A form of Revenge

== A FORM OF REVENGE ==
=== By Peter W. Mills ===
Published in Contemporary Science Fiction 2014
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!”
Category:Science Fiction
Category:Mills
Category:Published