Carol for Another Christmas (17 page)

“Well, yeah, as long as you get to control the whole thing, it's nice enough, I guess,” Sheryl said. “But if you'd been out there in the trenches—”

“Trenches?”

“The malls, the parking lots, the highways, and the various districts within the city, you'd probably be ready to say ‘humbug' to the whole thing again. Why do you think Wayne celebrates online?”

“I thought he was lonely—pining for Miss Banks.”

“No way is that guy lonely. He's rich, generous, and nice as well. Everybody invites him everyplace. But he's also smart—and too nice to make somebody else do his Christmas shopping for him. So he watches the tube and goes out on the Net to play Santa. You don't catch him in the malls, though.”

“Are these malls like the one we visited in our recent trip to Christmas in the past July?” Scrooge asked.

“Worse,” everyone said in unison.

“We should show him,” Melody said. “Otherwise, he's never going to understand why it's just not as easy for modern people to be as enthused about Christmas as Dickens.”

“We can't,” Dave pointed out. “It's past closing time.”

“No, it's not,” Curtis said with a grin, and held up a CD-ROM. “Not for The Mall That Wouldn't Close.”

“That sounds more sinister than Marley ever appeared,” Scrooge said. “What is it?”

“A joke gift a buddy of mine sent me. He video-taped the trip he and his wife made last year to the open-twenty-four-hours-a-day-during-the-holidays supermall to buy gifts for their kids. They went on a Saturday, which was the only day he had off. He turned it into a game on CD-ROM, interactive and updated to this year for the sick, sadistic thrill of sharing it with friends fortunate enough to be able to work through the holidays.”

“It probably won't play with Scrooge still jamming the lines,” John pointed out.

But the others urged Curtis to try, and he inserted the metallic disk in its little round bed and returned it to its berth within the computer. Nothing happened.

Then, above Scrooge's head, the Program Manager lit up in shining gilt letters and beneath it, a drop menu appeared, with the word
enter
illuminated by golden light.

Curtis looked around him and motioned to the others, who nodded, and everyone piled fingers atop the enter key.

Immediately, Scrooge found himself horribly cramped in a small, enclosed space that seemed to be barreling along as if it were rolling down a moun tainside. Beside him, Melody scruched sideways and on her other side, Curtis sat behind a platter-sized wheel. In back of him was the pressure of bodies piled upon bodies and the grunts, squeals, and giggles of the other young Databanks employees.

The most alarming thing was that all around them swarmed thousands upon thousands of red and white lights. Some flashed toward them like comets; some winked malevolently. All were smeared with the constant downpour that was removed and replaced, removed and replaced, with the swiping of businesslike-looking blades attached to the window through which he regarded the scene.

“Isn't this awesome?” Melody asked. “With Eb on board, Curtis's program went virtual.”

“Way cool,” someone else agreed.

But Sheryl said, “If I'd wanted to go Christmas shopping, I'd have done it by myself or with my sister, during the day, and I'd have picked my time. This is like a virtual nightmare. Anybody see the escape button?”

“Be brave, babe,” Phillip told her in a grim, tight voice. “We seem to be in it for the duration.”

“Where are we exactly?” Scrooge asked. “And are these hellish lights supposed to be decorative? I don't care for them at all.”

“I-5 South,” Curtis said, also grimly. “And no, the lights are for safety. Look closely and you'll see that the red ones are attached to the back ends of cars—”

“Railroad cars?” Scrooge asked.

“Uh—horseless carriages, Eb,” Miriam's voice said, and he felt a small hand giving him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

“And the white lights are attached to the front ends of the cars,” Curtis finished.

“Then those are coming
toward
us?” Scrooge asked, feeling quite alarmed until he recalled that he was, in fact, already dead and so presumably a fatal collision could do him little harm. He wasn't sure what the effects would be on the young people, but although they didn't seem to be enjoying the ride much more than he did, they did appear to be rather used to it.

“In most places they're on a different road, going the other direction, with a big grass strip or trees or concrete—”

“Or a two-hundred-foot drop to oblivion below—” Phillip's voice interjected.

“Between them and us. We're pretty safe—”

The rest of her sentence was cut off as a pair of white lights overtook them from behind, and Scrooge had the impression of tons of steel shooting past them like a charging elephant ridden by an enraged mad-man before it inserted itself in front of them, blinking its red lights at them. Suddenly, the entire conveyance containing Scrooge and his party slammed to a halt, squealing like a pig being roasted alive.

All around them similar sounds filled the air. Curtis uttered an oath.

“What is it?” Scrooge asked. “What's wrong?”

“Traffic jam ahead. Probably an accident like that butthead up in front almost caused us to have.”

“Oh, dear,” Scrooge said. And then the lot of them waited tensely for what seemed like hours until finally their vehicle was allowed to creep along, encased on all sides by many other vehicles. Similar incidents occured no fewer than ten times until at last, when Scrooge inquired, “Another one?” Curtis answered, “Naw. Now we're just looking for a parking place.”

“Ah,” Scrooge said with satisfaction, thinking that with their arrival, their unpleasant interlude would soon be over.

However, after an hour and a half of playing tag with great, long lines of cars, when Curtis pulled into a parking place and the vehicle breathed a sigh of relief to be divested of its human cargo, Scrooge was nearly knocked down by another car looking for its parking place. Or he would have been knocked down and possibly seriously injured had he not had the good fortune to be a ghost.

In the distance, within a vast field of vehicles as numerous and thickly massed as sand on the sea-shore, loomed an enormous building or series of buildings, many-tiered and many-doored. Scrooge could not tell if it was a factory or a castle, but he was assured by his companions that it was, in fact, the mall.

“Keep together, people,” Curtis said in the manner of a captain of the Royal Grenadiers. “We have no idea how this VR works. Mess up, and you could be Christmas shopping for all eternity.”

By the brilliant white lights suspended over the field of vehicles and by the roaming lights of the parking-space-ravenous vehicles themselves, Scrooge saw his companions give a collective shudder.

The people in the parking lot reminded Scrooge a bit of London. People of every age and no doubt every occupation funneled through the doors, where each individual became another striving unit in the teeming mass of humanity jamming the aisles and hallways. Scrooge and his companions could scarcely see each other.

“Oh, look,” Curtis said, pointing to a glowing rectangle in his hand. “A virtual shopping list.”

“This just gets to be more fun by the minute, doesn't it?” Sheryl asked with patently false brightness.

“I think we'd better try to complete it, though,” Curtis said. “This is a game, after all. I doubt we can leave until we're done. Either that or find the escape button again.”

“Maybe we
should
split up—” Dave began.

“No way. Here's what we need.” The list that followed was prodigious: “One God-Empress-of-the-Universe Barbie; spaceship for same, with carrying case that converts to launchpad for spaceship; women's medium blue robe and slippers, size nine; Nuke 'Em Playtime Plastique Explosive set with choice of colors for mushroom cloud—we want red; a soccer ball; a set of Magick cards; Trek uniform, size three;
The Cat Wore Black Pajamas
.”

“Oh, yeah, my cousin read that,” Phillip said. “It's about a cat detective in Vietnam. It's the new one in that series of The Cat Wore mystery books. You know,
The Cat Wore Spats
,
The Cat in the Hawaiian Shirt
,
The Cat in the Cravat
. Those books.”

Curtis continued the list, naming many other books in the mystery and science fiction genres. Also included were a Starbucks gift pack; an espresso-making machine; an Investigative Reporter kit complete with tape recorder, binoculars, and a complete set of lock picks; six boxes of ebony dark chocolate Frango mints; bubble bath; stationery with kitties; and finally, “a Miss Cocoa to keep Mr. Coffee and Mrs. Tea company in the well-appointed gourmet kitchen, I suppose,” Curtis concluded.

“That is a great many gifts!” Scrooge said. “Does everyone give so freely these days?”

“Oh, these are just the last- minute gifts,” Curtis said. “They'd already done most of their shopping online or on the interactive cable, through catalogs, or the TV shopping channel. These are just the items they couldn't get that way.”

“But, merciful heavens!” Scrooge said. “While I don't know what things cost these days, I would imagine the price of these items alone could have supported the Cratchits for several years or paid the mortgage on one of my debtors' homes.”

Curtis had to shout to be heard above the disembodied Christmas carols, the wails of tired children, the whirring of cash registers, and the rumble of voices from which an occasional “Excuse me,” “Do you have this in a nine?” “May I please get by?” “Ooops,” and “Watch where you're going” surfaced like passengers from a sinking ship just before they drowned in the tide.

“But where will we find all these things?” Scrooge asked.

Scrooge observed that Miriam tried to shrug, but while her shoulders did go up, she didn't have room to put them down again in the crush of people surrounding her.

The aisles were packed with goods and so were very narrow, and the people spilled off to either side. Slowly, and more or less together, Scrooge and his companions made their way through the emporium into a broad, enclosed pedestrian thoroughfare similar to the one he had seen in July, but with many more side streets and a much longer central avenue. Here the flow of people from the various doorways merely contributed to a great river of humanity surging along. The people were often attired in red and green, the cheery colors of Christmas, but they appeared harried, anxious, and distinctly
un
cheery, one and all. So heavily did the mob push that Scrooge found, to his unexpected satisfaction, that his own less-than-corporeal form was squeezed upward so that he was forced to float above the populace.

The air was thinner above the crowd, but since Scrooge no longer breathed, he scarcely minded. It was much better than having people walk through one. The others in his party appeared to be every bit as solid as the rest of the shoppers, but he supposed that if one was a ghost in actuality, one would remain a ghost in what the youngsters called “virtual reality” as well. His only change seemed to be that as a virtual ghost, he was more subject to being squeezed upward than to being walked through, or to walking through others. Really, this worked to his advantage.

From this lofty position, he could keep the others in sight as they dodged from one side of the avenue to the other, entering stores. He had little difficulty sailing under the wide, high doorways well above the heads of the customers.

The young people, being geniuses, quickly found a way to use Scrooge's position to further their own ends.

“Eb, can you see the Barbie, God-Empress-of-the-Universe, doll anywhere?” Miriam asked. He wasn't surprised she asked. She was not a tall woman, and many people towered over her, blocking her view of the goods.

“The doll section seems to be over to your right, my dear,” he said, “and upon a very high shelf I see one last doll with an improbable approximation of a lady's—er—physique. She is wearing a most elaborate costume and beside her is a rocket. Perhaps Harald should go with you, as he is somewhat taller than you, and could fetch it down more easily?”

“Roger, Mr. S.,” Harald said, and the two of them, with a little further coaching, soon located the doll, took her to the counter, and found, to their relief, they also had a virtual credit card with which to pay for her.

Similarly, Scrooge was able to help them secure other purchases. From the toy store, they fought their way to the music store; from the music store to the bookstore; from the bookstore to the household goods store; winning every step, swimming with the tide at times so swiftly as to be swept past their goal, at other times swimming against it so that it seemed each inch had to be gained many times over before progress was made. Not only that, but sometimes several stores had to be checked before the desired object could be obtained. If it were not found in this mall, Scrooge had no doubt that the penalty would be that they must forever roam the malls of America until they acquired that final gift. It reminded him uncomfortably of Marley's chains and cash boxes.

The young people looked very weary, and with every new purchase, the bundle of things grew that they had to haul down the long aisles, safeguarding it from the depredations of the mob.

At last, triumphantly, Harald placed the last gift, the Miss Cocoa, on the counter at the store. Then there remained only the task of carrying it all back the way they had come, relocating their vehicle, and braving the highways once more.