Everyone entering the supermarket was buying cigarettes.
Cruising quietly along the 40 mph lane, Franklin began to take a closer interest in the landscape around him. Usually he was either too tired or too preoccupied to do more than think about his driving, but now he examined the expressway methodically, scanning the roadside caf6s for any smaller versions of the new signs. A host of neon displays covered the doorways and windows, but most of them seemed innocuous, and he turned his attention to the larger billboards erected along the open stretches of the expressway. Many of these were as high as four-story houses, elaborate three-dimensional devices in which giant, glossy-skinned housewives with electric eyes and teeth jerked and postured around their ideal kitchens, neon flashes exploding from their smiles.
The areas of either side of the expressway were wasteland, continuous junkyards filled with cars and trucks, washing machines and refrigerators, all perfectly workable but jettisoned by the economic pressure of the succeeding waves of discount models. Their intact chrome hardly tarnished, the mounds of metal shells and cabinets glittered in the sunlight. Nearer the city the billboards were sufficiently close together to hide them, but now and then, as he slowed to approach one of the flyovers, Franklin caught a glimpse of the huge pyramids of metal, gleaming silently like the refuse grounds of some forgotten El Dorado.
That evening Hathaway was waiting for him as he came down the hospital steps. Franklin waved him across the court, then led the way quickly to his car.
“What’s the matter, Doctor?” Hathaway asked as Franklin wound up the windows and glanced around the lines of parked cars. “Is someone after you?”
Franklin laughed somberly. “I don’t know. I hope not, but if what you say is right, I suppose there is.”
Hathaway leaned back with a chuckle, propping one knee up on the dashboard. “So you’ve seen something, Doctor, after all.”
“Well, I’m not sure yet, but there’s just a chance you may be right. This morning at the Fairlawne supermarket… “ He broke off, uneasily remembering the huge blank sign and the abrupt way in which he had turned back to the supermarket as he approached it, then described his encounter.
Hathaway nodded slowly. “I’ve seen the sign there. It’s big, but not as big as some that are going up. They’re building them everywhere now. All over the city. What are you going to do, Doctor?”
Franklin gripped the wheel tightly. Hathaway’s thinly veiled amusement irritated him. “Nothing, of course. Damn it, it may be just autosuggestion; you’ve probably got me imagining-“
Hathaway sat up with a jerk, his face mottled and savage. “Don’t be absurd, Doctor! If you can’t believe your own senses what chance have you left? They’re invading your brain, if you don’t defend yourself they’ll take it over. completely! We’ve got to act now, before we’re all paralyzed.”
Wearily Franklin raised one hand to restrain him. “Just a minute. Assuming that these signs are going up everywhere, what would be their object? Apart from wasting the enormous amount of capital invested in all the other millions of signs and billboards, the amounts of discretionary spending power still available must be infinitesimal. Some of the present mortgage and discount schemes reach half a century ahead, so there can’t be much slack left to take up. A big trade war would be disastrous.”
“Quite right, Doctor,” Hathaway rejoined evenly, “but you’re forgetting one thing. What would supply that extra spending power? A big increase in production. Already they’ve started to raise the working day from twelve hours to fourteen. In some of the appliance plants around the city Sunday working is being introduced as a norm.
Can you visualize it, Doctor-a seven-day week, everyone with at least three jobs?”
Franklin shook his head. “People won’t stand for it.”
“They will. Within the last twenty-five years the gross national product has risen by fifty percent, but so have the average hours worked. Ultimately we’ll all be working and spending twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No one will dare refuse. Think what a slump would mean-millions of layoffs, people with time on their hands and nothing to spend it on. Real leisure, not just time spent buying things.” He seized Franklin by the shoulder. “Well, Doctor, are you going to join me?”
Franklin freed himself. Half a mile away, partly hidden by the four story bulk of the Pathology Department, was the upper half of one of the giant signs, workmen still crawling across its girders. The airlines over the city had deliberately been routed away from the hospital, and the sign obviously had no connection with approaching aircraft.
“Isn’t there a prohibition on subliminal living? How can the unions accept it?”
“The fear of a slump. You know the new economic dogmas. Unless output rises by a steady inflationary five percent the economy is stagnating. Ten years ago increased efficiency alone would raise output, but the advantages there are minimal now and only one thing is left. More work. Increased consumption and subliminal advertising will provide the spur.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“I can’t tell you, Doctor, unless you accept equal responsibility for it.
“Sounds rather quixotic,” Franklin commented. “Tilting at windmills. You won’t be able to chop those things down with an ax. “
“I won’t try.” Hathaway suddenly gave up and opened the door. “Don’t wait too long to make up your mind, Doctor. By then it may not be yours to make up.” With a wave he was gone.
On the way home Franklin’s skepticism returned. The idea of the conspiracy was preposterous, and the economic arguments were too plausible. As usual, though, there had been a hook in the soft bait Hathaway dangled before him-Sunday working. His own consultancy had been extended into Sunday morning with his appointment as visiting factory doctor to one of the automobile plants that had started
Sunday shifts. But instead of resenting this incursion into his already meager hours of leisure he had been glad. For one frightening reason he needed the extra income.
Looking out over the lines of scurrying cars, he noticed that at least a dozen of the great signs had been erected along the expressway. As Hathaway had said, more were going up everywhere, rearing over the supermarkets in the housing developments like rusty metal sails.
Judith was in the kitchen when he reached home, watching the TV program on the handset over the cooker. Franklin climbed past a big cardboard carton, its seals still unbroken, which blocked the doorway, kissed her on the cheek as she scribbled numbers down on her pad. The pleasant odor of pot-roast chicken-or, rather, a gelatine dummy of a chicken fully flavored and free of any toxic or nutritional properties-mollified his irritation at finding her still playing the Spot Bargains.
He tapped the carton with his foot. “What’s this?”
“No idea, darling, something’s always coming these days, I can’t keep up with it all.” She peered through the glass door at the chicken-an economy 12-pounder, the size of a turkey, with stylized legs and wings and an enormous breast, most of which would be discarded at the end of the meal (there were no dogs or cats these days; the crumbs from the rich man’s table saw to that)-and then glanced at him pointedly.
“You look rather worried, Robert. Bad day?”
Franklin murmured noncommittally. The hours spent trying to detect false clues in the faces of the Spot Bargain announcers had sharpened Judith’s perceptions, and he felt a pang of sympathy for the legion of husbands similarly outmatched.
“Have you been talking to that crazy beatnik again?”
“Hathaway? As a matter of fact, I have. He’s not all that crazy.” He stepped backward into the carton, almost spilling his drink. “Well, what is this thing9 As I’ll be working for the next fifty Sundays to pay for it I’d like to find out.”
He searched the sides, finally located the label. “A TV set? Judith, do we need another one? We’ve already got three. Lounge, dining room, and the handset. What’s the fourth for?”
“The guest room, dear; don’t get so excited. We can’t leave a handset in the guest room, it’s rude. I’m trying to economize, but four TV sets is the bare minimum. All the magazines say so.”
“And three radios?” Franklin stared irritably at the carton. “If we do invite a guest here how much time is he going to spend alone in his room watching television? Judith, we’ve got to call a halt. It’s not as if these things were free, or even cheap. Anyway, television is a total waste of time. There’s only one program. It’s ridiculous to have four sets. “
“Robert, there are four channels.”
“But only the commercials are different.” Before Judith could reply the telephone rang. Franklin lifted the kitchen receiver, listened to the gabble of noise that poured from it. At first he wondered whether this was some offbeat prestige commercial, then realized it was Hathaway in a manic swing.
“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