Руди Рюкер - Master Of Space And Time

Instead of glass doors, the supermarket had air curtains. These were sheets of cool air blown down from a grate overhead to be sucked into a grate in the threshold. We breezed into the store and looked around. Oh, man.

No-cal soft drinks, weight-watcher TV dinners, and diet junk food, all heavily vitaminized. This provender was at a double remove from reality: it was artificially made food that had been further treated in an attempt to make it healthy. There was nothing real in sight: no meat, no veggies, no booze.

I began to lose my temper. "What would you like, Harry? You can bet it's not here. God, you're stupid. Who else would go to a world the exact opposite of what he wants? Just look at this crap!" I kicked at a bin of one-calorie cupcakes.

"Watch your language, fella!" A round-shouldered man who must have been the manager poked his head around some shelves to glare at us. His face was coarse and humorless. When he spotted Sondra his cheeks grew red. "And get that slut out of here! She's practically naked!"

I sprang to Sondra's defense. Sure she had big breasts and a low-cut dress, but that didn't make her any less a friend. Far from it. I stepped threateningly toward the manager. "You're the one who'd better watch his language, jerk. Slug him, Harry!"

No one was watching, so Harry went ahead and punched the man in the stomach. What with Harry's superpowers, the punch doubled the manager right up. Eager to do my part for Sondra, I reached out and slammed my fist down on the hump between the man's shoulder blades.

To my surprise the hump was soft. It burst with a muffled plotz, and fluid began seeping through the manager's coat. The poor man's body shivered a few times and then he was dead.

"Oh, my God," I said in horror. "I–I didn't mean to kill him. I never thought that —"

"I'll move it out of here before someone sees it," Harry said tensely. "I can do teleportation. Just…"

Harry knitted his brows, and then the body was gone. I felt better almost immediately. This world wasn't really real, was it?

"That was bad," said Sondra. "Let's leave."

"We might as well get a couple of six packs of soda," I suggested. "Once we're outside, Harry can turn them into beer. We'll steal a car and go cruising."

"Sound thinking, Fletch. The old water-to-wine routine."

"That was nice of you two to stick up for me," mused Sondra. "Being beautiful isn't always pleasant. Do you think our money's good here?"

"We'll see. Be ready for trouble."

We took our place in the checkout line. A few people stared at Sondra with mingled lust and hatred, but for the moment everything was cool. I watched the checker, trying to anticipate any problems.

The checker was a pleasant-faced blond woman with Burnita on her name tag. She wore a gold chain with a pendant — a little silver chair. She scanned each product with a little light pencil. Everything had a patch of thick and thin lines, a Universal Product Code, just like back home. A cord fed the UPC information into a small console at Burnita's side. But instead of presenting each customer with a bill, she ran the light pencil across the client's forehead. Apparently there was some kind of invisible Universal Consumer Code tattooed on each of these people's brows. An efficient system, to be sure: a central computer could deduct your purchases from your credit holdings on a real-time basis. But, I wondered, what would happen if you let yourself become badly overdrawn?

Just then I found out. The customer in front of us was a ratlike little man with a tube of cheese food and three bottles of cough medicine. Clearly an unsavory individual, and just the type to let his credit holdings slip deep into the red.

Burnita seemed to feel the same way, and addressed him by name. "Now, Abie, are you sure you've got the credit for all this?"

Abie snarled something incoherent and pushed his selections toward the checker. She shrugged, and scanned first the product codes and then the invisible code on Abie's forehead. Nothing happened, and I breathed a sigh of relief. We were next. I reached in my pocket, feeling for some bills. Surely you didn't have to use credit. I hoped not, because all our foreheads were blank, which might…

FFZZZAAAAAATT!

A great sheet of electricity filled the supermarket entrance. Those two air-curtain grates were electrodes, powerful energy sources programmed to crisp anyone who ran up too high a tab. Abie's ashes spun raggedly. The floor grate sucked them out of sight.

"Oh, my," Burnita sighed. "That's the second one this week. It's hard for them, you know, since there's no other way to get food. You folks just want these sodas?" I suddenly realized that the little silver chair hanging from Burnita's neck was an electric chair. "Uh, wait." I drew out some money. "Can we pay cash?"

The checker's pleasant face grew tense and puzzled. "Is this some kind of joke? Come on, folks, which of you should I bill?" She raised the light pen toward my forehead. God only knew what would happen if they found out we were uncoded.

"Harry! Get us out of here!"

A moment of disorientation and then we were back outside in the parking lot. A harsh alarm bell was ringing.

"As long as you can do teleportation, Harry, why not just take us back to the blunzing chamber?"

"Aw, that wouldn't be any fun. I want to keep the super-stuff to a minimum. And what's the big rush to leave? We just got here!"

"Let's steal a car like Joe said," urged Sondra. "I've always wanted to be a big blond in a stolen getaway car."

"What are we getting away with?" I asked sourly.

"The soda!" Prettily she raised the two six-packs up like earrings. She looked like Marilyn in The Misfits.

"It's beer now," said Harry. "Let's take that Cad." We piled into a big white Cadillac with black leather upholstery. Sondra got in front with Harry, and I got in back with the beer. It was nice and roomy in there, almost as big as my bedroom back in Princeton. I wondered if Nancy was worried about me yet.

Harry psych-started the car and peeled out.

"There must be a bad part of town," he muttered, slewing into the traffic. "That's where we should go. Someone there'll tell us what's really going on here. I think we should try and overthrow the government." Harry dodged some cars and gave a whoop of laughter. We were still accelerating.

"This is neat," Sondra giggled. "Give me a beer, Joe."

"You two are getting overconfident," I warned. "If some cop shoots us from behind, then Harry's superpowers aren't going to be worth a damn." Grudgingly I opened three beers. Ah.

Harry flipped on the radio. It was an evangelist, of course, this being a world of bad choices.

"… hatred," said the radio. "Yes, hatred, my fellow Herberites. Gary came to preach hatred. I know this may sound strange to some of you out there in the radio audience, but it's not a matter of conjecture. God hates the unbeliever, just as the unbeliever hates Gary Herber. Yes, friends, it's true. Just look at the facts! On the one hand, we have Seth and Gary Herber bringing the clean wholesomeness of God's Laws. On the other, we have the unbelievers, with their trumped-up charges and their public electrocution. Seth Herber died, yes, he died for mankind. But thanks to the blessed Scionization, Gary Herber lives with thousands of us, friends, and he's ready to —"

A laser blast shattered our rear window. Cops behind us, gaining fast. I threw myself down on the seat. "Teleportation time, Harry. Can you handle the whole car?"

"No problem."

Disorientation again, and then we were coasting down a street of abandoned Moorish-style white stucco buildings with parapets around their flat roofs. Hard, midday sun overhead. The sirens were far away. Harry pulled up onto the curb and we got out. Shadows moved behind the buildings' broken windows.