Ladybird Ch. 1: Ladybird (Complete, 11000 words)

This is that story I talked about writing.

It will hopefully be an action-packed parody of superheroes (specifically the development of superhero mythos, rogues galleries and -verse characters), saturday-morning cartoons, World of Darkness and other urban fantasy of its ilk.

I rewrote this like ten times, so I hope you enjoy. I’m sure as we go along (if we go along), I’ll be able to write at a more comfortable clip (and better). If you like it, voice your opinion, otherwise I might just give up on it.

This chapter and the next will probably be very long. That is why I have divided them into sections with three asterisks. With an browser in-text search feature, you can quickly jump from one bit to another bit. Furthermore, I’ll try to make future chapters less long. I think I overdid it at some points. I usually write in a more minimalistic style than this. Sound off on that too and tell me whether you want less. This is a learning experience. Without further ado:

Ladybird

A Story About Robots, Magic And Bugs

By: Dennis N. Santana

This story is dedicated to Professor Hall, who made me love bugs and Professor Femiano, who helped me love writing again.

Chapter 1

* * *

“Oh no.”

Nellidae Cocci stared at the sixth floor’s men’s room door, the next one on the list. There was no getting out of cleaning it. She grabbed hold of her companion cylinder robot, who dutifully rammed open the bathroom door without waiting for her. The robot raised its visual-sensory panels up to her in fixed steel confusion.

She breathed out a sigh and flattened her cap against her hair. “Give me a moment. I need to mentally prepare myself so I don’t go into a rage and flush a bomb down F7.”

The robot moved its visual-sensory panels up and down to simulate a nod.

There were toilets with advanced AI installed in all business and government buildings. These suffered from the unfortunate but logical progression that toilets had very distinct feelings towards being cleaned. Their basic personalities would warp over a number of cleanings to build an educated opinion and distinct perception of being washed, based on their individual worldviews. An even more overt side-effect of this was that toilets were a pain in the ass for sanitation officers.

Some toilets, like the third floor’s C17, were gleeful at the prospect of being cleaned. They felt it was a labor of love and reveled in their enhanced utility and outward appearance once finally washed. Such toilets would sing popular songs they had learned from visitors and would provide cheerful, gentle affirmation and even thanks for a job well done.

Then there was the sixth floor’s F7.

“Thou hath no right to scrub mine pearl bowl, cretin!” Shouted Toilet F7, splashing jets of water out of its stall from its bidet, its toilet seat cover lighting intermittently as it spoke. F7’s voice had been carefully shifted over time by its toilet sound processing engine to sound more and more like a snooty Britannian gentleman.

Nellidae turned away from Toilet F7, gritting her teeth and ignoring its Shakespearean protests. She removed her electromagnetically-tethered toilet-cleaning brush from the appropriate compartment on her cylinder robot. She pushed a button on the handle and the brush detached and floated towards Toilet F7. After a second of nonchalant hovering above the toilet’s orifice, the brush thrust violently down into Toilet F7. The toilet’s muffled protests, choked curses and splashing water filled the bathroom. Nellidae wondered why Toilet F7 would react realistically to being choked by a brush and why such a feature was considered priority in programming it – as opposed to manners or decency.

Nellidae watched as the floating brush did all of her work for her, requiring only a shake of its detached handle every few minutes to spur it in the proper direction. A thin red laser line traveled between them whenever a shake was administered. Nellidae had numerous other convenient tools that made her position as a Sanitation Officer remarkably easy, including her companion cylinder robot, which could theoretically do all her work (though she would theoretically be punished if she tried to test this theory).

Her mop was of the same design as her brush and the vacuum was a little wheel-bound drone that needed only kind reaffirmation, or threats of pain and death, to be made to do its work. Nellidae would often set the little vacuum robot down, kick it in the back, and begin abusing it verbally and emotionally.

“Work faster or I’ll tear out your control card and turn you into a retro RC car!” Nellidae shouted.

“Oh my!” Whimpered the drone as it struggled to collect all the dust in the floors, “Oh dear! I do not wish to be a retro RC car! Would I be a Nippasian model?”

“You would be an Ameran model! Made in Texas!” Nellidae threatened.

“Hell I say! Hell on earth!” Replied the drone before doubling its cleaning efforts.

Nellidae cracked a small grin. Torturing robots was quite a lifestyle.

* * *

Engineering Conglomerate #4951-2627, nicknamed “Funcon” by the wage-workers who had not yet committed suicide, was one of many government-funded enterprises designed to waste away the nation’s riches. Their numerous inventions, each more ridiculous than the last (which was coincidentally Funcon’s design motto), were worked on by highly paid professionals who actually got through four years of college.

Sanitation Officers on average did not even begin high school. Nellidae quit after ninth grade chemistry.

Fun Facts About Funcon:

1. Funcon’s main building had thirty-seven floors above ground and twenty-two below ground. Nellidae was considerably responsible for twelve of these, mildly responsible for ten others, and could safely shirk what little responsibility she had for the other ones. By the end of the month, she had to have cleaned up her “beat” thorougly at least once. This often took her to the underground levels where the head scientists worked. If the companion robot had to do any work for her, she would get double pay, and more than likely would contemplate suicide. If she did not spend all her resources each month she would be punished, and though she only vaguely knew what that entailed, it was still frightening. Frightening enough to kill herself over it.

2. The gray jacket and pants worn by Funcon sanitation officers were considered very tasteful.

3. Funcon’s hallways were pristine enough for one to see one’s face in them – all of the time. Nellidae found it haunting to see her short, dark-haired self in the floor she was mopping every day, her brown eyes staring up at her, the same pretty if disgruntled face scrutinizing her like it scrutinized everything else so coldly and miserably. The floors were so clean in fact that she sometimes saw a reflection of the reflection she was seeing in the reflection’s eyes. By this point she usually took a step back, gagging fiercely and with her stomach churning. It was as though she could feel the ruthlessness of an uncaring universe.

4. Funcon had the highest rate of worker suicides in the Ameran Federation. They boasted this number in various television ads and were quite proud of it. They were also responsible for thirty-eight percent of Amera’s profit sinkhole, and were quite proud of that as well. They were recently falling behind to Shaftcorp in number of units purposefully destroyed during assembly as well as lost profits. This was bad, and they would probably starting hiring new people just to destroy units during assembly and spend money wastefully. That budget surplus had to go down and fast, or else everybody might be punished.

5. Funcon workers were encouraged to have sex with one another, as the scandal would most likely cost the company some money, which was always good news. The more public and wild the sex, the better for all. Nellidae never went to work on holidays. She might have been raped in the hallways by the executives.

?. Nellidae hated Funcon and everything it stood for. She also thought the pay was too good.

* * *

As she passed by one of the basement laboratories one morning, Nellidae scowled at a glass pane, through which she could see an experiment taking place below. An extremely expensive device that could produce crude oil from out of thin air was tested in front of a panel of Ticians. They all clapped their hands and jumped for joy at its success. Then they pulled a lever and clapped and jumped for joy as a conveyor belt dropped the machine into a grinder. Chunks of the miraculous machine that could save the world from misery and woe for all of eternity flew hither and yon, and the blueprints were thrown after it to much applause. A counter on the wall displayed how many Amero were wasted in that particular attempt. Everyone seemed rather pleased with the result. Except for one particular.

This particular was not precisely pleased and began to point out the mistakes that had taken place. Nellidae felt a bad taste in her mouth. She stared down at the Head Tician of Funcon, Dr. Annamaria Coulter (few knew that her whole name was Dr. Annamaria Hymen Coulter, but Nellidae had overheard this). The other Ticians in the room were too enthralled by her long lustrous red hair, light brown skin, shocking green eyes and buxom body to pay much attention as she explained increasing costs by using luxury materials and leaving the grinder on for a few hours after use to waste energy. Even the females were practically drooling at her – a sign of an open society of which the founders would have been proud. They all pretended to listen, nodding their heads and writing on their handheld thin-screen touchpads without looking at what they were writing. Nellidae stuck out her tongue. Coulter made her sick.

She remembered the first time Coulter and her had met – Coulter had told her she looked “cute as a ladybird.” Nellidae wanted to take it as a compliment, but could not make herself do so. In fact, the words invoked a primal sanitation officer rage in her, and she had to struggle not to beat Coulter with her very soft and gentle hovering toilet brush. She settled for beating toilets with her very soft and gentle hovering toilet brush instead. From that day forward their contact had not been limited, as Coulter had an affinity for a certain bathroom Nellidae had to clean, and every moment in the lovely Coulter’s company was like rubbing acid on her skin. They also tended to meet whenever Nellidae had to descend to the basement levels.

But she was not jealous, oh no. She could do calculus if there was a robot beside her with a functioning computer and could explain difficult scientific concepts by saying “Well, it exists.” Put beside each other, she and Coulter, they might have resembled a comedy act of some form. They were practically in separate worlds on all levels, physical and mental.

But she was not jealous, Nellidae assured herself, perhaps too vigorously. She was not ugly. In fact she was told she was very pretty. Since all babies were genetically engineered, and nobody wanted an ugly child. So Coulter was not objectively prettier than her. Having a figure and chest only hurt your hips and shoulders anyway. That colorful bouncy hair was just more work to do – Nellidae liked her flat long hair just fine, enough to put a little hair band on it every morning. Being a Tician wasn’t any big deal too! What did it do for you anyway? Only more stuff to burn and more Ameros to get rid of by the end of the month. Nellidae was merely angry, she thought, not jealous, because jealousy was petty, and anger was justified.

Somehow, all of this anger had been subconsciously assigned a target the day Coulter decided to compliment her by comparing her to a small spotted insect. So whenever she caught a glimpse of Coulter since that day, she had a ritual. This ritual made her feel better and went like so – she would lick her palm and rub it on a surface. Then she would leave the surface dirty and defiled in this manner and she would hope that Coulter would come into contact with it unknowingly, perhaps rub her hands on her clothing after, or touch food.

It was like an unknowing rape of one’s personal hygiene. This rationalization amused Nellidae to no end.

Whenever she told her mental health overseer about this ritual, he always increased her medications.

* * *

“Well, hello there! If it isn’t my cute little ladybird!”

Nellidae tried not to look too disgusted when Coulter strode up to her two days later. Given that they were both in the ladies’ room when they met, that it was morning and almost nobody was around and that Nellidae was supposed to be cleaning, she gave the most curt nod she could muster before returning to work. Coulter extended a hand and took Nellidae by the shoulders. She turned her forcibly around – Coulter was at least eight inches taller than Nellidae and stronger due to Tician enhancements. She bent down lightly to her level. They locked eyes.

“Say, you don’t want to hang around here cleaning, do you?” Coulter asked.

“I have to, or else they’ll pay me even more.” Nellidae replied. She gulped. “Then I’ll be punished.”

“But, if you help me with some super special work, they may even give you a deduction! You might even get to work for free!” Coulter said. The hand gestures she made as she spoke somehow made everything seem far more logical and well-expressed. They were quite deft and dramatic at times, like their own form of language.

“Work for free? You’re insane, that’s impossible. Look, I have to clean this bathroom and you’re not making it any more enjoyable.” Nellidae said, her tone now growing steadily out of control. She put her back to Coulter and picked a broom out of her companion cylinder robot. She contemplated that violent and soft brush beating all the more.

Coulter’s hair covered one of her eyes, but the remaining one had its thin brows downturning along with Coulter’s mouth becoming a thin frown. She put her hands on her hips. “Honestly, why are you so difficult? I need someone to help me test an invention that could revolutionize life as we know it.”

“Unless it cleans bathrooms faster than this hovering broom, I really don’t care.”

“I would think a bored sanitation officer would jump at the chance to try out a time machine.”

Nellidae dropped her hovering broom and switched around in an instant to face Coulter again.

“You’re kidding me.” She replied. Her eyes had gone wide and would not close.

Looking positively smug, Coulter placed a hand delicately upon her mouth, careful not to smear her lipstick. “Oh ho, now you’re interested!”

“You can’t have made a time machine, that’s just impossible! Just like working for free! You’re crazy and a liar!”

“That’s so cold of you! I was not lying! You see, I designed a Pan-Trilinear box lens and used its quadraverted rays to power an array of charged verdite crystals and applied the reverse of Tristan’s Inverse Law of Gravi-Dimensional–”

Nellidae jumped up to speak over Coulter for a moment. “Speak Ameran! I don’t understand any other language!”

“Oh, forgive me,” Coulter replied, “I was lapsing into my Tician.”

Nellidae blew out a sigh. There seemed to be no going against it. She gave a sidelong glance at her companion robot to gauge its cold, featureless expression. “Okay, look, I’ll go. But I’m only seeing this time machine of yours, then I’m going back to work. You stay here, robot.” She realized how ridiculous that sounded. One did not simply go look at a time machine and return to scrubbing toilets like it happened any other day. Or at least, Nellidae hoped so. Otherwise it would be terribly disappointing.

* * *

Coulter’s laboratory was in one of the low basement levels of Funcon. It was a massive square room filled with all sorts of random things Coulter had invented. The steel walls were covered in grease and gunk, setting off Nellidae’s senses. She wanted so desperately to clean all of this. There were numerous stick notes attached to every single invention – some of them were completely covered in stick notes. There was a machine that ate gumballs and spat out robots, a terminal with a big verdite rock pulsing on a pedestal, several rocket packs with one flaw or another, one big black and red powered armor, the shape of a barrel with thick square shoulders and a flat cylinder head, and many-jointed thick limbs and digits. Currently it was on standby.

Nellidae’s attention was drawn to the large spiral shutter porthole on the wall, about the size of a person. Beside it was a large console, connected to a larger console exactly twenty-five feet away. Both consoles were full of yellow stick notes, many of which contained rather nasty-sounding recipes for smoothies.

“I have a question. It’s been bugging me for a while.” Nellidae said.

“Fire away.” Coulter replied.

Nellidae pointed out Coulter’s face – specifically, her hair. “You have your hair growing out to cover your eye on the right like that, did something horrible happen under there?”

Coulter laughed. “Goodness no!” She lifted up her hair from over her eye, showing it to be just as infuriatingly pretty as the rest, “I just like it that way.”

“So there’s nothing special about that eye?”

“Nothing.”

“Why did you grow your hair like that then?”

“For the mystery of it,” Coulter said. With nary another word she turned Nellidae by the shoulders to face the time machine and gave her a light shove. The smaller girl stumbled a few steps closer to the alleged time machine.

Nellidae turned around briefly. “You want me to go in it?” She asked, cocking one eyebrow.

“Why, yes,” Coulter said, reaching into her turtleneck sweater’s front pocket and pulling out a button, which she pressed. She then reached into the pocket of her black skirt and pretended to be absorbed in rummaging through it blindly. “Lookit here! I also happen to have a gun.” She drew said gun instantly with a flourish. “And bullets too!” She cocked it. “So – you can either inhabit prehistory or you can become history. Your choice!” Topping off the scene, she laughed at Nellidae, laughed blithely with the back of her hand placed delicately in front of her mouth. “Ho ho ho ho!”

Shrugging, Nellidae raised her hands.

“I was just about to say I was going in anyway. You didn’t have to threaten me.”

There was an awkward silence as the drama of Coulter’s previous actions subsided.

“Oh,” Coulter frowned, “Well, too bad! Because I’m threatening you anyway.”

Beside Coulter a wall panel flipped over to reveal a computer terminal. Her right index finger methodically landed on the touchpad, making shapes on the screen while her left hand pointed the sleek ballistic pistol right at Nellidae. She let out another little laugh. “Ever since you showed up here, I knew you would be useful! A short and unremarkable cleaning girl won’t be missed at all, and I can experiment to my heart’s content!”

“I already said I was going in, you don’t have to keep insulting me.” Nellidae said.

The spiral door opened behind Nellidae and the green light from within it extended her shadow across the room. Inside, the machine was an array of verdite stones attached to short cylindrical extensions, arranged so they jutted out from the bottom of the supporting steel arch within the chamber. The other end of the chamber was sealed. Coulter took a step forward, thrusting her gun forward like she meant to beat Nellidae with it rather than shoot her. Nellidae took this as a sign that she should be backing into the machine now.

“Out of curiosity, why are you being so compliant?” Coulter asked.

“Well, you do have a gun.”

“I do. Yet, I don’t feel as though it is intimidating you.”

“It really isn’t. I guess what appeals to me is leaving behind this stupid nonsensical world.”

“Really?” Coulter said. She smiled, “Because to be honest that’s what appeals to me too! I mean, look around you. All of this could have been prevented. Our ancestors could have made a much better world than this. I’m going to do just that someday. Not now though. Because more than likely the verdite isn’t properly tuned and you’ll arrive in another dimension inside-out or in pieces. Or burned, or otherwise dead somehow.”

Inside out or in pieces? The words bounced around inside Nellidae’s brain for a moment. She thought it might have been shock, but she could not help but stop, time froze around her. She wondered whether she really wanted to be in pieces or inside out. Was one objectively better than the other? Were her other options just as poor-sounding? Then it dawned on her.

Time travel equals poorly thought-out equals in pieces equals death.

“I changed my mind!” Nellidae said, bursting into tears, “I don’t want to time travel anymore!”

Silence broke out anew between the two.

For a time the quivering sanitation officer and the dominant tician merely stared at one another, sometimes at the machine as well. The situation was assessed and then a conclusion was reached.

“Your change of heart does not undermine the fact that I have a gun.” Coulter said.

“Crap!”

Nellidae grabbed hold of her hair and jumped up and down. “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! I just wanted to rebel against my corporate paymasters out of petty–”

“Oh be quiet. You’re doing a great good for mankind!”

Coulter tried to prod her with the gun again, but Nellidae dropped on the floor in response, grabbing hold of her legs and shivering, crying, moaning, whining and all manner of things. Probably realizing that the threat of shooting was not going to do her any good, Coulter put the gun down on a terminal, pressed a few more keys on the touchscreen. The alleged time machine’s own terminal lit up, gave a welcome message and politely wished everyone a nice and healthy physics-defying experience before giving tips on safe time travel. The LED lights on the steel arch inside the machine started blinking. Pink veins of traveling energy made their way through the verdite crystals, causing them to glow and spark. Coulter then positioned herself in front of Nellidae, rubbed her high heeled shoes on the ground once, before delivering a sharp kick to the sanitation officer’s side. Nellidae rolled over with pain, clutching her side, weeping, but far too afraid to think rationally just yet.

“I’m going to keep kicking you until you’re in, so you might as well just go in!” Coulter warned.

A sudden, primal fear of time travel mishaps took over Nellidae. Twisting around and lunging, she sprang across towards Coulter and wrapped her arms around the woman’s legs, crying and squeezing at her feet. She could have tried to bring Coulter down, but she was far too depressed to do so. Instead, she kept on crying and begging, while Coulter struggled to free her legs from the girl’s iron grip. When she finally managed to free one leg she stomped on Nellidae’s head with her heels, smothering her sanitation officer’s cap. “Quit being so difficult, you said yourself you didn’t want to–”

Something brushed against her shoulder.

Coulter froze up, hair on end. Her foot remained firmly on Nellidae’s head, her arms out tremulously in front of her. Her back stiffened and inch by inch she turned her head. Perched on her shoulder, in all its abominable, six-legged, red and black, antennaed horror was a small beetle about the size of a button on her coat, its tiny wings contentedly squeezing beneath its elytra. The bug twitched happily from side to side with no discernible course, no effort from its terrifying alien intelligence, while Nellidae bawled and gagged on the floor, caught her breath, then bawled and gagged some more.

The foot upon Nellidae’s head began to shake. As did the leg Nellidae was holding on to. The once-collected Tician put both her hands on her mouth, closed her eyes, shed tears, tried to fight her own primal instinctual urges. The beetle frolicked about on her shoulder some more. Behind them, as if in reaction to the tension, the time machine began to hum an otherworldly tune. The verdite’s veins reached out from their confines like tiny bolts of lightning, beginning to fill the chamber with a sickening green and pink glow like the confines of a very dull electro party. As the lights reached a climax and nearly spread across the entire room, Coulter ceased shivering. Not much because of the lights, but from having reached her own limits.

Her hands dropped from her mouth.

“GET AWAY YOU FILTHY ABOMINABLE MONSTER!”

Any louder and the room would have shaken. Coulter joined Nellidae in screaming and crying. She flailed her arms in an attempt to rid herself of the beetle. The tiny insect clung happily to her clothing, twitching its antennae and remained where it was most comfortable. The computer prompted somebody to regulate the verdite, but it went unheard. So fiercely was Coulter trying to be rid of the bug that she toppled over Nellidae, fell in a heap along with her. Nellidae had little idea what was going on and thought it would be prudent to keep crying.

The monitors around the room began flashing, the pink and green light extending, past the doors, into the silent corridors. Coulter’s screams and Nellidae’s pleas filled the otherwise empty expanse, and the beetle remained happy and glad as the alleged time machine spiraled out of anyone’s control, and they became lost in its verdite-fueled light show.

* * *

The City of Rosewater boasted toilets that were made of vitreous china with toilet seats of a cheap combination of plastic and wood. These did not talk and rarely protested. Their personalities were probably dull. Some people felt that the toilets spoke in their own hidden language, singing the songs of the elders and predicting some great horror to come. These people were prescribed strong anti-psychotics if they ever spoke of these dire matters. Libel U. Lidae did not quite care about toilets, anti-psychotics or even really people. She had gone into the bathroom to clean her glasses, not for the lore of it. However, one thing she did care about caught her attention on the way out.

On top of the garbage can in the corner of the bathroom, right beside the door, was a small brown insect with a broad body, an elongated head with a discernible neck, long legs and a javelin-like, bendable mouthpart. It was creeping atop the can. Libel clapped her hands with excitement and neared the bug, hoping it would not startle. “This is,” She paused, contemplating its features, cross-referencing and examining all in her head, “Triatominae, an assassin bug! I think. I should go ask dad about it.”

She removed her large backpack and knelt. She took a jar out of the main space, popped the lid and returned eagerly to the level of the insect on the can. Using the lid, she pushed the insect into the jar and sealed it, caging the little creature. It looked rather disgruntled, or at least she imagined it did. She stared at it for a few moments, a fond feeling warming her heart. Dad would certainly have something interesting to say about it.

Once her newfound friend was safely secured in her backpack, Libel headed out into the halls of Randy E. Buehler high school. There was not much to be seen in the afternoon, with nearly every kid having gone home by now. Libel remained regularly after school, though she had no clubs to attend or sports to play. Normally she would just go out to the bushes skirting the play field at the back of the school, but today she just felt like going home. She had already caught a butterfly and an assassin beetle, which meant the day was not entirely wasted.

Libel exited the school, walking down the wide front path. She passed by the fountain out in the forecourt with its statue of Mr. Buehler, a pleasant chubby fellow who’s plaque read “My deck consists of 30 Black Lotuses and 30 Ancestral Recalls.” She cast her eyes over the beautiful white and blue flowers on the gardens flanking the path – someday she would come at night with a flashlight and give them a good look with nobody around to yell at her or give her awkward looks. She knew all sorts of amazing bugs must be there, especially at night.

At the end, the path through the forecourt opened up into the street, ending in a bus stop and a few benches for students just off the side of the road. All around, buildings tall and squat cast their shadows on Rosewater Central’s streets. People traveled between them like a small line of ants. In the morning, when everyone was waiting at the stops or rushing into the office buildings or restaurants nearby, it would swarm like an army ant march. She sat down and awaited the familiar city bus, making more insect similes to pass the time.

* * *

Libel knew that Rosewater was strange. She heard the things on the television all the time. The people who thought they saw vampires sparkling in the moonlight; the sightings of alien fungus; the cult that was supposed to be living in Lake Flores; the evil gelatin monster in the sewers; and the government conspiracies and other ridiculous things that unfortunately made the news every day. But she never quite thought about them. She thought the only weird thing in Rosewater was the people, like her, who wore sweater-vests to school. Not aliens, or cryptids, or any of that stuff. That was all fantasy.

The first of the strange things that occurred that night in Rosewater, the strange things that wanted to browbeat Libel’s worldview into line, was the shooting star Libel thought she saw plainly on the sky, at no less than five in the afternoon. She’d never seen anything so vibrant in the sky. Especially not while sitting on a bench waiting for a bus. Libel did not keep up with star patterns – if it wasn’t on the ground and buzzing it wasn’t exactly worth keeping up with – so she took that one for granted.

When the star began zig-zagging in the sky, Libelmerely cocked her eyebrow. Even when the star’s tail became so long that it seemed like the sky was being torn open. Libel took her own temperature by her forehead. She thought she was becoming sick, perhaps from that mosquito bite or those bee stings or that ant pinch or spider bite in the past week. But nothing supernatural could possibly be happening.

Libel held fast, while the pink and green lights began to spread from the supposed shooting star. Pink and green lights that should not have been so obvious in the sky. She merely looked around to see if anyone else was paying attention to this. Across the street, people were seemingly too busy with their suvlaki and computer-phones and paperback novels. She did note that one hobo began to foretell the end of days, shouting aloud that all homosexuals would burn in chemical flames.

This did not particularly help her view of her own sanity.

Libel turned her head away from the sky, shivered lightly, popped open her cellphone to look at the time. Forty-two minutes. The bus would appear in forty-two minutes. Splendid. She just had to ignore the sky for forty-two minutes. Easy enough, the sky was not important, anyone could live without it. She hummed a tune from Miss Spider’s Garden Friends, shut her eyes hard and clenched the side of the bench. Everything would be fine. She was just insane after all. A lot of people went insane. She would live through it. That’s what anti-psychotic medication was for.

* * *

Most people would claim that Space and Time had no definitive form, but Nellidae was poised to say otherwise. The verdite explosion had shown her the truth of the universe, sometime after breaking down and rearranging her every molecule in a separate dimension.

There was a gopher at the end of creation, who had amazing recipes for gnocchi. She had ascended the plywood steps, all marked with the logo of the House Depot, to kneel before his throne and ask that he lay his blessings upon her bespectacled glass half-brother Squirchunk. The gopher said “Plethora!” and the landscape melted away. Sixteen dancing automobile repairmen stepped unto a stage made of synthesized rubber and all the lost .5 amero coins from 2063 and onward.

On this stage, the great drama of their day played out – “Winston Churchill, A Silent Musical In Hungarian” which defied definition openly and was executed for doing so. Critics raved about “Winston Churchill.” Four stars, clamored a clam! Seventeen out of Pi, cried a ham! One enthusiastic deaf-mute reviewer wrote, “If I had a loaf of bread for every tear that Winston Churchill brought to my eyes, I could create a life-size replica of myself, out of bread, and I would never be lonely.”

There was a corner of universal truth – a round corner. Nellidae stood on her hands, literally, for they had fallen off, and thus traveled towards this corner, and found a magic tilapia, which granted curses. Nellidae asked it for one, and it replied with “Fuck you, you cuntpounding whoremaster.” Nellidae found that rather appropriate in a sidereal sort of way. From there she waltzed alongside all the king’s horses and all the king’s men towards an opening in the cookie jar of the seventeenth nebula.

There, she found a zipper-shaped break in the universe, and feeling rather pleased with herself, Nellidae took a bow and back-flipped into it for the amusement of a can of cranberry sauce.

* * *

Flores Mall was renowned for having a House Depot, next to a Teleshack, next to an Office Omega. For an enormous indoor mall, this was an accomplishment. Another accomplishment it would soon earn, unknown to most, would be to play temporary host to a dimensional ripple. Right in front of the Cometbucks, as though a cut through the flesh of reality, opened a glowing pink and green tear which belched out stardust and trace amounts of hydrogen along with a rather lovely brown-skinned woman with vivacious red hair. This woman’s lab coat, brown turtleneck sweater and black skirt were covered in residue from a number of universal delusions, all of which had now become unidentifiable blue dust.

But Annamaria Coulter would always remember that somewhere out there, there was a box that contained no less than sixteen unreleased Billy Hendrix LPs, unreleased because they were never recorded, were not supposed to exist and were not meant to be heard by anyone who did not fully understand the heart of Rock N’ Roll. This box floated within a nebula of cinnamon gas, and was guarded by an egg-beater that could download photos wirelessly from cameras for no particularly good reason. Someday, Annamaria would defeat this egg-beater and claim its cosmic treasures.

Right now, that was not her concern. Flores Mall was closed due to a supposed Anthrax attack and everything was dark. Coulter did not know about the Anthrax, so she cared only about the dark. She was immune to most diseases anyway. Genetic engineering had gone a long way for her.

Dr. Coulter quickly stood up from the ground and allowed her vision to settle in the gloom. After a moment’s blinking, she could see everything in a crisp and gorgeous array of green, black and white, clearly the envy of High-Definition Television everywhere. Recalling the events of the lab, she stiffed and suddenly stood on the tips of her toes, looking frantically over her shoulders, trying to find the euphoric bug that had so tormented her beforehand. When no bug could be found in plain sight, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Wait.” She said aloud, raising one index finger. “Verdite!”

She turned her head around, looked up, looked down. She did a slow turn, taking in the surroundings. Things were dark, but expansive. There were no sky-lights or windows, so she could not see outside. But she did find one point of reference in the bizarre pastiche that was her current location – a Burger Duke. Burger Duke Inc. was found guilty of crimes against humanity in the Great Judicial Debacles of 2075, and from there on were never seen again as a franchise. To have one open, meant–

“I’ve gone back in time!” She exclaimed, “Very back in time!”

She wondered if she was still in Amera. If she accidentally ended up in pre-historic Spaglia or Nippasia, she would be quite annoyed. To this end she began to examine the food court. She pulled back her right sleeve, clicked a button on her watch to bring up the holo-interface. After a few more touches on the holo-interface pad, she activated the personal laser on her watch, and began the troublesome sequence of burning through the shutter barriers over the serving desks at each food court venue. She rejoiced. The fact that everything in the menus was written in Ameran told her that she was in Amera. Phew. Bullet dodged. She did not consider that she might have been in Britannia, but that was perhaps for the best.

Inside a Shubway, she managed to snag a promotional flier that told her all she needed to know about her predicament.

Offer valid until 8/15/2012 or while supplies last.

“I’m in 2012 Amera!” Cried Dr. Coulter. “No! I might as well have sent myself to a deserted island! These people don’t even know what a holo-interface is! They’ve no idea that in 2055 there will be a great battle against the Maldavian space invaders, which will yield Humanity the power source of Verdite, and change the course of our technological evolution! They are unaware that theater as an artform will be abolished in–”

Coulter paused her lamentations. On the wall of the Shubway, she saw a golden plaque for every employee of the month for the past 12 months in Shubway. She felt an odd sensation wash over her. She relaxed. She sat down and poured herself a drink out of the fountain. It was carbonated. They drank carbonated things in this past. They probably used high-fructose corn syrup still! She stared forward, bewildered by the Employee of the Month wall, as though it were an extinct species of animal suddenly revived before her eyes.

“These people are stupid.” Dr. Coulter whispered to herself, unable to muster a good tone.

She bolted up, holding her fists in front of her, crushing her cardboard Tepsi cup.

“They’re stupid! Stupid, underdeveloped, primates! That is it! I, Annamaria Coulter, the superior being come from the future, will change the course of history as I have always wanted to! “I’m a tician! My superior intellect is out of the farthest grasp of these savages!” Dr. Coulter loudly declared to herself and the organic vegetable ingredients in the Shubway refrigerators. She was too excited to think very straight. “All I need are a few robots, or a big tank or something. Oh I like that idea!” She touched her watch again, bringing up her holo-scribbler and jotting down “Big tank,” with her fingers.

* * *

Libel was convinced. The sky was falling and nobody noticed it but her. She was Chicken Little complete with the glasses and geeky clothing. It was the end, and nobody seemed to care about anything at all. Perhaps some things, it took very special people to see. Maybe that’s why everyone else saw UFOs and she did not. Because she had a special sort of insanity. The one that allowed her to see massive green and pink rips in the sky, that nobody else could see.

The sky had been practically taken over by a massive surge of rave party lighting, complete with bolts crackling from the center intermittently. Yet the people on the street continued to hustle and bustle in and out of work and coffee and bagels, the hobo kept crying out about the apocalypse, and she was sure now he could not see what was really going on in the sky.

She had gone over to ask. “Mushroom.” He had sullenly replied, and handed her a cardboard hat.

The hobo detour had, unfortunately, caused her to miss the bus. As she waited for another, the sky progressively came undone. Clouds vanished almost altogether. The neon lighting turned every surface into an acid nightmare. It was supposed to have gone dark by then, she thought, but with a giant wound in the heavens vomiting forth a candy-colored eurobeat fantasy, things were bright as midday. She remembered what her mother used to tell her as a child and tried reciting comfortable words to herself in order to relax.

“Bugs.” Libel said.

She looked up. The sky was still being raped by technicolor. She hugged herself.

“Bugs. Bugs. Buggity bugs.”

Unfortunately, her chanting did nothing to calm her.

“Bugs bugs bugs bugs–”

There was a sudden shrill screech, like a man made out of nails was rubbing himself against a wall that was really a chalkboard. Libel covered her eyes with her hands and looked up at the sky in alarm, a seemingly very counterproductive thing to do – so she peeked through the web of her fingers. Was that the sound of the horsemen coming? Would all her sins be weighed against her? She thought she’d been a good girl so far. “Bugs!” She whimpered.

But there were no horsemen, nor God, nor even a third-rate God expy. The wound in the sky was just bleeding. Bleeding its rave party colors in chunks that seemed to shoot out like stars across the sky. Some flew off into space, most arched down towards the earth. The display was brilliant – as if from the center of the sky thousands of objects were being rained down in all directions, comets with long tails of pink and green headed down from the heavens.

With one headed right towards the school.

Libel felt the whole world grind to a halt as she watched the comet flying down towards her. She could not think about ducking, or leaping aside. Her eyes grew wide and her jaw hung. The lights were right before her eyes. She thought of restaurant napkins and how they were always so cleverly folded. She would never wipe her mouth delicately with one again. The world became a flash of glowing neon, there was a loud crunch, a sharp rending of metal–

The comet slammed into the bus stop sign, bent it until it snapped and kept on going along the ground. Libel was rather sure physics did not work that way, but then again she was rather sure the sky could not break in half and vomit candy-colored comets. Still dumbfounded by the killer rocks, Libel chased after the comet, which swerved around the left side of the school and thrust for the field. She didn’t know what she hoped to gain from following it, only that she would be missing another bus.

As Libel made it to the left side of the school, with the crowns of the trees there providing a roof, she found the comet having ground to a halt in a mess of uprooted bushes and dirt. She was not surprised to see that it was a green glowing rock the size of a baseball that had somehow gently pulled every plant in a fifteen yard radius from the ground, and made only a rather soft ditch along its path in the process.

She was still out of sorts from her near-death experience, which, now having regained some mental clarity, she regretted. How could it involve restaurant napkins? Feeling plainer and less interesting a person than ever, Libel decided to near the comet, bend down, and try to take the rock. If anything it might help her fend off whatever demonic hordes the apocalypse was about to bring. Or it might become a collectible.

Soon as her fingers brushed the rock, it shattered. Instantly, into a dozen shards.

Libel wanted to curse, but she had never cursed in her life before, and was not about to start cursing over a green rock. Instead she stood, turned sharply around, and left with her chin up and a disgruntled “Hmph!”

But while Libel was making quick away from this insanity, fate interrupted anew. Libel saw the flashing lights first in her glasses. She darted back around in the hopes that whatever truck driver was about to ram into her would be forever haunted by the look of horror on her face as she died. But there was no truck – instead there was a tear, a jagged rip in the fabric of space, time, mass and perhaps mathematics that had opened behind her.

Everything became silent. She heard noises from inside her throat and stomach clearly as she swallowed and beheld the rip. She saw a nebula formed of the bone dust of clowns, overseen by dancing bottles of srichacha, and how she knew the exact nature of these phenomena was a mystery even to herself. She saw the last Samurai standing in a field of stalks, not of wheat but of cellular phones, each of which was making a telemarketing call to a different person, none of which ever picked up.

The the rip closed. The skies blinked and the colors vanished. There was a girl lying in front of Libel.

She heard a katydid stridulating nearby. The sound calmed her mind.

* * *

Annamaria Coulter wandered under the impressive flower-patterned skylight right above Flores Mall’s central courtyard. Why the mall had a grand central courtyard was irrelevant to her plight. She was lost in its closed, possibly anthrax-filled confines and the maps were utterly arcane. She kept tapping them but the screen would never change. Such primitive technology – who made maps without touchpads? How did anybody decipher the darn things? Regardless, she was glad to find a connection to the outside world.

She stared up into the sky, which was alit with color. Then came the light show, the comets, the massive maw in the sky suddenly closing. Coulter beheld it all with a big grin on her face. The jagged rip, the jettisoned objects flying every which way, the aurora and how very few people would ever know this occurred. “The Verdite reaction was far more ridiculous than even I could have ever imagined.” She said to herself. “I’m sure those comets are all either Verdite rocks or objects from the area of the explosion, blown across time and space towards this pathetic place! So interesting! This is real science, not the crappy pseudo-economics everything has become back home.”

No soonr had she finished that the skylight burst overhead. Jagged shards began to rain down on the doctor. Dr. Coulter shrank back and covered her very important regions (her face) with her arms, shielding herself from the falling glass. There was a rain of cutting shards, miraculously unable to penetrate her clothing or skin as they fell all around her. She heard a massive thud coming from nearby, rising above the cacophony of falling patterned glass, bursting decorative lights, fizzling electrical equipment and broken steel supports, as if the ground had been shattered. She shielded her eyes, and it was only when she saw a green glow and a cloud of dust lifting that she was compelled to look.

What had taken the skylight down was a falling machine which now occupied a hole in the once pristine mall floor. Beside it was a chunk of green rock that Coulter immediately recognized.

Coulter stood up on leg and clapped her hands together, so overjoyed that her body was compressing. The glass shook off her body. “My gumball machine and a chunk of Verdite! How fortuitous!” She shouted. She dashed towards the machine, dropped to her knees and slid towards it, embracing it. At first glance it seemed constructed like a retro jukebox, but through the clear glass front one could see a gumball obstacle course with loops, twists, a spoon Ferris wheel and even a little gumball train. There was a lever on the side and roulette up top with three images – currently a triple seven.

From the inside pocket of her coat she drew a pair of very thin sleeves, as though of plastic, and placed them over her hands like gloves. Soon as she slipped them on, they turned entirely black. She reached for and picked up the chunk of Verdite, rather brusquely for what was an important substance. But she was used to Verdite. She knew it almost more than she knew human beings. More than anyone really knew it.

Coulter looked up at the sky, through the shattered skylight.

She then looked back down at the verdite rock and smiled.

“The comets could have been people, machines, anything in the surrounding area of the explosion. But more than likely, they were more rocks like you.”

She planted a kiss on the verdite stone. In spite of there being no one around, Annamaria felt rather chatty.

“Yes! With you, begins the reign of Dr. Annamaria Coulter!”

Leaping back up to her feet, Annamaria let out a laugh from the deep within her chest. She stretched her arms, bent back to look up at the sky as though laughing at the non-existent heavens themselves. The gumball machine watched this silently and obediently. The verdite rock glowed intermittently, sending enigmatic green waves and ripples of light across nearby surfaces.

“Stop right there!”

Coulter heard a click and the stomping of two feet along with the new voice in the courtyard. Slowly, she raised her hands and turned around. She cocked an eyebrow, curious. A young, stout policeman, or perhaps just security, stood across from her pointing his firearm. She could not tell what kind of officer he was, the uniform was too different from what she was used to. Where was his body armor and stun cane? His multi-use visor and electric grenades for attacking personal robots? All he had was a gun with a laser sight and a gas mask. The guard’s arms were shaking, so that his firearm was unstable, pointing at Coulter only half the time.

She smiled broadly. “So,” She began, allowing the words to hang in silence.

“W-What are you doing in here? T-This area w-was sealed off!” He shouted.

Coulter sighed. “I’ve just been lost around here. All the lights were off, and would it kill you to at least install a fake window? Even a holographic view of the outdoors is better than this closed-off maze. Also, what’s up with your maps? There were touch-screens in 2012, I know this for a fact.”

“What?” The guard pointed his gun all the more firmly. “Look, we have an anthrax threat in this building! You’re not supposed to be here!” He said.

“Anthrax? You still use that primitive thing?” Coulter crossed her arms, smiling smugly, verdite still in hand. “The kind of bacteria I know about would scare you so much your children would be born shaking.”

There came an awkward silence between the two.

“So you’re the terrorist then! The anthrax thing was true!” The guard finally shouted, now shaking so much that the gun’s laser sight was doing a round trip around the room. “Oh god, and everyone else is on the other side of the mall!”

How convenient, Coulter thought. Seeing no other end to this standoff, she complied. “Why yes. I am the terrorist. I hate Amera’s freedom and all that stuff. I have brown skin too, so I must be Adhanian.”

“You’re right!” The guard said, as though he had just had an epiphany about Coulter’s skin color. “So you’re under arrest! For doing terrorist things and being Adhanian!”

Smiling, Coulter stepped forward, carefully waving the Verdite from side to side in front of her.

The guard did not find this amusing. “Stay back!”

The laser sight falling between her breasts for one crucial moment. The sight lined up with the verdite for nary a second, sending erratic green reflections flying all around the room. A twitch of the finger, a second’s loss of vision and control from the guard, a green beam having just flashed in his lenses. The trigger clumsily clicked, the bullet erupted from the barrel and flew, cutting the distance to Coulter in an instant–

Coulter’s arm barely seemed like it moved at all. A loud ringing noise issued and the bullet landed on the ground nearby, a trail of smoke coming from the smashed tip. Coulter glanced down at the verdite. Not a single scratch across its perfect surface. She turned her attention back to the guard.

“My name is Annamaria Coulter,” She said, her eyes half closed, her smile macabre. She approached the guard, who turned so quickly to run that he had fallen. He crawled, turned around and crawled some more, scrambling backwards while facing Coulter. She could imagine the wide, horrified look to his eyes behind that gas mask. “From birth, I was engineered to have better reflexes, immune system defenses and mechanical coordination than any normal human. I can see in the dark, I can move faster than you can. My IQ is probably incalculable to your machines. Also,”

Though she had only been walking, Coulter was now on top of the guard. She reached down, seized his neck. The guard screamed as Coulter lifted him off the ground by the neck until his feet were dangling.

“I am perhaps two or so times stronger than you.”

Carelessly she chucked the guard forward as if throwing a one-handed pitch, discarding him without regard for where. The guard soared in an arch like he had been thrown from a speeding vehicle. Flailing and shouting the man landed bent half-over a nearby bench. There was a crack, barely audible, that Coulter picked up when he landed. His shouting turned into ragged gasps and he could not seem to drop his arms and straighten his back. He was in a rather unnatural position. One of his legs was twitching, kicking out.

Coulter shrugged. Too bad – she hadn’t wanted to hurt him too much. That was not really her style – she hated having to touch primates like that for starters – but sometimes she just did not know her own strength well. She cast a glance at her gumball machine. It was time for her reign to begin, and one man’s convulsions would not slow her down.

* * *

Libel was stumped. She looked at the field that lay beyond the cover of the trees overhead. It seemed empty. She looked at the fence to her right, and then the building to her left. All was empty. She held on to the thought that she was not being watched, to keep her from being too embarrassed as she approached the girl who had slid out of a hole that seemed perpendicular to reality. The girl was dressed in a gray jacket, white shirt and pants and reminded Libel of a school janitor, but the jacket and shirt had been torn apart it seemed. Libel saw rips on the sides that probably meant the back was cut open, but the girl was face-up, so she could not see her back entirely. She did see some skin, so it was likely.

She examined the girl’s face, giving her a light touch to see if she would react. Her skin was eerily smooth, and almost glossy. Not a mark on it. Her hair seemed normal, just long black hair. Her hands had the same kind of sheen to them. Like she was glistening ever so slightly. Libel knelt further down beside her and put her hand on the girl’s forehead to check her temperature.

When she raised the girl’s bangs, she found two long, flexible things, like thin straws. They sprang up as though free of the rest of the hair. Ending in tiny palps that twitched despite the girl being asleep, Libel identified these little black things immediately as antennae. This girl had antennae.

Libel gulped. Was she dealing with an alien? She carefully touched the antennae with her index and thumb fingers, grabbing hold of one of the twitching palps. She rubbed her fingers over it, seizing it between thumb and index. When Libel rubbed the antennae, the girl’s face began to contort in her sleep, like she was becoming restless. Antennae were sensory organs, Libel knew, so the girl right now was tasting and smelling Libel’s hand.

She could not help but giggle. Somehow, this was not frightening. The girl was acting like an overgrown, sleepy bug. The image evoked in Libel’s mind was downright adorable. Her fingers played about the antennae. She found herself wondering what sorts of sensations or dreams the girl could be having on account of her. The faster she rubbed, the more the girl tossed and turned. She even moaned a few times. Libel put her hand over her own mouth to prevent herself laughing too hard.

Until a hand shot up and grabbed hold of her sweatervest.

“What are you doing?“

Trembling, Libel looked down. The girl’s cute, sleepy face had taken on a murderous expression, brown eyes staring up, mouth contorted and teeth grit, brows down-turned. Libel released the girl’s antennae. Her hand remained in frozen in place for a moment, as though still holding on. Libel’s face was also stiff, a lopsided smile on her face. Perhaps she was enjoying playing with the alien’s antennae a little too much.

“Umm.”

Libel slowly brought her hand to her own lap.

“You have nice antennae.”

Libel smiled.

The girl blinked. Tremulously she reached up to her forehead to grab hold of one of her own antennae. She tugged on it, gently once, increasingly harder and then harshly ripped it from its location leaving behind a small, oozing wound. An oozing yellow wound. Tiny cracks formed around the area. The girl looked at the antennae she had just pulled out, writhing in her palm.

She then fell on her side, kicking her legs and pounding her fists against the ground. “AGH! IT HURTS! THIS THING REALLY WAS ATTACHED!” She cried and gritted her teeth, weeping with a dribble of hemolymph from her head joining her tears. Her other had antennae had gone completely straight and stiff from the pain. The one on her hand was drying up. Libel could not think of how to calm her down and merely watched the tantrum play out for a few moments. When the sight became unbearable she removed from her pocket a small handkerchief, knelt and pressed it on the girl’s head.

The girl slowly stopped thrashing, Libel’s hand reassuringly on one of her shoulders while the other cleaned up the hemolymph. She seemed almost incredulous. Libel passed the handkerchief around the wound and down the side of the girl’s cheek.

“My name is Libel Lidae, what’s yours? Oh, and why are you part insect?” Libel asked.

There was an awkward silence as both of them seemed to try rather hard to figure out why they were being so accepting of this situation.

“I’m Nellidae Cocci and I’m not an insect. I’m a Sanitation Officer for–”

She looked around herself for a moment. She pointed towards the tallest building nearby. “Probably for those guys. I guess.”

“That’s an apartment building and isn’t open yet.”

“You’re lying.” Nellidae snapped. At that instant two folds of hard, flesh-colored shell over her back popped open and a pair of wings spread. Unprepared to control her wildly vibrating wings, Nellidae flew a foot off the ground and then five backwards, slamming into a tree. Hemolymph flew in fountain jets all around – Libel would have thought this rather gory and graphic were it not yellow gunk from a bug-girl’s head.

* * *

Nellidae’s head felt split open. She rubbed her scalp with her hand and was surprised to find that in spite of all the yellow fluid flying everywhere, her cranium was intact. She licked some of her yellow blood from around her mouth. It tasted like copper. She had yellow blood that tasted like copper. Why it did not taste like iron, which by all means should have tasted like copper anyway, she did not know. There were numerous and sundry things she did not know at the moment.

For example, who this girl was that was constantly wiping her, and why she did so. Libel was at Nellidae’s side once again, rubbing her handkerchief on the sanitation officer’s stricken head. When she put it right in the center, where the blood flow was worst, Nellidae felt a horrendous sting. Her back popped open again, and her wings began to vibrate. Libel held her down.

“It’s okay! Calm down, relax, and your elytra will close again!”

Nellidae found it hard to calm down with some random girl holding her down by the shoulders, against a tree that was still covered in her insect juices, but regardless her wings ceased beating after a moment’s worth of calm breathing. The elytra popped closed. She reached behind her back, and felt nothing there. They closed so seamlessly that nothing seemed strange at all – but now she could feel the wings inside now. Slowly she was beginning to attune to whatever was happening to her. She even smelled Libel with her remaining antennae.

“See? All good. Now you’re clean too.” Libel put away her messy handkerchief, soiling her pocket with yellow coppery gunk. “Are you really an alien? Like from outer space? Do they have bugs in outer space? What kinds do they have?”

Nellidae grunted. “One question at a time would you? In order – no, no, who cares, maybe.”

“Why is the last one maybe?”

“Maybe!”

Libel giggled. “Alien humor is amazing!”

“I’m not a damned alien! I told you, I’m a Sanitation Officer for Funcon! Look!”

Nellidae grabbed hold of the tree and helped herself to stand. She dusted off her sanitation officer’s uniform, and struck a stately pose, her flat chest thrust out forward, her chin up, her hands closed into fists and settled against her hips. She was staring just ever so slightly to the upper right. Difficult as it was to be stately when she was at least an inch or two shorter than even Libel, Nellidae thought her efforts were admirable. Silent, statuesque, Nellidae maintained her pose until Libel next spoke.

“I don’t get it.” Libel said.

“It’s my sanitation officer pose!” Nellidae shouted, jerking her arms up.

“Ah. What’s a funcon?”

Nellidae cried out in frustration. Her eyes darted around, searching for landmarks. Where the hell was she? What was wrong with these trees? They didn’t look like they were made of artificial vegetative compounds, and there was no touchpad for their oxygen production engines. The ground was also filthy all over, there was so much dirt and grass that Nellidae thought she’d have a heart attack. Her inner sanitation instincts were assaulted on all sides, especially by the filthy flowers she could see beyond their location, a massive patch of those pests, blowing off pollen and allergenic dusts and attracting bugs all over.

So disgusting!

Where was the glass dome? Why were the buildings all of uneven heights? Why was Libel wearing that strange sweatervest thing when she was supposed to be wearing the standard Ameran Department of Training high school uniform? Most of all, she wondered why Libel was wearing glasses. How could she had been born with bad vision? That was impossible, unless her parents wanted to punish her. Oh dear, Nellidae thought, that must be it.

“You poor thing!” Nellidae said, right at Libel’s smiling face.

Libel blinked. “Hmm?”

“I’m sorry your parents did that to you. Glasses? They’re beasts, savage beasts, how does anyone choose to destroy their child’s eyes like that. How will you perform adequately at your workplace with those bad eyes? You’ll be punished eighteen times over. But your face is pretty even with your glasses, so they aren’t totally inhuman. They also made up for it with your breasts, I see.”

Libel blinked. She drew out her handkerchief and placed it on Nellidae’s forehead., rubbing where the wounds once were. “I think you may still be bleeding out and I just can’t see it. Your condition is clearly deteriorating.”

* * *

Annamaria Coulter carried her gumball machine to a nearby window. A few quick commands on her wristwatch allowed her to disable the alarm. Returning to her gumball machine, she lifted it and threw it. Through the smashed window, she saw the outside world and all of its archaic terrors. The parking lot was the first sign of savage horror. Who drove anymore, honestly? Regularly scheduled public transportation connected the entire world! The worst of it all was the congestion. So many cars crammed so terribly close together. She felt claustrophobic looking at it. Then there was the littering, the beer bottles and the papers and by the lords of science was that a cigarette pack? Barbarous! Dr. Coulter felt the vomit rise to her throat.

“This world desperately needs a strict Technocracy.” Dr. Coulter said, shivering from the unregulated night cold. Why was the dome not regulating–

There was no dome. Dr. Coulter beheld the night sky in all of its unfiltered terror and felt like an ant staring into the face of a God.

“I will never get used to this.” She said.

She grabbed hold of her gumball machine, lifted it and walked to an unused space in the parking lot.

From her pocket, she produced her trick Amero coin. It had a flexible, spidery leg (“No, not spidery, don’t think in insect similes…”) that could yank the coin of the gumball machine. This was intended – only trick coins could activate her special gumball machine, otherwise anyone could have popped a robot out of it. Also, she would have definitely run out of Amero coins if she had been forced to use this machine to conquer the world. Foresight paid off! She slipped the coin into the slot and turned the little wheel on the front.

Ka-Chunk!

The roulette spun. Coulter waited about ten seconds before hitting a button on the side of the machine. The three slots fell into place – three symbols the rough shape of a stylized (C/S) symbol. Coulter clapped her hands in anticipation.

A green and blue gumball from within the machine slid out unto a tiny ramp. The ramp led the gumball to a spiraling chute which spat it out unto a pair of spinning spoons. As the spoons spun, they lowered to another level, where the ball went into a tiny elevator, along with tiny gumballs dressed in suits. They waited until the proper floor, but then a fire alarm sounded. Gumball firemen charged into the elevator and rescued everyone, before the gumball finally landed out of a small door and into Coulter’s hand.

“I love this gumball machine.”

Coulter put the gumball up to her mouth, opened her mouth and passed her tongue around it in a long, wet, involved lick. The taste was quite like blueberry. She placed it on the ground bent down and touched it with the tip of her verdite crystal. Then with the tip of her shoe she tapped the gumball ever so delicately. The little ball rolled down the parking lot, the saliva on it begining to fizz and go up in wisps of vapor, while the gumball bloated, twisted, jumped and thrashed. The hard exterior turned a paler hue than before, stretched like rubbery. Within the membrane she could see gears twisting and cables rearranging themselves. It was like a synthetic pregnancy, unfolding before her very eyes.

“I love this gumball machine.”

To be continued.

(/End Chapter 1)

* * *

Libel Lidae’s Fun Bug Facts

Hello everyone! Today we’re going to learn all about Hemolymph, with the help of our unreliable friend, Wikipedia!

Quote:

“Hemolymph or haemolymph is the blood analogue used by all arthropods and most mollusks that have an open circulatory system. In these animals there is no distinction between blood and interstitial fluid. The liquid fills all of the interior (the hemocoel) of the body and surrounds all cells.

Hemolymph is composed of water, inorganic salts (mostly Na+, Cl-, K+, Mg2+, and Ca2+), and organic compounds (mostly carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids). The primary oxygen transporter molecule is hemocyanin.”

So it’s basically bug blood! Though, Nellidae is kind of a weird bug, what with being a human and all, so her body probably does not follow these rules. If it does, then the copious amounts of Hemolymph that she lost due to her own carelessness would probably have been enough to kill her! An interesting bonus fact is that if Nellidae is a Ladybug then she could bleed out her pores to scare away predators! That’s…utterly disturbing. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep well with that mental image. Oh god…

Until next time…