Satan's Dollar Store & other stories

The System

Forty Seven? Jax stared at the card in disbelief. How could it possible say Forty Seven? Only yesterday it had told him Thirty Four and what had he done since then? Nothing. Nothing at all. Maybe Hellas was right. Maybe the whole thing was nonsense. But how could that be true? Everything depended on The System. Everything. If it were all based on nothing, how could anything even function? How could the whole world work? And yet it worked, or at least some parts of it did sometimes. Right now he couldn't be sure. The line wasn't moving at all. What was that lady doing up there? Come on, lady, move! The seventeen other people ahead of him in line were also beginning to grumble and murmur. It was, after all, a public kiosk, meant for everyone, not just for one foolish woman wearing a red beret and a black rain slicker. Jax had seen this kind of blockage before. It was only a matter of moments before the mood turned nasty. The woman seemed to sense the panic growing behind her. She stepped aside, still clutching the card in her hand. As she turned, Jax saw she'd been crying. Well, that can't be helped, he reminded himself. The System is and The System knows. She is probably less than Twenty, Jax decided from her expression. That's a less than Twenty look if I ever saw one.

Jax had been fourteen when The System became. They say it was a man named Peter who invented it. No one ever knew his last name, only that he was rumored to be a good man, a kind man, who had only goodness and kindness in mind when he made his discovery. They said all sorts of things about Peter. Thirty years later, it was likely Peter was dead and gone by now, having lived to see his concept spread its wings and literally take over the world. There was no corner on Earth now not under its sway, from the most populated city on the planet to the most remote village in the most secluded jungle.

The System ranked and rated everything on a scale of One to One Hundred. Everything. Whether it was a business or a person or a movie or a book or a recipe or philosophy or a dress shirt or a comb, if it existed it was rated, ranked and rated on the scale. The scale itself had never changed, never budged, but the things it listed underwent continuous change, radical and constant continuous change. Jax was holding a proof in his hand. Forty Seven on his card. Thirty Four yesterday, and yet in between he'd done nothing, or at least nothing he could think of. What did I do? He wondered again, to fall Thirteen points? His score had never moved so much in a day, not in all those thirty years.

Of course, he'd heard of such things, even much more massive swings. There was the day that ValTech dropped a round Ninety whole points, and the entire company vanished overnight. It could happen. Jax remembered, even if no one ever talked about it anymore. Why talk about such things? ValTech had been a Ninety after all! Wasn't that a wonder all by itself? One should be happy with such a rating. Surely all the ValTech people were proud of that achievement, however it had come about. Jax loved to speculate, even though Hellas wouldn't listen and told him not to. He had looked into it. ValTech, the company, had never done anything, nothing at all. They had never produced a product, never documented a document, never expounded upon a single exposition. They were "Tech" and they represented "Value". The Val in ValTech stood for Value. This is the only fact that was ever known about the company. They were Value and they were once a Ninety, and then they fell, and then they were gone.

Fourteen people ahead of him now. Twenty three people behind him on Copernicus Boulevard. The weather was drizzly and humid. The sky was iron and the air was still. He was still outside the storefront windows of The Broken Wheel. Fourteen people ahead of him, now only thirteen as a happy young man skipped off to the side and down the street, waving his card like a miniature flag on a national holiday parade. Good for him, Jax said to himself. Nice is nice, and happy is good. He had been happy just yesterday. Forty Seven was the highest recorded in his personal experience. The charts showed him swelling to that peak over a period of weeks of two or three points forward, one or two points back. He had been following Hellas' rules. Compliance in all things. Being Kind as a way of life. Going Out Of His Way to be Helpful and Considerate. Smiling Upon All Occasions. Hellas had liked him better those past several weeks, had even helped to bake a fresh pie, had even brought home some bacon. She was, as usual, well ahead of him, never having sagged beneath a Sixty, and usually upwards of a Seventy Two.