BARGAIN BREAK

BARGAIN BREAK.

Eden Passage had been difficult enough to pin-point in the A to Z. It
was no easier on the ground. For two hours Ginger and Adam squabbled
and snarled their way in and out of a maze of back streets, off-loading
blame as they lurched from one misdirection to the next.
At last they found it, leading off a dingy square lined with boarded-up
warehouses. Rain began to speckle their grey AFCAW suits.
"Well, this can't be it," grumbled Adam, appalled, "We must have got
the wrong place."
Gionger was already fuming with impatience. "Look, it says Eden
Passage. What more do you want? For God's sake, let's get on with it.
We've wasted enough time."
"I don't like the look of it," muttered Adam, "This isn't what we
expected."
His digital flashed as he reached into an inside pocket for the glossy
brochure. Friday the thirteenth. Great. A day when anything could go
wrong. It probably would. He'd never thought of himself as
superstitious before.
Ginger tugged at his arm. "Come on! Never mind that."
"All right, all right. Keep your hair on."
That was the trouble with GInger. Always in a hurry. See everything.
Taste everything. Try everything. Just do it. Now. Immediately.
Choking down premonitions of imminent disaster, Adam reached for
Ginger's hand. In silence they crept forward over the slimey cobbles,
picking their way round oily puddles full of drowned rainbows. The
passage narrowed until only a pale sliver of sky forced apart the
leaning tops of the buildings.
Far-Away-and-Long-Ago Holidays Incorp. was the tallest and skinniest of
all the buildings. Once the entire front must have depicted a massive
Noah's Ark crammed with extinct plants and animals. Now the paint was
crackled with age and slowly peeling. An exhausted neon light blinked
spasmodically on... and off... and on again.
It looked nothing like the picture on the brochure.
For a brief moment Adam was filled with admiration for the
photographer: each shot was a masterpiece of wide-angle. Then
apprehension returned with a vengeance. White lights spiralled behind
his eyes. Migraine and nausea threatened. He stopped dead. Rain began
to trickle down the back of his neck.
"I don't think we should go through with this."
Ginger rounded on him instantly, fists clenched, green eyes flashing,
red hair springing out like flaming corkscrews.
"You tell me how else we can afford a honeymoon if we don't buy Used
Time. People like us never usually get together enough money for
holidays. Good grief, we've been through it all a hundred times. We're
really lucky to get this chance. Used Time has always been reserved for
historical research and the filthy rich before. Now they've 'slashed
the price for a limited period' and I'm jumping at the chance. What are
you so afraid of?"
Adam said nothing. The pressure behind his eyes steadily increased.
Ginger moved in close to try a different approach.
"We'd have a whole month together, Adam. Just you and me. Think of it -
no AFCAW parades for four whole weeks. And we won't lose any Benefit
because it'll only take up an hour of Present tIme. This is the chance
of a lifetime. We have to do it. I want to see live animals, pick just
one flower, feel real grass under my feet. Please, Adam, please,
please."
"I don't know. There's something wrong. I can feel it."
"Right. If you won't come, I'll go on my own."
Adam managed a sman. "I hope you realise that won't qualify as a
honeymoon."
"Ha ha ha."
The door slammed behind her, then swung creakily open again.For five
minutes or so Adam walked up and down, muttering to himself and
knuckling his temples to shift the pain.
Overhead, the sky turned black. Rain began to funnel down through the
buildings in a stream of liquid ice. A tail end of wind flexed the
painted plyboard front until the Ark seemed to move on an undulating
sea. He turned and looked at the swinging door. Above it, the long
extinct animals, faded to monochromatic cartoons by the poor light,
leered down at him.

"...and so the beauty of it is that the further back you go, the longer
you can have."
Adam's head throbbed. He shifted uneasily on his chair and glanced
surreptitiously round the room. What was it that was so wrong? Nothing
he could put his finger on.
The very fat man's teeth flashed. "Right my friends. I think we're
ready to send you off on your holiday of a lifetime." He was rewarded
by a burst of enthusiastic applause. Throughout the lecture he'd never
once stopped smiling. In fact, from the moment Adam had slunk through
the door everyone in the building had radiated relaxed good humour.
Even the large portrait of His Majesty beamed approval.
Ginger was right on the edge of her chair, poised for the off. A dozen
other couples, some singles, even a large family, sat stiffly upright
in neat rows, occasionally shifting restlessky on their uncomfortable
seats, but attentive and eager as the smiling young men began to
synchronise Back-bands.
All the holiday makers were wearing standard AFCAW suits. Since
'Available For Casual Work' was only another way of saying
'Unemployed', Adam idly wondered how they'd all managed to scrape
together the money for this trip. Of course, he and Ginger had been
lucky. Some computer had been under-Giroing them for two years.
Far-Away-And-Long-Ago's brochure had arrived on the same day as the
surprise back pay.
The niggling little something was still struggling towards the surface
as Adam unwillingly followed Ginger into the cubicle. But it was only
as they spiralled rapidly backwards that he was finally able to reach
out and grab it. By thn it was too late.
In the very last second before he melted into unconsciousness, he
realised why it was all so familiar. THose fixed smiles. That dowdy
room. The standard issue carpet. And most of all, those rows of
tell-tale bum-numbingly uncomfortable chairs.

"Adam" Adam!"
Very reluctantly, he opened his eyes.
The light was so bright that it hurt. They were lying in the middle of
a beautiful forest clearing, lifted straight out of a kid's fairy story
book. A gnarled old fruit tree leaned over them. Above it, the sky was
clear and blue. There wasn't a cloud in sight.
"Adam - our Back-bands..." Ginger was scrambling to her knees, almost
in tears as she waved her wrist under his nose. The bracelets had
already shrivelled. Another minute and they crumbled into fine black
dust which were lost in the thick grass.
Adam shrugged. "I told you that something was wrong. Would you listen?
No. This is all your fault, Eve."
She shot him a nasty look. "Don't call me that. I hate that name. You
know I never use it."
For a while she walked around pretending to look at the flowers. It was
very hot and she would have liked to have stripped off the ugly AFCAW
suit as she had planned. She didn't. Not yet. She still hadn't forgiven
him.
"I wonder how long it'll be before they come looking for us," she said,
at last, "They'd expect us back in about an hour their Present
Time."
"They won't."
"Don't be silly."
"They won't ever come looking for us. THink about the inside of that
place. Not the outside. That was all set up to make us think we were
getting a dodgy bargain. Just the inside. Think hard. What did it
remind you of?"
Ginger shook her head. "Nothing. What are you getting at?"
"Compare it with the CAW office, or any of the Centres For People Not
Currently in Paid Employment."
There was a short silence.
"Carpet? Chairs? Prominent picture of the King?" he prompted.
"I see what you mean, but it's just coincidence."
"No," said Adam, bitterly, "It's a government scam. Some clever sod has
thought of a unique way of getting down the unemployment figures and
cutting costs by spreading us around the last million years or so.
Society is being ethically cleansed this time. Humanely, too. After
all, we're still all alive, as far as they know. And we even chose
where we wanted to go."
"Oh," she said, fiddling with some fig leaves, "Well, it could be
worse."
"Really? How? I'll never forgive you for this. As far as I'm concerned,
the honeymoon's over. Bloody women. Tell you what, i'll never listen to
a woman again for the rest of eternity. And if I have my way no other
man will either."
Up among the leaves, the serpent grinned and winked and tightened its
coils. Eve reached up into the branches and started gathering
apples.
"Here," she said, passing a particularly ripe one to Adam, "You'll feel
much better when you've had something to eat."