"After The Move"
By Brian Roberson
V
Telly looked at Tans Hansell in shock and rage. "You let them go right now!"
Hansell continued to laugh. "Let them go? Why should I let them go when they provide such a valuable service to me in pulling this cart? The more carts I have, the more I can sell! I provided them with what they needed, now they provide for me with what I need!"
Telly looked at the boys. "What happened?" He said to them.
"He had furs! All kinds of furs!" Evan cried out. "He had every kind that we could imagine! They all felt so soft, Telly! We couldn't resist!"
"Help us Telly, please...!" Michael said in an anguished little voice.
"I told you last time! You better run!" The Black Man said to Telly.
"Tans Hansell, I want to bargain with you for these two boys."
Hansell gagged out a nasty sounding little laugh. "You wish to bargain for them? Why my dear Telly, that's the buying and the selling of human beings! That would be unethical!"
"What you're doing already is! You are tricking those that you are selling to into becoming your slaves! What you are doing is wrong!"
"Do you really understand what is right and wrong, Telly?!" Hansell said with his face and his voice hardening. "After The Move, right and wrong ceased to exist! We make out own rights and wrongs now!"
"You are the worst of the Phonys, Tans! You swindle, you lie, you steal!"
"I give people what they want! "
"You turn them into slaves!"
"How am I supposed to maintain my selection without help!? That's all these people are doing is helping me!"
"You prey on their weaknesses and their needs! You take advantage of them!"
"I provide goods and services! It's a free market!"
"There is nothing free that I'm seeing! All I'm seeing is bondage!"
"Please Telly...!" Evan said.
"These boys had no idea what they were giving up when you seduced them into your servitude with your corrupted wares!"
"I gave them what they wanted! They wanted furs! I happen to have lots of furs! Furs of every kind! They wanted them and I have them! It's basic supply and demand!" "They wanted furs! They didn't want to pull around your carts until the end of time!"
"It already IS the end of time!"
"You let them go!"
Tans smiled at Telly. It was not a friendly smile, but one full of cunning and hatred. "So Telly, it seems like maybe we can do some business after all." Tans said.
"I'm not doing any business with you!"
"Telly!" The boys cried out.
"Then we have nothing to discuss!" Hansell said angrily.
"You let them go, Tans!"
"No! I need them to pull my cart! I gave them the furs! It's only fair!"
"No it's not fair! It isn't a valid deal! You never disclosed the terms and conditions of your sale! You didn't disclose it to any of these people!"
"Caveat emptor!" Tans replied.
"No Tans! Your claim of service against these people is invalid! You did not disclose the terms! It makes you as much of a thief as if one of them stole from you!"
A look of doubt briefly flashed across Hansell's face. "But I provided the goods and the services! I have the right to be compensated!"
"You are required to name the compensation to the customer! The customer must know what their obligations are! "
Tans began turning a bright flaming red, and he began to distort, as if he were viewing himself in a funhouse mirror.
"I provide the goods and the services! I fulfill the needs and wants! It is within my rights to require services in return!" Hansell said in a deep and echoing voice.
"You have to let the customer know up front! It is your obligation to explain all the terms of the sale! You can't keep those hidden! It invalidates the sale! These people owe no obligation to you!"
Tans was now starting to burn. His face began peeling off as though he were in searing heat. Blisters were popping up as his face burned, and his body was distorting madly. Evan and Michael both hid their faces in their hands at the sight.
"The Free Enterprise system must have little or no regulation in order to be efficient! To do so otherwise compromises liberty, freedom, and social structure!' Tans croaked.
"There is no liberty with you! There is only servitude!"
Tans then burst into bright orange flames. His flesh and clothing all burning off of him in strips. His face melted off revealing a skull, his eyeballs both melted out of their sockets.
"Positive balance of trade increases the wealth of all !" Tans said in an echoing, gurgling voice as the flames completely consumed him.
"Not if the customers all become slaves to you against their will! All that happens is that you become a tyrant and a despot!"
Tans then made a shuddering yell as he suddenly vanished in a giant puff of white smoke. All the carts and trunks then disappeared at the same time, as did the furs around the boys necks. The ten people whom Tans had enslaved all stood blinking in the sunshine and staring at one another on astonishment.
"You mean it was that easy?" The Black Man cried out.
Evan and Michael ran over to Telly and threw their arms around him.
"Where are we?" A woman who had been carrying a trunk said.
Telly turned to the group and smiled. "You are all free now. Tans Hansell no longer has any valid claim against you."
"Oh great, now where are we supposed to go?" A man said.
"Yeah thanks a lot! Now we're stuck out in the middle of who knows where? Why couldn't you mind your own fucking business, Muthafucker!?" The Black Man said.
"But...you're free...I...freed you..." Telly stammered.
The group all moaned collectively and began shuffling on in the same direction they had been going in.
"Yeah thanks for nothing." The Perfume Man said.
"Go to Hell!" A haggard looking woman muttered as she walked past Telly.
"Nice going, asshole!" The Black Man muttered. "Tans Hansell wasn't any picnic but it's better than being stranded out in the middle of nowhere! Yeah, this is WAY better!"
Telly watched as the group shuffled off while mumbling curses at Telly. The boys then began feeling their necks.
"Our furs! Our furs are gone!" The boys began yelling. "We've got to find Tans! He has furs! We've got to find him!"
"Are you guys serious...?!" Telly exclaimed. "He had you enslaved to him and had you pulling around one of his carts against your will! Now you want to go back?"
"But...he has furs..." Evan said.
Telly rolled his eyes to the heavens, grabbed the boys by their collars, turned them into the opposite direction of where everyone else was headed, and the three of them started walking.
They soon left the glade that they had been in, and emerged into an endless expanse of rolling steppe land, very similar to the step land their neighborhood was built on. The power line pylons turned into the same skirt latticed towers that ran near his home, so Telly figured that they did not have far to go. The boys were bring sullen and recalcitrant towards Telly, as they didn't have any furs now. Telly was starting to rethink his offer to make them a part of his new home.
Eventually they began seeing a cluster of buildings in the distance. As they got closer they saw that they had indeed arrived back at the neighborhood. They left the path and cut across the fields until they came across the barbed wire/thorn hedge barrier. The boys knew of a small gate that was nearby, and they all squeezed through it. They soon found the little dirt road that ran behind all the houses. They walked right past Telly's house, as he didn't want to go in there. Soon, they were right back at Big Bill's, who was sitting on the back porch drinking his beer as usual. They all went up the hill to the house and stood before the fat man.
"So did everyone have a good journey? Did everyone get what they needed?"
"No!" The two boys said at once.
"We have no furs now! None at all!" Michael cried out.
"Relax, relax!" Big Bill said. "If you go up to your room I'm sure that you'll find some furs in there. I got you some at the market. I knew that you would lose yours."
The boys looked at each other in joy and bolted full speed into the house. Tell then sat on the chair next to Bill.
"Telly, so you know, I've decided not to take in anymore children. There are just too many now. It's too much work for Catherine." Bill said.
"Speaking of that Bill," Telly said. "I want to ask you permission to ask Catherine if she wants to set up a new house with me. I'm in love with her. We can take some of the children with us too."
"If you do that then you had might as well take them all. I can't take care of them by myself;."
"I'm sorry Bill, but I love Catherine. She is all I think about."
"Do you think she loves you?'
This caught Telly off guard. "I don't know...I...hope she would."
"What you have to understand about Catherine, is that she doesn't have any love in her. She has a great deal of anger in her. She had a great life going for her before The Move. "
Telly paused. "Bill...while I was on my journey, I met a man who said that you knew what was happening when The Move happened, and that you saw the attack."
Bill sighed. "Yes, he was right. When I heard on the TV that the Russians had fired all their missiles at us, and that we had fired all of ours, I knew I was a dead man. I didn't even try to escape. I figured that even if I did somehow survive, what kind of life would it be? Instead, I got a beer out of my refrigerator and sat on my porch, just like I'm doing now. I remember seeing the missile fly right on by my house. It was making a sputtering noise, like it was running out of fuel. Then I was here."
"That's what I can't figure out, Bill. Why are we all here? What is this place? Why aren't we dead?"
"Telly, we ARE dead. All of us."
Telly then turned to Bill in shock. He was feeling a narcoleptic attack coming on but he fought it off.
"Do you understand much about how the human brain works?" Bill continued. Telly just shook his head.
"No, I don't."
"It takes a signal 1/1000th of a second for any signal to reach the brain. Neural, pain, sensation of heat, anything. By the time that signal hit our brains, our brains were ashes in the wind, Telly."
Telly just stared at Bill in astonishment, and he was starting to realize what had happened.
"Think about it, Telly." Bill continued. "We were alive and then we were not, just like that. Since we never knew that we had died, our subconscious minds never reacted to it. We all died but our subconscious minds lived on. That's why we're all here now. Living frozen in the very moment where our brains and our bodies went up in clouds of vapor. What exactly do you see around you now?"
Telly paused as the answer came into his head. "It's my old neighborhood from when I was a kid."
"And who is everyone that you have seen?"
"It's all people I have known." Telly continued. "Catherine is my girlfriend from high school, Tans Hansell was my boss. You were one of my neighbors. The kids are all kids I knew back in elementary school. I've seen all these places before. I know all these people."
"Exactly. We all see what our own memories and experiences brought with us. Right now I'm sitting and staring at the busy street I used to live on, what are you seeing?"
Telly looked out in front of him. "I'm seeing an endless expanse of fields behind a dirt road...a golf course...it was a golf course. This neighborhood was surrounded by a gold course!"
"And as a child you idealized it as an endless field, stretching to eternity, so that is the image that you brought with you."
"So who do I look like to you?"
"You look like the mailman, Telly."
Telly and Bill both broke out into laughter at that.
"What I'm trying to tell you, is that any pursuit of any relationship, be it with Cathy or anyone else, is impossible here. Neither of you are seeing the same world, she is not seeing you and you're not seeing her. We can only see and experience what we already know of. My recommendation to you, is that you pursue your happiness with whoever came here with you. Stop chasing after ghosts. Appreciate what you have right in front of you that is real. To not do so will only lead to nightmares and despair. Trust me, I've tried it too, it doesn't work, and it`ll drive you crazy.. You simply have to accept what is there."
Telly smiled at Bill, got up from the chair, and went down to the path. He turned and walked back to his house where his parents were. He opened the front door, and as he was expecting, he saw his dad sitting at the kitchen table with his tea and his newspaper.
"Hello Telly? Have you had a busy day?"
Telly smiled. "I sure have, Dad."
"Would you like some tea?"
"Sure Dad. I would love some."
Telly sat down as his dad poured him a cup of tea.
"Doug? Is Telly here?"
"Yeah, I'm here Mom! I'll be right up!" Telly said as he smiled at his dad and took a sip of the tea.
The End