Collector's Item- A Fable Of The Future

Paulus Cranshaw stared at the rows of numbers on the curved panoramic screen in front of him and felt a sweat break out under his armpits. His predecessor, damn his exactitude, may have been correct. There was a potential imbalance in the stats and it was deadly serious. It was the largest discrepancy Paulus had ever seen in his almost thirty years with the department.

 He still had doubt about the accuracy of his findings. But the numbers couldn't lie, could they? Double-entry accounting was one of the few systems that had survived past Date Zero, although it was now called DualCheck, a modern affectation of a fifteenth century invention. The theory was simple. Ins had to match outs. When they didn't, there was the devil to pay. But why, after all this time, did this messy business have to come to a head now, when he only had a month to go until retirement?

There was only one way to prove it, and Paulus was loath to go down that path. In his experience, it was a method of last resort, invariably inducing funny little glitches into the vasty deep of the system.

He glared defiantly at the large red button labeled EDC on the panel, protected from an accidental key-stroke by a flip-up metal guard. EDC stood for Expanded DualCheck, another fancified name for an old-fashioned audit. Did he dare engage it? His hand hovered over the hateful thing, his mind fogged with uncertainty. To push, or not to push? It was a dilemma not without peril. In the past, thumbing that button had brought all kinds of unwanted attention to his desk, vectoring in like ants to a jam sandwich.

Finally, he took action. He was tempted to close his eyes, but decided against it. He popped up the safety catch and viciously jabbed the detestable red thing. A suspicious low-frequency oscillation resonated in the bowels of the building and the monitor in front of him dimmed momentarily, and then suddenly went dark. His heart sunk. Then, miraculously, it came back to life. Rows upon rows of numbers began to march across the screen again.

But it was not good news.

Paulus got up from his desk and walked down the hall to his supervisor's office. He could feel the faint tremor of the hydrogen reactor that powered the complex, through the soles of his shoes. The vibration –almost an audible hum– was a small bug that still had to be worked out of the system, which was otherwise a marvel of modern engineering that generated the cleanest and most efficient of green energy that had ever been conceived. Completed two years before in 2045, it brought the reactor’s H²O fuel source and coolant by underground pipeline all the way from Lake Champlain. He stepped carefully, keeping close to an outside wall because that minimized the sensation on the bottoms of one’s feet.

He tapped timidly on Siskin’s doorframe before entering. His boss, as was his habit, was leaning well back in his aero-chair speed-scanning the row of large abacuter screens on the wall. He swiveled around when Paulus came in.

"Yes?" It was an impatient yes. Siskin was an impatient man.

Paulus cleared his throat and found his voice. "Hemphill was right. There's a serious imbalance in the inventory report for the distribution cell in the Northeast sector."

Siskin's eyes bugged out. Imbalance was not tolerated in the Northeast Bureau of Product Management for United America. He was a management streamer who had now been in NBPMUA’s top position for a full three months, and it was a word he never wanted to hear.

"What item?" he snapped.

"You won't believe this," Paulus said nervously. He was always uneasy when he had to report to Siskin, and his voice betrayed him with a nervous habit; a funny little chortle that always seemed to annoy his boss, possibly because it usually accompanied bad news. "It's something called Adirondack chairs."

"Never heard of them," sniffed Siskin, which didn't surprise Paulus. The Director never bothered himself with details. He left that for underlings. But to give Siskin his due, this particular item went back prior to Date Zero, well before Siskin was born. So Paulus needed to explain.

He started to pull an old ergo-chair over toward Siskin's desk. The legs scraped loudly on the glossy high-impact surface. Like most of the material created AC, the office floor would theoretically last a hundred and forty years but quiet it was not. He stopped abruptly and grimaced. "May I?" he asked, pointing toward the bothersome seat. "This may take a bit of time."

The Director, glowering, waved his hand irritably at the chair. "Sit! Sit! But make it fast. Now, what about this...this...?"

"Imbalance?"

"Problem," said Siskin. "What about this problem you've got?"

Paulus didn't like the sound of that. It wasn't really his problem. He had inherited the troublesome file when Hemphill had left the department three months ago. It was an ancient one, going back to well before Date Zero. Hemphill had retired early after only twenty years and Paulus wondered if this business had anything to do with it.

"Hemphill worked on this from about 27 AC,” he ventured nervously. AC officially stood for After-Computers although behind official backs some wags dared to call it After-the-Crash. AC began at Date Zero, or the old year 2000. All the information stored in the computers had been rendered useless on Date Zero when the engineers hadn't been able to solve the Y2K-date-chip problem. Now there were no computers. All screens were self-powered by quantum time crystals and most people had implants. Also, since the period before Date Zero now didn't officially exist, everyone felt a little uncomfortable talking about it.

Paulus continued, lowering his voice to just above a whisper. "He took it over from someone named Jonder who'd had it since about 11 AC, and he had inherited it from a man named Quinte who had first suspected shortages and had been tracking them manually since before Date Zero. They actually can be traced as far back as the old year, 1984. I only got the file three months ago so I really don't think it’s fair to call it my problem......... sir." He'd added the sir as an afterthought and hoped that he had given it the proper tone of deference.

"This is 47 AC," said Siskin angrily, proving that he had an amazing grasp of the obvious. He glared, pointing at an abacuter screen on the wall and a number popped up, blinking. "That's sixty-three years! Why wasn't I told before now?"

"You were," Paulus said quickly. His armpits were perspiring again. "Hemphill told me he had briefed you when he turned the file over to me three months ago."

 "Oh, that," said Siskin, shrugging. "He mentioned something about a few missing wooden items.” He waved a dismissive hand. “What's the big deal? Write them off. We don't even use wood as a production material anymore."

"Except for these particular articles, and only in the Northeast sector," said Paulus pointing to an area on the screen-map of United America on the wall beside Siskin's desk. "And it’s more than a few. In spite of the out-dated design and material, there's still a heavy demand for them there and a great many people just won't accept anything else other than the real thing."

Siskin looked wearily at the detailed section of the map where Paulus was pointing. The area was what used to be the old New England states, before AC and Date Zero and before the rest of the country had been divided up into the 1313 districts that now made up United America. Siskin hated details. How could you possibly run a department as big as this if you let yourself get bogged-down with useless details?

"Ok, some wooden things," he said, with another indifferent shrug.

"That's right," said Paulus, studiously nodding his head. "Wooden Adirondack chairs."

"Hmmm," said Siskin. He was beginning to get bored and the room momentarily went quiet except for the faint hummingbird-like vibration that the steel frame of the building conducted like a giant tuning fork. Finally he spoke, warily: “So what's the…uh… imbalance?"

"Well here's the thing, you see," said Paulus, excited now. "They have an estimated wear-life of seventy-five years, which is not bad considering that they use pre-AC material. But overall production exceeds projected demand by seven million units. I've studied the numbers now for three months and there's no denying it anymore. Over the last sixty-three years, seven million Adirondack chairs have just disappeared."

"That's impossible," huffed Siskin, sitting bolt-upright in his chair. "They must have been exported to other districts."

Paulus shook his head sadly. "No," he said. "I checked it out. They only sell in the one area. And here's the interesting thing. The same people seem to buy them year after year."

"There's a simple explanation. They're wearing them out."

"They're built to last seventy-five years. Even the oldest ones listed in the production records would only be sixty-three." 

 "Have you interviewed some of the buyers? Maybe they're burning them so they can get a new entitlement."

"It's against the law," Paulus reminded him.

"Maybe they're throwing them out."

"Also against the law. But no. I contacted the Directorate of Disposables and Recyclables. Nothing in their abacuters. They even checked in some of the old land-fills that were still legal before Date Zero, but nothing. They've simply...... disappeared....sir." There. It was all out finally, and Paulus was relieved.

"Disappeared?" The Director was up from his chair, striding around the room and shouting now. "Seven million bleeping Adirondack chairs do not simply vanish into thin air. Not on my watch, they don't!" He pointed his finger with the implant at the row of wall-screens again. A document popped up. "I see you retire in a month, Cranshaw. You better have some answers for me by then. Give Hemphill a call and ask him what happened to his pension. Now get out!"

As Paulus was backing out of the room, he had an epiphany. He realized that no matter how advanced a society became, it still needed scapegoats.

    *                                              *                                                     *

The view below him from twenty-three thousand feet in the pollution-free and diamond-clear air over what had once been central Vermont cried out for appreciation. Chnzyxx took his eye off the screen on the instrument panel and peered outside and downward through the transparent port. He slowly absorbed it all with the unreserved approval of a traveler who had seen both the best and the worst that the galaxy had on offer.

Not to worry if his attention strayed briefly from the controls; it wasn’t crowded up here these days. No having to watch for and avoid the busy criss-crossings of those frail, thin-walled metal capsules from bleams ago spewing puffy-gray contrails anymore. He’d had a few scary near-misses on early trips to this sector, but air-travel in the stratosphere by the locals now was but a long-past nuisance, and good riddance to it.

The meandering ridgelines of the two rugged surface-ranges directly below – the Greens and the Taconics – shrunk in size as he continued his climb-out. He checked his screen-map again and made a mental note. Next trip, he’d come directly back here. No sense wasting time trolling around anywhere else. He’d managed to get a full load right down there below him on just one low and slow pass between the two ranges.

But business aside, the place also had an overall tranquil cachet; an appeal that he had previously struggled to articulate to folks back at home. However on this last junket through the valley he’d overheard one of the locals aptly describe it. “It’s the greenest, cleanest and most welcoming place on the planet.”

Chnzyxx tightened his harness, slapped the four thrust levers into hyper-drive and then reclined the seat thirty degrees to grab a few winks on the way back to base. A few scalons later, he docked his long-range cargo-hauler at the serving bay and toggled the unloading fasteners down into place with the seven-inch toe on his middle foot. One of the loadies tossed him a container of schmiirczz. He tipped it up and guzzled it noisily.

"Tastes good," he said. "It was a long trip. I was away almost a bleam."

"What have you got this time?”

"The usual," said Chnzyxx. "I found the area where they reproduce best. Every time I go back there's a new crop. It's easy picking."

"Ok," said the loadie. "Open the chute and dump them. But the boss said to tell you that this is the last salvage he can buy from you, and he needs to see you inside."

"Why?" asked Chnzyxx, reaching for the drop-lever.

"The Bureau of Interstellar Trade is on his case. They turned up an imbalance in their records and they said they've traced it to your vehicle."

-30-