The Mall (17 page)

Replacing his shoe, he took one deliberate step at a time, holding the handrail firmly and peering up into the slowly graying darkness.
 
He decided that there must be an operating emergency light somewhere up above and sure enough as his eyes slowly adjusted, he discovered that he was capable of finding the steps with his eyes rather than by reaching out blindly with his foot.

The door to the second floor was unlocked.
 
Peering within, he saw a hallway and set of bathrooms identical to the one downstairs.
 
He closed it gently and continued up.

Third and fourth floor door, unlocked.

When he reached the fifth floor—the first floor on the apartment level--he found the source of the light shining dimly through a protective metal cage.

He reached tentatively out and tugged on the door handle.
 
It was firmly locked.
 
He rushed up to the sixth and seventh floor doors and found them locked as well.
 
He tried some knocking, then some pounding, but he got no response.
 
Taking one final shot, he trekked the last flight of stairs he assumed led to the roof and found that locked as well.

Finally, he was forced to return to the first floor, the feeling in his stomach growing prickly with anxiety at each step he took.
 
He had begun to realize that he was alone now, separated from his family by locked doors on one end and distance on the other.

For the first time, he recognized that there was a short flight of stairs leading down.
 
He trotted down and opened the last remaining door.
 
Behind it, a vast dark open space stretched out before him and he realized that it must be the subterranean moving platform level that he’d heard about on the TV commercials for the Mall and from his friends.
 
He’d heard of some kids running races on the platforms to see who could get to the end the fastest.

He could feel a steady flow of air against his face and wondered about the source of it, though he knew there was no way he could gather up enough courage to walk blindly into that open field of darkness to find out.
 
Instead, he returned to the first floor.

Pulling his sock out of the door and carrying it over to a nearby bench, he pulled it back on over his bare foot as he considered his choices.
 
The only alternative he could see was to head back to the theater and hope that Mom and Cora would still be there.
 
Who was he kidding?
 
It seemed logical to him that they would have left with all the others and were probably sitting in the car right now, cursing him for all the trouble he had caused them.

He was truly alone now.

His knees gave a brief but violent shake and he had to lock them to keep his balance.
 
All those times he’d wished he could’ve been born an only child or that his mother would drop dead returned to him with a bitter taste of well-timed irony.

Albert wandered through the darkened corridors of the Mall in a stupor, radio lying dead in his hand.
 
He tried a few doors and discovered that they were locked.
 
This didn’t alarm him in the least.
 
He dimly recalled learning during the security orientation and training that in the event of natural disaster or civil unrest, the Mall would enter “lockdown mode.”

Essentially, this meant that all entrances and exits would automatically close to contain possible shoplifting or looting, what they in the retail industry referred to as “shrinkage.”

When someone on staff would use this term, Albert often thought that this was the perfect descriptive term for both the theft of goods, as well as the effect the loss would have on the individual private parts of Mall shareholders when they discovered what said stolen items would cost them in profit.

At the moment, however, Albert was not making this wry observation.
 
The Albert-that-he-had-once-been was currently “away from his desk.”

He wasn’t sure he would ever be capable of expressing humor again since his discovery that he might very well be a machine, along with everyone else in the world.

No, Albert wasn’t alarmed by the locked doors he kept finding throughout the Mall.

On the contrary, the fact that the Mall performed the way it had been designed during a time of apparent emergency was instead a great comfort to him.

He reached into his pocket for the object he knew was there, but yanked his
hand
back out in alarm.
 
He couldn’t think about what was in there anymore, because it only confused him.

Since he’d had his revelation--his epiphany--that people were machines, the object in his pocket had begun to make less and less sense.
 
Best just to shelf it for now, he decided, and get on with the job at hand.

Which was what?

Fulfill your function.

But what was that exactly?

He continued through the darkened Mall, hoping his legs would lead him along the right path.
 
For if he was truly a machine, shouldn’t he be following a program at this moment?

What he found the most vexing was the way the others would approach him—hysterical, panicky—asking for answers, bleating for guidance like mindless sheep.
 
He supposed that they couldn’t be blamed for running their own corresponding programs.
 
As long as their routines didn’t conflict
with his own,
there wouldn’t be a problem.

“Head to the northern-most exit,” he would tell them, one after the other, repeating the words like a mantra.
 
“Head north.”
 
He knew that per protocol, the only escape would be the central entrance to the Mall.

“But that’s, what, like a mile away,” they would complain, some burdened down with their purchases—being the shopping and complaining machines that they were.
 
“I can’t walk that far.
 
I require assistance!
 
Get me a Bot!”

Albert knew that all the Mall service Bots were programmed to lead groups toward the North entrance.
 
He also could see that a great many of the Bots—nearly three out of four in his crude on-the-scene calculations--had been deactivated, though he wasn’t exactly sure why.
 
The batteries running the Bots were supposed to store enough energy to work at least a week on a full charge and the batteries recharged themselves throughout the day on simple sunlight alone.

They had failed to function as they had been designed.

They were faulty machines.

But he couldn’t explain all this to those people (
machines
), because it would simply be a waste of his time and energy.

It would be inefficient.

An unwise use of resources.

So, he would often turn and walk away, sometimes giving a shrug, sometimes repeating that phrase burned into his personal hard drive.
 
“Head north.”

Then they would explode with emotion—
being the emotion producing machines that they were
--
something that was becoming more and more foreign to him.
 
They would flail their arms and fling their curses, having as much effect on him as frothy sea water rolling over the surface of a great stone.

At one point, he’d even gripped the Faze-Wand at his hip and experimentally depressed the button along its shaft, hoping the dramatic crackle and blue arc of electricity that would flicker from the two prongs at its business end might affect the enthusiasm of some of the more annoying ones.

The wand had been as dead as his radio.
 
Not even a buzz.

Another faulty machine that failed to do its job.

But how could he blame the people (
machines
) for attempting to fulfill their function, no matter how mundane that particular duty might be?
 
He felt it best just to avoid them for now.

So, he steered clear of the north entrance, away from the sounds and confusion of human beings (
other machines
), working his way south, deeper and deeper into the slowly thickening darkness of the Mall as one by one hour by hour light source after light source would die, depleted of its stored solar charge.
 
There were some areas that had gone completely black except for the faint glow of the one-quarter crescent moon peering down through the glass central ceiling, giving him just enough light to avoid any missteps.

Though he tested the flashlight on his hip and knew that it was another malfunctioning machine, he preferred the dark anyway.
 
He felt comfortable there.
 
The lack of vision seemed to enhance his hearing.
 
He could hear every footstep and voice as it faded in the distance.
 
He could hear the flutter of every bird that had made its nest in the rafters above, confused by the sudden onset of darkness for the first time in their artificial world of constant daylight.

Were they machines as well, he wondered?
 
Tiny nest-building, flying and shitting machines?

Even the voice of the Mall itself he could hear.
 
Every little creak and groan of settling material, like a living entity around him, protecting him, shielding him, coaxing him along its pathways like blood itself flowing through healthy wide veins.

“Lamia?”

Albert cocked his head down towards his dead radio.
 
He reached blindly out, found it in its pocket on his belt and lifted it to his ear tentatively.

“We’re almost alone you and I.”

The concept of being alone there inside a complex the size of a
city,
sent a chill of almost erotic proportions up his legs and into the core below his belly.
 
Suddenly, he wanted to be alone in the dark vastness more than he had ever wanted anything.
 
To lie on the floor in the center of the Mall and watch the sun rise in the glass overhead.
 
To be alone with the Mall as it awoke from its slumber.

Albert made a pleasant hum in the back of his throat in response.

“But there are others still here,” the voice from the radio told him.
 
“You know what they are, despite their appearance, don’t you?”

Albert nodded, picturing the two punks in his head.
 
“Yes, they are skateboarding, law-breaking machines,” Albert answered.
 
“But I don’t know how to find them.”

“I will show you.”

“Owen?” Lara hissed from her position just inside the entrance of the E-Bot store.

The hiss of static came from the hand-crank radio/flashlight in Cora’s hand.
 
She had been searching from one side of the dial to the other almost constantly since she’d discovered the function, though there hadn’t been the slightest bit of break in the white noise.

She snapped a finger at the child in frustration. “Turn that off, Cora, so I can hear!”

The beam of her flashlight skipped around the darkened E-Bot store from one frozen display to another, reflecting light back to her whenever it would strike glass or plastic turned in just the right position.

“Owen, this is your mother,” she raised her voice.
 
“If you’re hiding from me, so help me I’ll…”
 
Wrong tactic, her intuition screamed, as she continued deeper into the store.
 
“Owen, I’m not mad at you, hon.
 
I’m just worried, s’all.
 
Please come out if you’re still here.”