MARTians (8 page)

Unicorn Uni is a division of AllMART. So is SpeedyMed. Even Bats of Happiness, which provides essential nutrients that help grow the lettuce sold in AllMART’s FarmFresh Produce department. Everything is connected to everything else, and that means everything depends on me.

The music for the cheer rises. I stand and join in. . . .

I may be just a little part,

But I pledge my beating heart

To AllMART.

Buzzy Bee the animated hero takes us on a tour of the store, which is laid out like all AllMARTs everywhere. We zoom up and down the aisles, and I can feel how the pieces fit together. It makes sense to me. If Buzzy Bee came through the ceiling, plucked me up, and dropped me in another AllMART where it was night instead of day, I would be right at home. It would be perfectly familiar. I will never be lost. What a comfort.

Dawna Day uncovers a shopping cart full of uniforms. “Line up; let’s get you all just what you need.”

They don’t actually have a polo shirt and pants in my size, so I end up with things that will probably be a little too large.

“You can change in the bathrooms. Hurry back! Something special will be waiting!” Dawna Day prods us along.

I’m hoping the special something might be lunch. I’m grateful for the bathroom break. It has been a long morning. While I’m waiting for my turn in the bathroom stall, I tear open the plastic envelope. My new clothes are shapeless. They smell like I imagine the ocean smells — like freshly washed garbage. But that must be my imagination.

The special surprise was not lunch. It was the head manager of the store, Mr. Middleman, come to admire us all in our uniforms while we sat at our desks. He waved from the door. That was it. Then we sat through another three hours of training vids.

I am exhausted. It’s a longer day than any I ever spent in school, but it isn’t just the time I’ve spent, it’s that I’m too scared to relax. The desks, the vid screen, the way I’m learning — all of that is familiar — not scary at all. I’m scared because I’m not waiting for my real life to start; it’s started.

I just want to walk out the door and go home.

That isn’t an option.

“One last thing,” says Dawna Day, my personal human-resources manager. “You all have a special relationship to AllMART — certainly all AllMART employees are special, but
you
are extra special. You are now part of the AllMART family. It is part of a very ancient social contract,
in loco parentis.
This means that you are not employees. We are
family.
That is how much AllMART wants you to succeed — as much as a parent.” The lights in the classroom dim, just a little, and her gentle voice says, very quietly, “Some of you may need AllMART very much. And AllMART is here for you. Some of you may be separated from your families for a little while. You may need a place to live, a home. It is very important that you know AllMART wants you to have a home. Each of you has received a text invitation.” She pauses to touch the screen on her teaching device. “If you need anything, a place to stay, advice, or . . . anything . . . just reply to that text. We can give you the help you need. And it will always be strictly confidential. Just remember, that message is here, like open arms to hold you. Just remember.” We all sit there, in the hushed and twilit room.

The lights get bright again. Dawna Day opens the door and says, “Give yourself a cheer!” We stand and
clapclapclap
while we file out, into the hall. Dawna Day throws her hands in the air and says, “We meet here again tomorrow. Smile, Belly! Let me see that special welcome mat, all of you.”

I smile.

Timmer meets me just outside the employee exit. He is wearing his MORT badge and bouncing up and down on his toes.

“The ‘Help’ message sitting on your phone waiting for your reply: Delete that.”

“Hello, MORT. It went fine. Thanks for asking.”

“I’m serious. It’s junk. You don’t want AllMART to be your loco parents. Raoul explained it to me. I signed up, because . . . you know how it sounds like a good idea. But when Raoul found out, he flipped. He paid a guy to get it flushed out of the system. If you ask for that help, then they know they’ve got you. You get moved into the dormatoriums. Sometimes they move you away to work in the distribution centers — or who knows? Factories. It isn’t up to you. It’s up to them; they can move you wherever they want to in the system. You don’t need AllMART to be your family. You have the Warren. Look, it’s best if you just delete that message so it is never a temptation, but I get it if you can’t do that yet. Just trust me. Before you ever reply to that, come to us; we are your family now. You need help, ask me. The deal is, though, you will help us. We know that. That’s the deal.” He pauses and turns his attention to his phone.

I can feel my own phone purring. I reach in my pocket and pull it out. WARREN has sent me a message:

“Just delete the AllMART Help message. Please . . .” Timmer looks at my badge. “ZERO! They did that to you? ZERO!”

“Could be worse.”

“How much?”

“I could be beautiful BELLY.”

“That happened?”

“It did, MORT. Did you ask? Is that how you knew it was a bad plan to badger the badger?”

“Me? No. I was going to wait till the end of the day, you know, be relaxed about it, not call out the mistake in front of an audience. It was a kid tagged DRAIN in my class. He said it was bullshit. It wasn’t a human name. He got really angry.”

“What happened?”

“Three days into training, he disappeared.”

“You mean he quit?”

“He disappeared, like I said. Come on, it will look weird if we stand here. Follow me.” MORTimmer walks away in what I’m pretty sure is the wrong direction. I run a couple steps to catch up.

“Look weird? Who’s watching?” I say.

“The surveillance,” he says.

“What surveillance?” I look around.

“Stop it. Don’t look. Never surveil the surveillance. At least don’t look like you are looking.” He points directly ahead, toward a car far across the parking lot. “There are cameras on all the lot lights. Top of the posts. I said
don’t look
! And there are drones. Mostly they focus on the traffic flow. But just know, they can always see you, so don’t make yourself interesting.”

I just want to go home. That isn’t an option, so I just want to go to the Warren. If I were a dormitory employee, I’d probably be home by now. That really doesn’t sound like a bad deal. I start across the parking lot. Timmer grabs my arm and pulls me in the wrong direction.

“Never walk directly toward the Warren. Always walk like you are going to the parking lot, to the bus stop or a car, then circle around.”

“Why?”

“It’s a Raoul rule. Purely precautionary.”

We walk across the pavement. I can feel the heat through the soles of my shoes. Even though I haven’t met him, I’m starting to really dislike Raoul.

When we open the door to the laundromat, 5er isn’t the only one there.

“Hey,” says Timmer.

“Hey,” say the two people sitting on washing machines. They say it at the exact same time.

“Pineapple,” says Timmer, pointing. “And Luck. They’re twins.” When Timmer says that word
twins,
their two heads bob up and down, synchronized, like they are bouncing on the same spring.

If Timmer hadn’t said they were twins, I wouldn’t have guessed it. Pineapple is bigger than Luck. Their hair isn’t even the same color, but then, Pineapple’s hair is an unnatural shade of red and Luck’s hair is green, which is never, in any shade, natural on human beings. They are both wearing AllMART polo shirts.

“We brought ice cream — melted,” says Luck, and hands a carton to Timmer, who tips it like a big mug and drinks from it. When he lowers it, he has a mess of cream on his lip.

“Want some?” Timmer holds the carton out to me.

“No, thank you,” I say.

“You sure?” says Timmer. “It looks like ice cream is what’s for dinner.” He points at me and says, “This is ZERO. I found her. She lives here now. Currently in training.”

“I’m Zoë.” I hold out my hand, but neither twin reaches out to me.

“Training? Look, if you want the coolest job, fail the tests,” says Pineapple. “Prove you’re back-of-the-store, behind-the-scenes material. Best chance to snag stuff, during loading and unloading. And you will develop mighty guns.” Pineapple stops to display. Each bicep gets a kiss from its proud owner. Luck falls sideways laughing.

“Also, you can look however you want — even bored. Smiles not required,” says Pineapple.

There is no way I’m ever going to fail a test, accidentally or on purpose.

“Who are you, really. Pineapple? What’s your real name?”

“She’s still kind of hung up on the name badge thing,” says Timmer, pointing at me.

Luck sets down the ice cream carton and looks directly at me and says, “You didn’t complain. . . .”

“No. She’s safe,” Timmer answers for me. “
Belly
beat her to it.”

“Belly! Ouchy! That’s almost as bad as Drain,” says Luck.

“What’s the story about Drain? You said he disappeared. What’s that even mean?”

“It
means,
” says Pineapple, “they took him, he’s gone, and he isn’t coming back.”

At that moment, the dryers stop tumbling clothes. The air is hot and static.

Timmer takes a deep breath and says, “You need to know.”

He looks at Luck and Pineapple where they sit, silent.

“Zero needs to know, right?” He doesn’t wait for them to answer. “It’s like this: Like I said, Drain was in my trainee class, and he got hotheaded when he saw his badge. He was ballistic about it. He wouldn’t drop it.

“When I left that day, his sister, Soapy, was waiting by the employee exit door.”

“Drain’s sister, Soapy?” I need to be sure I heard that right.

Timmer nods and says, “Yeah, Soapy.”

And I stop believing the story Timmer is telling me, right at that moment.
Soapy
! And
Drain
! I look around the laundromat and wonder if the next person in the story will be called Rinse — or Softener. I don’t say anything, though, because I want to hear how it ends.

“The next morning, Soapy was there again, asking everyone if they had seen her brother. He hadn’t shown up at all.

“People said maybe he just left. But Soapy said no to that. He didn’t take the car, and that’s where they were living mostly, to save on gas. All his clothes and shit were still in the backseat. He wouldn’t have left everything. He wouldn’t have left without saying good-bye.

“It was days and days, and Soapy still couldn’t find Drain.

“She drove out to where they used to live when they had a whole family, but the place was empty. She asked all the olds who refused to leave the neighborhood. None of them had seen him. After that, she went to Dawna Day and asked to see the security camera data — she figured she could at least see where he went while he was on the premises, like which direction he went. Dawna Day said no to that; it would be an invasion of privacy. So, like I said, Drain disappeared.”