MARTians

It’s a big day today. Today I graduate from classroom training to actual work on the store floor. I’m teamed with a supervisor and an experienced associate to ensure my success.

TO: ZERO

FR: DAWNA DAY, Human Resources

RE: Work Assignment 1, JoyZone!

“Happiness is always on sale at JoyZone!”

DIRECTIONS:

1) Proceed to JoyZone! prep area.

2) Select costume. Note location of related products.

3) Watch product vid.

Scene: A mother paws frantically through a bin of loose miniatures, holding up one plastic animal after another, while her son wails from the driver’s seat of the KidMobileKart. She can’t find the right dinosaur. The child’s heart is broken; the mother’s heart is breaking.

Scene: The KidMobileKart approaches. The mother stops at a tidy display, removes a DinoRoar TwinPac, hands it to the boy. Everyone is happy. Mission accomplished.

Voice-over: DinoRoar TwinPacs. Sure to please.

4) Report to Aisle 46 for your first day of work! Congratulations!

Panic flutters against my ribs. I don’t know the way to the JoyZone! prep area. I’m going to be late because I’m going to be lost. Then my phone trembles. When I look, the tiny screen text says, “Take the corridor to your right, proceed through Inventory Stacks 37–46. Turn right at Inventory Stack 46. The prep area is on your left, beside the doors marked STORE FLOOR.”

Now I need to choose a costume. Most departments have something to identify the employee as an expert — the camo vest for the Great Outdoors, for example. JoyZone! is a bit more elaborate because we are appealing to children and childlike customers, and their imaginations are — what did they say in Retail Psychology? Deeper and stickier? A seed of want planted in that deep, sticky brain grows like a magic bean. My costume choices are a duck bill, an elf hat, or a floor-length sparkle-power FairyPony Tale hair extension. Each of them comes with appropriate booties that slip on over my shoes. The duck bill is a flexible schnoz that is held over the nose and mouth with elastic bands. I can practically see the germs crawling around inside it from the associates who have worn it before. The elf hat looks promising but seems too seasonal. The elf footwear has long pointy toes with bells. I don’t think I am ready to wear tinkling bells that might attract customer attention. The best choice for me is the glittery hair attachment and the high-heeled hooves that go with it. The hooves would be impossible to walk in if they were real shoes, but, as flexible plastic illusions, they work.

I check to make sure I know where these fine products are: FairyPony Tale toys, including SkyHooves, can be found on Aisle 49.

I will not, however, be working in that aisle. I head for Aisle 46, where I am to rendezvous with my coworkers. The air in JoyZone! smells heavily of plastic. The toys are off-gassing. I suppose people with children, and children themselves, are indifferent to stink.

The supervisor of JoyZone! is waiting, wearing a smile as big as a welcome mat and a pair of fleecy animal ears. She waves at me. Her ears waggle back and forth. “Thought controlled!” She brushes her hair up so I can see the silvery electrode attached to her forehead. “Found in electronics, not toys, boo!” Her giant smile becomes a pout, which is over and done in less than three seconds.

My other coworker for the day approaches. The duck snout and rubbery yellow booties don’t disguise the walk. I know that walk. It’s Timmer. It is the first time I’ve seen him at work. Dolly Lamb bustles past me and throws her arms around him. “It’s my favorite Mort in the whole wide world!” She pulls his face down to her level and plants a big smacking kiss on the duck mask. Then she turns to me and squints at my badge.

“Don’t ma’am me! I’m Dolly Lamb. We are all kids here, Zero. And. You. Look. Adorable! Swish that sparkly tail! Swish!”

“Yay, Zero is a FairyPony. Okay! Today is dinosaur day.” She points at a giant acrylic bin; inside it is a tangle of plastic animals, all different sizes and shapes. Outside? Sticky smears left by little hands and noses. “We need to destock these dinos! First, we sort all of these items into inventory buckets. Then we will install the new display brackets.” Dolly pauses and squeezes Timmer’s biceps. “We are so lucky to have these big muscles to help us!” Dolly seems a little lost in the moment. Her thought-controlled ears tremble. “Then we stock the space with DinoRoar TwinPacs. You watched the product vid? Right?”

She smiles. I smile. Our smiles duel; the biggest grin wins. My cheeks hurt. She wins. “Thank you, Dolly Lamb,” I say. I wonder about what she might have heard. And I also wonder why it was so hard for her to read my name tag if she was expecting me, but those thoughts aren’t happy thoughts. Those thoughts don’t belong in JoyZone!

I’m slow to answer, but Timmer quacks, “Yep! We carpool. We both live on Terra Incognita.”

“That’s dandy!” says Dolly Lamb. “How do you keep your hooves off Mort the munchable man muffin? I know I would eat him right up!”

“Oh, we’ve known each other since we were little,” says Timmer. “We played together in the cul-de-sac — while we were still in diapers.”

The three of us work cheerfully, emptying the free-roaming dinosaurs and sorting them into buckets.

“Oopsie!” says Dolly Lamb. “Almost put that one in the wrong bin. Can’t have that happen. One bad dino can mess up the whole recycling process.”

“Yes! Recycling is the AllMART way. This little guy . . .” She pauses to wave a long-necked thing with flippers and jaws full of sharp teeth in the air. “He might become a shampoo bottle, and this”— she wiggles a frilled, three-horned, chubby one —“she could become a brassiere!”

This might explain why the bra I’m wearing is poking me. It remembers a previous life as a three-horned dinosaur.

Dolly Lamb’s ears telegraph her thoughts. Happy focus, happy focus, happy focus, twitch to the back, droop. “Zero. We should be wearing hazard gloves. I’ll get some.”

I see — and smell — the problem. There is a bloated disposable diaper, size Super-Tot, in the dinosaur bin.

“You just sit tight. Don’t touch a thing until I get back. I’ll be back in two twitches of a lamb tail.” This is funny because Dolly turns around and wags her tail, a tuft of thought-controlled plush. Then she’s off on her mission.

I stand there. I have a handful of dinosaurs I was going to sort into the buckets. Should I put them back in the bin? Should I go ahead and sort them? Am I being disobedient by touching them, even though I was already touching them?

“Z?” Timmer gets down on one knee and looks up at me. The duck mask maintains its cheerful composure. “Z, your bootie is crooked.”

“Not that booty, that bootie,” says Timmer. He points at my feet. One of my high-heeled-hoof booties is twisted off to one side. I bend over to fix it, but the dinosaurs in my hand make it awkward, as does the proximity to the duck. Before I can do anything, Timmer is adjusting it for me. But I also feel something pointy shoved into my sock. I frown. He turns his attention to my other foot. Something else is shoved into that sock. Then I see him stashing a bright green toy in his own bootie. He stands. He reaches into the bins and grabs another batch. We are both standing there with our hands full of dinosaurs when Dolly Lamb returns, carrying hazard gloves and a bottle of hand sanitizer. A janitorial services associate is following her with a scooper and an incinerator bag.

“Sillies! Go ahead and put those in the buckets,” says Dolly Lamb. Then she squeezes sanitizer onto our upturned hands and models the proper hand-sanitizing motions with her gloved hands. We are gloved up, and the diaper is whisked away to the incinerator. Dolly Lamb hums a happy song while we work.

When that is done, the shelves will be rearranged to accommodate brackets for the plastic bubble packs of dinosaurs that guarantee happiness. DinoRoars are purple. They stand on their hind legs; their front legs can hold rudimentary tools, like bazookas included in the accessory bundle. They have small wings, which can be removed. The girl dinosaur has lovely, brushable hair in a mane down her neck. That’s important. Her bazooka is pink. That’s important too.

At the end of my shift, I unclip my FairyPony Tale hair extension and hang it back in its place. I smooth it out. I wish I could brush it, but I don’t have the proper accessory to use. Then I sit to remove my high-heeled-hoof booties. That’s when I can’t avoid facing my situation.

I have removed stocked items from the store floor. I am in possession of stolen property. The value — or lack of it — is irrelevant. This is a matter of principle. Right is right; wrong is wrong. I am in the wrong. I deserve job loss and jail time. I deserve to be sent to the frozen-food lockers with crazy Soapy and that girl who stole grapes.

I know that there are surveillance cameras in the changing room. There are cameras in the bathrooms too, so I can’t even attempt to flush the tiny dinos down the toilet. I hunch over and hide as much as I can from the cameras I can’t see but I know can always see me. I pretend I’m pulling my socks up, but I’m pushing the pointy plastic problems deeper.

Timmer sits down beside me on the bench. He moves the duck mask up onto his forehead. “So what do you think of Dolly?”

“She is batshit crazy and stoned out of her gourd. She managed a slip-and-fall accident a couple of years ago. Now they keep her tanked to the gills, and she isn’t allowed on ladders.”

Slowly, like I’m tired after a long day of work, which I would be if I didn’t have a gallon of adrenaline jumping through my heart, I stand and follow Timmer as he hangs up his duck mask and rubber booties. If the alarm sounds when I pass through the gate, there will be no arguing with the evidence. Dismissal, suspension, prosecution; a black mark that will follow me for the rest of my life; the doors to management closed forever: All because I am in possession of stolen recyclable trash I don’t even want.

“Howdy,” says Timmer. The gate security manager grunts, scans Timmer’s tag, scans mine, and waves us through. Nothing. Silent nothing. Timmer holds the door open for me, and I walk through it.

Timmer pulls a dinosaur out of his sock and balances it on 5er’s bony knee. “Z has some too,” he says. “Look. They’re cool, huh?”

I dig the toys out of my socks. 5er doesn’t say anything. He just sits very still with the dinosaur balanced on his knobby knee. Timmer lines the toys up so it looks like they are all sitting watching television.

“This one is Raoul. Raoooul!” Timmer pretends the T. rex is roaring. “And this one is Juliette,” he says, stroking a long, lovely plastic neck. “This is me with the horns, and that’s Z.” He points at the duck-faced one.

Why am I the duck-faced one? It seems like Timmer should be that one. He spent the day quacking like a duck, not me. And Juliette? Again? Who is Juliette?

“And this is you, 5er. This one can fly.” Timmer lifts the dinosaur from 5er’s knee and glides it to sit with the rest. 5er doesn’t touch them.

“I get why they didn’t take you, Timmer, but why did they leave 5er with you?”

“Oh, man, no. He’s not . . . We’re not . . . I found 5er, just like I found you. I pulled an inventory shift, and it went real long. It was way past midnight when I came out. I was planning to go to Terra Incognita — like I did sometimes. Just driving home, you know, it felt normal. And I wanted to feel that. The parking lot was nearly deserted, except for the few cars in the far-awayest corners where people were trying to sleep.

“So I saw a pile of stuff on the curb by the exit ramp. I thought probly it was bag of garbage — but it coulda been useful, like a lost coat or something. So I was going to check it out. It might be useful. But when I started walking toward it, it moved. So I figured it was alive, a raccoon, maybe, or a small dog. I still thought, hey, check it out. I wouldn’t get too close. What if it had rabies? And if it was a dog, though, and it wasn’t bitey, it might appreciate a little petting — as long as it didn’t have open sores or smell really bad.

“But when I went over close, I could see it wasn’t a sick raccoon or a lonely puppy. It was a kid.

“Man, I think it woulda been easier to tame a rabid raccoon. I took me an hour to get him to say hi and tell me he was 5er. Then I had to sit there and ask a kajillion questions until I figured out he was waiting for his family. My butt was sore and cold from sitting on that curb, but I couldn’t get that kid to budge. Damn! 5er was rooted to that cement. If I hadn’t figured out the plan of leaving a sign for his family, we probly woulda been sitting in that sad place all night long. For the next week or so, he spent nights at the Warren and days on the curb, waiting. Then I argued him around to changing the sign so it tells them to come here if they want to find 5er. It’s a nicer place to wait, and he can watch the lost and stolen child reports. Just in case.”

“The lost and stolen child reports? Has he been reported? I mean by you? Shouldn’t you report him to . . .” I was going to say the police, but then I thought about the black body armor and the invisible faces. “You could report him to AllMART security. They would know what to do.”

“But we already know what to do,” says Timmer. “We let him wait. That’s what he needs. That’s what he wants. He needs us to help him wait. His family didn’t mean to leave him. It was an accident. They were traveling in four cars. One went East, one West, one North, and one South. The plan was to join up again when somebody found work. When that happens, 5er’s family will all get together again. Somebody will count noses and notice he’s gone. 5er just has to wait it out.”

“Why doesn’t he talk? I mean, if he told you that stuff about the four cars . . .” Suddenly I wonder if he did. Maybe Timmer just made this up, and none of it is the real story of that little boy we call 5er at all. Maybe 5er isn’t even his name. “Why doesn’t he talk now?”

Timmer shrugs. “What does he have to say? I mean, maybe talking makes it worse.”