“And don’t think that diamonds are only a girl’s best friend … you guys, be sure to visit our two-thousand-carat baseball diamond, signed by late great sluggers Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, and Mickey Mantle!”
Marilyn blows a kiss for the camera before applying polish to her toes.
“Stay fabulous!”
Epiphany’s Jewelers.
You Followed the Rules, Now Get Your Jewels.
Only in Mallvana
The lights came up, and the girls shivered as the icy fingers of want strummed up and down their spines. This is excruciating, Marlo thought, which is the point, I’m sure, of having all of Mallvana’s spendy splendor rubbed in a greedy girl’s face. The girls chewed their lips, fidgeted in their chairs, and shivered from the cold sweat of appropriation withdrawal. It was a punishment that was cruel but hardly unusual in this underage underworld.
The teacher straightened her belt—which holstered both an antique pistol and a cutlass—and tossed a piece of chalk playfully in her hand.
“Me name is Grace O’Malley” she said while surveying the class full of girls. “And I’ll be teachin’ ya the finer points of corporate strategy.”
Jordie raised her hand. It swayed like a bobbing brown mast.
“Aye, me ferst question,” Ms. O’Malley said with a smile.
“Why is the … whole barmy room … rockin back ’n forth?” she asked in nauseated fits and starts. “It’s makin me so dicky I’m near honking.”
The teacher smiled. “If yer wantin’ to be corporate pirates, then ya got to be learnin’ to hold yer own while everythin’ round ya is as wobbly as closin’ time at the local pub.”
Lyon’s arm shot up like a tan cobra ready to strike. “I just want to know,” she said snidely “what an old pirate from Leprechaun Land knows about corporate strategy?”
“That’s rather the point, isn’t it?” Ms. O’Malley said, her eyes a pair of blazing emeralds. “To see what an old leprechaun like me knows.”
The teacher paced in front of the chalkboard. Her green cape billowed behind her.
“As I see it,” she pondered aloud, “thars scarce little diff’rence between bein’ a pirate and runnin’ yer own corporation. Fer one, there’s hostile takeovers—”
Bordeaux raised her hand.
“I’m glad to see me talk is stirrin’ up all sorts of questions,” Ms. O’Malley said with a grin. “What’s on yer wee mind, luv?”
“Do you know Johnny Depp?”
The girls giggled.
“No, lass,” Ms. O’Malley replied. “Just the bonny deep … now, enough with the interruptions, ya bony gulls.”
The teacher rubbed her chin and inspected her desk.
“Ah,” she said as an idea struck her, “here’s a way to explain it.”
She grabbed a stapler and held it out to the class.
“Let’s say this here is the S.S. Junk Bond. And this,” Ms. O’Malley continued, holding a Scotch tape dispenser in her other hand, “is the Raging Equity, which gets an ambitious gust in ’er sails and decides to take over the Junk Bond by any means necess’ry”
Ms. O’Malley set the stapler and tape dispenser on the edge of her desk, side by side, then tied her hair back with a velvet scrunchy.
“First, she pulls alongside the Junk Bond, and the captain bellows, Attention, crew! Overthrow yer captain and end his reign of error! Join our merry, thievin’ family, where ever’one gets their fair share!’”
The stapler and tape dispenser pitched and yawed in the agitated, imaginary sea.
“But the market was angry, me friends,” Ms. O’Malley continued. “The captain of the Raging Equity has to act fast and wages a fierce raid before the Junk Bond loses all its perceived worth. He preys upon the other crew’s vanity, greed, and weakness and wins it all without spilling a drop o’ blood.”
Ms. O’Malley pulled up her plaid wool trews and sat down behind her desk.
“Any questions, lasses?” she said, winded, wiping beads of perspiration from her brow. “Or are ya gonna just stare at me like a herd of seals that’ve been in the sun fer too long?”
The girls traded uneasy looks. Takara raised her hand.
“Yes, lass … a copper for what rests on yer mind,” Ms. O’Malley said.
“I like pirate story very much!” Takara gushed.
Ms. O’Malley sighed.
“Aye, yer welcome, miss. Perhaps I’ll strike the colors and scuttle this particular lesson for today. Besides—”
The teacher clapped her hands together and pushed herself away from the desk.
“—it’s time to play a little game!”
Ms. O’Malley stood up.
“I want ya all to shove yer desks to the sides of the room.”
Marlo and Norm heaved their bulky desks to the wall in squeaky bursts. Lyon and Bordeaux tried vainly to budge their respective desks but, considering that their combined weights barely crossed the triple-digit barrier, managed only a few scrapes. Jordie, her desk the first to hit the wall, grinned as she watched the two skinny girls struggle.
Lyon blew a frosted bang out of her face. “Can someone move this for me?” she whined.
Jordie walked over to her. “I’ll move it for yeh,” she said, “if I can punch yeh hard in the arm for afters.”
“Whatever,” Lyon said with resignation.
Jordie smirked and shoved both of the girls’ desks to the wall in three heaves. Then, true to her word, she walked back to Lyon and slugged her hard in the shoulder.
“Oww!” Lyon yelped. “Teacher! Jordie just hit me!”
Ms. O’Malley’s green eyes twinkled with amusement.
“Ye struck a bargain, lass,” she replied. “Then ye had ta make good.”
Lyon rubbed her arm and fumed.
“Look!” Takara chirped while pointing down at the floor. “Class big game board!”
Marlo looked down. Sure enough, the floor was striped with electrical tape to simulate—judging by the inclusion of spaces such as Boardwalk and St. Charles Place labeled with Magic Marker—a large Monopoly board.
“Monopoly?” Lyon yawned. “How boring. My father owns half of these places for real, anyway.”
“I think it’s cool!” said Marlo. “I get to be the car!”
“The dog would be more appropriate,” Lyon mocked with a sneer.
“I want to be that cool three-wheeled European convertible!” Bordeaux exclaimed.
The other girls passed the same look of confusion back and forth with one another.
“You mean the wheelbarrow?” asked Norm finally.
Ms. O’Malley stepped from behind her desk and out to the middle of the classroom.
“Would you girls stop yer harpin’?” she said with her hands on her hips.
None of the girls knew exactly what their teacher was asking of them but assumed it had something to do with them being quiet.
“That’s better,” Ms. O’Malley remarked. “A good word never broke anyone’s teeth, ye know. Besides, ye lasses won’t be needin’ any game pieces, as you yourselves will be the pieces.”
The teacher handed each of the girls $1,500 in funny money.
“Now, if all of ya will stand over there in tha corner that says ‘Go.’”
The class congregated in the corner, lurching across the gently rolling floor. They crowded and fussed to fit in the same tape-outlined square.
“Good,” Ms. O’Malley said while seating herself cross-legged. “Now, ya may be wonderin’ why we’re playin’ a game in class. If ya hadn’t already a’been told by poor dear Poker Alice—which I sincerely doubt, judgin’ from her track record—yer all being trained ta join the ranks of the Netherworld Soul Exchange, when ya grubs turn ta butterflies, that is. That’s basically what Rapacia is, a prep school to pump out new blood to feed the NSE.”
The girls stared at their teacher with faces blanker than a hobo’s bank statement.
Ms. O’Malley smirked. “There’s plenty of time fer all t
hat later on,” she said, scooping up a pair of dice. “We’ve got ourselves a game ta play. We’ll be doin’ things alphabetically, so, Bordeaux, ya ken go furst.”
The teacher cast the dice between her sandaled feet. “Eight! Good start, lass. Off ya go.”
Bordeaux skipped to Vermont Avenue.
“So, lass,” asked Ms. O’Malley “Do ya wanna buy it?”
Bordeaux shook her head. “We already have a cabin in Vermont,” she replied.
Ms. O’Malley smirked and shook her head. She scooped up the dice and rolled them again. “Five! Go fer a walk, Jordie.”
Jordie stumbled over to the Reading Railroad and took two hundred-dollar bills from her stack. “Stonking!” she exclaimed, handing her money to the teacher.
“Congratulations,” Ms. O’Malley said while taking Jordie’s pretend money. “Smart move … for a Brit,” she added with a sly wink.
The teacher rolled the dice.
“Four … ooh. Sorry, Lyon,” Ms. O’Malley said.
Lyon fumed and stomped to Income Tax (Pay 10 percent or $200).
“Income tax?!” the spoiled girl snapped. “My family doesn’t have to pay taxes—we’re rich.”
“We’re playin’ a game, luv,” Ms. O’Malley said.
Lyon wadded up two hundred-dollar bills and threw it at her teacher’s feet. “Keep the change,” she huffed.
Ms. O’Malley sighed to herself as she rolled the dice. “Ten … ouch. My condolences, Miss Fauster.”
Marlo frowned. She wobbled ten paces across the lurching floor to Jail.
Lyon laughed wickedly. Just then, the door opened.
“Yes?” Ms. O’Malley inquired.
A warty demoness with scraggly white hair stood in the doorway.
“I’m here for Marlo Fauster,” the demoness rasped in low, husky tones.
“Wow,” Bordeaux whispered. “She really is going to jail.”
“Ha!” Lyon snorted. “I might learn to like this game after all.”
“—and Lyon Sheraton,” the demoness finished.
The corners of Lyon’s mouth drooped slowly downward.
“And what is this all about, then?” Ms. O’Malley rumbled fiercely.
“The Grabbit.” The withered demoness gulped. “It wants to see the two of them. Immediately.”
“Oh,” replied the teacher as the winds of ire left her sails. “Of course.”
Ms. O’Malley smiled at the girls, but the concern in her eyes betrayed the reassurance of her warm grin.
“I’m sure it’s nothing, girls,” she said unconvincingly. “Two people shorten the road, ya know.”
The two girls looked at each other and frowned.
Marlo had a sinking feeling that the road ahead, while admittedly short, was uphill all the way.
MiDDLEWORD
It may be that no man is an island, as the popular human saying goes, but every girl is an aisle. A place of opportunity, of hope, of freedom. She wanders down this aisle—herself—searching, browsing, assessing, filling her cart (or pockets) with shiny things. Does it make her feel better? Not necessarily. But it can fill her with a sense of who she is, or at least who she wants to be. But, in some cases, when you put the cart in front of the girl, she may soon wonder who—or what—exactly she is filling it for.
See, sometimes, want is a carrot dangling before your eyes. You stumble forward, blind with desire, and before you know it, you find yourself in some ghastly place with no idea of how you got there, and—worst of all—no carrot to show for your troubles.
This want—the inexorable urge to follow something shiny and new, not carrots specifically—can be overwhelming, pushing all reason and perspective out of your head. It can quickly become an electric, all-consuming hunger that drives wanting wanters to do almost anything to get whatever it is that the havers have. The problem is that these wanted things, much like carrots, aren’t particularly worth following (as they can only lead to salads). And sometimes, if you’re not careful, that carrot of want can lead you to the feet of something terrible—something like a giant, greedy, frighteningly powerful rabbit with a cataclysmic agenda.
20 · UP AND ATOM
CLAD IN A reflective catsuit, Yojuanna B. Covetta slunk undetected across the Mallvana plasma screen. Shoppers bustled by, oblivious, blinded by the joy that, though death had prevented them from “taking it with them,” in Mallvana they could buy it back, return it, or exchange it for something in their size.
Yojuanna reached the edge of the screen, which bordered the Science ’n’ Séance store. She crouched down, thrust her arms in front of her, leapt from the screen—breaking up into billions of little ones and zeros—and reassembled on a computer terminal inside the store.
She wiped beads of digital sweat from her brow and hid behind an open document on the screen—the very one she had come to get.
FOOLISH FRENCH PHYSICIST
FUTZES WITH FATE
By Wolf Larkin, Global News Account Totality
(GNAT)
SKROOZ-TOULOUSE, FRANCE—Last week, the French Organization for Outlandish Learning and Investigation of Scientific Hazards (FOOLISH) conducted a series of experiments at the organization’s facility in the town of Skrooz-Toulouse, on the Franco-Swiss border. By taking materials of extreme density and placing them in their Radial Intensity Super Kinetic Yielder (RISKY), the FOOLISH scientists were able to create a small, yet intensely powerful, black hole.
Conventional black holes are infinitely dense relics of dead stars: bottomless pits in space exhibiting gravitational appetites so voracious that not even light can escape.
FOOLISH’s RISKY is an unusual machine due to its patented spiral design, allowing atomic particles to whip about at great speeds. Then they are slammed into each other so hard that they create energy of an intensity rivaled only by that released at the creation of the universe.
But do these scientists worry about creating a black hole powerful enough to absorb all matter, growing exponentially until it erodes the entire universe? Professor Jacques de Manqué maintains that these FOOLISH efforts pose no threat to the world as we know it, explaining that to do catastrophic harm, scientists would need atoms from an unfathomably dense source. Locating a substance of that density, he assures, is practically hopeless.
Yojuanna smiled as she tucked the digital document down the front of her catsuit.
“Come right this way, ma’am,” said the Science ’n’ Séance cashier as he approached the register. Yojuanna grabbed several folders on the desktop and hid behind them.
The balding cashier, with tufts of wild gray hair on the sides of his head, set a large box down on the counter. “Phew!” he gasped to an old woman with a pair of spectacles balanced on the tip of her nose. “Your grandson will love this Smash ’n’ Flash Atom Cannon. When is he due to arrive?”
The woman fumbled with the catch on her purse. “He has a terminal disease,” she said with a trace of excitement. “So I should be seeing him any day now! And, without his mother around, I can spoil him all I want!”
“This kit is a great start,” said the man with a grin. “In fact, I was just reading about some experiments in particle collision they’re conducting up on the Stage. I’ll print you out a copy for you to give to your …”
He stared, puzzled, at the computer screen.
“That’s odd,” the cashier said. “I just had it up. And what are all these folders doing here?”
The man tried to click on the folders, but Yojuanna grabbed the cursor and threw it across the screen with all her virtual might. The cashier dragged it back, then he—and unbeknownst to him, Yojuanna—struggled for control of his computer.
“What the … ?” he muttered, cursing his cursor.
The old woman sighed.
“I don’t think I brought enough money,” she relayed with frustration. “I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached to my shoulders. And it almost wasn’t, after that terrible accident…”
The cashier scow
led at his computer.
“Maybe if I just turn it off and on,” he mumbled. “That usually seems to—”
Yojuanna gulped and let go of the cursor.
The man exhaled with relief.
“There,” he said. “That always seems to scare these infernal boxes.”
He looked at the woman and smiled kindly.
“Don’t worry about the money, ma’am. I’ll just put it on your tab. It’s not like you’re going anywhere!”
“Thank you so much,” the woman said, her face crinkled with bouquets of lines blossoming around her eyes and mouth. “Could you deliver it? I’m afraid it’s a little heavy for me.”
“Of course,” he replied. “Cloud One, I assume?”
The old woman’s forehead scrunched up with indignation.
“Cloud Two,” she said, stretching out the “two” like a rubber band just before the point of snapping. “In the right light, you can almost see my halo.”
The man looked back at her dubiously.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said with the even tone of someone who has worked retail for years and wishes to avoid unnecessary conflict. “Cloud Two, then. I’ll send it HCW—Heaven Can’t Wait—Express, so you should get it before your return.”
The cashier popped up a new screen on his computer and typed in delivery instructions. Yojuanna crept from folder to folder until she reached the window. She carefully scaled the window’s edge like a digital cat burglar.
“Name, please, ma’am?” the cashier asked, tapping away at his keyboard. “For the delivery.”
“Thera Grandit,” the woman replied.
The man typed in the name and prepared to send the order off to be delivered. Yojuanna, however, kept kicking the cursor away from the send button with her camouflaged boot.
“Blast it!” the cashier cursed.
Just then, a miniature cruise missile shot up from the model rocketry aisle and dive-bombed the cashier on its race for the entrance. The old woman screamed as the missile’s flaming exhaust singed her blue-white hair.
Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck Page 11