square blocks, you can easily envision how distant some
points of the complex can be from others), there is a
maze of express elevators, slow elevators, descending and
ascending escalators, horizontal pedways with belts mov-
ing at a variety of speeds, and stairs—though very few of
the last. Near any of the main shopping plazas within the
structure, one needs only to stand close to any wall to
hear the thrumming arteries of transportation moving
ceaselessly, efficiently, like blood behind the plastic and
the plaster.
It is possible to live in one such complex without ever
finding the need to leave for wider spaces. If the urge to
divorce oneself from civilization and its mad pace be-
comes too urgent, there are the underground parks with
false sunlight and real trees and four floors of convoluted
paths and bubbling, fresh brooks. There are butterflies and
small animals and birds. If one happens to be a sports
aficionado, there are arenas where various games are
played out weekly. Some housewives who seek no career
beyond that of running their home may be married in the
complex church, return from a honeymoon, and perhaps
live the next ten years in eighty floors, each nine square
blocks. Husbands who work at stores within the complex
and not at professions that take them into other parts of
the city, may spend an equal length of time without ever
seeing the real sky and the real world except through their
windows—which usually exhibit other apartment com-
plexes built nearby.
And no one seems to mind.
In fact, this sort of existence is advertised as a blessing,
as something all of us should desire.
For instance:
Crime, the realtors point out, is all but nonexistent
within the confines of the apartment area. All corridors
are monitored by a full-time staff of police from central
scanning depots within the structure. Anyone bent on
illegal activity against the residents would find that it is
utterly impossible to get into the complex without a plastic
identicard full of computer nodes which activate the auto-
matically locked doors. And only residents are carefully
screened guests may have the use of such cards. Since
everyone with a card has his fingerprints, retinal pattern,
blood type, odor index, hair type, and encephalographic
readouts on file with the structure’s police bureau, it is
difficult, if not impossible, to commit a crime from within
and escape detection and retribution. Compared to the
outside world, with its juvenile gangs, organized rackets,
and political dissidents, such a style of crime-free living is
quietly attractive.
Pollution, the same realtors say, is a serious problem
outside the complexes. Man never really seriously stopped
fouling his air and his water until the early 1980s. Then,
some of the European and Asian countries had still not
seen the light. Pollution had not totally ceased until the
mid 1990s, after the complexes were being built. Outside,
the air had still not been purified. The death rate for lung
cancer, beyond the complex walls, among those unfortu-
nate enough not to have seen the wisdom of such compact
mini-cities, was three times that for complex dwellers. The
same for all respiratory diseases. The realtors could go on
and on. And they often did. The complexes had elaborate
filtration systems, and this selling point was never over-
looked.
Inflation, the salesmen will tell you, is far less noticeable
in a complex apartment, for the companies who own the
mammoth structures also do the buying from the smaller
stores within. A company owning a hundred complexes,
buying for a thousand grocery stores and hundreds of
thousands of citizens can obtain lower wholesale rates and
pass the savings on to the residents.
A community sense of togetherness, the realtors insist,
has all but died in the regular life style, in the cities and
the suburbs. There, they say with great sincerity, there is a
dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself attitude. In the great
complexes, this is not so. There is a camaraderie, a sense
of group achievement, a community pride and identity
that makes life more like it used to be: “Back When.” No
man need be an island, but a part of a great continent.
Trumpets. Drums. End of the ad.