Judgment Day -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
For an hour I stood at the door handing out money, but it was just
plain foolishness. The streets were mobbed with people handing out the
stuff. Everyone wanted to give it away. It was a game; the rich gave it
to the poor, and the poor turned around and handed it back to the rich.
By two o'clock it was impossible to tell who had been rich and who poor.
In the meantime, Jane kept me posted on what was going on over the
radio. Every country on the face of the earth was passing emancipation
acts as quick as they could get a quorum together. The age of the
common man had really come in--two days before deadline.
Jane and I left for lunch at three o'clock. We both knew it would be
the last time we'd see the store. As a final gesture, we piled fifty
thousand dollars or so on the counter, and left the doors open. It
seemed the only thing we could do.
We ate in an East Sixty-third street restaurant. The regular help had
left, but people wandered in off the streets, cooked for a while, ate
and left. Jane fixed a few dozen club sandwiches for our share, and
then we ate. The next problem was where to sleep. I was sure all the
hotels would be full, but we had to try. In an emergency we could sleep
in the store.
We walked into the Stanton-Carler, one of the biggest hotels in New
York. There was a young man behind the main desk, reading _The World as
Will and Idea_, by Schopenhauer.
"Any chance of a room?" I asked him.
"Here's a pass key," he said. "Take any vacant room you can find."
"How much?" I asked, fanning a few thousand dollar bills.
"Are you kidding?" he said, and returned to his book. He looked like a
very serious young man.
We found a vacant room on the fifteenth floor, and sat down as soon as
we were inside. Immediately, Jane jumped up again.
"Records," she said. "I want to spend the day before Judgment listening
to good music."
I was dog-tired, but I wanted the same thing. Jane and I had never had
enough time to listen to all the music we wanted to hear. Somehow, we
had never gotten around to it.
Jane wanted to go with me, but I thought, what with the jam New York
was in, it would be easier if I went alone.
"Lock the door until I get back," I told her. "It may be the day before
Judgment, but not everyone's an angel yet." She winked at me. She
hadn't winked in years.
I scrambled through the crowd to a music store. It was deserted. I
picked up a long-playing recorder and all the records I could carry.
Then I came back. I had to walk to the fifteenth floor, because some
guy was zooming up and down in one elevator, and the rest were out of
order.
"Put on the Debussy," I told Jane when I got back, throwing myself in
an armchair. It was a joy and a pleasure to be off my feet.
That's how we spent the rest of the day, and the evening. We played
records. I had gotten some Bach, Debussy, Mozart, Hayden, and a few
others I never heard of. I listened to more music in that day than I'd
heard in five years previously.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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