the night.
Albert listened after him, holding his breath.
Soft whispers filled the darkness.
Sharp, shapeless sentences without words.
Somebody was out there.
The Doctor?
Albert looked for him.
The old man lay breathing softly by the glowing embers of the fire, only feet away.
Albert belly crawled to him, pulling himself with his elbows across the cold, hard roof.
Whispers again from the dark, more animated now.
Many different whispers, all at once.
Albert pressed his lips to the Doctor’s ear and again smelled the odor of cheap booze.
“Doctor?”
He didn’t stir.
“
Doctor
.”
A whisper forced through clenched teeth.
Zayus groaned.
“Eh?
What?
Lemme alone.
Sleepin’.”
“I hear voices.
Somebody’s out there.”
“Yeah…?
Who?”
“I don’t know who.
Not me.
Not you.
Not Bobo because he doesn’t talk.”
The Doctor cracked an eyelid, mildly alert.
“Right.
Right.”
He thought better of it and shut his eye again.
“Don’t worry about them.
Back to sleep.”
He relaxed again into unconsciousness.
Albert shook him roughly by the arm. “Them?
Them who?
Who them?
Mayor McCheese’s men?”
“Don’t think so”, said the Doctor.
“Moonlighters, probably.
Just Moonlighters.”
“What?”
An abrupt snore.
Albert shook him again. “What’s a Moonlighter?
Do they eat people?”
Both of Dr. Zayus’ eyes popped open this time, fixing irritably on Albert.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Zim.
Moonlighters are just average people like you and me.
Honest, hardworking citizens who supplement their income by sneaking up on unwary travelers in the moonlight, cutting their throats, and making off with their valuables.”
“That’s horrible.”
Zayus shrugged and forced back a phlegmy cough.
“Lots of people Moonlight for a little extra dough.
It isn’t anything to be ashamed of.”
Albert stared quizzically down at him.
“Have you done it?”
The Doctor dragged himself up on one elbow and squinted into the night.
“You know, I think my neighbor is a Moonlighter.
I wonder if he’s out there….”
Albert was struck cold.
“They’re….
They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so.” The Doctor settled back down and shut his eyes, resting the back of his head on his hands.
“Not unless they have their own genetically enhanced commando super-chimp.”
Bloodcurdling screams, pregnant with horror and ridiculous amounts of pain, suddenly ripped through the night – high pitched cries like the screeching of a thousand cats all being slowly strangled to death at once.
The agonized howls filled Albert’s senses, projecting vivid images of unspeakable human torment and suffering onto the unwilling screen of his delicate mind.
Albert wanted to clap his hands over his ears but his arms were lead weights.
He wanted to retch but his stomach was hiding in his shoes.
And then it stopped.
Albert tried not to whimper, tried to sniff back the tears in his eyes.
“See?” said the Doctor.
“Problem solved.”
****
Almost a year had passed since she’d heard anything on the other side of the wall – a tire squeal, a gunshot, a screaming voice – anything but silence.
The unbearable quiet of the night hounded her, gnawed at her bones, forced her to flee her apartment or face madness.
She met him at a small café in Beta Quadrant, dressed in a ridiculous blue-sequined party dress that was three sizes too big, cinched in at the waist.
He ordered the cheeseburger; she, the McRib.
When she’d first seen him sitting alone at the hardened plastic table-and-chair assemblage, already sucking on a strawberry shake and being extra careful not to get any of it on his Ollie the Otter tie, her first impulse was to keep walking.
She moved past him unnoticed to the side exit, only stopping as her hand fell upon the door rail.
It was the loneliness that stopped her; the all-to-familiar emptiness of the world beyond the glass.
She ate in large bites, tearing at her food so that she wouldn’t have to speak to him.
He talked endlessly, about television and bowling and politics.
He didn’t much resemble his picture on the web.
That man had seemed humble and sophisticated and intelligent.
“Let me tell you why
I
should be President,” he said.
“This is what I’ll do someday when
I’m
the CEO of Omega-Mart,” he said.
“Being a floor manager of a
whole
grid square is a big job,” he said.
Strange how people got instantly more boring when you added sound.
After dinner, he took her to the tree museum.
She hadn’t been there since she was a small child, brought there by a father she didn’t know anymore.
Just like clockwork, Silly Tie Man finally began to feign interest in her, asking insipid questions and making what she supposed he thought were clever remarks about her appearance, apparently convinced that a string of snappy one liners that he’d heard on TV, when combined with an army of musty papier-maché mock-ups of extinct vegetation, made a lethal combination for getting into a woman’s pants.
To call him pathetic would have been an insult to pathetic people.
She consoled herself with the knowledge that, if she’d wanted to, she could easily kill him and hide him in a stand of dusty firs nearby, then stage a daring escape.
By the time they found his body she’d be – where?
Where would she be?
Where could she go?