THEY WERE going across the plastic fields and yards of Moderan, on carnival. There was an air of circusing and picnicking and old last-days-of-school as they went ta rap ta rump tump tumpa tump in their metal-on-plastic way. They were going to the fabulous new shopping district set up in the northwest corner of a Moderan province by the Committee for Better Understanding of Old Times.
They came after a hard-walking trip—they had decided, since this was an outing jaunt, a pleasure sojourn, not to clutter the hard-pressed roll-gos—to a little rise of plastic ground and topping that they could look down a gentle slope to a town of neon. Arrows darted hither and yon under the high-blue vapor shield of June and all over Neon Town spots danced, long lines waved, short lines ran up and down lengths of gay air, squares and diamonds and circles formed and disappeared and formed again, cans of coffee bloomed full-tinned in the sky, tea bags were outlined in red and yellow and blue, life insurance was sold by the hatful by big block letters that ran spelling in the sky and then erased and spelled again in a brighter color until such brightness was reached that the eye begged for relief, and that came in the form of dancing spots of brown and wavy lines of gray where sprightly diet cola was being madly merchandised alongside rock-solid mortuary goods from a nearby undertaker’s establishment. Not to mention articles of wearing apparel of all description, lawn mowers, house trailers, new cars, toy machine guns, burial markers, health plans, exercise schemes and hundreds of dozens of other things that MUST be sold.
The picnickers of Moderan, two tall spare old ladies of many iron-x and a few gold-seal “replacements,” stood spellbound on the gentle slope leading into Neon Town. For awhile they could not speak but could only look and wonder. Then the tallest sparest one, of mostly iron-x, but one or two gold-seal “replacements,” pushed her phfluggee-phflaggee button and said in a high tight phfluggee-phflaggee voice, “Have you your guide book, Emm?”
“Yes, Luu,” replied the other in a voice-button voice that was really jumping now, “isn’t this just too much!? EXCITING!”
So they tapped on down into the neon-sparkling place, and they were met there by no one. “You mean we just go on in?” they wonderingly asked each other. “I thought there would be admission—and committees,” they both thought. Emm thumbed at her guide. “The book says, ‘When you are in the shopping district, you are to feel as free and relaxed as though you were in your own live-alone bubble-dome houseball having your calmness bath in a soof-air tub. There will be no NO compulsion nor pressuring toward buying, and no attempt whatsoever to set up a false merchandising aspect will be made,’ ” Emm recited on, her face cut and slashed and danced upon by the merchandising neons cavorting prettily. “ ‘Stop at the bank and arrange for whatever financing you will reasonably expect to need.’ ”
On the first block of First Street in Neon Town they came to an ancient building, a thick-walled boxy structure of concrete and old-made steel. Tubed pale blue neon said it was THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK AND TRUST COMPANY, and bright red tubed neon said dancingly a figure of assets that was fully past any sensible meaning. Luu and Emm gasped at the dancing numbers and allowed phfluggee-phflaggeewise that assets were certainly up well at FIRST NATIONAL.
They went in to cool sterility and a kind of clean mustiness, sensed often in the past in such places as First Nationals, and they saw the well-groomed, efficient, surface-smiling little zero-man, the bank clerk borrowed from Olderan for the exhibit. Emm, with Luu ta-rumping hard behind her, tapped toward his window. The total zero behind the window waited patiently, quietly smiling his zero smile, toying a little at his shirt cuffs and drumming his well-done fingers a little on the counter, nervously, as bank clerks are always apt to do while waiting for old ladies to make that long hitchy walk across the foyer. But withal he seemed altogether well-adjusted to waiting patiently for old depositors and old withdrawers. There was no problem.
After a long and hard ta-rumping time Emm and Luu reached the window. “We seek financial counsel and advice,” Emm recited from her guide. “What would you consider adequate for our downtown shopping tour? Remember, this is our initial encounter and first contest with your lights and slogans.” There was no smile upon zero-man now. He was dealing in financial advice, and already, no doubt, he reminded himself of some great bank vice president advising two old female tycoons. He eyed the two metal ladies as though they were as detestable as bugs might have been in the Old Days, on the spotted plants along the foyer. After eyeing them coldly awhile and giving the impression of efficient calculation by making some meaningless straight parallel lines and some very pretentious X’s on a sheet of paper that he carefully kept concealed, he came up with a bleak smile. “How about securing a loan and setting up a checking account of five hundred million dollars for each of you?” he said.
“We have no collateral,” Emm recited. “We are just come down from Upper Moderan for an educational shopping tour in this Old Place, this transplanted bit of Olderan.” The little bank clerk smiled a more real smile now, relieved that his part of the act was over, handed them two blank checkbooks and wished he were back home in Olderan for some good-hole golf. “Good luck. Don’t overbuy!” he called at the backs of the hard ta-rumping Luu and Emm.
They went upon the streets and it was noon and the flesh ribbon clerks, the flesh five-and-dimers, the flesh file people, the flesh type thumpers and all the many other office achievers common to Olderan were darting at the hamburger places, fretting in line at the cafeterias and hoping to do everything in a great hurry so they could have a little shopping time on their thirty-minute noon “hour.” To compensate a little for their daily indigestion and those big heart attacks later to come! “Well, I never!” said Luu to Emm. “What are they doing?” Emm leafed at her guide. “If you happen to be caught in the noon crush,” she recited, “the flesh people will be eating.” And Luu and Emm looked through the steamy windows of “joints” and saw the people rudely gulping great plump hamburgers and daintily fingering out brown sticks from heaped saucers of French fries. “Well! I never!” gasped Luu to Emm.
Then, since it was near the center of the day, they remembered that it was time for something for themselves. They looked wildly about and they looked wildly at each other. “The guide, the guide,” gasped Luu.
“Of course,” replied Emm, calmer now, “it’ll tell . . .‘Near the center of the day,’ ” she read, “ ‘at the normal period for lube and introven, you are to enter any one of the numerous comfort stations, marked in the usual Moderan way FE for the use of those of female descent, MA for the male types. A full line will be available for your convenience, if you forgot your totem bag.’ ”
“I brought mine,” volunteered Luu. “I know it’s clean.”
“I never like the public ones either,” agreed Emm swinging her own totem bag as they ta-rumped on down to find a place marked FE. Once inside the comfort station they each took out their own little bottle of lubricant and oiled well the metaled parts, with an especially liberal application at all the places of jointure. “Wouldn’t it be nice if this were all we had to do,” sighed Luu. But it was not. Now came the more involved thing of feeding the flesh-strips that held together the “replacements.” This involved much dissolving of tablets and many fractionings of many wafers, many grains from many big and little capsules and drops from bottles of diverse sizes and colors and shaking all this well before assembling the tubes and the needles and the feeding jars. First Luu lay upon the feeding strip, a black steel slab pulled out of the wall and fixed perfectly level, and Emm “fed” her by sticking one of the nutriment needles into each of her flesh-strips. Luu lay as though dead while feeding, which was the correct pose at “mealtime” in Moderan. When Luu’s “meal” was through, she arose vigorously and “fed” Emm. Not that each lady couldn’t have “fed” herself, if need be, but they cooperated today to save more time for shopping.
When they emerged from the comfort station, they found that the streets were quieter. The workaday people of Olderan had gulped their hamburgers and French fries, had drunk their colas and their coffees, had grabbed their few minutes of shopping time from their thirty-minute lunch “hour” (to do something, some little something, even, in buying to ease the ache from the lure of all those signs) and then they had dashed gaily back to their challenging stimulating endeavors. YES!
Luu and Emm went shopping in Neon Town. While there was nothing for sale there that they needed or could possibly use, ever, let it be known that the compulsion of the merchandising was so subtle and so aggressive and so compelling and so friendly and so entirely completely effective there that these two good old new-metal ladies were swept loose from their sales-resistance moorings almost completely. They bought lawn mowers and trash cans and panty girdles and nylon stockings and life insurance and Easter hats and Christmas cards and Halloween pumpkins and birds in cages and men’s suits and the latest apparatuses and aids for feminine hygiene, not to mention fabulous foods and drinks and birth-control pills that they could not possibly in any way need to employ, ever.
After a long and thoroughly educational and completely stimulating day in Neon Town the tired but happy Luu and Emm ta-rumped back to their homes in Moderan, leaving all their purchases at a building provided just for that, near the outer gate. “Well! I never!” gasped Luu to Emm. “I never could have believed it either, if I hadn’t seen it,” agreed Emm.