“Hathaway!” he shouted back. “Relax, man! What’s the matter now?”
Doctor, -you’ll have to believe me this time. I tell you I got on to one of the islands with a stroboscope, they’ve got hundreds of high speed shutters blasting away like machine guns straight into people’s faces and they can’t see a thing, it’s fantastic! The next big campaign’s going to be cars and TV sets; they’re trying to swing a two month model change-can you imagine it, Doctor, a new car every two months? God Almighty, it’s just-“
Franklin waited impatiently as the five-second commercial break cut in (all telephone calls were free, the length of the commercial extending with range-for long-distance calls the ratio of commercial to conversation was as high as 10: 1, the participants desperately trying to get a word in edgeways to the interminable interruptions), but just before it ended he abruptly put the telephone down, then removed the receiver from the cradle.
Judith came over and took his arm. “Robert, what’s the matter? You look terribly strained.”
Franklin picked up his drink and walked through into the lounge. “It’s just Hathaway. As you say, I’m getting a little too involved with him. He’s starting to prey on my mind.”
He looked at the dark outline of the sign over the supermarket, its red warning lights glowing in the night sky. Blank and nameless, like an area forever closed off in an insane mind, what frightened him was its total anonymity-“Yet I’m not sure,” he muttered. “So much of what Hathaway says makes sense. These subliminal techniques are the sort of last ditch attempt You’d expect from an overcapitalized industrial system.”
He waited for Judith to reply, then looked up at her. She stood in the center of the carpet, hands folded limply, her sharp, intelligent face curiously dull and blunted. He followed her gaze out over the rooftops, then with an effort turned his head and quickly switched on the TV set.
“Come on,” he said grimly. “Let’s watch television. God, we’re going to need that fourth set.”
A week later Franklin began to compile his inventory. He saw nothing more of Hathaway; as he left the hospital in the evening the familiar scruffy figure was absent. When the first of the explosions sounded dimly around the city and he read of the attempts to sabotage the giant signs, he automatically assumed that Hathaway was responsible, but later he heard on a newscast that the detonations had been set off by construction workers excavating foundations.
More of the signs appeared over the rooftops, isolated on the palisaded islands near the suburban shopping centers. Already there were over thirty on the ten-mile route from the hospital, standing shoulder to shoulder over the speeding cars like giant dominoes. Franklin had given up his attempt to avoid looking at them, but the slim possibility that the explosions might be Hathaway’s counterattack kept his suspicions alive.
He began his inventory after hearing the newscast, discovered that in the previous fortnight he and Judith had traded in their
Car (previous model 2 months old)
2 TV sets (4 months)
Power mower (7 months)
Electric cooker (5 months)
Hair dryer (4 months)
Refrigerator (3 months)
2 radios (7 months)
Record player (5 months)
Cocktail bar (8 months)
Half these purchases had been made by himself, but exactly when he could never recall realizing at the time. The car, for example, he had left in the garage near the hospital to be greased, that evening had signed for the new model as he sat at its wheel, accepting the sales- man’s assurance that the depreciation on the two-month trade-in was virtually less than the cost of the grease job. Ten minutes later, as he sped along the expressway, he suddenly realized that he had bought a new car. Similarly, the TV sets had been replaced by identical models after developing the same irritating interference pattern (curiously, the new sets also displayed the pattern, but as the salesman assured them, this promptly vanished two days later).
Not once had he actually decided of his own volition that he wanted something and then gone out to a store and bought it!
He carried the inventory around with him, adding to it as necessary quietly and without protest analyzing these new sales techniques, wondering whether total capitulation might be the only way of defeating’ them. As long as he kept up even a token resistance, the inflationary, growth curve would show a controlled annual 10 percent climb. With that resistance removed, however, it would begin to rocket upward out of control…
Then, driving home from the hospital two months later, he saw one of the signs for the first time.
He was in the 40 mph lane, unable to keep up with the flood of new cars, had just passed the second of the three clover leafs when the traffic half a mile away began to slow down. Hundreds of cars had driven, up onto the grass verge, and a large crowd was gathering around one of the signs. Two small black figures were climbing up the metal face and a series of huge gridlock patterns of light flashed on and off, illuminating the evening air. The patterns were random and broken, as if the sign was being tested for the first time.
Relieved that Hathaway’s suspicions had been completely groundless, Franklin turned off onto the soft shoulder, then walked forward through the spectators as the lights blinked and stuttered in their faces…, Below, behind the steel palisades around the island, was a large group of police and engineers, craning up at the men scaling the sign a hundred feet over their heads.
Suddenly Franklin stopped, the sense of relief fading instantly. With a jolt he saw that several of the police on the ground were armed with shotguns, and that the two policemen climbing the sign carried submachine guns slung over their shoulders. They were converging on a third figure, crouched by a switchbox on the penultimate tier, a ragged bearded man in a grimy shirt, a bare knee poking through his jeans.
Hathaway!
Franklin hurried toward the island, the sign hissing and spluttering, fuses blowing by the dozen.
Then the flicker of lights cleared and steadied, blazing out continuously, and together the crowd looked up at the decks of brilliant letters. The phrases, and every combination of them possible, were entirely familiar, and Franklin knew that he had been reading them unconsciously in his mind for weeks as he passed up and down the expressway.
BUY NOW BUY NOW BUY NOW BUY NOW BUY NOW
NEW CAR NOW NEW CAR NOW NEW CAR NOW
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
Sirens blaring, two patrol cars swung up onto the verge through the crowd and plunged across the damp grass. Police spilled from its doors, batons in their hands, quickly began to force back the crowd. Franklin held his ground as they approached, started to say: “Officer, I know the man-“ but the policeman punched him in the chest with the flat-of his hand. Winded, he stumbled back among the cars, leaned helplessly against a fender as the police began to break the windshields, the hapless drivers protesting angrily, those farther back rushing for their vehicles.
The noise fell away abruptly when one of the submachine guns fired a brief roaring burst, then rose in a massive gasp of horror as Hathaway, arms outstretched, let out a cry of triumph and pain, and jumped.
“But, Robert, what does it really matter?” Judith asked as Franklin sat inertly in the lounge the next morning. “I know it’s tragic for his wife and daughter, but Hathaway was in the grip of an obsession. If he hated advertising signs so much why didn’t he dynamite those we can see, instead of worrying so much about those we can’t?”