Jim looked at me, I shrugged, and he pulled into the space. We opened up the van doors and got out, stretching, our bodies cramped and tired after spending so much time in the vehicle. I walked up to the man, not sure of what to say.
He took the pipe out of his mouth, smiled at me. “You must be Bob,” he said.
I nodded.
“Dan called. Told me you’d be coming. I’m Ralph Johnson, mayor here.” He held out a thick hand, which I shook. “I’m also the welcoming committee and the adjustment coordinator, which means that it’s my responsibility to show you around, answer your questions, find you a place to live, and find you jobs if you intend to live here.”
“Questions, huh?” Don shook his head. “We have a lot of those.”
“Everyone always does.” He looked us over, each of us, nodding to himself as he did so and puffing on his pipe. “Dan said he was very impressed with you guys. And gal,” he added, nodding toward Mary. “He must have been. That’s the first time he’s called home since he left.”
“Really?” I said, surprised.
“I guess it was because you were all together. As you’ve probably noticed, people who are Ignored don’t tend to travel in packs. They don’t organize. But you guys…” He shook his head. “You guys are really something.”
“Philipe,” I said. “That would be Philipe.” I wanted to give credit where credit was due. “He’s the one who started the terrorists, got us all together.”
“The terrorists?”
“Terrorists for the Common Man. It was Philipe’s idea. He thought we’d been Ignored long enough. He thought we should act as terrorists on behalf of all the people who were Ignored, who couldn’t or wouldn’t stand up for themselves.”
Ralph shook his head admiringly. “This Philipe must be quite a man. Where is he now?”
“He’ll be coming in the next day or so, with another group of us.” James looked over at me questioningly. I knew he was wondering if he should bring up what had happened. I shook my head.
“I’ll be looking forward to it,” Ralph said. “In the meantime, I guess we should start on your orientation. Why don’t you begin by telling me your names and where you’re from. Introduce yourselves.”
We gave our names and hometowns, brief bios.
The mayor took his pipe from his mouth when we were through, looked at us thoughtfully. “I don’t know quite how to put this,” he said. “There’s no way to say it except to just say it. Have you all, uh, — ”
“Killed our bosses?” I asked.
He smiled, nodded, relieved. “Yes.”
“Yeah,” I told him. “We have.”
“Then welcome to Thompson.” He started walking slowly up the cement path toward the blocky building. “We’ll get you signed in and signed up and then we’ll be all ready to go.”
The mayor’s office, on the first floor of city hall, looked disconcertingly like a larger version of my office at Automated Interface. There was only one window — a small glass square overlooking the side parking lot. The rest of the room was blank, the walls bare, the desk covered with bureaucratic papers, no trace of personalization anywhere. We were given forms to fill out, generic questionnaires that looked like job applications but were supposedly “residency declarations.”
After a few minutes, Jim looked up from his form. “You guys have stores here, homes, a city hall. How come this place isn’t on any map?”
“Because this is not a real town. Not technically. It’s owned by Thompson Industries. They test-market their products here. If we don’t like them, then they figure the average American won’t like them. We get all the free products we want: food, clothes, electronic equipment, household appliances. We get it all.”
I felt a sudden hollowness in my gut. “You mean this city wasn’t founded by the Ignored for the Ignored?”
“Hell, no.”
“It’s not a real Ignored city then.”
“Sure it is. To a certain extent. I mean, we’re left alone here, we’re completely autonomous. It’s just that — ”
“Just that Thompson owns the land and the buildings, and you work for the company instead of yourselves.” James put down his pen.
Ralph laughed heartily. “It’s not as bad as all that. I admit, the concept may take some getting used to, but after a while, you don’t even think about it. For all intents and purposes, this is our city.”
A thought occurred to me. “If you’re a subsidiary of Thompson here, if the corporation bankrolls you and supports you, that means you’re not Ignored. Thompson notices you. Thompson knows you exist.”
That seemed important to me somehow.
He shrugged. “Not really. The statisticians record the number of units of each product we consume, report the figures to their superiors, who forward them to the company’s analysts, who report their findings to their superiors, who relay the information to their superiors, until the data finally reaches someone who can make a decision. No one really knows who we are. The big cheeses at the company probably don’t even know this town exists.”
We were silent.
“We used to be owned solely by Thompson,” the mayor continued. “Well, we still are, but we’re not used solely by Thompson. Other companies pay Thompson for our use. Kind of an inter-business partnership. A whole host of corporations now provide us with their products. So we get everything free. We get free cable TV, all the movie channels, because they want to know what people want to watch. All of our food is free because they want to find out what people eat. Our stores are stocked with the latest fashions because they want to know what clothes people will buy. The Gallup people have a permanent office here. The random polls you hear about? They’re all conducted here, in Thompson.”
“Everything’s free?” Don said.
“Everything. You can take whatever you need. We like to joke that we have the only communist system that actually works. Of course, it’s bankrolled by money-grubbing, multi-billion-dollar capitalist corporations.”
“Does the government know about this place?”
Ralph sucked on his pipe. He leaned back in his chair. “I don’t think they do. You know, I’ve thought about that long and hard, and I don’t believe they’re aware of our existence. Otherwise, we probably would’ve been studied to death. Some military use probably would’ve been found for us in the Cold War days. No, I think we’re one of those corporate secrets that private enterprise keeps under wraps.”
“The reason Don asked,” I said, “is because men have been after us. Official government-looking guys.”
The mayor’s face clouded over. “National Research Associates. They’re hired by a consortium of companies who’re in with Thompson.”
“Why?”
“They don’t want any of us outside the city, don’t want us infiltrating the general population. Figure it’ll throw off their outside polls. Right now, see, they run parallel polls, question us, question the general population. We’re a big expense. Other companies have to pay through the nose for our services. Some of them don’t like it. They keep trying to trip us up, prove we’re out of sync.”
“And they’d kill us for that?”
He shrugged. “What are we to them? Nothing. Who would notice if we were gone? Who would care?” He smiled slightly. “Thing is, we screw ’em up every time. Either they can’t find us or they forget about us. We’re almost impossible to catch. Even people specifically looking for us don’t notice us.”