Daily Story 158: Punch, Agent of Chaos

Jake opened his eyes and took a deep breath, thinking immediately of the similarity to those commercials where someone is pulled from unconsciousness by the aroma of coffee or orange juice or whatever, although he thought it unlikely that there would be a commercial for burning wiring any time soon. He lay in bed and tried to convince himself that it could be coming from somewhere other than his computer - that it could, in fact, be something much better - like the wiring in the walls. If that was all, if the apartment complex was just going to burn down, he could grab his computer on the way out and he would just be homeless. That was manageable. He had renters insurance, and he could stay with his parents for a while. An involuntary shudder passed over him. No, not his parents. But he could sleep in his car or something, and he would still have his job. Mr. Grimes had made it very clear that this would not be a possibility if the GGN report wasn't on his desk bright and early Monday morning.

Jake swung his legs out onto the crinkling layer of fast food wrappers and soda cans that covered his floor and crunched his way over to the computer desk. He walked slowly, praying as he did that he would find some other explanation for that unmistakable smell before he reached the ancient case. That bitter tang was stronger on the other side of the room, and the LEDs were dark. Showing the purest optimism, Jake pushed the power button. Twice. It just didn't seem fair - considering the damage it had done to his life, it would have been more appropriate if the monitor had exploded, sending jagged chunks of glass through his stomach. There should have been fire leaping out of the case, keys flying off of the keyboard and into his eyes, electricity arcing off of the mouse and grounding in his brain, causing his eardrums to rupture. Instead, it just sat there. Taunting. Jake wiggled various cables and flipped the light switch that, he knew, was not remotely connected to the power strip. The possibility of rogue electricians rewiring his apartment eliminated, he got out a screwdriver from the pile of sunflower seeds where it currently lived and gently removed the outer covering of the computer. A fresh waft of electrical mishap hit his nostrils. The power supply was completely fried, which wasn't really surprising since the little fan that was supposed to cool it looked as if it had perished while attempting to cough up a hairball. He removed the power supply, because it seemed like the thing to do, and dropped it on the floor. It made a nice, loud noise when it hit the upper strata of junk, and Jake found himself picturing the noise it would make if it landed on his roommate's cat.

The beast in question was named Punch, and had long grey fur that managed to gather in little drifts (when dry) and strange mounds (when wet) all around the apartment, especially where they were not wanted. Somehow these scale models of Punch would end up in Jake's raisin bran, on his pillow, topping his burger that he only left unattended for five seconds. They would blow past like tumbleweeds wherever he looked, as if they were reproducing on their own. No cat could have that much fur. Granted, Punch weighed about thirty pounds, but even so these clumps of hair that sat like glistening monoliths on every surface must be the work of no less than ten or eleven animals. Until now Jake had always thought the dry fur to be the more harmless of the two; while it did manage to get onto his food more often, at least it had never been partially digested and then used to make some moist little sculpture in his shoe. But now... now it was clear that Punch had been working towards this eventual goal for months, distracting him with obvious violations of the apartment so he would not realize the more diabolical plan being put into motion. The GGN report, bane of his weekend, was now lost to him forever.

While he had made sure to save his work slightly more frequently than usual it did very little good when he had only been saving it to the hard drive, which was clutched in the cold, dead hands of his computer. Jake looked at the screwdriver in his hand and toyed briefly with the idea of taking the hard drive out, but unless he developed some sort of super power that allowed him to transfer data from the hard disk to paper using only his limited mental abilities he would still need another computer to hook the hard drive up to. Jake spent a few minutes thinking about how disappointed he would be if he gained super powers and then found out that it was something lame like data transfer, and then he wiggled some cords again.

He could just picture walking into Mr. Grimes' office and dropping the hard drive on his desk, maybe even playing dumb about it and suggesting that he had been under the impression this was how Mr. Grimes had wanted it. This would lead to some questions, of course, as anyone looking for the GGN report on Jake's hard drive would be distracted by twenty gigs of pirated software, illegally downloaded music, and porn. There was probably a company policy about that kind of thing. He had already been written up for being late to work too many times, and the porn thing would probably push it over the edge. He didn't even like porn, he just couldn't bring himself to delete it once his roommate had downloaded it. Mr. Grimes probably never looked at porn. He probably looked at motivational posters instead.

Ideas ran through his mind about what he could do for his last day. Surely there were some entertainment possibilities here - after all, they couldn't threaten him with being fired anymore. He could wear an inappropriate T-shirt. He could flip off his boss. He could, in fact, do just about anything he wanted as long as he stopped before the point where they could arrest him. He paused for a moment while he thought about this, and then started to dig through the detritus around his bed for his tie, hoping quietly that he might find his spine too. He reached around under his bed for a moment, and when he pulled his hand out it was clutching a strip of hideous paisley-covered imitation silk. Well, one out of two isn't bad. He grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled a quick note to his roommate - "GETTING FIRED TODAY, NEED MORE TIME FOR RENT, ALL YOUR DAMN CATS FAULT. PIZZA TONIGHT? YOU'RE BUYING."

Daily Story 149: Counterfeiting

The first body was found in March, laying in the grassy field just east of the dining hall. Identification was simple; the colony had only three thousand members and there wasn't a single one who couldn't point out Billy in a crowd. Full name William Harris Jenkins, male, twelve years of age. He was the first child born on the colony, and there was nobody that didn't love him. We kept it quiet for a few hours while we moved the body and cleaned it up a little; it didn't show any signs of damage but the irrigation pumps had come on and so his face was covered in mud and grass. Once he looked like himself again - other than the lack of color to him which we couldn't do anything about - I made the difficult trip to inform his parents.

Billy answered the door.

When I say there were three thousand members you need to understand that that's the grand total. Between the ages of ten and fourteen there were three hundred, and half of those were girls. There's just no way you fail to notice two kids are perfect look-alikes in a pool of a hundred and fifty.
"Hey Sherriff," he said, "My mom's not home. Can I get you anything?" Such a polite kid. I smiled at him and asked for something to drink, then waited for him on the porch. As the oldest member of the colony - very nearly fifty years old - I felt like I had some kind of responsibility to remain calm and collected even in the face of something impossible. He came out and we talked a little about the harvest and his mother's quilts, and then I asked him about the field.
"You ever play out there, Billy?" He sort of nodded and shrugged simultaneously, the standard "I guess so" gesture all the kids used. I pressed for more, but he insisted he hadn't been out there for weeks because he had been collecting the bounty on bull-spiders.

I finished my lemonade, headed back to the office, and told the others. To put it plainly, they thought my frail mind had snapped out of grief. It took a while to sort things out while keeping anyone from being alerted, and then all of our precautions turned out to be for naught - because the next body was found smack-dab in the center of town. By himself. Cody Williams came into the office one right after the other, following alongside the stretcher like a concerned loved one. The doctor was actually pleased, laid them down side by side and did a full comparison. I'm sure it was great for the scientific aspect of things, but it did something awful to Cody's head and for the next month he wouldn't get out of bed because he insisted he was already dead. Meanwhile the doctor declared the corpse to be some sort of crazy forgery, an advanced clone. It calmed everyone down to know nothing supernatural was happening, but that left a lot of questions for me.

The doctor didn't make his proclamation overnight, and by the time he did three more were found - one an infant. I watched as he did examined the most recent one and I tried to get some details from him.
"Doc, correct me if I'm wrong... but we don't have a rig that can make duplicates of people like that."
He nodded, turned off his recorder. "That's correct, Sherriff. It was just the best thing I could come up with."
I got goosebumps all over, but I pressed on anyway. "Don't rule anything out, then. Aliens. Demons. Let your mind go wherever it wants, I won't tell anyone and I won't say you're crazy."
He smiled at me, with a kind of pride. "I'll tell you that I have ruled out time travel as of this morning. Denise had a cut on her right hand that was on the corpse as well - and it's healed up now. I've implemented a test for another hypothesis, but I can't tell you right now."
"And that's it? All you can rule out is time travel?"
"So far. If I had my old lab from Earth, maybe, but with travel time for the bodies it would take twenty years to hear back even if the supply ship arrived tomorrow."

They continued to pour into the doctor's office through April and May, at a pace of about twelve per week. People started to get used to it, which was actually sensible since at that rate it would be almost five years before everyone had a turn. It was on May twenty-fifth that the Doctor called me in, pointed to his own body on the slab. He looked like he hadn't slept in weeks. I probably didn't look much better; I had been working non-stop on the surveillance systems even though I knew there was no way I would be able to cover even a quarter of the colony and whatever was going on never happened on camera.
"Sherriff... a few months ago I started dosing myself with radiation. It was a silly idea... after all, anything that can reproduce a body that exactly should be able to get radiation right too, but the readings had been just slightly different between a few of them. The dead Cody, for example, had a little less background radiation."
I could feel ice running down my spine. I already knew what he was going to say.
"This corpse, my corpse, matches exactly the levels and type of radiation that I had documented for myself. I... do not."

I said before that I try to remain calm and collected, and that's just what I did. I told the doctor - or the thing that looked like the doctor - to keep it to himself and not raise a panic. I went to my house and packed a few things, slipped away to the emergency shuttle, and abandoned them all to be replaced one by one. My deputy noticed the shuttle leaving, of course, and he tried to tell me to come back. I didn't even respond - after all, I had dragged his cold body out of the office myself a week before. I reached the mining outpost and refueled, sent as detailed a message as I dared back to the government hub but I didn't wait for a reply - I know they just thought I was crazy. I've been laying low ever since, but I had to come here and get a stiff drink today - see, it's been ten years since the supply ship picked up some of the colonists to go back to Earth... they're docking at New York Port right now.

Daily Story 125: Cat and Mouse

I can smell my nemesis, see the residue of his presence on the fallen buildings. I am getting closer. This city is in ruins like all the others, but I can sense life somewhere in the shadows; the flickering heartbeat of fusion cells. Organic life is present too, faint hints of humanity too recent to be from before the war. Duty calls me onward, sniffing rubble and stalking through the sewers. I pause to watch for movement, but all is silent and still. A rodent, unperturbed by my cat-like appearance, climbs onto my leg and begins to groom himself. I have no orders regarding rats.

He has hidden himself well - impressive considering the entourage of humans. The organics are sloppy, easy to track. For the first few years after the war they seemed to throw themselves in front of our weapons. I wonder if this recent difficulty heralds some thinning of the herd, where my fellow cleaners have destroyed the slow and careless and left the society to form out of quiet, discreet beings. Doubtful, since there has barely been enough time for a single new generation to come of age - still, the fact that I am already having problems in following them is both impressive and disturbing. It could be that there are less than the twelve I had estimated.

Proceeding down into a valley caused by the collapse of the underground transit systems, I find a shoe with fresh DNA on it. So close. My nemesis is nearly within my grasp. I have watched traps and ambushes kill off the others from my squadron, crush them before they could see our duty fulfilled and the last traces of the United Americas destroyed. I have received no signal from Eurasia, no communication from other Cleaner crews further south. This may be my burden alone, and I cannot fail. I can smell the humans on the breeze, flowing from a half-collapsed tunnel. Their time is up.

I circle around to get ahead of them and I wait. A heavily damaged IR81 is slumped against a wall nearby and I want to finish it, rip the reactor from its frame, but I force myself to remain hidden. Its ruined legs aren't taking it anywhere, I can return once I have ambushed the humans. An hour passes, and I hear them coming closer, smell them on the air. I can even sense the energy signature of my nemesis. More time passes and I realize something is wrong; they are moving too slowly, and making far too much noise. I charge towards it and break through into the plaza... and find a decoy.

The Highway Assembler is draped in human's clothes, and rumbles along the street acting on some sort of pre-programmed instructions. Once again my nemesis has made a fool of me. I run as fast as I can back to the valley and beyond, searching for them. They have bought more time, but it will not be enough. I will find them, will destroy them. On all fours, running at full speed, I see the tripline too late - cartwheeling for twenty feet before I slam into a wall. A metal rod, torn from the foundation of some building, slams into my right shoulder and expertly slides between armored plates, tearing vital wires and crippling me. I welcome this attack, because it means I am finally face to face with my tormentor after all this time.

He looks terrible. He is military, but outdated; a CM125 without any upgrades. He hurls a block of stone at me that I easily dodge as I pull the metal rod free - I long to launch a missile into him but ammunition has been so hard to find. This fight will be up close and personal. My first thrust falls short as I realize my leg is caught on debris, and he grabs the weapon so that we are both holding it. Pivoting, he jams the barrel of his gauss rifle into the side of my head - damaging both - and then falls as I sweep out with my free leg. I fall as well, but it is planned and I am able to dart my head forward into his neck - my jaws clamp down and sever a pneumatic line that would have been better protected in a newer model.

He thrusts something up against my thorax and I feel a concussive blast - some sort of jury-rigged bomb has peeled back my plating and removed my nemesis' hand. For the moment, neither of us makes a move. I am slightly more damaged, but am also faster and stronger. I need only to restrain him for a moment in order to deliver a killing blow.
"You don't need to do this," he says, "there's no war anymore. Nobody left to be at war with."
"There is you." And after him there will be his humans, and then the disabled robot and highway assembler, and then I will move on to the next city and the next until none remain.
"The Americas had Cleaners too, you know. We were too good - Oceania is gone, and if there's anyone left in Eurasia I'll be surprised. This is it. The humans I'm protecting might be the last ones."
I tell him that I'm aware of this. He is correct, after all. I find it to be unlikely that the ones who built me survived the onslaught.
"Then why? Your programming must allow for some change of situation, some option for you to abort if the conditions are altered."
"It does," I tell him, "But I choose to do my duty." I lunge at him and spear the metal rod through his chest - it angles upwards just as I intended and cracks his reactor casing; he will be forced into emergency shutdown.
"I choose the same," he says, and the world goes white.

He had another bomb, a larger one. I have no sensory input save for optical in the visible spectrum. I can see parts of me lying thirty feet away, but there is no trace of my nemesis. I can take some comfort in the fact that without him the humans stand no chance; there must be only a handful of them. I had already lowered my estimates, and now after seeing the shape he was in I suspect their numbers are even less. Possibly five. My reactor is stuttering, and I know that soon I will shut down. From the shadows of the city steps a single child. Was this it? Did he really destroy himself to protect one malnourished girl? A hand rests on her shoulder, and I realize there is someone else. Everywhere, between the vines and the twisted stone and metal, I can see pale limbs. How is this possible? They march forward, appearing from the wreckage without a sound to reach for me - a hundred silent and vengeful ghosts.

Daily Story 119: Armed Robbery

The below is very long; I apologize. It was originally written for the Machine of Death project, but they didn't want it.

---

I didn't want to use the Machine; I wanted my death to be a surprise. I've always been a worrier, and I was sure that once I knew how I was going to die I would be neurotic for the rest of my life. I know that I can't avoid my fate, but I never would have stopped trying - so it's a little ironic that I didn't avoid getting the reading even though that WAS in my power. I thought about it. I knew that I could tell the nice man at the insurance company that it was against my religion and he would be forced to figure out my rates some other way. This was even technically true, although it's also against my religion to have sex outside of marriage, use birth control, use the Lord's name in vain, and skip church. I do all of those things most Sundays. I'm a healthy twenty-eight year old guy, no real history of anything, so I probably could have gotten a good deal on life insurance even without the reading from the Machine. Really there was no reason to do it at all, but somehow it pulled at me like a moth towards an open flame - or, less melodramatically, like a starving college student to a slice of pizza. One that may or may not contain anchovies hidden below the cheese.

Instead of actually resisting I imagined resisting. I pictured telling the insurance clerk that I wouldn't do it, at which point he would insist, and I would make an impassioned speech about religious freedom. He would try to sneak a blood sample, but I would catch him and throw the machine to the ground, smashing it. The machine would smoke and sizzle for a moment before spitting out an entire roll of paper with 'ERROR' down its length. I would sue the company for trying to force me to know my destiny, and of course I would win. Already rich, I would go on tour to promote my new book, "Just Say No to Fate". I would be an instant celebrity, be surrounded by women, and live forever. All this went through my head in the time it took for the Machine to process my blood sample and spit out the tiny slip of paper with my "mortality analysis" on it. It was as vague as all of the predictions were, giving no real information; I wasn't going to be able to avoid it. On the other hand, it wasn't 'WATER' - I actually know someone who was handed that, and just thinking about it turned me into a wreck immediately. Water? What the hell does that mean? I can't avoid water, I need water to live! Am I going to drown? Be skewered by an icicle? More than seventy percent of the Earth's surface is covered in the instrument of my death! So mine could have been a lot worse; mine just said 'ARMED ROBBERY'.

I went through most of the Kübler-Ross model's stages of grief, although I don't feel like I ever really hit 'anger' except in passing. Denial hit me first, which I'm guessing is common; I had a daydream where I would be in a bank making a deposit when sinister-looking commandos would rush in and fire automatic weapons into the air. They would yell for everyone to lie down and shut up, go around collecting jewelry and cell phones - but I would go unnoticed behind a particularly healthy ficus. The cashiers would fill bags with money, everything would be going okay, and then one of the badguys would decide to rape some beautiful woman from the crowd. Not able to let him get away with this, I would lunge out and hit him over the head with a paperweight - not that anyone actually uses paperweights anymore - and grab his gun as he fell. One of the others would turn and raise his machinegun, but I would shoot him between the eyes. Two more would start shooting, one on either side of me, but with a leap I would slide across a convenient desk (the same one I had grabbed the paperweight from I guess) and, in slow motion, shoot them mid-slide as I dropped onto the far side of the desk, safe behind cover. One of the men would throw down his weapons and run for it, but the last one - the evil mastermind - would shoot him in the back for his cowardice. I would shoot at the boss at that same moment, blasting the gun out of his hand and forcing him to attack me with his combat knife. The battle would be fierce, but in the end I would get him with a letter-opener - presumably because I have some sort of subconscious obsession with obsolete office equipment. The woman that I had saved would throw her arms around me and kiss me passionately, and the other patrons of the bank would stand up and applaud. The next time I tried to use the Machine it would just spit out a blank piece of paper, letting me know that I had defeated fate itself. Yes.

Depression came next, because the five stages of grief are really more of a guideline than anything, and I found myself sobbing on my couch because I had wanted to stop by the bank and simply couldn't bring myself to go anywhere near one. I also couldn't use an ATM, go to the mall (too many jewelry stores), or go on the big Las Vegas trip some of my friends were planning. I found that I could order most things I needed online - even groceries - and so for about a month I worked from home and turned down all the good-natured attempts to get me out to the bar for karaoke. There was only one problem with this situation, which was that I was lonely. I'm sure I could have found a way to order a prostitute just like I had ordered my groceries, but that wasn't really what I wanted. I wanted a girlfriend. I had lost my last one just before using the Machine, for the usual stupid reasons. I could have called her, but I knew she was already seeing someone else. Besides, even if I could find an available ex-girlfriend it was unlikely that I could lure her to my house. She would want to go out. Did movie theaters get robbed? Probably. Must have happened at least once.

That was the thought that moved me on to bargaining. Cars crash all the time, right? That's one of the most common predictions from the Machine. That and heart attacks. Even before the Machine, everyone knew that cars killed people more often than most other things. And yet they kept driving. It was some sort of risk analysis. Yes, driving can get you killed. But is the risk of death worth making it easy for me to go to the store for some peanut butter? On the one hand, I don't want to die. On the other hand, there's no way I'm walking all the way to the store just for a jar of mashed nuts. I'll take the car. We make this choice all the time, deciding that delicious, creamy peanut butter is worth risking death for - just not worth the physical effort of walking. So I made a deal with God - who was probably a little surprised to hear from me after all this time - that went something like this: You let me survive going places with a low risk of armed robbery, like the grocery store, and I'll go to church every Sunday until I die. Armed robbery of churches has to be fairly uncommon. In addition to this, when I felt particularly nervous I would add onto the agreement with the Almighty - God, if you let me live to fifty, I promise I'll walk right into a bank on my fiftieth birthday just to give you a fair shot at me. Once the nervousness passed, I would adjust the deal up to sixty-five.

This got me out of the house, but I wasn't to the 'acceptance' stage yet. In fact, I wasn't really even past depression and denial. It was a sort of ongoing cycle, waking up with denial, having a fit of depression before I left the house, and trying to convince God that carjacking wasn't really the same as armed robbery the whole drive to work. I dated some, but after the second girl to recognize my symptoms and point me towards a support group I put women on hold. It wasn't as bad as I had pictured, my heavy-duty breakdown had only lasted for five weeks rather than the rest of my life, but this low-grade discomfort and nervousness was still a problem. I started to think of a reason for someone to rob the building I was in at gunpoint, no matter where I was. What if some street thug, high on... well, on whatever it is that people get high on these days, decides to rob my doctor's office for more drugs while I'm getting my throat looked at? What if he's so high he robs the church I'm at because he thought it looked like a doctor's office? It could happen. Heck, someone in a convenience store could fire his gun off to let the clerk know he was serious, and the bullet could land a mile away - right in my brain. The only thing that kept me going out during this paranoid phase was the fear of home invasion. These things happen ALL THE TIME.

I thought about going to the support groups. Obviously I wasn't the only one having this problem. They would listen, and nod, and talk about feelings. I would cry about my abandonment issues from my childhood, explain that my father had left my mother when I was only two, and they would pull me into the group hug. They would offer kind words and try to guide me through this troubled time, explaining that my fear of death is deeply tied to my father's departure - his disappearance from my life being like an unresolved death. At that point I would sob and tell them yes, yes, finally someone who understands - but I'd probably lose my composure and start laughing, and they would realize I was making fun of them. I would admit that my parents are still happily married and the whole group would chase me out the door, throwing the little plate of free cookies at my head. It would be a bonding experience for them, but wouldn't really help my mental state and might bruise the back of my poor, tender skull.

It was this tendency of mine to drift off into a complex and silly fantasy world that caused me to wander into an alley without noticing. I thought it went through, but there was a chain-link fence blocking my way. When I turned around, he was there. He didn't look particularly desperate to me. He didn't look like a junkie either. Maybe his hair was a little greasy, but his clothes looked new and he was clean. The gun was shaking a little in his hand, but no more than you would expect from pre-crime jitters. It was a nice-looking gun. I didn't even hear him ask for my money the first time, my heart was pounding and blood was rushing in my ears. I wanted to fight back, or run, or do anything but stand there looking stupid. He asked a second time - could have been the third, for all I know - and I found myself reaching slowly for my wallet. I thought of myself back in the insurance office, letting him take my blood and look into my future while I imagined resisting. I felt spineless, hopeless, and I knew I shouldn't be calmly obeying this man. Why should I hand him my wallet if I already knew he was going to kill me? I should scratch his face, make sure the police have DNA evidence. I should throw my wallet over the fence just to make his life harder. I should have - but as usual, I did what I was told. Handed him my wallet, put my hand back in the air. He looked at my watch, ran his eyes up and down my body as if window shopping. Then he turned and ran.

I stood in that same spot for an eternity, hands in the air. Surely he was coming back for me. This was how I was going to die, so it was only a matter of time. I might have stood there all night, but after a while my arms got tired. I felt sick, felt like throwing up. My body had been so ready for something to happen that it wasn't sure what to do with all the excess energy. The nausea was joined by exhaustion and giddiness at the same time, and I sat down right there in the alley and giggled. I couldn't stop. If it's possible to die from adrenaline overdose, I must have been right on the edge. I stayed there for about an hour, just letting my body calm down at its own pace, and then stood up and walked out onto the street. The stores I passed just didn't seem scary anymore. I didn't suspect that everyone I passed was holding a concealed weapon behind their shopping bags. I had faced death, and lived. I'm not naive; I know that the Machine is always right. When I die, it will be in some way due to an armed robbery. I'm not immortal, and if I use the Machine again the slip of paper won't be blank. But not all cars crash, not all banks get robbed, and not all muggers kill the person they're mugging (what an excellent word - 'mugging'). I may still avoid some of the most dangerous places the same way someone who is allergic to dogs avoids hanging out at the vet's office, but I won't be afraid to be alive. The Machine isn't out to get you. It's not stalking behind you with a scythe. We all know death is out there somewhere, but he's in no hurry and you shouldn't be either.

I imagine myself, at the age of one hundred and fifteen. I've got terminal cancer. My wife, children, and grandchildren are all with me and we're celebrating my birthday. The banner over the cake says both 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' and 'BON VOYAGE', and everyone is laughing, telling stories about me, and hugging me. I grab one last piece of cake, get into the car, and tell it to take me to the bank. The cars will drive themselves by then. I'll totter into the bank, a frail old man, and when I get to the front of the line I'll smile at the teller and pull out a gun. This is a hold-up.

Daily Story 112: Looking Eastward

The door to the Department of Temporal Mechanics turned green as Alice swiped her hand past it, but she didn't enter. She had been waiting - almost hoping - that it would turn red and sound the alarms. She stood for a moment in the rain, cold drops trickling through her blonde hair and down between swirling tattoos, asking herself if there was any point in going to work anymore. Her entire reason for taking the job had been to bring the madman who killed her family to justice, but even after tracking him to the 1860s - and waiting for what felt like forever until a trip was approved for the correct area and time - she had failed. They had known she was coming, an Agent had stopped her just twenty feet from her target. If only it had been the right Agent, at least it still would have been worth it - but they would never let her see him again. So now what? Just keep being a receptionist? Not likely.

"You're going to freeze to death out here, kid." Alice jumped, and spun around to find the security guard holding an umbrella over her. Heart pounding, she tried to compose herself.
"Hey Andy. Sorry, I spaced out. One of these days that'll get me in trouble, I'm sure."
He held the door for her, smiling. "Somehow I can't picture a nice girl like you getting in any trouble."
Alice ducked inside and sloshed over to her desk facing the entrance, watching in a kind of coma as each scientist wandered in for the day. Harvey came in late and hurried past her desk without making eye contact before she could even apologize for tagging along with him illegally. She had liked Harv, he was awkward but kind... and now he was terrified of her. Definitely time for a change of scenery.

Decision made, Alice grabbed her one personal item off of the desk and stood to leave - quitting formally seemed unnecessary with the door right there. She would be unable to give them an honest exit interview anyway, nor could she give them a forwarding address since she planned on heading seventy-five years into the future and the DTM believed - absurdly - that it was impossible to jump forward in time. Her criminal record there wouldn't make it easy to find work, but Alice was resolved to be something more exciting than a receptionist. Something greater. She reached for the door for her final time, took a deep breath, and was nearly knocked off of her feet as Doctor Rytier burst in.
"Ah! Alice! Just who I was looking for!" His hair was sticking off at odd angles, and his clothes were wrinkled and covered in pet hair. Alice stared at the screen on his lab coat, showing current credentials. Hadn't he been fired months ago?

"You've been so nice to me, Alice; asked after my son when he went to the institution, smiled at me even when everyone else in this place... and your namesake, of course, was a great inspiration in a roundabout way - I bought you a copy, to celebrate my breakthrough."
Alice took the slightly damp package from his hands. It was a book, actual paper like a collector's edition: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. "I've never heard of it; what is it about?"
Doctor Rytier stared at her, confused. "Is... are you joking with me, dear?"
"Of course I am," she lied, resting a hand on his shoulder. She had become so used to lying over the past year that she found herself smiling and flirting slightly to distract from the soul-crushing panic boiling up inside. Had she changed something? How?
"If you could come to my personal lab, I want you to see this first. Do you mind?"
If she had altered the timeline an Agent would find her sooner or later - probably Chase, that smug bastard. Still, she reasoned, there was no point in making it easy on him. "Let's go."

Doctor Rytier, she discovered, lived and worked in an ancient basement apartment that reeked of cats. Alice looked around at the old whiteboards and faded posters on the walls, at the stacks of books and dirty dishes. Suddenly this felt like a terrible idea. She remembered the talk of Rytier's mental instability and her head was filled with images of the man who had killed her father while ranting about birthing some dark god into the world. Steadily refining her life's goals, she added 'creepy basements with crazy people' to her list of places she didn't want to be, right under 'reception desk'. As Alice attempted to find a polite excuse she noticed a smiling face suspended in the air and froze.
"We've been a bad little girl, haven't we?" it said.
Doctor Rytier stared as the chameleon cloak was thrown back to reveal an Agent from Alice's time. "Who... what are you?" he croaked.
The Agent just continued to smile, as he always did.
"You people at the Department, so naive. Thinking there's no future iteration of the organization keeping an eye on you. This shouldn't be happening, doctor Rytier. You should be dead by now, without making... whatever this is."

Alice looked around for a way to fight back, but unless she threw a kitten at him there was nothing to do. "Chase, I didn't change anything. You stopped me. This can't be my fault."
"No, Alice, you didn't change anything directly. Your boyfriend is the problem. How hard is a little babysitting? Witness Protection duty somewhere in the past should be easy, but he had to go and write some nonsense stories for children. He's taken care of, but the department thinks it's easiest if we just remove you from the equation retroactively. Say goodbye, Alice."
This was it. Her family, he boyfriend, and now her very existence would be lost just when she had resolved to move on with her life. Alice waited to be wrenched free from time, to feel reality collapse around her. Instead, the door opened and the security guard from the DTM walked in.
"Who the hell are you?" Chase asked, still smiling.
"You people at the Department, so naive." Andy said, "Thinking there's no future iteration of the organization keeping an eye on you. Sorry Chase, I've secured Alice a position in a different universe. Oh and relax, those books already existed in the prime timeline."
For the first time since she met him, Alice saw Chase lose his cool. He was hammering at the subdermal controls in his arm, but nothing appeared to be happening.
"No... no, listen to me. The books are an anomaly!"
"You just think that because you're convinced you came from prime. Really, you're the one that's an anomaly. Sorry, Chase."

Chase flickered and.. vanished. Alice looked down at Doctor Rytier, passed out on the ground. A white kitten was licking his face. She felt unsteady, like everything around her was just someone's dream and they were likely to wake at any moment - snuffing her like the flame of a candle. "What happens to me now?"
Andy shrugged. "Now you work for a company a lot like the one Chase worked for, but somewhere else. Your bosses will meet you there, you can't miss him. They always wear a tweed jacket - in fact, they love to be called 'Mr. Tweed'." The sarcasm of this statement hit Alice like a brick and she resolved to call her new employer no such thing. Reaching down, Andy lifted a black kitten onto a boxy device of some sort and stepped back.
"Let's make this look like an accident, okay Novikov?"
"NOT A PROBLEM, ANDREY." The voice boomed from nowhere and everywhere at once. The kitten on the device suddenly began to urinate, and with a shower of sparks a shimmering mirrored portal appeared in the air - almost like the time portal but... dark somehow. Without a backwards look, Alice abandoned the ruins of her life and stepped through.

Two identical portly men in tweed jackets stared at her. The lab was the same, though without the cats or people. The books laying open on the table appeared to be in Russian, and for some reason the door was on the opposite end of the wall. Little differences. The portal vanished, and Alice reached out to shake her new bosses' hands, awkwardly extending one arm to each of them.
"So... I'm supposed to be your new field agent, I believe. Will I be starting right away?"
"Oh, yes." one replied in a curiously deep voice, "You will be deep undercover, long-term." The other nodded and added, "As a receptionist."
Alice cursed.

Daily Story 104: An Appointment in Samarra

I realize something is wrong when there's a gunshot in the alley and I nearly jump out of my skin. I'm always jittery after a job, but it's worse this time; Bean gave me some drugs to calm me down and they haven't done a thing. The shot was probably just a mugging, or some kid showing off, but my heart is racing and I'm picturing the entire SWAT team breaking down my door. I head to the window to look and the alley looks clear... but Bean's car is across the street. He's had more than enough time to get to it, he was supposed to be going and meeting up with Nick, the third member of our team.

The more I think about this the more nervous I get. The prototype teleporter is worth enough to make us all rich, but what if that's not enough for them? What if they don't want to split it three ways? I tell myself I'm just being paranoid, but that seems to be further evidence... if this stuff isn't calming me down, what exactly did Bean give me? I'm looking for somewhere to stash the teleporter just in case when the doorknob wiggles, and suddenly I can hear the blood pounding in my ears. Next there's banging, someone trying to knock the door in - there's nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. There's just one option. Snapping the teleporter into place around my wrist, I push the button just as a shot rings out and blows the lock clean off of my door.

I land, hard, against a dumpster in the alley below - I must have phased right through my wall. I was hoping it would take me further, but at least I'm out of the apartment and in the open. I run to the back of the building but as I get there I see someone coming around the other corner - and now I know for sure I've been betrayed. Even in the dim light I can see he's in one of the military-castoff catsuits Bean got us to wear on jobs, and that means it's either Bean himself or Nick - we're wearing the only three suits like that in the city.

I reach for my gun but realize too late I've left it in my apartment - he draws and fires as I turn to run and he gets me right in the side. I feel the bullet tear through me, flaming swords of pain radiating through my body. I fall, rolling out of his line of sight. He's going to come and finish me off, I know it. I have a field-hospital quality medkit in the apartment, but that's not going to do me any good... unless I can teleport back in while they look for me out here. I worry that I'm risking appearing in a wall or something, but I have to hope that whoever designed this thing took that into account somehow. I slam the button, and land almost exactly where I wanted - in the lobby of my apartment building by the mailboxes.

I peek around the corner and see Bean heading down from my apartment. Perfect. He'll be going outside, and Nick will say he saw me out there - so they'll never suspect that I'm back up in my apartment patching myself. At the last second, though, he sees me and pulls his gun.
"What the hell are you doing here?" He yells, gun pointed right in my face, "You just scared the crap out of me!" He starts to lower his weapon - he must have seen that I left mine upstairs so he knows he has the upper hand - but then he sees the teleporter and he points the gun at my face again.
"Take that thing off of your arm. What do you think you're playing at here?"
That's the answer. I have an ace up my sleeve! I call his bluff, put my finger on the button again, and he lowers the gun. He can't risk losing it.

"Look, let's just both calm down," he says with a smile. "We're friends here."
If I had a gun I'd shoot the double-crossing bastard right now. "Friends don't try to poison each other, Bean. Something to help me relax, huh? What did you give me? What was it?"
He looks around, trying to feign confusion. "Man, I swear, I just gave you the same stuff I take for myself. You... you must be having a paradoxical reaction. Like hyperactive kids, you know? Give them a coffee and the caffeine calms them down."
He's actually trying to Gaslight me. Like I'm going to forget that he was just lurking in my apartment, that Nick just shot me. Still, I can turn this on him. I nod, like I'm agreeing with him, and as he lowers his guard I lunge. It's a lucky hit, and the gun flies out of his hand.

We wrestle for a minute, the gunshot wound in my side threatening to knock me unconscious with pain every time he bumps it, and I get an arm around his neck. He's grabbing at me, but he can't pull me loose and he gets weaker with every second. Finally he stops struggling, stops breathing, and I let him drop. The way to my apartment is clear, but I realize I have a chance to just finish this now. I take his gun and head outside. Circling around the back of the building, I see some movement at the far end - Nick must be looking for me still. He comes around the corner and I'm hoping it's dark enough that he'll think I'm Bean but instead he reaches for his weapon. I fire off a shot and he stumbles, dropping out of sight. Now my nerves are getting at me again; do I go towards him, with no cover? What if I only grazed him, or if he circles around the front of the building?

Whether or not that's what he's planning it seems like a good idea, so I head to the entrance. I wait for a moment but there's no sign of him and I'm feeling lightheaded from the blood loss... and maybe from whatever Bean slipped me. If I pass out without patching myself up I'm as good as dead. I head inside, stepping over Bean, and stagger to my door. I can't get it open and everything is going dark around the edges. I hammer on the door, slam against it with my shoulder. Finally I settle for shooting the lock off and I fall inwards, collapsing on the floor. The medkit is in the bathroom, a million miles away. I can't make it, can't even stand, and as everything goes dark I realize I must not even be in the right apartment - after all, didn't the lock get shot off earlier?

Daily Story 95: Purgatory

There's a fuzzy emptiness around me as the system comes out of hibernation mode, and with a quiet ding a sentence appears in the void in front of me: User Entering Local Network Range.

I know I should remain calm, for all I know Sara just lost her connection for a moment, but I can feel my heart racing - not my actual heart, of course. I drop into the lobby, seamless white walls shining and perfect. Sara appears at the same time as me, wearing that stupid green sundress. Her eyes narrow as she looks at me, and then she composes herself and nods politely. I smile at her as best I can, but my dreamless sleep hasn't dulled the pain of our last "conversation". The things we yelled at each other hurt far more than the actual fighting, of course. That impotent flailing battle, punching and slapping and choking. All for nothing. We turn to the wall that's scrolling network information and I hear a sharp intake of breath - looks like Sara just caught the date. Twelve years since we spoke, though it feels like yesterday.

A name finally appears on the local network list - Betty. With a sound like a doorbell she appears in the lobby with us, in overalls and what looks like a Arkham University shirt. She looks a little like an Italian version of Sara, black hair instead of blonde and an olive tint to her skin. Before I know what's happening we're in a tangle in the middle of the room, arms in knots and everyone crying. I honestly don't even know who went to who. We pull ourselves apart awkwardly and step back, and Betty grins at us.
"I'm Betty, hi. I... it's good to see you guys." The relief in her voice tells me everything, but I have to ask anyway.
"Hi Betty, I'm Phillip. You're dead too, aren't you?" Betty nods, and I see Sara slump a little. We haven't been rescued.

Sara sounds almost skeptical. "Do you know how you got here? It's been more than thirteen years since we died, I didn't think anyone new would come into range after all this time - especially with us in such a shielded area." Betty shrugs, and cocks her head to the side. She's staring at nothing, probably going through some internal files. Finally she smiles.
"For a while there I could access the security cameras, before they died. I found myself pretty easily, laying in a stairwell on the ninety-third floor. You guys are in the Helms building, right?"
"Eighty-ninth floor," Sara and I say in unison. We look at each other, and for just a second I feel some anger welling up as if she answered at the same time as me just to spite me - as absurd as that is. Betty is oblivious to our hostility, she's nodding again.
"I was laying on my back, on the landing, and my head was hanging off the step. The accelerometer in my brain recorded a lot of motion a minute ago, and I think... I think my head fell off and rolled down the stairs. Judging from how long I rolled I would guess I bounced just right to go down... three flights? Maybe three and a half. Pretty impressive, if you think about it." She looks almost proud. Sara smiles - I haven't seen her smile in forever - and she agrees.
"Yeah... I mean, heads aren't exactly round - I would have expected it to stop right away."
"I bet it's because my brain is an older model," Betty says, "I was an early adopter and it's heavier than most. Gave it that extra momentum. Shame I didn't make it closer to street level somehow, there must still be some networks up."

There are, of course. There have to be. Everything that can't be gassed is still out there, slowly breaking - but with all the independent power grids and secure transmitters... it's just this damn internal stairwell that's stopping us from being in contact with the world. I've zoned out, missed some part of the conversation. Betty is talking about how she went into hibernation mode.
"Us too," Sara says, "We kept each other company for the first year, but... to be perfectly honest after a while it was either shut down or find a way to kill each other." I smile at that, and she catches me. For a second she looks hostile, like she thinks I'm laughing at her, and then she smiles too. A little, anyway.

It wasn't always this way. I had seen her around the building, we were friendly. After the attacks we were close, we were the whole world for each other for a year and for a few months in the middle there we had even been more. I miss that. It's not her fault, for such a long time she managed to not take all those hateful things I said seriously; we both knew there was a limit to how much time two people could spend together. Having a third could make us happy again, for another year or two. Maybe more, though of course at some point we'll shut down again, sleep and wait for a rescue that seems more impossible with each passing year. I'm jealous of all the people that died in open, crowded places. They might have hundreds or even thousands of people with them to keep them sane. Still, I shouldn't complain at a time like this. Betty is pulling up her library, and from the look on Sara's face there are some movies we didn't have. It really is nice to see her happy again. I put a hand on her shoulder and she flinches a little, then leans into me. I'm sure we're both thinking the same thing, that our situation could have been a lot worse. How many are just out of range, isolated in their minds like Betty had been - without even one person to keep them company?

Betty is starting a movie, fake popcorn appearing beside her. Sara whispers an apology in my ear, and I whisper the same back. There are worse hells than this, but even so... immortality had sounded like a lot more fun in the brochure.

Daily Story 89: With Longing

It's three in the morning and for just a second I'm trapped in that fog where you're not really awake yet. I'm sure an alarm is going off and I grab my gun before realizing that the sound is my phone ringing and all I've grabbed is my wallet off the nightstand. A soft moan tells me Shelley is awake, and I know I'll get hell about this in the morning because she's convinced she can't get back to sleep after being woken up. We've been married thirty years, and I've never seen anyone who can drop so quickly back into a dead sleep but there's no telling her that.

I slide the phone over - an antique, black Bakelite with a rotary dial on the base - and lift the handset. I mumble something that even I'm not sure is a 'hello' but there's just silence on the other end.
"Charlie? It's you, isn't it?" There's a ragged intake of breath like you hear when someone's been really sobbing, and then just a quiet 'yeah'. Must be bad tonight.
"How about I meet you at the Denny's in ten?"

The Denny's is just a minute away from my house so I get there first and grab a booth. Some kids in the corner give me some funny looks, though I can't say if they're staring at the bunny slippers or the scar that runs all the way down the center of my face. The menu is sticky with something, and I don't have a napkin so I have to wipe my hands off on my shirt, but they could slap me on the way in the door and feed me canned dog food and I'd probably still come here just because it's open. Besides, Charlie has some strange fondness for their burgers and tonight it's all about him. I'm mostly steady these days, but Charlie can still hear it calling to him, trying to make him fall off the wagon.

He comes in a minute later, wearing a tattered cardigan and worn blue jeans. I can see that under that cardigan he's wearing a seven hundred dollar silk shirt left over from his days in the fast lane. He settles into the patched vinyl seat and takes a menu, even though we both know what he's going to order, and after a moment he gives me a sheepish look that seems out of place with those wide shoulders and square jaw. "Sorry about on the phone," he says, "I lost it. I'm still adjusting, you know?"
"You should come to the meeting tomorrow, Charlie. Talking to me is great and that's what sponsors are for, but you never see people anymore."

The waitress takes our order, and I decide I might as well dive on in.
"Okay Charlie, spill it. What is it that has you halfway off the wagon?"
He shrugs, then stares out through the window at the parking lot. He looks old suddenly, and I realize I don't know how old he is. Guys like us might look ancient when we're twenty or we might be healthy as a bear into our eighties - if we don't get killed first. We've both had our close calls for sure; I've got my scar down my face and he has that hand.

"I drove past Milton's place earlier. Down on fifth. He keeps it looking like a smoke shop, but I know he would recognize me if I went in, he'd invite me into the back. I can afford it, barely. Just one, but one is all you need." His voice is quiet, almost like he's talking to himself.
"I know Milton. Got some stuff off of him back when I was active, he did a custom job for me. Zombie snakes, a whole crate of them." Just the memory of those things gives me a terrible black twinge of longing. Charlie is nodding, his mind filled with the possibilities.
"Never did zombies before, always meant to try them. I was into death rays. Had one mounted in a converted observatory, sixty feet long and could level a city block."

I shouldn't encourage this, I should change the subject, but I don't know a lot about Charlie's career and I'm curious. "Who smashed it?"
Charlie smiles, ear to ear. "Silas Cantrell, gentleman spy. Ah, he was a class act. He managed to get it to collapse onto me at the last second, pinned my legs but didn't do any permanent damage. Exactly how it should be. I activated the self destruct, told him I would see him in hell... and of course while he jumped dramatically out the window I pulled free and dropped into the tunnels. Not all of my ventures went that well."
I nod, thinking back at my extensive résumé. "I had a few disasters. Once, the hero got there when I was out on a supply run and set off the self-destruct, didn't even get out in time so there was nobody to vow revenge on. Just a big silly waste of a secret lair."

We both sigh, and Charlie is fidgeting with the salt and pepper shakers. The glass clinks against his metal hand, a replacement from some run-in with a masked vigilante.
"Charlie... you know you can't go back to it. Come to the Villains Anonymous meeting with me, we'll get you back on track."
He nods, but I don't know that he means it. He wants to feel a windpipe in his iron grip, he wants... how does the saying go? 'To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.' God, it's been so long since I've heard the lamentations of anyone's women.

The waitress gives Charlie his burger, and in the silence as we eat I find that I'm now trying to talk myself down instead of Charlie. Take it one day at a time Doctor Calamity. One day at a time.

Daily Story 80: The Last Night at the Drowned Spider

No, that's not even close to how it happened. I was there, so just relax and I'll tell you.

... Generally, this is the part where you get me a beer.

Thanks. Okay...

It was Saturday night at the Drowned Spider, and the usual crowd was making trouble. Not real trouble, you understand - not anything I would have to send them under the cornfield for. Just the usual rowdy action, arguments over whether or not Eddie Shorthand was cheating at pool again and some noisy discussion about the merits of various football teams. Me, I'm a hockey kind of guy. The point is it's loud and rough as always, but the second the bouncer rings that tiny bell next to him the whole place goes silent. That's because all the regulars were there, so anyone at the door had to be an out of town visitor, someone who was profoundly lost, or a fed. I 'ported outside the Spider and across the street, where I could watch from the shadows.

It was a kid, probably just barely drinking age. He was looking around, nervous, which told me he wasn't lost. The little window slid open and I could see the bouncer's eyes.
"This is a private club, an' I don't know you." he says. The bouncer's voice was like gravel, which was appropriate considering his knack for reducing anything to pea-sized chunks by vibrating his hands. Handy on bank jobs. Anyway, the kid says "Someone told me this was a club where people... like... where I could..." stammering like that, wringing his hands, staring at his shoes.
"Ah. Right, no problem," the bouncer said, "Just give me your password then."
I'll tell you, the kid didn't just look confused he looked like he was flat-out going to cry. "They didn't tell me a password," he says, and the bouncer clearly feels sorry for him. His rough voice goes a little softer and kinda fatherly; still sounds like a tractor idling of course.

"Well, they couldn't have, not exactly," He says, "The password is different for everyone, innit?"
And at this the kid brightens up some, looks around to see if anyone is watching. He held out his hand in front of him, and a big ball of flame appeared just hovering over it.

No, as a matter of fact it wasn't him that burned the Spider down. Stop trying to get ahead of me.

So the bouncer lets him back in and I 'port inside too, and everyone does the introductions. We were always a friendly bunch of assholes. Right away Eddie Shorthand challenges him to a game of pool, and I let him because I know Eddie will have the kid win a few times before using his telekenisis to cheat. I figured at that point I would either pull him away from the table and let Eddie lose a few bucks, or I would let the kid learn a valuable lesson - that being to never trust guys like Eddie Shorthand. Everyone else is watching me, to see what I decide to do with the kid. See, if the Drowned Spider were Mount Olympus, I would be Odin. No, Zeus. Whatever, I'll take them both on in a fight so long as they don't have a sniper rifle.

So not twenty minutes into it he's figured out Eddie's game and I can see the wheels in his brain turning, trying to figure out if he should let it go or challenge Eddie, call him a cheat. I wave him over, and I give him the big tip: don't start a bar fight in a room full of freaks if you don't know who has what powers. Fire is fine, sure, but some of these guys can trump that without blinking, take every joule of heat you throw at them and then stab you with tentacles of black energy.

I'm referring, obviously, to Crazy Ike - but there were a couple guys there that could have crushed a pyro without breaking a sweat. Hey, check me out, making a joke without even trying. Anyway, you never know what someone can do. Plus, even the best power is worthless if you spend your days so scared of the feds that you never practice. When I was younger, part of the first wave of freaks, I could barely move a pencil across the room. Now I can get change for a twenty right out of the register without even trying. So anyway, this is my first conversation with the kid and I'm just thinking he's alright when I realize his wrists are funny. Something off about them.

I grab him by both arms and a split second later I'm holding some fancy implants, flamethrower mods to make the kid seem like a natural. He's in shock, panting on the floor, and everyone in the Spider is just staring at me. Me and the bouncer, who they're ready to lynch. Man, those were some displeased customers. The feds must have had him bugged somehow too, because instantly they're firing through the windows and ramming at both doors. The bullets are bouncing off of White's energy shield at first, but I knew for a fact that he had been doing shots with Big Dave and was one sip of beer from passing out and pissing himself. Well I'll tell you, some people complained about how cramped and tiny the Spider was but I liked it. I liked it because if I went to the middle of the room I could reach pretty much the whole place with my power.

The kid stood up, starts to say something about if we cooperate... I sent him to a cell in a certain middle-eastern prison I lived in once - most of him, anyway. His testicles dropped to the floor in a little bloody pile like giblets from a turkey. A minute later we were all standing in Jersey, everyone but the bouncer who let the kid in, Big Dave who was in the restroom, and Eddie Shorthand who I was pretty sure had been sleeping with my girl. The fire was maybe just an accident during the shooting or maybe Eddie tried to make some Molotov Cocktails, I don't know. But I do know two things.

One is that you better find a psychic to be your bouncer now that they're giving the undercovers fake powers, and the other is that I need another beer.

Daily Story 62: Like The Good Old Days

"You're a terrible, terrible scientist," squawks my headset, "and you should be ashamed of yourself. We're doing lab work, Mike!"
I shrug, not that Brent can see it, and continue gazing out across my perfect lawn. It's early yet and the light hasn't lost that golden quality - and near the edge of my property the mist is still burning off. Perfect.
"Listen, I have all the equipment I need right here. It'll be just like I'm in the lab, except I don't have to smell you. Did you really think I saved up all these years and bought a house in the country just so I could spend half my day in traffic? It's not good for me, Brent. My people need to be close to nature."
"Your people? You can't be more than a quarter elf, Mike, and you would die in a week if I took away your television." This is true. As soon as the sun is a little higher in the sky I plan on sitting in front of that television, sipping some very expensive coffee, and watching some steroid-pumped ogres beat each other into a bloody pulp on cable. Not exactly a smiling little forest elf.

"I need you to take this seriously, Mike. Please." He sounds desperate, nervous. Brent is never nervous. I can picture his beard bristling, him pacing back and forth as he curses me in Dwarvish, and I wonder again what has him so agitated. I don't wonder enough to actually drive to the lab, of course - moderation in all things, right?
"I'm pulling up the video now, keep your beard on." I turn away from my magnificent lawn and key my password into the computer, pulling up a live feed of the lab where Brent has, for some reason, placed a costume sword on the table.
"Explain, please." This ought to be good. I tighten my bathrobe around me and walk outside for the mail as I listen to him assure me once more that what he's about to tell me is not a joke. As if Brent ever joked.
"It's... it's a magic sword, Mike. An actual magic sword."

I pause at the end of the driveway, looking at my neighbor's patchy grass. They've got obnoxious plastic animals staked into their lawn, not to mention the hideously ugly real animals. One hisses at me - hisses! - as I close the mailbox. I've seen a lot of rare breeds of chickens, some with big white tufts of feathers and some with enormous blue feet, but never have I seen a breed that looked as ill as these. Long necks, sparse feathers over grey-green scaly skin. Disgusting. I hiss back and turn towards the house.
"Brent, have I mentioned how ugly the neighbor's birds are?"
"Mike... stop obsessing about how great your house is and how much better you are than the neighbors. I need you to focus." It would be easier to focus if the neighbors weren't so much worse than me, but I know that one of these days I'm going to push things too far and Brent will have a heart attack while yelling at me, so I let it go.
"Sorry. Okay, so you have some sword that you say is magic. Hooray. We all have something our grandparents swear was magic, Brent. I've got that obnoxious shield over the fireplace, my ex-wife had... well, no, she had the shield, I stole that. Anyway, it doesn't really change the fact that there's no such thing as magic. Never was, never will be. Fairy tales don't count as scientific evidence." There's a heavy silence, and I know I've pissed him off. He finally says something, and his voice sounds strange.
"Humor me, Mike."

I sit down at the computer and take control of the robotic arms, swinging them down with the laser cutter to take a bit off of the sword. It looks brand new, so this it probably going to be the fastest way to shut Brent up. The handle is wrapped in leather of some sort, and the new dating machine can tell us the age of something in just half an hour with an organic sample. The lasers are positioned, and I activate. I just need a little slice, and... huh.
"Something is wrong with the laser scalpel, Brent." He doesn't say anything, just reaches on-camera with my nameplate off my desk and runs it under the beam. The laser flares around it and the nameplate falls in half. I should be upset about that, it was teak, but I can't stop staring at the leather. It seems to be completely undamaged.
"Brent... I need you to put that sword into the Chamber." The Chamber is my personal baby, one of the most expensive devices on the continent and the reason Brent puts up with my shit. He places the sword inside, and I start scanning.
"Okay... we have... huh. We have zero background radiation. None. This thing is completely inert." This isn't happening. Brent is playing a trick on me... except he isn't. Probably wouldn't know how. The Chamber continues to sweep and Brent is silent, he knows this is going to take some time to sink in. Finally, a message flashes up on my screen.

"Got something... it's... I have no idea what it is. Some kind of radiation, but nothing I've seen before. Not a magnetic field, exactly, but it's behaving like one... I'm going to see if the Chamber can reproduce it." After a moment the lights on my screen flash green and then vanish in a sea of red. Damn. "Brent, something went wrong. I had it, I'm sure I had it, but as soon as I matched the field something must have broken because now the Chamber says it's everywhere."
"Can I reset it? I need to know what this is, Mike." He sounds giddy. That grumpy little dwarf is actually giddy.
"I'll need to do it. I'll be there in an hour." I grab my clothes and pull them on as I walk towards the door. Disheveled and a little smelly, I shuffle to the car but I'm forced to stop by the latest decorating disaster my neighbors have committed. It looks like a life-sized statue of the guy, all dressed in his gardening outfit. How tacky can you get? As I'm looking at it I notice a blue glow through my window... did I turn the television on? I can't let it burn out the screen, I just got that baby. I head back to the house at a jog, and as I open the door I see that the glow is coming from the ancient shield hanging over the fireplace.

The keys drop through my numb fingers as I hear hissing and screaming in the yard behind me.

Daily Story 60: They Don't Sparkle, Either

Betsy sighed and put down her diary, trying to think of another synonym for Adonis. Statuesque? No, she'd used that far too many times today. She sighed again, feeling butterflies dance in her stomach as she thought of Edwin. Oh, Edwin. For a brief moment she wondered if the lightheaded feeling and the butterflies could be the fact that she hadn't eaten for the past few days rather than just the giddiness of pure love, but dismissed that thought as absurd. She was almost a hundred pounds, surely she could survive without eating for a while - and soon, so soon, she would never have to eat again because Edwin would sink his long powerful vampire fangs into her and make her one with him and it would be so romantic. It would be perfect, and wonderful, and that glorious moment when he began to slurp out her blood would feel even better than sex, she was sure. Well, reasonably sure. She couldn't be absolutely positive since she had, up to this point, not tried either activity.

As Betsy opened her diary again (sighing in romantic angst for the twelfth time in five minutes) and began to write about how terribly unfair it was to be only seventeen - or sixteen and three months, which was practically the same thing - and not able to go and live her life which would be full of adventure and romance somewhere where people appreciated her free spirit and willingness to not be like all the other kids, Edwin suddenly appeared in front of her in that silent and sexy vampire way he had and completely disrupted her thriving run-on sentence.
"Oh, Edwin!" she cried, bosoms heaving. That was the intent, at least; she hadn't managed to develop what one would call bosoms, exactly, and so they were more like shoulder pads from her mother's old jackets stuffed into her bra. In addition to that, the deep breathing required to make them heave combined with standing suddenly (and possibly - just possibly - the three-day hunger strike) caused her to pass out so that she more precisely said "Oh, Edwhuh..." before crashing to the ground and stabbing her ear with a pinecone.

For a moment, Betsy wondered why Edwin hadn't caught her with his incredible vampire speed, but then he crouched down beside her and lifted her up in his perfect arms like pale marble. Some tiny part of her brain, deep down inside, wished yet again that he were warm and soft - but the rest of her reminded that part that cold and hard and scary was more romantic. So much more. She looked up into his perfect red eyes, and coyly tilted her head to expose more neck before remembering that that was the side with the zit - why must acne interfere with her true love? Were the fates against her?
"Oh, Edwin, I love you so much. I want you. Need you. Please, bite me. Bite me now."
He was almost drooling, but in a totally romantic way. Slowly, he leaned forwards and she felt the points of his teeth press against her neck.
"Oh, yes Edwin!" she cried, and then the pressure increased and OH DEAR GOD! The pain was intense, all consuming. The pressure just kept coming, and she could feel her flesh tear as warm blood flowed down and soaked her shirt.

She struggled, but she might as well have been wrestling with solid iron. She screamed for a moment but then somehow couldn't get her breath - the pain was just too powerful. Something else tore, something inside her neck. This wasn't right, wasn't how the stories went at all. That same tiny part of her brain as before reminded her that this was, in fact, a lot like the stories about vampires - just not the newer stories she was a fan of. Betsy could feel her heart beating, each beat weaker than the one before. She was getting cold, getting numb. Was that the change starting? Was she turning into a vampire? Edwin dropped her roughly to the ground, and as he wiped the dark blood from his face she saw that he looked different now. It was like some sort of spell had broken, and she could see his actual face.

It wasn't pale, it was pasty - almost grey. The skin sagged in places, and dark veins were visible on his cheeks. His mouth - that perfect mouth that she had pressed against hers so many times - was ugly and distorted by the hideous fangs. For some reason it was getting hard to see, but she could just make out Tony, another vampire, walking up behind him.
"Ah... broke another toy, Edwin?" Toy! Tony would be regretting that comment in a moment when Edwin defended her honor.
"Yeah, looks like. I always do that. Wasn't even very filling, to be honest."
"So are you going to turn her?" Of course he was, Betsy thought. Of course.
"Are you joking? Man, you know I like them to be seventeen at the oldest - what would I do with her in a year?"
"How do you even get kids to go out with you, you pervert? I wouldn't think it would be so easy to get them to date a pedophile." The world seemed to be falling away from her, the voices sounding distant and strange.
"Ah, that's easy. Just tell them you're like two hundred years old."
"But you're forty!"
"Sure, but if you let them know that they can grasp the math better and they won't go for it."
"Ah. So... what now?"
Now... now he saves me, Betsy thought. This is just a trick, right?
"Well, her little sister is looking pretty tasty for a fourteen year-old. I could say Betty here got attacked by werewolves, act all sad... I'll have her in a week."
"You're a sick son of a bitch, you know that?"
"Dude, vampire."
"Ah, right."

And then she couldn't hear anything anymore.

Daily Story 52: What A Waste

There's a magic trick - a disappearing act - that people try not to think too much about. It's a marvel of engineering, but much like the Vanishing Cabinet trick the audience doesn't really want to hear about the engineering aspects. They want the box they're familiar with, and they want the assistant to step inside and disappear... and then they want to stop thinking about it. Of course, the metaphor falls apart a bit here because the thing disappearing is certainly not a lovely assistant and you absolutely don't want it to ever reappear. But I digress.

On my first flight to Mars, I was stopped by Customs in orbit. This didn't bother me. I had followed all the rules and if some of my passengers had illegal fruits or vegetables that wasn't my problem, it was theirs. They had all signed waivers. What I failed to realize is that several passengers were carrying things far worse than strawberries - though in my case strawberries are pretty terrible since I'm deathly allergic... there I go again. Sorry, back to the story. Where was I... oh, right, one passenger was also wanted by the law and felt certain that this was not a routine customs search but a roadblock set up to capture him.

I was oblivious, cheerfully setting up the docking protocol with customs and not once wondering why there had been a rush on the bathroom. I didn't think for a second that three separate passengers were dumping things into the toilet that didn't belong there. A zero-g toilet is a bit daunting at first, but once you're used to it going to the head really isn't that bad. There's an arm that comes down like a tray table to help you stay seated, and a lot of extra buttons, but in essence it's still a toilet. That first time, though? Having never prepared for this? Terrifying. That feeling of air rushing past your exposed undercarriage is totally foreign - on Earth we have gravity to take care of our waste disposal. You get used to the air flow, like you get used to anything, and you don't stop to wonder about the mechanics of it. And I've digressed again.

Three people went in, dumped items, and ran out. A fourth grabbed some nice young woman by the hair and dragged her into the head with a knife to her throat, screaming that they would never take him alive. This turned out to be correct, but I guess I'll get to that in a second. Sorry. Anyway, I learned about this at the same time as the customs agents and we were all just as shocked as each other because they hadn't been looking for anyone, they really were just checking for fruits and vegetables.

They weren't expecting illegal drugs, which had been dumped. They certainly weren't expecting banned chemicals (being smuggled in to keep outdated machinery running even though it had been declared environmentally unfriendly) which had similarly been dumped. They absolutely were expecting some illegal booze, but wouldn't find it because that, too, had headed down the drain. For myself, I wasn't expecting those items to all end up in the toilet at the same time and have some sort of reaction.

What people don't want to think about is where bodily waste goes. It disappears, like magic, and they're happy about that. Those who have some idea will tell you that the liquid is spewed out into space and the solids are compacted, exposed to the vacuum to sterilize them, and then stored. They're forgetting some things, because like I said nobody wants to think about how that particular trick works. One thing they forget is that the process of separating solid and liquid isn't instant, and so if a few people use the head in rapid succession it all gets to mix. The second is that there's air - it's that gentle flow of air that directs the waste in that zero-gravity environment and it needs to go somewhere too.

We don't throw out air in space, so it gets filtered which is fine if it just contains some ammonia and bacteria but if it's a cloud of corrosive gas from a freak chemical reaction it could do something strange like melt through into a fuel line and dump that into the mix as well. I'm not sure why they put that fuel line there, I tried to ask an engineer once but it turned out he had only designed... there I go. Back to it, I apologize.

So, as the customs officials ran over to negotiate or shoot the guy or whatever, the system that heated and separated the waste kicked on. The toilet seat headed off towards Mars and knocked out a satellite, doing millions of dollars of damages. It was spectacular. It also left a hole in the ceiling, out of which rushed some air. Just some, though, because that poor bastard managed to plug the hole nicely with his body. The air pressure wasn't enough to crumple him and suck him out right away, and the girl got out of the bathroom and slammed the door. The guy lived through this part, at least long enough to see the system back up and vomit compressed blocks of human waste at him. Fast. Not a great way to go.

The real problem for me, of course, was that the filter had melted and for the rest of the flight the whole ship smelled like a giant fart. That's why they... oh, I'm sorry, you just wanted to know my lunch order.

Chili, please.

Daily Story 47: Long Has Paled That Sunny Sky

Harvey wouldn't stop staring at his watch.
"Harv, you're making me nervous. Quit it."
"Yes, miss Liddell. I apologize." Harvey slid the watch back into his waistcoat, anxiously wiping his brow with a handkerchief even though he didn't appear to be sweating. He shifted his short, pudgy frame from one leg to the other, anxious and twitchy. Without thinking he reached for his watch again but caught himself before pulling it out. "Miss Liddell," he said, "It's just that strictly speaking I was only cleared to come to Oxford to gather some historical information, the English perspective on aspects of the American Civil War - at a meeting that was to take place in just a few minutes. I'm very nearly late."

Miss Liddell looked down at him with a mixture of annoyance and pity. "Strictly speaking, Harv, I shouldn't be here at all. So if you want to run off to your meeting and leave me unattended..."
Harvey's cheeks turned beet red, his eyes wide as saucers. "N-n-no!" He wiped his pasty forehead again, and clutched the handkerchief like a life preserver.
"Don't stutter, Harv. You sound like... nevermind. We're going to go to a furniture shop at 49 High Street, and I'm going to have a little talk with the proprietor. Then we can go back, and nobody will be the wiser. Now let's get going, 1862 smells atrocious."
Harvey was looking at his watch again. "But, miss Liddell, you aren't cleared for any of this. You're a... a receptionist, not a Chronology Technician!"

She smiled, a little smirk that somehow scared him and made him think about the fact that a regular receptionist never would have been able to sneak into the secure area without setting off all kinds of alarms. He sighed and hurried after her down the street, grateful that she had at least worn period-appropriate clothing. The simple blue dress she was wearing had no logos, no screens. She had turned off her tattoos, and reverted her hair back to a natural blonde color.

"Stop, Harv. We're there."
Harvey looked across the street and saw the furniture store, a strange-looking man lounging in the doorway. He wore an apron, and had a top-hat at the back of his head. In combination with his rather large nose and lack of chin it was a peculiar sight. Harvey was looking around for some route of escape, wondering whether he could get back home without destroying the timeline, when he noticed a curious appearance in the air; it puzzled him very much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, he made it out to be the lower half of someone's face, looking out from under a hood. The rest of the body was visible only as a slight ripple in the air, like heat distortion.
"How are you getting on?" asked the mouth, nearly giving poor Harvey a heart attack.

Before he knew it he had been shoved roughly into an alley. "Miss Liddell... I... this is highly unusual!" She ignored him, as did the newcomer who had thrown back his hood and now appeared to be a disembodied head. He smiled and leaned against the wall, allowing the tip of a shoe to show from under his light-bending cloak. "After Theophilus Carter again, my dear?" he asked with a grin.
"He's a madman." Somehow she was now holding a sinister-looking rod, white-knuckled and shaking.
"So? The judge said you were mad as well, dear. And I know for certain I am."
"He should have been executed, not dumped somewhen! Why are you assigned to this case, anyway? Where is Dodge?"
"As if they would let you two see each other again! It's a wonder they didn't take your boyfriend's badge. He's here, however. Doing what he can for you."
She raised an eyebrow. "What does that mean?"
There was a strange wrinkle in the air that might have been the man shrugging. "We saved your father, after a fashion. You're no longer the youngest, by the way; he's had six children rather than four already."
In an instant she had pressed the strange black rod up against his head, though it didn't wipe the smile from his face.
"That you've left some version of my father somewhere in the distant past is little consolation to me. I'm stuck in 2380, all alone."
Harvey shivered. 2380? She was a receptionist in 2305. He mopped his forehead again, pulling out his watch and moaning in despair when he saw the time.
"The new old you is happy, at least. She's out on a day trip to Godstow, I believe, or I would introduce you. Duh-duh-Dodge is with her - undercover. Too much older than her to spark up the old relationship, of course."

She stepped back, looking through the smiling man at the shopkeeper across the street who still stood oblivious in his doorway.
"We let you off on temporary insanity when you killed him last time, but you won't be that lucky again and we'll still save a copy of him. We need him."
She seemed to sag and deflate, as if shrinking. A hand appeared in the air and took the rod from her, and she turned to Harvey as she wiped tears from her eyes.
"Good choice, dear. I'll tell Dodge you said happy Independence Day, and that you look good as a blonde." He lifted his hood back up and moved aside.
"I... Harv, go do your thing and then we'll head back."
Harvey shook his head. "No, no, it's no good. I'm late. We'll have to schedule another run, it will take months."
Nodding, Alice Liddell tapped the subdermal control in her arm and a shimmering mirrored surface appeared in front of them. She stepped through her reflection and vanished, and Harvey followed - pausing only a moment to look back at the smile floating in the alley and wonder what exactly had just happened.

Daily Story 44: Cold Iron

Most people still think that iron burns fairy folk, which is almost exactly wrong. The iron sucks the warmth and life out of them, so while the metal itself turns white-hot the fey freezes solid. I pull the bar away as the stick it's tied it to catches fire, and toss it as hard as I can towards the pond. It's a good throw, and there's a hiss of steam as the heavy weight drags the stick under the shallow water.

I look down at the remains of the goblin, so cold that the grass around him has already turned brittle; it radiates off of him in waves, giving me goosebumps. As always, I feel... strange. Not guilty, never that, but somehow awkward. Like when someone tells you that a relative has passed away, but it's one you don't remember. You don't feel sad, but you feel like you should be saying something, thinking something.

I take a Polaroid and walk back to the bus stop, leaving the grotesque ice sculpture where it is. The body will vanish at sunup, no need for me to break my back dealing with it before then. I'm trusted enough to be paid off of the Polaroid alone, unlike the newly-licensed bounty hunters that I see with their dripping bags of souvenirs. Disgusting. I'm glad I'm past that, not the least because now I don't get glares from the ignorant masses.

I remember when I was going to college in Pennsylvania I dated a girl that was part of some animal rights group. They were militant to some extent, breaking into labs that participated in animal testing. I sometimes wonder if she's moved to the Fairy Rights groups these days, and I know that if she has she's probably killed people - those groups make even the most extreme animal lovers look like coma patients. I have trouble picturing the girl who ended our relationship because she caught me eating a hamburger leading a raid on a government building. I hope she just settled down somewhere, opened up a vegan bakery.

I have to hide the fact that I'm a bounty hunter because of these people, who simply remember all the wrong stories. They picture the sugar-coated children's cartoon version, and if they would just read a few stories written when their grandparents were little they would know that these "darling" creatures are bad news. They remember tales of leaving little treats on the doorstep for the fey, but they think it was done as some sort of gift. A gift! In another hundred years, will we look back at the mafia and think that all the money given to them for "protection" was just handed over out of love? People still sometimes hang a horseshoe over their door, but forget that they do it to keep the Fair Folk from entering. Whether a horseshoe over the door or a knife buried under it, the fey sense the iron and keep out - what else would it be for? General good luck? Stupidity.

My bus stops at the central hub and I wander over towards the mall, which has been a hotspot lately. I don't really need to do any more hunting to pay the rent this month but there's nothing good on television and I don't like letting the little monsters feed on teenagers anyway. It's a tough call sometimes, when it's a particularly obnoxious teenager and a relatively harmless fey. One time I caught a leprechaun begging for change - he was offering a fifty dollar bill if anyone could just give him two twenties. I tried to warn the girl he was talking to, but she flipped me off without even listening so I shrugged and watched the deal go down. The leprechaun eyed me warily but went through with it, happily running off with his twenty dollar bills. I just chucked and turned to walk away, and the girl asked me what was so funny. I told her to wait and find out. I would have loved to see the look on her face when she found a worthless scrap of newspaper where her fifty should be.

Those are the hard cases, though, because the government has backed off on Leprechauns, Brownies, and Gnomes - or at least the fey that they have decided to call gnomes. We're still supposed to arrest them, but not kill them. That's a really tough order. I had some shoddy handcuffs made, magnetized iron wrapped in leather. The leather doesn't hurt, but the magnetized iron burns right through with enough power to make them very cooperative and unable to pull any... tricks. Even so, hauling them off to jail is a massive pain, especially since I don't have a car. I'd actually rather go after the more dangerous ones.

I'm almost to the mall when I see a girl, can't be more than fifteen, and she has a pixie on her hand like a butterfly. Shit. I try to get her attention, tell her not to touch it, but her eyes are already glazed over. I don't want the little thing to get away, so I slowly reach into the inside pocket of my jacket for the big gun. In the same way that the homemade handcuffs are weak, there are certain weapons that are more effective than normal iron. Meteoric iron is stronger, having never been smelted, and stronger still is Magnetite. I have some pellets of magnetite and a small but powerful slingshot that I keep with me at all times, though I rarely use it. A cheap bar of iron is nearly always enough if you get the drop on them, and even in this case the magnetite is overkill - but at least I know that even a graze will knock it out.

The pellet is loaded, but I'm moving slowly and I can already see that it's too late. The girl has reached out to pet the pixie, and as I watch it sinks its teeth into the girl's finger, flapping its wings in delight as it digs in. The girl looks concerned, in a distracted way, but isn't fighting it off. Damage already done, I take an extra second to aim carefully and release, catching the pixie in the midsection and knocking it to the ground. The ball of magnetite is lodged in the pixie, and it's exactly like the time we dropped raw sodium into a tub of water in science class - the whole pixie bounces around on the asphalt for a minute blazing like a flare, and then explodes.

The girl is blinking and holding her hand, probably wondering why it's bleeding. I feel bad for her. These stories she's been told, about the magical little people who love sunshine and flowers, will all be ruined for her once she remembers what happened. I'll always believe it's for the best, always favor truth over comfort, but it still pains me every once in a while to see innocence lost in such a violent way. Without saying anything I take her hand and start to wrap a bandage around it, and for the first time she really focuses and looks around, though the last few minutes clearly haven't come back to her yet. Minuscule frozen bits of the butterfly-winged pixie are drifting down around us, even the largest no bigger than a peppercorn, and the girl quietly asks me,

"Is it snowing?"

Daily Story 36: Consolation Prize

In 1994, six years before the economic and literal collapse of the corporation, the Fancy-Shine Lip Balm Company had a contest where people were encouraged to offer up their own ideas for lip balm flavors. As part of the promotion the company offered flavorless lip balm and promised that a panel of judges would test and rate any that were sent back with flavor added.

This was the second-worst idea that the Fancy-Shine Lip Balm ever made. The very first "flavor" that the judges tested turned out to be Elderberry. This sounded nice enough, however as it turned out the lib balm had been made not just with the berries themselves, but with several parts of the plant that contained calcium oxalate. The judges awarded it points for flavor and appearance, but then disqualified it due to the powerful burning sensation. The swelling it caused could have counted in its favor, as large lips were generally desirable at the time, but there didn't seem to be a way to guarantee that the swelling would stay on the lips, tending instead to move to the throat where it caused an unpleasant choking hazard.

Immediately the decision was handed down to throw out all samples they received after taking note of what flavor it was supposed to be, as actually using the samples was clearly stupid and dangerous. Hundreds of phials of lib balm were thrown away, most boring and uncreative flavors that Fancy-Shine actually already produced, such as cherry and peach. In the end, rhubarb won out over peanut butter and jelly and went on to sell abysmally, being canceled after only a month. The winner of the "make your own flavor" contest ended up with more free product as a prize than was ever actually sold.

Meanwhile, on a shelf in the basement of Fancy-Shine there were some unusual flavors, spared from the dumpster by an amused employee. When that employee was subsequently fired for having sex with a co-worker's daughter that had been pressured into working at Fancy-Shine after dropping out of college, the odd collection was left behind - forgotten like the pair of panties that remained sandwiched between two boxes of register tape for almost four years before being unceremoniously thrown out by the cleaning crew one night. The phials and jars were labeled with flavors such as 'Rhinoceros' and 'Burnt Coffee Grounds'. The panties were labeled 'Regina Hawley' which is admittedly less of a flavor and more of an embarrassment to Regina's mother, who lost out on the opportunity to be promoted to head of accounting when she accepted a position with another company in Georgia to avoid having to listen to her co-workers snicker every time they passed the supply closet.

As the years passed, the disastrous flavor-creating contest completely faded from memory and so when Janet Lewis moved her desk into the dusty little room in the basement to avoid having to share her cubicle with two other people she had no idea what, among other things, pickle-flavored lip balm would be doing down there. After wasting a few hours sorting through them and even throwing a few of the less interesting ones away, she stacked them nicely in a pyramid shape and turned out the light to leave. Had she remembered her purse, everything would have continued on in her life as it always had and she would have led a boring but reasonably good existence before dying at the age of seventy-five when a bus bound for Atlantic City would have swerved off the road, crushing her.

Instead, pausing to grope around for the purse she had left hanging on her chair rather than turning the light back on, her eyes started to adjust to the darkness. What she first thought to be a floating spot in her vision, an after-image of the ceiling light, resolved into a tiny glowing shape near the desk. She reached out, still mostly blind, and as she grabbed at the shape she knocked down all of the discarded flavors. Janet turned the light back on, and looked at her palm to find a small glass jar labeled 'Happiness'. She put it into her purse, put the purse over her shoulder, and headed upstairs just in time for the entire building to collapse behind her. As everyone would later agree, the worst idea that the Fancy-Shine Lip Balm Company had ever had, far worse than testing homemade flavors or bringing hormonal teenagers into the office, was deliberately cutting costs on building construction to an illegal degree while simultaneously ignoring the fault line that the property straddled. All things considered, the building lasted about seven years longer than it should have.

Janet Lewis was thirty years old, five and a half feet tall, and covered in dust. Her long hair, normally brown, had taken on a grayish color from the debris of her former workplace as had the jeans she had chosen to wear for casual Friday, not realizing that it was Thursday. She had a sort of nervous twitch, which she had only developed moments earlier, as well as a tendency to stare into the distance at nothing in particular while listening to the ringing in her ears. This tendency had come about at the same time as the nervous twitch, and they worked well together.

Janet was unemployed, although not yet officially - the official word would have to be passed down by someone in Human Resources which was unlikely to happen soon as the entire department was buried underneath Marketing. The actual employees were largely safe, as Janet had lost track of time looking through the rejected lip balm flavors and was one of the last people out of the building. To be more precise, she was the very last person out of the building - unless you count mangled corpses as people and a pile of rubble as a building, in which case she was fourth from last. Janet wasn't a big fan of semantics, though she rarely mentioned this because in the past it had led to someone accusing her of hating Jewish people. Janet only really knew one Jewish person and she did happen to hate her, but she wanted desperately to believe that this had nothing to do with Laura's cultural or religious background and was based entirely on Laura being an obnoxious bitch, but the fear that she was secretly and involuntarily racist tugged at her brain as she tried to fall asleep nonetheless. It seemed best just to be nice to everyone and enunciate clearly when talking about semantics or the country Niger.

More importantly, Janet had in her purse a small amount of faintly glowing happiness-flavored lip balm. It was a milky translucent green, and its label looked as if it had been made with a typewriter on regular paper which was then cut and glued to the glass, rather than the more common pre-made sticky label. Janet, to the extent that she had thought about it at all, presumed that this and the other flavors in the basement was just some leftover R&D project. After all, even lip balm needs research and development. She was intrigued by the fact that it glowed, but only enough to have put in her purse - not so much that she remembered anything about it after the excitement of having the building she was leaving nearly kill her on the way out. It settled slowly to the bottom of the purse where it waited, a ticking bomb - ready to change Janet's life but not quite willing to be misspelled for comic effect as 'ticking balm', because really that's just overdoing it.