The Mall Read online

  Why was the sign working and not the elevator, he asked himself. For that matter, why were some of the emergency lights still functioning?

  At that moment, both the digital message flickered and a nearby wall light dimmed several watts.

  They’re on a separate circuit, he hypothesized. Probably a battery.

  But didn’t the Bots run on batteries? So why then had some of them frozen up?

  Owen knew the fact that he had noticed these discrepancies put him in a class above most ten-year-olds. He knew that he was a sharp kid. Not that it helped in his current situation.

  Nothing was making sense. He was beginning to feel every bit the shortcomings of his ten years of experience and knew he was ill-equipped to deal with the overwhelming events that had been dropped at his feet. He ached for anything familiar.

  Grandma Charley!

  It was a more logical choice than being thrown outside with total strangers. If he couldn’t get up there using the elevator, surely there must be a stairway.

  He turned down the hallway adjacent to the bank of elevators. The corridor was completely dark except for a single dim exit sign at the end and tiny slivers of light spilling out from beneath the twin bathroom doors.

  Owen tried the unmarked door just under the exit sign and discovered it unlocked. He stuck his head within the stair well and peered up into the pitch black darkness beyond, listening to the distant whistling of air currents. Was that fresh air coming from a rooftop door?

  In his enthusiasm, he slipped inside and started up the first step, letting go of the door. An instant later, a terrifying thought occurred to him and he leapt back down into the path of the door, wedging his foot in the doorway before it could close. He conceded the very real possibility that the door might lock behind him, and if the doors above were also locked, he could be trapped here indefinitely, in total darkness no less.

  Leaning his back up against the door, he untied his shoe and yanked off his sock, moist from nervous sweat. Tucking it into a firm ball, he wedged it between the jamb and the locking mechanism of the door. It eased shut, held open by the sock ball.

  That should hold for a few minutes until he could check out the state of the doors upstairs.

  Replacing his shoe, he took one deliberate step at a time, holding the handrail firmly and peering up into the slowly graying darkness. He decided that there must be an operating emergency light somewhere up above and sure enough as his eyes slowly adjusted, he discovered that he was capable of finding the steps with his eyes rather than by reaching out blindly with his foot.

  The door to the second floor was unlocked. Peering within, he saw a hallway and set of bathrooms identical to the one downstairs. He closed it gently and continued up.

  Third and fourth floor door, unlocked.

  When he reached the fifth floor—the first floor on the apartment level--he found the source of the light shining dimly through a protective metal cage.

  He reached tentatively out and tugged on the door handle. It was firmly locked. He rushed up to the sixth and seventh floor doors and found them locked as well. He tried some knocking, then some pounding, but he got no response. Taking one final shot, he trekked the last flight of stairs he assumed led to the roof and found that locked as well.

  Finally, he was forced to return to the first floor, the feeling in his stomach growing prickly with anxiety at each step he took. He had begun to realize that he was alone now, separated from his family by locked doors on one end and distance on the other.

  For the first time, he recognized that there was a short flight of stairs leading down. He trotted down and opened the last remaining door. Behind it, a vast dark open space stretched out before him and he realized that it must be the subterranean moving platform level that he’d heard about on the TV commercials for the Mall and from his friends. He’d heard of some kids running races on the platforms to see who could get to the end the fastest.

  He could feel a steady flow of air against his face and wondered about the source of it, though he knew there was no way he could gather up enough courage to walk blindly into that open field of darkness to find out. Instead, he returned to the first floor.

  Pulling his sock out of the door and carrying it over to a nearby bench, he pulled it back on over his bare foot as he considered his choices. The only alternative he could see was to head back to the theater and hope that Mom and Cora would still be there. Who was he kidding? It seemed logical to him that they would have left with all the others and were probably sitting in the car right now, cursing him for all the trouble he had caused them.

  He was truly alone now.

  His knees gave a brief but violent shake and he had to lock them to keep his balance. All those times he’d wished he could’ve been born an only child or that his mother would drop dead returned to him with a bitter taste of well-timed irony.

  So, now that you got your wish, Big Man, what exactly are you going to do now?

  7

  Albert wandered through the darkened corridors of the Mall in a stupor, radio lying dead in his hand. He tried a few doors and discovered that they were locked. This didn’t alarm him in the least. He dimly recalled learning during the security orientation and training that in the event of natural disaster or civil unrest, the Mall would enter “lockdown mode.”

  Essentially, this meant that all entrances and exits would automatically close to contain possible shoplifting or looting, what they in the retail industry referred to as “shrinkage.”

  When someone on staff would use this term, Albert often thought that this was the perfect descriptive term for both the theft of goods, as well as the effect the loss would have on the individual private parts of Mall shareholders when they discovered what said stolen items would cost them in profit.

  At the moment, however, Albert was not making this wry observation. The Albert-that-he-had-once-been was currently “away from his desk.”

  He wasn’t sure he would ever be capable of expressing humor again since his discovery that he might very well be a machine, along with everyone else in the world.

  No, Albert wasn’t alarmed by the locked doors he kept finding throughout the Mall.

  On the contrary, the fact that the Mall performed the way it had been designed during a time of apparent emergency was instead a great comfort to him.

  He reached into his pocket for the object he knew was there, but yanked his hand back out in alarm. He couldn’t think about what was in there anymore, because it only confused him.

  Since he’d had his revelation--his epiphany--that people were machines, the object in his pocket had begun to make less and less sense. Best just to shelf it for now, he decided, and get on with the job at hand.

  Which was what?

  Fulfill your function.

  But what was that exactly?

  He continued through the darkened Mall, hoping his legs would lead him along the right path. For if he was truly a machine, shouldn’t he be following a program at this moment?

  What he found the most vexing was the way the others would approach him—hysterical, panicky—asking for answers, bleating for guidance like mindless sheep. He supposed that they couldn’t be blamed for running their own corresponding programs. As long as their routines didn’t conflict with his own, there wouldn’t be a problem.

  “Head to the northern-most exit,” he would tell them, one after the other, repeating the words like a mantra. “Head north.” He knew that per protocol, the only escape would be the central entrance to the Mall.

  “But that’s, what, like a mile away,” they would complain, some burdened down with their purchases—being the shopping and complaining machines that they were. “I can’t walk that far. I require assistance! Get me a Bot!”

  Albert knew that all the Mall service Bots were programmed to lead groups toward the North entrance. He also could see that a great many of the Bots—nearly three out of four in his crude on-the-scene calculations--had been deactivated, thoug
h he wasn’t exactly sure why. The batteries running the Bots were supposed to store enough energy to work at least a week on a full charge and the batteries recharged themselves throughout the day on simple sunlight alone.

  They had failed to function as they had been designed.

  They were faulty machines.

  But he couldn’t explain all this to those people (machines), because it would simply be a waste of his time and energy.

  It would be inefficient.

  An unwise use of resources.

  So, he would often turn and walk away, sometimes giving a shrug, sometimes repeating that phrase burned into his personal hard drive. “Head north.”

  Then they would explode with emotion— being the emotion producing machines that they were--something that was becoming more and more foreign to him. They would flail their arms and fling their curses, having as much effect on him as frothy sea water rolling over the surface of a great stone.

  At one point, he’d even gripped the Faze-Wand at his hip and experimentally depressed the button along its shaft, hoping the dramatic crackle and blue arc of electricity that would flicker from the two prongs at its business end might affect the enthusiasm of some of the more annoying ones.

  The wand had been as dead as his radio. Not even a buzz.

  Another faulty machine that failed to do its job.

  But how could he blame the people (machines) for attempting to fulfill their function, no matter how mundane that particular duty might be? He felt it best just to avoid them for now.

  So, he steered clear of the north entrance, away from the sounds and confusion of human beings (other machines), working his way south, deeper and deeper into the slowly thickening darkness of the Mall as one by one hour by hour light source after light source would die, depleted of its stored solar charge. There were some areas that had gone completely black except for the faint glow of the one-quarter crescent moon peering down through the glass central ceiling, giving him just enough light to avoid any missteps.

  Though he tested the flashlight on his hip and knew that it was another malfunctioning machine, he preferred the dark anyway. He felt comfortable there. The lack of vision seemed to enhance his hearing. He could hear every footstep and voice as it faded in the distance. He could hear the flutter of every bird that had made its nest in the rafters above, confused by the sudden onset of darkness for the first time in their artificial world of constant daylight.

  Were they machines as well, he wondered? Tiny nest-building, flying and shitting machines?

  Even the voice of the Mall itself he could hear. Every little creak and groan of settling material, like a living entity around him, protecting him, shielding him, coaxing him along its pathways like blood itself flowing through healthy wide veins.

  “Lamia?”

  Albert cocked his head down towards his dead radio. He reached blindly out, found it in its pocket on his belt and lifted it to his ear tentatively.

  “We’re almost alone you and I.”

  The concept of being alone there inside a complex the size of a city, sent a chill of almost erotic proportions up his legs and into the core below his belly. Suddenly, he wanted to be alone in the dark vastness more than he had ever wanted anything. To lie on the floor in the center of the Mall and watch the sun rise in the glass overhead. To be alone with the Mall as it awoke from its slumber.

  Albert made a pleasant hum in the back of his throat in response.

  “But there are others still here,” the voice from the radio told him. “You know what they are, despite their appearance, don’t you?”

  Albert nodded, picturing the two punks in his head. “Yes, they are skateboarding, law-breaking machines,” Albert answered. “But I don’t know how to find them.”

  “I will show you.”

  Then suddenly, a tiny light appeared in the vast darkness some distance ahead and Albert started toward it dutifully.

  8

  “Owen?” Lara hissed from her position just inside the entrance of the E-Bot store.

  The hiss of static came from the hand-crank radio/flashlight in Cora’s hand. She had been searching from one side of the dial to the other almost constantly since she’d discovered the function, though there hadn’t been the slightest bit of break in the white noise.

  She snapped a finger at the child in frustration. “Turn that off, Cora, so I can hear!”

  The beam of her flashlight skipped around the darkened E-Bot store from one frozen display to another, reflecting light back to her whenever it would strike glass or plastic turned in just the right position.

  “Owen, this is your mother,” she raised her voice. “If you’re hiding from me, so help me I’ll…” Wrong tactic, her intuition screamed, as she continued deeper into the store. “Owen, I’m not mad at you, hon. I’m just worried, s’all. Please come out if you’re still here.”

  Briefly, the light skipped over the disc-like eyes of a short Bot about the same height as Owen, sending out a momentarily flash. Lara took a step toward it and heard the servo-motors within buzz weakly. The perfectly round eyes swiveled around toward her, reflecting the light back at her.

  Lara gasped and stumbled backwards a step into Cora.

  Attracted by the movement, she told herself. It’s as dead as every other piece of electronic equipment in here.

  She spun on her heel and took Cora’s hand. “C’mon, he’s not here.”

  Lara swung out of the store entrance and looked first one way, then the other, listening for sounds of security personnel, who in the absence of any public announcement system or bullhorn had all taken to using the old fashioned method of Vox Humana. It was especially convenient for anyone trying to avoid them.

  Cora gave her flashlight another series of cranks and switched on the static. “Mommy, I can’t get any stations. Am I doing something wrong?” the five year-old asked.

  Unwilling to admit to even herself what that might mean, Lara exchanged the radio/flashlight for the one she’d been using. “Something’s probably wrong with that one. Here, can you do Mommy a big favor and crank this one up for me? The light’s starting to dim.”

  The child took the light and diligently began to crank it, wearing an intense expression.

  Lara switched the setting back to the light bulb icon on the side. The beam was strong and with good reason. Cora had been winding the crank almost constantly since they’d left the Radio Shack. Coraline Myers was a pleaser. Give her an assignment and she’d work it as long as the praise kept rolling in.

  To Lara’s surprise, several lights remained in the hallway which led to the Repair Shop.

  “We’re going to see the Wizard,” she responded, leading Cora up the hallway to a familiar door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.” Ignoring the red button marked “Service,” she noticed that the door had been cocked open with a wooden wedge. Lara pushed it open and stepped through. “Hello,” she called aloud.

  No voice answered. No light came through the round port-holed doors of the Bot operating room.

  “Stay right here in the light where I can see you,” Lara told Cora, sliding the wedge further down the edge of the open door, so that more of the light from the hallway spilled through into the foyer.

  “No, Mommy,” Cora said with alarm. “Don’t leave me.”

  Lara looked back at Cora with concern. “Cora, I won’t leave you.”

  “Owen left,” the five-year-old stated bluntly.

  “I’ll never leave you,” Lara snapped, planting a kiss in the center of her head. She took Cora by the hand and pushed open one of the swinging doors.

  Peering inside, she saw him sitting at his cluttered desk, head bowed, a single votive candle lit beside a thick book. Her first impression was that the mechanic—for she had no better name for him—was asleep.

  “Hello,” she said, in a barely audible rasp.

  For a moment, the mechanic remained still, then suddenly his head gave a subtle jerk and he turned smoothly around toward L
ara, eyes blinking sleepily at her.

  Oh, this is pointless, Lara suddenly thought. The whole Mall is falling down around our ears and this guy is reading by candlelight. This guy was a dead end, not worth exploring.

  Lara spun around and had already started out into the hallway before she even lifted her eyes. The big silver robot had already skipped back a step to avoid colliding with her. “Oh!” she gasped. “I’m sorry.”

  “My apologies, ma’am,” the familiar silver robot said in its deep melodious voice. “I did not mean to startle you.”

  “Hello… Reggie, is it?”

  “Yes, thank you for remembering, ma’am,” it replied, its head turning to Cora, blue eyes flashing brightly. “Hello, little ma’am.”

  “Hello, Reggie,” Cora whispered, glancing apologetically at her mother. “Can you help me find my brother Owen?”

  The silver robot’s eyes flickered. “Accessing historical data files. Owen Eugene Myers entered the Mall of the Nation today at 545 pm, Central Standard Time, accompanied by Lara Lynn Myers and Coraline Justine Myers. His face was scanned in the system and was subsequently tracked a total of twenty-five additional times in the course of seven hours. Reported lost by his mother Lara Myers at exactly 242 am. Last known location was…” The blue eyes flickered. “Last known location was… processing.” The blue eyes continued to flicker. “Processing.”

  Lara instinctually checked the watch on her wrist, the hands frozen at around ten minutes before three.

  “I am sorry for the inconvenience, but the network officially failed at 248 am. As a result, there is no record of the last known location of Owen Eugene Myers.”

  “What’s the current time?”

  Reggie’s eyes flashed. “Internal clock reports 327 am.”

  “Could you please check to see if my child left the Mall with the others who were evacuated?” Lara moved closer to the mechanized man, unable to fight the biological urge to ingratiate herself with another who could provide aid to her, though she was aware in the background of her mind that her proximity could in no way influence the machine. The Bot would either help her or not. Though she knew it had been programmed to help a human being if asked, she feared that a higher priority might restrict it.