35.
"FLOYD WAYNE VISHNIAK," SAID THE DIGITIZED VOICE FROM THE computer, and an array of fresh windows popped into life on Aaron Green"s high-resolution video screen. One of the windows was a photograph, a head shot of a white man with lank blond hair, not short enough to be short and not long enough to be long, sticking out from beneath a blue baseball cap that were turned down at the corners, giving him a sad and bedraggled appearance, and his skin was flushed and glossy under the blaze of an electronic flash. This was not a posed shot. It had been taken from a low angle as Floyd Wayne Vishniak rode down an escalator at a shopping mall somewhere. He was staring down into the camera with a blank and baffled expression that had not yet developed into surprise. He was wearing a tightly stretched, inside-out, navy blue T-shirt with a couple of holes in it and he had the ropy muscles of a man who got them by doing physical labor and not by working out at any health club.
This image was not the only window on the computer screen. There was a small one next to it, this one showing a brief video clip that kept looping back and replaying. It showed Floyd Wayne Vishniak sitting in the cheap seats at a sports arena somewhere, leaping to his feet along with all of the other people in his vicinity to shout abuse at some miscreant down below. In this clip, Vishniak was wearing a tremendously oversized, bright yellow foam rubber hand over his real hand. The long finger of the hand was extended. Just in case this message was not clear, it had been printed with the words f.u.c.k THE REF. And in case the ref did not happen to be looking in his direction, Vishniak could clearly be seen mouthing the same words - chanting them over and over - in unison with all of the other sports fans in his section. In Vishniak"s other hand he was holding a plastic beer cup the size of the Louvre. While he was waving his giant yellow digit in the air, beer sloshed over the rim and splashed down on the shoulders of the fan in front of him, who reacted, but either did not care or was afraid to make a big deal out of it. Floyd Wayne Vishniak was not a person that most people would consider picking a fight with. He was not especially big, but he was tightly wound in the extreme.
Other people were waving giant foam rubber hockey sticks and other hockey-related paraphernalia.
Though the action below - the source of the controversy - was not shown on this video clip, it was evidently a hockey game, and at least one of the teams was apparently named the Quad Cities Whiplash.
Another window, below the video loop, showed a map of the fifty states with a blinking red X superimposed on the Mississippi River, between western Illinois and eastern Iowa. Under the blinking X was the label DAVENPORT, IOWA (QUAD CITIES).There were two other windows on the screen, both of them carrying textual information. One of them was a brief c.v. of Floyd Wayne Vishniak. He had grown up in the Quad Cities, straddling the Illinois-Iowa border, dropped out of high school to get a job in a tractor factory, and been laid off and rehired six times in the intervening fifteen years. During the past year he had barely managed to earn his weight in dollars.
The remaining window was a tall narrow one that ran down the side of the computer screen. It was a list containing exactly one hundred items. Each item consisted of a phrase describing a subset of the American population, followed by a person"s name.
As this presentation - this computerized dossier - proceeded from one name to the next, the corresponding item on the list was highlighted, a bright purple box drawn over it so that the user could see which category he was dealing with at the moment. The hundred categories and names on the list were as follows: IRRELEVANT MOUTH BREATHER.
400-POUND TAB DRINKER.
STONE-FACED URBAN HOMEBOY.
BURGER-FLIPPING HISTORY MAJOR.
SQUIRRELLY WINNEBAGO JOCKEY.
BIBLE-SLINGING PORCH MONKEY.
ECONOMIC ROADKILL.
PENT-UP CORPORATE LICKSPITTLE.
HIGH-METABOLISM WORLD DOMINATOR.
MIDAMERICAN KNICKKNACK QUEEN.
SNUFF-HAWKING BAs.e.m.e.nT DWELLER.
POSTADOLESCENT ROAD WARRIOR.
DEPRESSION-HAUNTED CAN STACKER.
PRETENTIOUS URBAN-LIFESTYLE SLAVE.
FORMERLY RESPECTABLE BANKRUPTCY SURVIVOR.
FROSTY-HAIRED COUPON SNIPPER.
CYNICAL MEDIA MANIPULATOR.
RETICENT GUN NUT.
UFOS ATE MY BRAIN.
MALL-HOPPING CORPORATE CONCUBINE.
HIGH-FIBER DUCK SQUEEZER.
POST-CONFEDERATE GRAVY EATER.
MANIC THIRD-WORLD ENTREPRENEUR.
OVEREXTENDED YOUNG PROFESSIONAL.
APARTMENT-DWELLING MALL STAFF.
TRADE SCHOOL METAL HEAD.
ORANGE COUNTY BOOK BURNER.
FIRST-GENERATION BELTWAY BLACK.
80"S JUNK-BOND PAR VENUE.
DEBT-HOUNDED WAGE SLAVE.
ACTIVIST TUBE FEEDER.
TOILET-SCRUBBING EX-STEEL WORKER.
NEO-OKIE.
s.h.i.t-KICKING WRESTLEMANIAC.
SUNBELT CONDO COMMANDO.
RUST-BELT LUMPENPAOL.
and others . . .Aaron hit the s.p.a.ce bar on the Calyx workstation"s keyboard. All of the windows disappeared except for the long skinny one with the list of categories. The next item on the list was highlighted and spoken aloud by the digitized computer voice: RETICENT GUN NUT - JIM HANSON, N. PLATTE, NEBRASKA.
Another set of windows appeared, just like the last set but carrying different images and information.
The photo was in black and white this time, reproduced from a newspaper, showing Jim Hanson, a lean- faced man of about fifty, wearing an adult Boy Scout uniform and standing out in the woods somewhere.
As before, there was a short loop of videotape. It showed him standing by a picnic table in a backyard somewhere, tending a barbecue and acting as eminence grise to a crowd of small children, presumably his grandkids. The map window was the same except that now the red X had moved to the middle of one of those states in the middle of the country; apparently this was Nebraska.
Jim Hanson didn"t look very interesting. Aaron hit the s.p.a.ce bar again, moving on to the next item on the list: HIGH-METABOLISM WORLD DOMINATOR CHASE MERRIAM, BRIARCLIFF MANOR, N.Y. This time, the photo was a glossy color studio shot. The video clip showed Chase Merriam teeing off at a very nice golf course somewhere along with three other high-metabolism world dominators.
Aaron started whacking the s.p.a.ce bar, paging through the list, flashing up the hundred photos one at a time. When it worked its way down to the bottom, it cycled back up to the top again, so he could keep it up forever if he wanted to. The red X on the map hopped back and forth across the country, tracing out a perfectly balanced demographic profile of the United States.
Floyd Wayne Vishniak was sitting in his trailer, watching Wheel, when he heard the sound of tires on gravel. He went to the front door, glancing over to make sure that his sawed-off shotgun was sitting in its secret place; it was there all right, craftily concealed in the narrow gap behind three stacked cases of beer, right next to the door. Having thus established his parameters, he looked out the window to see who had come all the way out here to pay him a visit. If it was another bill collector, he was not going to get a very friendly reception.
From initial appearances, it could very well be a bill collector. It was a little skinny dark-haired man with gla.s.ses and he got out of the car wearing a b.u.t.ton-up shirt and a tie. First thing he did was open the back door of his gray Ford LTD Crown Victoria and unhook his suit jacket from the little hook that was above the back door.
Floyd Wayne Vishniak had been driving around in cars since he was tiny, of course, and he had seen those little hook thingies above the doors and someone had told him a long time ago that they were to hang coats off of. But this very moment was the first time in his entire life that he had actually seen one used.
A seed of resentment was germinated in his mind. Garment hooks in the back seats of cars. Always there, never used. A mysterious vestige of other times and places, like spittoons. n.o.body used them; that"s how it was. n.o.body wore suits to begin with, unless they were going to a wedding or a funeral. When they did wear suits, if they absolutely had to take off the jacket for some reason, they would toss it out flat on the backseat. To hang it up that way - what was this little geek trying to say, exactly? That the lint or whatever on the backseat of his fancy luxury car (which was spotless) could not be allowed to touch the fabric of his fancy suit jacket?
It was a nice car all right, brand new and probably costing in excess of fifteen thousand bucks. Its beautiful gray finish had been streaked, below the beltline, with dark brown mud thrown up by the wheels as it had come up the gravel road from the highway. Floyd had been kicked out of his apartment in Davenport so that the landlord could rent it out to a big family of African-Americans come from Chicago to steal away a few more of Davenport"s nonexistent jobs. Fortunately he knew someone who had this farm just outside of town, and was willing to let him live here in this trailer.
The man put his suit jacket on. The satin lining flashed in the horizontal sunlight of the early evening. He shrugged his shoulders a couple of times so that the jacket would fall into place and look pretty on him. The jacket had padding in the shoulders that made the man look bigger than he really was. He reached into the backseat andpulled out a briefcase.
As soon as he saw that briefcase, Floyd opened the door of his trailer and stood there leaning against the doorframe and smoking his cigarette and looking down the full height of the jury-rigged, mud-tracked staircase at this little man.
"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Vishniak," the man said, looking up at him.
"That"s funny, I ain"t introduced myself yet. How"d you know my name? I don"t know you. I don"t know anyone like you. All my friends drive pickup trucks with a lot of rust on "em. Who the h.e.l.l are you?"
The visitor seemed taken aback. "My name"s Aaron Green," he said. He looked like he really didn"t want to be here. That actually made Floyd more sympathetic to the man because Floyd didn"t want him to be there either. So that was a start anyway.
"What do you want?" Floyd said.
"I want to give you ten thousand dollars."
"You got it with you?"
"No, but I have a down payment of one thousand."
Floyd stood there in the doorway for a while and smoked his cigarette and pondered this unusual situation. A man, very likely a Jew from Chicago, had just driven up to his trailer and offered him ten thousand dollars.
"This a Publishers Clearinghouse thing? You a friend of Ed McMahon or something?"
"No, it"s not a sweepstakes. I represent ODR, which is a poll-taking organization based in Virginia.
We"ve identified you as being a typical representative of a particular part of the United States population."
Floyd snorted derisively. He could just imagine.
"We would like to keep track of your reactions to the current presidential campaign. What you think of the different candidates and issues."
"So you want me to go to Virginia?"
"No. Not at all. We want you to change your lifestyle as little as possible. That"s crucial to the system."
"So you"re going to call me up every couple days and ask me questions."
"It"s even easier than that," Green said. "Can I step inside and show you?"
Floyd snorted again. "My little abode ain"t much to look at."
"That"s okay. I"ll only take ten or fifteen minutes of your time."
"Come on in then."
Aaron Green and Floyd sat down in front of the TV. Floyd turned the volume down a little bit and offered his visitor a beer, which he declined. "I have to drive to Nebraska tonight," he said, "and if I have a beer now I"ll be pulling over to urinate all night long."
"Nebraska? What, you taking one guy from each state?"
"Something like that," Aaron Green said. Obviously he did not believe that Floyd Wayne Vishniak, a dumb uneducated factory worker, would ever be smart enough to understand the details.
"You ever read d.i.c.k Tracy comics?" Aaron Green asked.
"They don"t have it in the paper here," Floyd said. "You ever read Prince Valiant?"
Again, Aaron Green stumbled. He was having a hard time building up his momentum. "Well, you might have heard of the wrist.w.a.tch television set."
"Yeah, I heard of that."
"Well, here"s your chance to have a look at one." Aaron Green pulled something out of his briefcase.
It looked like a super high-tech watch or something. Like some kind of secret military thing that a commando in a movie would wear.
The band of the watch was not just a strip of leather or anything like that. It was made of hard black plastic ventilated with lots of holes. It was huge, about three inches wide. It consisted of several plates of this hard black plastic stuff hinged together so that it would curve around the wrist.
Instead of having just one clockface on the top surface, it had a whole little screen type of thing, just like on a digital watch except that it wasn"t showing anything right now, just gray and blank. And in addition tothat there were a few other raised black containers molded to the outer surface of the watchband, but they didn"t have any screens or b.u.t.tons or anything like that, they were just blank, and must have contained batteries or something.
"s.h.i.t," Floyd said, "what the h.e.l.l is it?"
"Most of the time it"s a digital watch. Part of the time, it"s a television set, complete with a little speaker for sound."
"Can I get Whiplash games on it?"
"I"m afraid not. The TV will only show one type of program and one type only, and that is political programming having to do with the election."
"s.h.i.t, I knew there was a catch."
"That"s why we"re offering you the money. Because this is not all fun and games. Some responsibility falls on your shoulders as part of this deal."
Floyd Wayne Vishniak thought that if Aaron Green were not trying to pay him ten thousand dollars, he might throw him down the stairs and jump on him out in the yard and mess him up a little bit. He did not appreciate the fact that this little man, who was about the same age as him, and maybe a bit younger, was lecturing him about responsibility. It was the kind of thing his dad used to say to him.
But for now he was going to be cool. He put his feet up on the table next to the briefcase, sat back, raised his eyebrows, peered at Aaron Green through the smoke of his cigarette. "Well, for ten thousand bucks I guess I could be responsible."
"Think of it as a part-time job. It"ll take maybe ten minutes of your time every day. It doesn"t prevent you from having other jobs. And it pays very, very well."
"What do I got to do in this job?"
"Watch TV."