AD NAUSEAM
by Adam Browne
Through his windscreen, a billboard the size of an upended landscape -- and on it a vast, plush mouth, a woman's, in close-up. Surgical steel hooks glinting in the lip corners; milady's implants urging her lips grinward: an advertisement for the Prosthetic Smile.
And above, other advertisements haemorrhage across the sky, orbital hoardings contending with the moon for airtime; a rationalised zodiac of brand names, logos, bylines -- crisp businesslike constellations appropriate to the timesÖ
Then, close behind him, the flatulent blat of a truck horn.
Reflexively he checks his rearview, but there's no truck behind him. The horn was of course counterfeit, a ploy.
Quickly, he looks away. Too late. Already the mirror reflects coherent rainbows, a laser plotting images onto his retinae; an advertisement unfurling behind his pupils, taking root in rich eyejuices.
He tries to counter -- clenching shut his eyes (his car knows the way home) -- but the advertisement (with a chuckle, as it were) simply shifts spectra. Finds a wavelength to which his eyelids are transparent...
And he is granted visions, shimmering against black, of a wind-shivered meadow bounded by lounge-room walls: a living carpet, a Metabolic Floorskin...
He marked himself as a target years ago. Made rash enquiries into Floorskin prices.
And although he lost interest after discovering that without CarpetBees the carpet's floral design quickly degrades, and that the pile grows wildly unless held in check by adorable little Longhorns bonsai'd to the size of kittens -- he has been fair game ever since.
Not that it has made an appreciable difference to the amount of advertising he endures -- the white-hot megawattage, the pitiless kilotonnage; the advertising so ubiquitous it is elemental, as fundamental as earth, air, fire, water...
Offering him no respite even after he makes it home.
His apartment is a storm of advertisements -- every screen infected; the living room lauding Volkswagen's hatchback disposables; the kitchen exhilarated about a new soft drink called AgentOrange...
And in the bathroom he changes channel, sidles between commercial broadcasters, following the cues to which his need has attuned his senses...
Then -- darkness. Silence.
He has it.
Channel 3052: the channel transmitting nothing. Just darkness. Silence.
Nothing.
It's a subscriber station and the fees are steep, but now -- as he soaks in a hot bath, in the peace, the surrogate hush -- he would pay twice the price if asked.
Briefly, gratefully, he drifts into sleep.
Then the screen begins to fizz, emitting energies to rid itself of condensation.
Stirring, he regards the television in the side of the tub. Below the screen are the manual controls. Including one labeled On/Off. Which of course is not a control at all. It's an appendix, a coccyx, a vestigial nubbin from the age when televisions allowed themselves the occasional break...
He touches it hopelessly, a habit since childhood...
Later, he prepares for bed.
But the bedroom is relentless, worse than ever -- an unending fulmination of advertising: advertisements interrupted by advertisements; advertisements advertising other advertisements; long murmurous advertisements that never come to the point and others consisting of nothing more than a repeatedly screamed brand-name...
And he soon weakens, indulging again in Channel 3052. Telling himself he deserves the occasional nightful of silence.
Although there is still a twinge of guilt as he drifts towards sleep: at night the peak rates apply. He really shouldn't let it run until morning. But he does.
At least until just before dawn, when his subscription expires, terminally overdrawn. And he is woken by an advertisement for Metabolic Floorskins.
Story copyright © 2000 Adam Browne <adambrowne63@hotmail.com>
Illustration copyright © 2000