A Form of Revenge(Peter Mills) A FORM OF REVENGE

By Peter W. Mills


Mad scientists come in all shapes and sizes. Their assorted diabolical plots to destroy civilization also come in a large variety of apparatus and method. Theodore Bicky was the only mad scientist in history to actually succeed in producing a diabolical civilization-destroying plot which really worked. It should be said, though, that Theodore Bicky was not actually a scientist, which fact may possibly jeopardize his acceptance as prime exhibit in any mad scientist hall of fame built in the future. This, though, would not greatly inconvenience Theodore Bicky, because the very success of his plot ensured that the human race would have no future in which halls of fame, or any other civic structure, could be erected. He would instead have to settle for being an effigy in a mud hut of fame, at best.

Theodore Bicky was elderly and had worked for most of his life as janitor in a local college. For forty years he and his wife had lived in the same run-down apartment in the same run-down apartment block in the same run-down back street in the same run-down part of town. Perhaps, then, it was an inevitable process of fate when his wife was run down crossing the street outside. The same day, Theodore Bicky received a letter in the mail from City Hall telling him that he had been made redundant from his janitorial position due to a restructuring of the civic administration and a resultant rationalizing of human resources. Evidently his job had been rationalized out of existence.

This, of course, meant that Theodore Bicky could no longer pay the rent for his apartment and had to apply for welfare. At the front of the queue a harassed woman in large spectacles sat behind a glass window. A small nameplate informed that she was Ms. Dabroski. “You have to fill in this form,” she instructed, handing it through the arch in the glass window. “This applies for welfare money to live on. Rent payment is the next counter.” She switched into blank-faced standby mode until he had made way for the next person in the queue. As he glanced at the forms and shuffled over to join the next queue he heard her start up again for someone else. “You have to fill in this form. This applies for welfare money to live on. Rent payment is the next counter.”

Eventually reaching the front of the queue at the rent window, he faced the man lurking behind a small plate admitting to the world that he was Mr. Williams. “You have to fill in this form,” he instructed, handing it through the arch in the glass window. “This applies for welfare rent payments. Money to live on is the next counter.”

The following morning an official in a suit and tie with an ID card dangling round his neck on a red ribbon and protected from any dirt by a plastic envelope called at Theodore Bicky’s apartment and left him a sheaf of forms to fill in because he was next-of-kin to his late wife. “You have to fill in these forms,” he advised, “otherwise we cannot release the body for burial. If you need financial help to arrange a burial, you need to go to the welfare office.”

Later that day he trekked back to the welfare office and asked which window dealt with funeral costs. It was pointed out to him. It was the only window without a queue in front of it. Neither was there anyone on the other side of the arch in the glass. There was a brass desk bell which he tapped to produce a loud chime. There was no name plate. A flustered woman came in through a rear door and presented him with a sheaf of papers. “You have to fill in these forms,” she instructed, handing them through the arch in the glass window. “This applies for welfare funeral cost payment. Money to live on and rent payment is the next counters.”

On the way home he visited the bank where his wife had held her own account. He explained the circumstances to a young woman behind a small name plate which informed that she was Ms. Glover, and asked if he might claim the money in his late wife’s account. “That’s complicated,” mused Ms. Glover. “It all depends whether your wife left a will or not.” She handed a thick wad of papers through the arch in the glass window. “You have to fill in these forms.”

Then he trekked back to the welfare office and dinged the bell at the funeral costs window. The same flustered woman came through a rear door. Theodore Bicky explained that his wife had held a small deposit account at the bank in which they had been saving up for a holiday, and that she had died without leaving a will. “That means she died intestate,” pronounced the woman. “That means, if you want the money from her account, you must apply to the civil court for a right of intestate inheritance as next of kin. It will probably take several months.” She thrust a sheaf of papers through the arch in the glass window. “You have to fill in these forms.”

That evening, Theodore Bicky sat alone in his run-down apartment staring in sheer disbelief at the mountain of forms rising a clear eighteen inches from the tabletop. He had neither the heart, the will nor the inclination to even begin filling in the first one. Despondency had set in. He checked the refrigerator and found one last tin of beer and sat sipping it, his mind blank. He could not believe the way in which his life had suddenly been overwhelmed by an avalanche of forms, on top of his natural sense of grief. He felt that officialdom was kicking him when he was down and out and least able to cope with the complexities of life and death.

To take his mind off things, he watched TV. After an hour a cheap horror movie began, but his mind was only partly registering the plot. On the screen, a mad scientist in a white coat cried exultantly to his white-coated assistant: “I have done it! I have finally succeeded in crossing a gorilla with a kung-fu expert – now nobody will dare stand in my way!” That night, Theodore Bicky dreamed he was being hunted through swamps by an army of lurching zombie clerks waving papers at him. “You have to fill in these forms!” they shrieked.

Next morning, something came in the mail. It was a handwritten letter inside a normal stamped envelope addressed to him. He read it. Then he read it again more carefully. Then he sat down and read it through several times more. Then, very slowly, he turned his head to gaze at the heap of forms on the table. Then, for the first time in several days, he smiled, somewhat crookedly. Then he felt like laughing, but the sound emerged as an evil cackle very like that of the mad scientist on last night’s TV movie. With an angry sweep of his arm he cleared the table of the pile of forms. Then he fetched an ancient typewriter from a cupboard and began to type, thinking deeply and carefully and cackling every now and then.

Within a week, garbage had begun to pile up in the streets, uncollected. Within two weeks, the buses stopped running. In three weeks it was the train service. In four weeks shops were closing, in five factories followed. In two months the national banking system broke down and money started to devalue at a catastrophic rate. In three months the world markets crashed and all banks went bust. The whole of human society was riddled with huge riots as entire populations rose in anger against their governments. Government broke down everywhere and all officialdom was locked in an inescapable paralysis from which nothing could rescue it. Government disintegrated, money was worthless. People took to bartering instead. The whole world reverted to the conditions of the Middle Ages. Horses were more valued than cars, for which there was no longer any fuel being produced. Inside a year, the Middle Ages had regressed to the Dark Ages, then to the equivalent of the Stone Age. In the space of twelve months, human civilization on earth had collapsed completely and with an amazing thoroughness.

Theodore Bicky sat on the steps outside his run-down apartment block watching a group of several people wearing business suits and brandishing spears attempting to chase after a fleeing deer that had wandered down from the hills. Beside him sat Roy Billings, his equally elderly neighbor from across the passage. Roy offered him a can of beer. “Still got seven six-packs left,” he remarked casually. “Shame we can’t chill ‘em any more since electricity went.”

Theodore Bicky accepted the beer gratefully. “Thanks Roy.” He gestured toward the galloping and puffing stockbrokers and the fleeing deer. “Think they’ll catch it?”

“Not a snowball’s chance in Hell,” gritted Roy. The two men looked at each other and broke out in guffaws of laughter.

“You know,” mused Theodore Bicky suddenly growing serious, “it was me who did it.”

“Did what?” queried his friend.

“Destroyed human civilization,” answered Theodore Bicky. “I just got into such a temper with all the forms I had to try to fill out in order to salvage my right to keep on living. I decided I wanted to get my revenge on society, on that horrible, inhuman institution we used to call ‘civilization’ – on officials and their sacred official forms! I decided I was going to destroy it completely, beyond any capacity to recover.”

Roy Billings turned to look at his neighbor, wondering if he should take him seriously or not. “And exactly how did you go about accomplishing that?” he inquired with a humoring smile.

Theodore Bicky gazed absently at the broken windows of the building opposite, through which the smoke from several cooking fires wafted. “I did it by inventing the Ultimate Weapon,” he answered. “It came to me in a series of flashes of understanding.” He looked at his friend, who suddenly realized that Theodore Bicky was completely, frighteningly, serious.

Theodore Bicky went on. “You see, one night I watched a horror movie about someone who crossed something with something else to produce an ultimate warrior. The very next morning I got this in the mail.” He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his back pocket and handed it over for inspection.

“It’s a chain letter,” stated Roy flatly, glancing at it. “I’ve had dozens of them in my time, back when we still had a mail service and post offices. I always tore them up.”

“Well,” responded Theodore Bicky quietly, almost reverently taking back the letter, “I didn’t tear this one up. It says that the recipient of the letter will see a list of ten names and addresses enclosed. If you eliminate the bottom name and address in the column and add your own name and address to the top, then copy the letter ten times and mail them off, you will get ten people writing letters back to you. But – when your name is second on the list as the chain letter is sent on, you will get letters from one hundred people, and your name goes into third position on the list. Then you will be sent letters by one thousand people. When your name is in forth position, it will be ten thousand letters, then a hundred thousand, then a million and so on, if nobody breaks the chain.”

Roy was impressed. “Does it work?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t try it. I broke the chain. You see, I suddenly realized that this was the key to making the ultimate weapon against civilization.”

“How?” Roy asked with interest, producing two more cans of beer.

“I did what that mad scientist did in the movie – I crossed two things to make something more powerful - I crossed a chain letter with an official form!”

“Run that past me again?”

Theodore Bicky chuckled. “I devised a form of my own on the typewriter, with pages of silly but official-looking questions, like: 'How many left-handed people are employed in your department? Please tick only one box. None? Under Five? Under Ten? More Than Ten?' There were dozens of other stupid questions like that – just the sort official offices love. Then, when I got my first welfare money I had it printed up properly to look official. This form had a serial number at the top corner and instructed whoever received it to copy it on a photocopier ten times, but first changing the serial number to one number higher, and to rotate the alphabet letter, so that, for example, the serial AF/1234 would become AG/1235. Then the ten copies must be sent to the ten official addresses shown in the list on the form, but first the bottom address on the list must be removed and your own head office address added to the top of the list.”

He took a joyful swig of beer. “Then, the clerk who was first to get this form and send off the initial ten copies would, within a week, receive ten forms back from other official offices – each one with a new serial number. These would have to be filled in, entered in the registry and filed. The second week, they would get a hundred more forms back, the third week it would be a thousand, then ten thousand, then a hundred thousand, then a million, then ten million forms – and the same thing would be spreading to quickly include every single office of any kind anywhere…”

“Soon all the administrative offices of all the city halls, banks, businesses and official departments throughout the whole world were completely occupied on a round-the-clock basis in filling-in, copying, sending and filing this one form with a regenerating serial number so that it was always officially different. Extra staff needed to be taken on to cope with the massive increase in paperwork. Within a few months, all the administrative offices of every country in the world were so snowed under that they were entirely paralyzed and the workings of human civilization ground completely to a halt. You see? I destroyed civilization by inventing the chain-form!”

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