Many of the women had teamed up, and as Franklin walked over to the entrance a pack of them charged towards their cars, stuffing their pay slips into their bags and shouting at each other. A moment later their cars roared off in a convoy to the next marketing zone.
A large neon sign over the entrance listed the latest discount — a mere five per cent — calculated on the volume of turnover. The highest discounts, sometimes up to twenty-five per cent, were earned in the housing estates where junior white-collar workers lived. There, spending had a strong social incentive, and the desire to be the highest spender in the neighbourhood was given moral reinforcement by the system of listing all the names and their accumulating cash totals on a huge electric sign in the supermarket foyers. The higher the spender, the greater his contribution to the discounts enjoyed by others. The lowest spenders were regarded as social criminals, free-riding on the backs of others.
Luckily this system had yet to be adopted in Franklin’s neighbourhood — not because the Professional men and their wives were able to exercise more discretion, but because their higher incomes allowed them to contract into more expensive discount schemes operated by the big department stores in the city.
Ten yards from the entrance Franklin paused, looking up at the huge metal sign mounted in an enclosure at the edge of the car park. Unlike the other signs and hoardings that proliferated everywhere, no attempt had been made to decorate it, or disguise the gaunt bare rectangle of riveted steel mesh. Power lines wound down its sides, and the concrete surface of the car park was crossed by a long scar where a cable had been sunk.
Franklin strolled along. Fifty feet from the sign he stopped and turned, realizing that he would be late for the hospital and needed a new carton of cigarettes. A dim but powerful humming emanated from the transformers below the sign, fading as he retraced his steps to the supermarket.
Going over to the automats in the foyer, he felt for his change, then whistled sharply when he remembered why he had delierate1y emptied his pockets.
‘Hathaway!’ he said, loudly enough for two shoppers to staie at him. Reluctant to look directly at the sign, he watched its reflection in one of the glass door-panes, so that any subliminal message would be reversed.
Almost certainly he had received two distinct signals — ‘Keep Away’ and ‘Buy Cigarettes’. The people who normally parked their cars along the perimeter of the apron were avoiding the area under the enclosure, the cars describing a loose semi-circle fifty feet around it.
He turned to the janitor sweeping out the foyer. ‘What’s that sign for?’
The man leaned on his broom, gazing dully at the sign. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘Must be something to do with the airport.’ He had a fresh cigarette in his mouth, but his right hand reached to his hip pocket and pulled out a pack. He drummed the second cigarette absently on his thumbnail as Franklin walked away.
Everyone entering the supermarket was buying cigarettes.
Cruising quietly along the 40 m.p.h. lane, Franklin began to take a closer interest in the landscape around him. Usually he was either too tired or too preoccupied to do more than think about his driving, but now he examined the expressway methodically, scanning the roadside cafs for any smaller versions of the new signs. A host of neon displays covered the doorways and windows, but most of them seemed innocuous, and he turned his attention to the larger billboards erected along the open stretches of the expressway. Many of these were as high as four-storey houses, elaborate three-dimensional devices in which giant housewives with electric eyes and teeth jerked and postured around their ideal kitchens, neon flashes exploding from their smiles.
The areas on either side of the expressway were wasteland, continuous junkyards filled with cars and trucks, washing machines and refrigerators, all perfectly workable but jettisoned by the economic pressure of the succeeding waves of discount models. Their intact chrome hardly tarnished, the metal shells and cabinets glittered in the sunlight. Nearer the city the billboards were sufficiently close together to hide them but now and then, as he slowed to approach one of the flyovers, Franklin caught a glimpse of the huge pyramids of metal, gleaming silently like the refuse grounds of some forgotten El Dorado.
That evening Hathaway was waiting for him as he came down the hospital steps. Franklin waved him across the court, then led the way quickly to his car.
‘What’s the matter, Doctor?’ Hathaway asked as Franklin wound up the windows and glanced around the lines of parked cars. ‘Is someone after you?’
Franklin laughed sombrely. ‘I don’t know. I hope not, but if what you say is right, I suppose there is.’
Hathaway leaned back with a chuckle, propping one knee up on the dashboard. ‘So you’ve seen something, Doctor, after all.’
‘Well, I’m not sure yet, but there’s just a chance you may be right. This morning at the Fairlawne supermarket…’ He broke off, uneasily remembering the huge black sign and the abrupt way in which he had turned back to the supermarket as he approached it, then described his encounter.
Hathaway nodded. ‘I’ve seen the sign there. It’s big, but not as big as some that are going up. They’re building them everywhere now. All over the city. What are you going to do, Doctor?’
Franklin gripped the wheel tightly. Hathaway’s thinly veiled amusement irritated him. ‘Nothing, of course. Damn it, it may be just auto-suggestion, you’ve probably got me imagining—’
Hathaway sat up with a jerk. ‘Don’t be absurd, Doctor! If you can’t believe your own senses what chance have you left? They’re invading your brain, if you don’t defend yourself they’ll take it over completely! We’ve got to act now, before we’re all paralysed.’
Wearily Franklin raised one hand to restrain him. ‘Just a minute. Assuming that these signs are going up everywhere, what would be their object? Apart from wasting the enormous amount of capital invested in all the other millions of signs and billboards, the amounts of discretionary spending power still available must be infinitesimal. Some of the present mortgage and discount schemes reach half a century ahead. A big trade war would be disastrous.’
‘Quite right, Doctor,’ Hathaway rejoined evenly, ‘but you’re forgetting one thing. What would supply that extra spending power? A big increase in production. Already they’ve started to raise the working day from twelve hours to fourteen. In some of the appliance plants around the city Sunday working is being introduced as a norm. Can you visualize it, Doctor — a seven-day week, everyone with at least three jobs.’
Franklin shook his head. ‘People won’t stand for it.’
‘They will. Within the last twenty-five years the gross national product has risen by fifty per cent, but so have the average hours worked. Ultimately we’ll all be working and spending twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No one will dare refuse. Think what a slump would mean — millions of lay-offs, people with time on their hands and nothing to spend it on. Real leisure, not just time spent buying things,’ He seized Franklin by the shoulder. ‘Well, Doctor, are you going to join me?’
Franklin freed himself. Half a mile away, partly hidden by the fourstorey bulk of the Pathology Department, was the upper half of one of the giant signs, workmen still crawling across its girders. The airlines over the city had deliberately been routed away from the hospital, and the sign obviously had no connection with approaching aircraft.
‘Isn’t there a prohibition on — what did they call it — subliminal living? How can the unions accept it?’
‘The fear of a slump. You know the new economic dogmas. Unless output rises by a steady inflationary five per cent the economy is stagnating. Ten years ago increased efficiency alone would raise output, but the advantages there are minimal now and only one thing is left. More work. Subliminal advertising will provide the spur.’