2.c.vi
Felix was
sweating. He hated sweating. He’d once asked his father if beads of sweat
might be a good thing, like little body diamonds. His father explained that sweat drops would
be akin to cubic zirconium, not diamonds.
Felix then ran squealing to the shower and had refrained from strenuous
exercise ever since.
He considered
closing his shop after the incident with the dirty couple and the… Actually, he
couldn’t bear to acknowledge the thought of the thing that had squirmed around
his sales floor. But by the time he’d
composed himself and come out of the restroom, the store was crawling with
sharply dressed tech boys. Felix was
horrified that so many people were seeing his business in such a state.
And it made
him sweat.
“Copy. We will maintain surveillance but not
engage,” said a tech boy wearing a black blazer with pale-yellow elbow
pads. He slid his slick, gadgety
looking, Post-It yellow phone into the chest pocket of his jacket and made some
smart looking hand gestures. Three of
the other tech boys snapped to attention and then ran out of the store.
Blazered tech
boy glanced around. Was he assessing the
situation and deciding what to do with his remaining operatives or was he scrutinizing
the condition of the sales floor?
“Alright boys,
we need to finish up here, and fast. I
have no doubts that we’ll all be seeing some real action and soon.”
There was a
burst of nervous hurrahs from the standard tech boys. Then one of them gestured
toward Felix and said, “What about him?
Do we need to run a battery?”
Felix felt his
ass clench.
“He’s not one
of ours, but be sure to issue–”
There was a
loud crash and a dripping, putrid smelling tech boy with black shorty shorts
and a sleeveless, collared shirt of indeterminate color, fell through the cold
air return in the ceiling at the back of the store and slammed onto a glass-top
counter. It did not break. Felix only dealt in quality.
“I made it
out! I’m alive!” shorty shorts said,
bounding around the store. Droplets of
grayish contaminants flew from fingertips spattering the display fixtures.
“You reek,”
said blazered tech boy.
Shorty shorts
stopped dancing. His eyes narrowed as he
examined the store.
Oh god, even
this filthy thing was passing judgment.
“How’d you
guys get here?” short shorts asked.
“Duh. In the van,” said a standard tech.
“Then why’d I
have to crawl through that corridor of hell if you already knew to come here?”
The tech boy
in the blazer stepped up to shorty shorts, leaned forward, and said, “Cause
you’re the new guy, newbie. And because it’s
funny. Now come on, let’s close it up
here and get to where the action is.”