Speaker 1: Pushkin. Customers come to expect fast delivery of anything on
Speaker 1: Earth from Amazon, and our jobs continue to make that happen.
Speaker 1: Other big retailers are also spending a lot to keep
Speaker 1: up with the fast shipping expectations Amazon has created in
Speaker 1: a world gone haywire. Sometimes art is the only thing
Speaker 1: that can make sense of it all. Let me put
Speaker 1: it this way. We want what we want, and we
Speaker 1: want it when we want it, and usually we want
Speaker 1: it now. That's been Fountain, the award winning author of
Speaker 1: Billy Flynn's Long Halftime Walk and most recently, Beautiful Country
Speaker 1: Burn Again, a reported narrative of the twenty sixteen presidential election.
Speaker 1: And this is the Chronicles of Now, where we ask
Speaker 1: writers to dream up short stories inspired by the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Ashley Forward. People's consumer behavior is going through a
Speaker 1: lot of changes. While some head to the stores to
Speaker 1: stock up on groceries and household items, others preferred to
Speaker 1: stay in the safety of their homes. Amazon seeing a
Speaker 1: surge in demand as many people turn to online ordering
Speaker 1: to get supplies. During this outbreak in the COVID nineteen era,
Speaker 1: online shopping has accelerated, and that means convoys of vans
Speaker 1: fed x ups usps have been sneaking through our neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: leaving packages to pile up on our doorsteps, mirroring our
Speaker 1: mounting fears over what's coming next, what the country, our lives,
Speaker 1: our families might look like in the years to come,
Speaker 1: what sacrifices will be asked to make for would be
Speaker 1: autocrats around the world. Any chance to secure evermore iron
Speaker 1: fisted control of their country is a good thing, and
Speaker 1: the coronavirus pandemic is quite an opportunity. We feel like
Speaker 1: we have no control over these things. Corporate decisions, government decisions,
Speaker 1: these things that affect us on the local level and
Speaker 1: individual level, They are decided far away about powerful people
Speaker 1: who do not answer to us. And so this moment
Speaker 1: of crisis and all those delivery vans gave Bim Fountain
Speaker 1: an idea for this week's story. There were as many
Speaker 1: trucks as ever, but now they took things away FedEx
Speaker 1: Amazon ups. They all did their part, but more often
Speaker 1: it was the boxy white Mercedes vans with the high
Speaker 1: roofs that had started showing up in the latter years
Speaker 1: of the boom. Plain white, no company name, no snappy
Speaker 1: logo on the side, which in our hyperbranded times might
Speaker 1: have briefly struck us as odd, and then they blended
Speaker 1: into the landscape of everything else. We didn't know how
Speaker 1: good we had it, did we? It was so easy,
Speaker 1: and how quickly we became used to it. The couple
Speaker 1: of keystrokes that produced the modern miracle of that package
Speaker 1: on our doorstep in three to five days been two
Speaker 1: the next day if we were willing to pay for it.
Speaker 1: And ultimately, how did they do it? Same day packages packages,
Speaker 1: thousands and millions of packages pouring out from what were
Speaker 1: once called warehouses but now went by the name Fulfillment Center,
Speaker 1: a neat sleight of hand that appealed to our higher nature.
Speaker 1: Supply chain magic was about so much more than crass materialism,
Speaker 1: and honestly, that's often how we felt fulfilled. In a
Speaker 1: not negligible way. I made the NonStop sales job of
Speaker 1: modern life. We were constantly being admonished not to put
Speaker 1: our faith in material things, and we tried, most of us,
Speaker 1: and mostly we succeeded. We were not shallow people. The
Speaker 1: things in our packages weren't just well things, They were
Speaker 1: how to put this content, structure, emotion, part of the
Speaker 1: necessary human fabric of our lives. Emerging economic crisis in America.
Speaker 1: The legalities were never made entirely clear to us, but
Speaker 1: that was true of many things. Life changed so fast,
Speaker 1: so drastically, that not everything about special measures could be
Speaker 1: adequately explained in anyway. We were too frazzled and generally
Speaker 1: panicky to process more than the general drift recovery it
Speaker 1: was called, or recovery operations. The country was in crisis,
Speaker 1: the economy imperiled, historic losses. Doubt somehow the country and
Speaker 1: the economy had become one and the same. The whole
Speaker 1: thing was really quite astonishing. The white van would pull
Speaker 1: up in front of our house at the most inconvenient time,
Speaker 1: early morning when we were hustling to get the kids
Speaker 1: off to school, or evening when we were cooking dinner
Speaker 1: or checking homework, where it's settled in at the kitchen
Speaker 1: table to grind our teeth over the ever rising stack
Speaker 1: of bills. And there they'd be at the front door,
Speaker 1: two burly recovery techs in their dark uniforms, pants and
Speaker 1: jackets if it was winter, shorts and short sleeved shirts
Speaker 1: in summer, and always a third tech standing out by
Speaker 1: the van, watching unfailingly polite. They were soft spoken, sympathetic,
Speaker 1: and huge. The entire cadre seemingly recruited from the ranks
Speaker 1: of former college and professional football players. They had clipboards,
Speaker 1: reams of fine print paperwork, and boy did they know
Speaker 1: their business. It was always quite specific what they'd come for,
Speaker 1: always one particular thing, a lamp, the gas grill, electronics, cookware.
Speaker 1: And this was the truly unnerving part. They knew exactly
Speaker 1: where it was. The cycle logical effect of that should
Speaker 1: not be underestimated. A giant standing in your doorway describing
Speaker 1: the color, make and model of an item in your house,
Speaker 1: and when you'd bought it from whom and for how much,
Speaker 1: and its precise location. Shock and awe call it, And
Speaker 1: naturally we'd be standing there wondering what else they knew
Speaker 1: about us. Meanwhile, they'd gotten past the door without us
Speaker 1: really knowing. How well they'd been trained. Obviously, posture, demeanor,
Speaker 1: tone of voice. They all worked a kind of syncope
Speaker 1: or hypnosis on us. No doubt, the great advances in
Speaker 1: data collection and behavioral science that had been used so
Speaker 1: deftly to get us to buy were now being deployed
Speaker 1: for the opposite to get us to relinquish, not covet
Speaker 1: to want less except less. We quickly learned that calling
Speaker 1: the cops was futile. They wouldn't come except to detain
Speaker 1: us as we'd resisted, become hysterical or even physical. There
Speaker 1: were rumors of occasional shootouts, but look, most of us
Speaker 1: just wanted to get on with our normal lives as
Speaker 1: much as possible. Across the country, already struggling and out
Speaker 1: of the pain was everywhere those who could least afford it,
Speaker 1: real hardship, real suffering. The weeks and months ahead. It
Speaker 1: was there every night on the news, bendered by the government.
Speaker 1: So was it really so terrible living without those eight
Speaker 1: hundred threadcount sheets that lovely Danish modern chest of drawers.
Speaker 1: A few activists kicked up a fuss about consumer rights,
Speaker 1: but rights, as it turned out, existed only in politics.
Speaker 1: As consumers, we were in the realm of commerce and markets,
Speaker 1: and markets, we were told, had their own immutable laws.
Speaker 1: At night, lying in bed, they hardly ever took beds,
Speaker 1: we reflected that we'd done everything that country had asked
Speaker 1: of us, but it had not been enough. We worked,
Speaker 1: paid our taxes, obeyed the laws, raised and educated our
Speaker 1: children the best we knew how, and always paid at
Speaker 1: least the minimum on our credit cards. All this, and
Speaker 1: still it had not been enough. Sacrifice and self discipline
Speaker 1: were now the order of the day. For how long
Speaker 1: no one knew we did miss our things. Of course,
Speaker 1: some we genuinely grieved for, those few precious things that
Speaker 1: were keyed to our souls, our truest selves. Others we
Speaker 1: missed for a while, and maybe we'd rage silently at
Speaker 1: the invasion of our homes and the humiliating injustice of
Speaker 1: it all. But in time the memories faded and we
Speaker 1: forgot them. These minor things, though even these could surface
Speaker 1: in our minds at random moments, a favorite plaid sweater
Speaker 1: they'd taken away, a classic cocktail set, and we'd feel
Speaker 1: a pang, as if these things were parts of ourselves
Speaker 1: we'd lost, not the main part. Surely weren't we bigger
Speaker 1: than that? And yet the loss that was Rules of
Speaker 1: Special Measures by Ben Fountain. The narrator was Eduardo Ballerini. Ben.
Speaker 1: One of the things that stood out to me the
Speaker 1: conspicuously unbranded white van. It's one of those things that's
Speaker 1: creepy because it's too clean, like a Stepford wife. I
Speaker 1: like that a lot. The Stepford van, you know, come
Speaker 1: to think of it, I've never seen a dirty one,
Speaker 1: and purposely designed not to draw attention to themselves. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: don't mind us. We don't even have a flashy logo
Speaker 1: to draw attention to ourselves. It's so terrifying you don't
Speaker 1: ask about the white van and just hope the white
Speaker 1: van's not coming for your things. So it's almost like
Speaker 1: Russian roulette. Is the van going to stop at my house?
Speaker 1: And is it going to take away? Or is it
Speaker 1: going to deliver? And by the way, that's a great
Speaker 1: way to divide people. If it was an entire block
Speaker 1: or an entire city, people might get the notion that, hey,
Speaker 1: we can stand together and put up some meaningful resistance.
Speaker 1: But it's when it's just piecemeal that's when we're weak.
Speaker 1: The spookiest part of the story is that they know
Speaker 1: precisely where our stuff is. Like we're talking to each
Speaker 1: other on zoom right now, and if someone was eavesdropping
Speaker 1: on this stream, they'll see precisely where some of my
Speaker 1: stuff is. Are we just stupid to let companies know
Speaker 1: so much about us? Yes, we've given too much of
Speaker 1: ourselves away in the pursuit of convenience and pleasure and
Speaker 1: instant gratification. I grew up when Sears Roebuck was the
Speaker 1: only place you sent away to get stuff and it
Speaker 1: took six to eight weeks to arrive at your house.
Speaker 1: And talk about delayed gratification. It just seems to me,
Speaker 1: in my little moral universe, all this convenience will have
Speaker 1: to be paid for at some point. The narrator of
Speaker 1: the story is making a concerted effort to just live
Speaker 1: their life, even though strange people are showing up carting
Speaker 1: away their things. They're making accommodations to the new normal,
Speaker 1: which is a phrase we are hearing a lot these days.
Speaker 1: I feel like every day someone's talking about the new normal.
Speaker 1: What is your story telling us about the human propensity
Speaker 1: for adaptation. Well, in this particular story, the adaptation is, Oh,
Speaker 1: just don't bother me too much, don't take too much
Speaker 1: from me, and I won't make a fuss. And I
Speaker 1: know so many people have it worse than me, you know,
Speaker 1: just don't be too hard on me, and I'll go
Speaker 1: along peacefully. And I think American society in the last
Speaker 1: forty years has become a very obedience oriented society, and
Speaker 1: it punishes you financially and in all other kinds of
Speaker 1: ways if you don't go along. I have to say,
Speaker 1: one of the things that's really heartened me in the
Speaker 1: course of the last six weeks is the fact that
Speaker 1: a lot of people aren't going along. They're kicking up
Speaker 1: a fuss about, you know, most notably George Floyd's murder,
Speaker 1: and that is, in a appropriate fuss, an appropriate example
Speaker 1: of disobedience, and I think we need more of that
Speaker 1: spirit in our society. I'm inclined to agree with you.
Speaker 1: One line that really struck me is somehow the country
Speaker 1: and the economy had become one and the same. Do
Speaker 1: you think that that's where we are or closer and
Speaker 1: closer to where we are in the United States? Oh,
Speaker 1: I think it's absolutely where we are. Yes, we have government,
Speaker 1: and we have neighbors who we care for, and there's
Speaker 1: love and there's altruism and all that, but ultimately it's
Speaker 1: really all about economics. You saw this demonstrated when the
Speaker 1: closing started to happen, and people like my lieutenant governor
Speaker 1: here in Texas was basically willing to sacrifice human lives
Speaker 1: on the altar of the economy. You know, we aren't
Speaker 1: so much a country anymore in the minds of a
Speaker 1: critical mass of our city. We're an economy that happens
Speaker 1: to have a country attached, and we are taxpayers and
Speaker 1: consumers as opposed to citizens and neighbors. And so there's
Speaker 1: been a paradigm shift in our collective thinking, and I
Speaker 1: think it's very dangerous. Do you think we can go back? Yes,
Speaker 1: I do think we can go back. I think shifting
Speaker 1: from that paradigm to a more humane and open minded
Speaker 1: and generous spirited paradigm it will probably take a massive
Speaker 1: shock to the collective system. Is this not enough? I
Speaker 1: thought two thousand and eight was going to be it,
Speaker 1: But it certainly seems like we have the ingredients of
Speaker 1: a perfect storm for an existential crisis. That's probably what
Speaker 1: it would take for us to shake up our thinking. Ben,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for your time here today. I
Speaker 1: really really enjoyed this conversation and I've loved your story you, Ashley,
Speaker 1: has been a pleasure. You can read my full interview
Speaker 1: with Ben Fountain on our website and Chronicles dot f
Speaker 1: where you can also read Rules of Special Measures and
Speaker 1: other short fiction torn from today's headlines. The sound designer
Speaker 1: and composer is Art Warshop, The producer is Curtis Box.
Speaker 1: The associate producer is Emily Rostick. Tyler Cabott is the
Speaker 1: executive producer and founder of Chronicles of Now for Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Leeta Mulaud and Jacob Weisberg for the
Speaker 1: Chronicles of Now podcast. I'm Ashley Ford. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening. Yeah, I'm I almost wonder if traffic's being,
Speaker 1: for some reason rerouted onto my street because it's a lot. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's a big white van.