Orbits: A Contemporary Fantasy of Pattern and Apocalypse (Part 3 of 4: Break-Ins and Break-Downs)
I was with my wife up in the office that night. Let's just say she was distracting me from getting paperwork done. I'd left the security monitor perched where I could see it from the floor, the camera trained on the front door. The planets drifted in. One, two, three. I caught it out of the corner of my eye. Sarah sensed my distraction and started to climb off. I said, "Leave it. No one else is out this late anyway." There had been plenty of nights where they entered unnoticed and we found them wandering around hours later, with the door unlocked behind them. It could wait.
Except tonight was different. Someone must have been watching from outside. Two guys came in a moment later, wearing dark coats, and baseball caps pulled low over their faces. They moved fast. Nervous and determined. I swore, jumped up, dialed 9-1-1 on my cell, and asked the police to stay on the line. They said fine, you have five minutes. I pulled my clothes on and dropped the phone in my pocket, out of sight.
Sarah said I was crazy, we should stay locked in the office, get the cops to come and handle it. But I didn't know what these guys wanted. Maybe they saw the Planets come in and figured we were open late. If McNay showed up and found the door unlocked, it would be our final straw with law enforcement.
I walked to the balcony. I saw one of the guys was at the cash registers, peeking into the empty tills. Well, that didn't look good. The other one paced the floor, looking down the aisles one by one.
I shouted down to him: "Sorry, man. We're closed."
He looked up at me. He had a ski mask pulled down over his face. Bad to worse. One of the Planets was riding up the escalator. He pointed at it. "What about him? You kicking him out too?"
"Well," I said, "he's a cleaner".
He pulled a gun. "Where you keep the money in this place?"
I took a step back. He fired a round into the drop ceiling beneath me. The sound was deafening, echoing through the big store. I threw my hands up reflexively. He stood with a steady, two handed grip. It was too likely he could hit, and if I dove for the floor the only thing he could take out was my head. So I stopped moving.
"Show me the safe," he said.
"It's up here," I said. "Take it easy. I'll show you." Retail safety 101: give the bad guys what they want. The Planet upstairs was making a slow pass through Science and educational workbooks, drifting towards young readers. Downstairs, the other two were making the guy at the cash registers crazy. He started shouting. "Everybody down! Nobody move! Hey, you, what's wrong with you?"
"They can't hear you," I said. "Just ignore them. They won't do anything."
"Bullshit. Who the fuck are these guys?"
"Just take it easy, okay?" The first crook kept his gun trained on me as he walked up the escalator. I had trouble breathing as he got close. My chest felt tight and my bowels loose. Keep it together, I thought. Just a few minutes. I could collapse later. As he approached, I could see his grip on the gun wasn't so steady. His arms shook and he ground his teeth. These guys were strung out on something, high, unpredictable. We both winced when there were gunshots downstairs. Two, than a third. The shooter shouted, "These guys are fucking crazy, man!"
Upstairs: "What are they doing?"
"Just wandering around."
"Quick," said the man in front of me. "The safe. Now."
I led him through the break room into the cash office. It was a tiny space, no windows, barely enough room for the safe and the shelves of paperwork. With two men and a gun and the stench of fear-sweat it felt as claustrophobic as a grave. I opened the safe. My hands shook so badly that I scraped them on the door. I pulled out the deposits. Two days' business. $3400. I held them out.
He snatched the bags with his free hand. "That's it?" he said.
"People don't use cash much, anymore."
His face twisted and twitched. He looked out of the office and came to a decision. "Come with me," he said.
"You can just leave, man. No one's gonna stop you."
More twitching. "I don't trust you those freaks out there. And you are not calling the cops."
So we repeated our earlier dance in reverse: out through the break room, down the hallway into the kids' department. He kept the gun trained on me until we reached the balcony. A clear view to the door, the Planets all out of sight somewhere. He turned and ran.
Then I saw the flashing of police cruisers. They were at the front door before he reached the top of the stairs. He pounded on the balcony, furious and heartbroken and defeated. He squinted behind the mask and blinked back tears.
"Big mistake, man," he said. "This should have been so simple."
He turned. I stepped back. His hand shook as he raised the gun. He struggled for a moment against the rage inside him, gave up, and pulled the trigger.
The bulk of that silvery suit was like an eclipse. Did it move faster than usual? Was it trying to protect me? Who can say? Time and motion follow different rules when bullets are flying. I'd been so focused on the barrel of that gun that I hadn't seen the Planet until it stepped in front of me. I saw the fabric of its uniform flutter with the impact of the first shot. Then I dove towards preschool and rolled across the floor until I had several bookshelves behind me. I kept my head down and let my bladder go as I heard shot after shot, and the mad screaming of men who just couldn't understand what was happening.
The cops took the shooters into custody, and then Sarah and I made statements and declined an ambulance and assured the police we were fine. They sent us home and said they'd lock up the place once they spoke to the Planets, but McNay showed up as we were leaving and told them not to bother.
The company gave me a week off to deal with the shock, and it was a few weeks after that before I felt ready to watch the security footage from that night. The camera showed the Planet cut in front of me. Then it moved calmly along the balcony as the shooter retreated back, firing again and again in panic and disbelief. The bullets had no effect at all. I couldn't see if there were any wounds, because the camera filmed from behind.
It did seem like the Planet walked with more determination than usual, as if it was bearing down on the shooter. It felt good to imagine that, for those few seconds, it was avenging me. But that's human nature, isn't it? To imagine that the blind forces our well-being in mind when coincidence cooperates with our plans? I was probably kidding myself. But I was alive.
The Planet reached the end of the balcony. The shooter stumbled and collapsed on the floor. The Planet turned left, casting its sad, limpid eyes towards the home-decorating titles as he moved silently out of frame.
They held a small party for me when I came back to work: pizza and ice cream and soda in the break room. That was nice. And the next time the Planets came in, Nancy and Ernie decorated them with ribbons and glitter. We checked their outfits but they must have had them replaced at whatever cosmic tailor they used. We couldn't find a stitch of damage.
"Why do they keep coming back?" Nancy said.
"Are you still talking about this?" Ernie said, "after all these years?"
"I always thought they were attracted to the books," Nancy said, "but they'd find more books in a library. If it's information they're attracted to, they'd do better in a data center. If it's people and commerce, well, there are stores that do more business than us. One of these things got shot a dozen times. Why do they keep coming back here?"
"Why do any of us keep coming back here?" Reggie said.
The company went bankrupt a few months after that. We heard about it on the news first. Then we got pink-slips and a few days' notice. I asked Jack if he was offering severance packages for long-term employees. He laughed in my face. "There's no company left to be severed from," he said. "But you can work with the liquidation company if you want to."
Most of us did. We couldn't think of what else to do. Retail workers live paycheck to paycheck.
The liquidators hung massive banners in the windows. They had us sticker everything at a couple of bucks and to throw stuff on the shelves wherever it fit. We were just shoveling books out the door, now, selling them like surplus lumber or coal. Except that coal was better for heating your house, and more expensive.
It surprised us how long it took to get rid of it all, at these prices. The first thing most of us did was buy a bunch of stuff for ourselves, thinking we better grab these bargains before anyone else did. Beautiful art books, leather-bound classics, entire series of manga we could never have afforded at full price. We drove home with cartons of books, grinning at our good fortune.
Then in sunk in how crazy it was, buying more stuff at a time like this. Where were we going to put all these books? There were no more jobs out here, so it wasn't like we could all keep living in the suburbs. Working for one of the last retail chains had shielded us a little from the desperation in the community, and as the store emptied out we realized we were in the same boat as the rest of the country.
New "vertical suburbs" had been springing up around the major cities, rings of towers that recalled the Brutalist idealism of the 1970s, set into to industrial parks or near train lines to reduce commuting and eliminate cars. Those of us who had a little set aside and got lucky could move, re-train, and hopefully find work that wasn't too dreadful. Those without luck or money would migrate to cooperatives or work camps deep in the countryside. At least America was exporting again. This was a matter of pride for those who owned the farms and factories.
None of us were in a position to be buying books. Where would we keep them?
Most of our customers were elderly: retirees who'd resigned themselves to dying alone in houses they were unwilling to leave. They'd spend hours picking out a title or two, then go out into the mall to haggle for candles and lamp-oil so they'd have light to read by.
We all looked pretty rough by the end of that year, thin and poorly dressed. Cheap clothing was a thing of the past, and the thrift stores had all been picked clean. Reggie and his girlfriend set up a patch and repair business on the side. We came into work wearing what we had left, and talked about where we were going to go when it was all over.
Through it all, though, circling and staring: the Planets in their shiny, silvery jumpsuits. They seemed curious about the changes: the bare stretches of shelving, the dirty threadbare carpet, the flickering fluorescent bulbs. They drifted around, taking it all in. Or maybe that's just what we imagined they were doing.
"Where do you suppose they get their clothes?" Nancy said.
The end. The books gone, and the toys and electronics. Then the shelves and racks, the desks and counters. Even some of the bathroom fixtures. The last week was a "make me an offer" free-for-all.
We got our final wages in cash and they told us not to come back.
I kept my key. I don't think anyone remembered I had one.
Thanks for reading part 3 of "Orbits."
Stay tuned for the conclusion in "Part 4: Escape Velocity," hitting Steemit Friday around noon, EST.
Do you write this as u go or u have it prewritten? It truly is brilliant. Ever published anything? Though looking at things (i follow some other authors) most make more here posting chapters then with actual books on different sites.
This one was pre-written. Between writing and revising, the whole story represents between 60-80 hours of work. To be honest I had originally shared it on Wattpad as an experiment, which is a great site for hashing out rough drafts and getting comments from readers, but of course it doesn't pay a penny! Here I'm actually getting readers and a few upvotes! So thanks again for your support.
I've never had anything "traditionally published" (beyond a newspaper column 20 years ago) but it's been my dream to full-time write since forever. Now it seems like self-publishing is the way to go. And I'm so extremely slow with fiction. Coming to Steemit I discovered that articles and non-fiction seem so much easier.
Well, I love to read...so secretly I ofc always wanted to write too. But never had ideas on what to write. This story is right up my alley. I mean the things I like to read the most and I find it very original.
In a way, you are already "full-time writing". It may not all be fiction...but you are. Fiction is...well...hard. I mean there is so much of it out there it is hard to come up with anything fresh enough. I think the main issue with self-publishing is self-promotion. That takes more work then writing itself I guess.
Whoa part 3! I really like how you blended the supernatural element of the Planet and the somber gloom and doom of reality in a nice flowing story. I've seen some shops getting closed, and if I used to shop there sometimes I feel a little sad. I think your writing conveys this feeling pretty well.
The bit when the workers were busy hogging all the good books but then realised they had nowhere to place them, I like that part very much ^_^.
Loved it so far. Can't wait for the final part!