Shop-Smart

Shop-Smart Stores had finally figured out how to beat the competition, by slashing their ballooning employee costs to historic lows. They had replaced every staff person at their retail locations with custom-designed robots. The robots were the perfect workforce. They worked 24 hour shifts, with no breaks for meals, restrooms, vacations, or sick leave. They never complained, unionized, or went on strike. And, they could be trained and retrained at the push of a button. If one broke down on the job, there were no health insurance or workers’ compensation claim to deal with, they merely replaced the unit with an even more efficient newer model. Their bottom line soared.

I had read all the articles about this revolutionary business model for the 2020’s, but I had never set foot in a Shop-Smart until tonight. It was two o’clock a.m., and this was the only store in town where I could get both toothpaste and light bulbs at this time of night. When I passed through the glass doors, I was transported to a fluorescent-washed paradise containing every product known to the human race. Friendly robots trundled around on wheels, greeting what few customers were in the store at this wee hour of the morning and offering assistance.

A loudspeaker announced, “Attention, Shop-Smart customers, today we are giving away a top quality carving knife to every customer who joins us in Aisle 15 for a brief demonstration.” Why the hell would they be giving out knives at 2:00am? I perused a rack of baseball caps, on sale for $5.99.

I was just trying on a particularly stylish red cap when something strange happened. A loud, deep thrumming sound vibrated through the building. I held my ears as all the lights suddenly dimmed to about a third of their brightness. All the robots were frozen in place. The sound and vibration hurt my brain. After a few seconds, it mercifully stopped. The robots stood like statues for a few more seconds, then resumed their activity. A few of them looked disoriented, and these moved in circles for a few moments. But within a minute, they all seemed to be back at work.

Naturally, the toothpaste and light bulbs would be on opposite ends of the humongous store. As I made my leisurely way towards Hardware, which I thought to be a likely location for the light bulbs, I noticed one of the aisles had a large pool of dark liquid spreading across the floor. A discarded blanket lay at one end of the spill. A robot was just placing a yellow cone at the end of the aisle. “Be careful, sir, there’s a spill on Aisle 4” it said in its wonderful, sultry female voice. They certainly had done a good job with the voices. The faces, however, needed some work in my opinion. There was no real attempt to make them appear human. They were flat and blank, and did not move. The hard ridges of each mouth were formed into a permanently helpful grin. Their dim, yellow flashlight eyes occasionally blinked beneath tinted plastic lids.

As I stalked the aisles, I became aware of a repeating sound. A thunk… followed by a pause. Thunk… pause… thunk. I was now entering Sporting Goods. There amongst the baseball bats and gloves, was a robot, dressed in a cheery sports uniform. It was speaking to a man, who was slouching in a portable stadium chair. “Check out this bat, 20% off” the robot cheerily demonstrated the bargain bat, swiftly spinning its body with bat outstretched. Thunk! The bat struck the side of the man’s head with tremendous force, forcing his head to lean towards me in a quizzical pose. “Check out this bat, 20% off” the robot said again, repeating his deadly twirl in the opposite direction. Thunk. The man’s head flipped back the other direction. Now, I could see clearly that the man’s dark hair was matted with blood, bits of bone and other things I didn’t want to see. “Oh my God!” I screamed. “Stop!” The robot did stop, his body facing the wall of baseball gloves behind him. Slowly, its head swiveled towards me, fixing me with its yellow-eyed stare.

All thoughts of heroism gone, I ran. I ran, as fast as my 40 year old unexercised legs would carry me. But as bad luck would have it, I hung a right into Aisle 4. I went sailing wildly across that slick mess. But now, I saw and smelled the mess for what it was. Blood. And the discarded blanket I had seen was no blanket. As I skidded into the object, I felt the mass of the body from which this massive pool had leaked. The poor soul appeared to have been ravaged by a large pair of garden shears, which still protruded from the man’s (or woman’s? I couldn’t tell) chest.

Now drenched in blood, I scrambled to my feet and ran again. I suddenly realized I had become disoriented in the maze of aisles and had no idea which way the door was. I ran anyway, searching for the beacon lights of the cash registers. Unfortunately, the next thing I stumbled upon was Aisle 15. The knife demonstration. There were three or four bodies on the surrounding floor. It was hard to say whether there were three or four bodies, because of the state of them. Knives of every shape and size protruded from mangled piles of meat that were vivacious customers just minutes before. The robot still stood behind its little butcher block table, touting the features of the amazing, incredible, lifetime guaranteed, Sharpever Knife. It was directing its sales pitch to a woman’s severed head, which sat on the corner of the table. The head’s glassy eyes watched with rapt attention as the robot carved neat cross-sections off someone’s forearm, bone and all. That was a very sharp knife indeed.

I kept running, although the horrific images I had just seen were threatening to shut my body down into a state of resigned shock. I forced my legs to keep pumping, my burning lungs to keep breathing. I entered "Shoes." Incredibly, I found a woman there, oblivious to everything, rummaging through a clearance bin looking for a matched pair.

“Lady, you have to get out of here! RUN!” I shouted at her, grabbing her arm as I ran by.

“Get off me!” She yelped, yanking her arm away. “Security!”

There was no time to make her understand. I saw a robot coming up behind her, arms outstretched, one pointed high heel shoe in each hand.

“Please, lady…” I hissed, barely able to force sound from my throat. She whirled around and saw the robot, but she seemed to believe it would protect her from me.

As I struggled onwards, I heard the robot say to her in its soothing voice, “Let me help you find a pair.” Then, a soft crunching sound. Without looking, I knew with nauseous certainty I had just heard the sound of two high heels being smashed through the woman’s temples.

Suddenly, I saw the doors! I angled towards them, trying hard not to focus on any of the horrors that hovered in my peripheral view. From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a food sample cart with two robot attendants. One was holding a man immobile, while the other was stuffing his mouth with taquitos. The dead man’s lolling neck and sightless eyes said he’d long since had enough.

The doors drew nearer. My gasping breath seared my chest, and my legs grew weaker with each step, but I was going to make it. With a last burst of speed, I flung myself at the door labeled “Push – Exit” and… crashed into an immovable wall of plexiglass. Locked, I should have guessed. I fell to the floor, my breath literally knocked out of my body.

A security robot stood over me. “Sir, you can’t leave the store without purchasing that merchandise.”

‘What merchandise?’ I thought. The red cap?! I couldn’t even believe it was still on my head.

The robot raised a device I recognized from watching police on TV. “Don’t tase me…” I pleaded weakly. But this was no ordinary taser, and no ordinary guard. In that last moment, before 2000 volts fried my cells and destroyed all thought, I wished desperately that I had skipped this trip, gone home and enjoyed my bad breath in the dark.