Jackie tried to spell out the word “zbambabar” in their soup while waiting in their hotel room for their mother to return from the gelado shop. Jackie couldn’t tell time, & didn’t know where to find a clock; but it felt like it had been many hours. All o’ the windows were covered by drapes so well that Jackie couldn’t tell what the time o’ the day ’twas, & they didn’t dare open them. Now that they remembered, ’twas all gray out, anyway, so that you couldn’t see the sun when they were sure ’twas morn.

Jackie stared down @ the letters becoming soggy in the sickly tomato swamp, like blood from someone with the kind o’ obscure disease that changes the color o’ their blood slightly somehow. They wondered if dehydration changes the color o’ your blood. They had heard their mother tell them that blood is truly blue when inside your body; some chemical reaction turns it red when it leaves your body, to tell you this blood was dangerous, while the blood inside was good. Their mother told them that the body was good @ telling you something was wrong — that was why pain exists, or why your nose becomes runny or you become feverish when sick. Your body is doing that on purpose to protect you from the real evils that you don’t e’en know ’bout.

Jackie thought ’bout turning on the TV, but didn’t feel like it. Last night while lying in bed, they had heard their mother watching a news story ’bout “climate change” & how scientists were predicting all kinds o’ complicated reactions the world’s body would go through if we didn’t keep its temperature under 1.5° — things like polar bears going extinct, more natural disasters, coral reefs disappearing, & food shortages. Jackie had a nightmare ’bout a world where the sky became red & rain & lightning struck everywhere, ’causing cities to fall apart & people running round screaming like zombies, thin from hunger. Things like that only happen in movies; but their mother told them reality was much crazier than fiction. ’Twas mo’ complicated & confusing, just like how germs work. Jackie remembered someone @ their school who was bald from cancer & their mother told them cancer was when you had zombielike cells that took up room in your body & pushed the important cells out o’ the way. Jackie had trouble imagining exactly how it worked, ’cause cells were just that sly. Jackie was pretty sure they didn’t know how cancer worked in the middle ages, or e’en if it existed, but they couldn’t remember where they learned that. Then ’gain, they couldn’t e’en understand how the “Black Plague” worked or why so many people were just seemingly mutating & falling dead, just like that.

Jackie continued to stare down @ their alphabet soup. But Jackie didn’t dare move to move their spoon to pick a letter up. That would cause too many chemical reactions Jackie didn’t understand.

So the 2 restaurants batted the frozen potato ’tween each other like an explosive story without eyes on its oven mitts.

Just ’nother day in the rainy cities.

’Twas the only solution to such a zenith artifact. None dared destroy it, but none dared to keep it in 1 place for too long, or else it will grow eyes in its calm & use them to see what should ne’er be seen.

Thus the 2 restaurants, 1 serving Chinese & ’nother serving Italian, traded them like tapes in paper bags when nobody was looking.

This ancient ritual continues to today.

’Twas a bombclam, as they say in the rainy cities: ’twas too explosive to cover, too explosive to keep in one’s premises.

So the 2 big rival papers batted the story back & forth ’tween each other like a frozen potato without oven mitts on its eyes. Sweat slid down their necks like playground toddlers, ignorant o’ the tragedies o’ the adult world. They prayed their final days to the Afternoon Moon, knowing that the coin could flip tails on their head.

But then the story fell down lukewarm, like a fizzled-out meteor, shrunken like an aborted fetus.

The Pumpkin Vine slithered into both their windows & bore the fruit o’ new news: the source stuffed the story with artificial sugar. The mayor had only been seen near the vending machine where a HeroHero Cola had been absconded without renumeration. There was no record o’ his putting his hand down into that mechanical mouth. ’Twas all theories. ’Twas all nothing.

The papers were safe in their lackadaisical stories o’ grandmothers knitting classic Dragon Quest maps into rugs… for now.

Stanislav trembled in his bevels as he watched the man in the thick boots walk up to him. ’Twas testin’ time.

Stanislav didn’t bother resisting. He knew what happened in all the dystopias. He opened his mouth, “Ahhh”, while the man in the thick boots stuck his thick fridger-pop stick in.

Such testing was routine: they had to be tested for “bias”, which was defined as that which the particular tested happened to not like. They could find the bias in your tastebuds.

Or so they claimed. Stanislav didn’t know how they determined what was “bias” or not. He wet his bevels with trepidation.

Then it struck her like lightning through her chest: Lupe shouldn’t know ‘bout the lost key — couldn’t know. Only Zane knows, & he hasn’t returned, & Lupe hasn’t left. But so many things happened since Zane 1st found out that she she hadn’t realized till now.

But Lupe had already made public this illogical knowledge. There were many witnesses. She clutched herself. ¿How many o’ them have already realized the logical error? ¿How long had they been keeping this knowledge secret?

She sighed: what a mess. It would take her years to root out this logical contamination.

As she rotated the diamond in her fingers, she thought ‘bout how the average fool would sell this for petty money. But she knew where its true value hid.

She took a deep breath & thought to herself, It’s a cold shower, a bandage rip: a second’s misery is worth the infinite reward.

After 1 mo’ second o’ hesitation, she forced her hand forward, gritting her teeth as she felt the perfectly sharp edges tear into her eye.

Her partner jerked to attention, & then reached toward her.

¡Lucy! ¡What are you doing?.

¡Let go!, Lucy croaked ‘tween sucked-in breaths. She coughed out some o’ the blood that fell on her lips from her eye. You have no idea what this diamond can see….

You know what they say: there can only be 1 or none, she said without emotion. But there are 2. She knows that, I know that. ¿But who knows who will turn out to be the 1?.

Despite the gravity o’ what she was implying, she continued to stare down @ whatever new gadget she was tinkering with now, as if the outside world weren’t e’en happening. If her loyal 2nd hadn’t seen her behave this way too many times to count in dire situations, & yet always come out on top, he would’ve been nervous.

Still, he struggled to keep the discomfort from his voice when he finally asked, ¿So what should we do with them?.

Nothing drastic, replied his Gearmother. We’ll just lodge a li’l complaint with them is all.

Her 2nd nodded. Usually that worked. We were reasonable programagicians, after all.

Usually.

They started to call it “The Thing”, but it didn’t care. ¿What could it do? ’Twasn’t its fault it had a craving stronger than theirs. Everyone was different down to the bones. ¿Did they expect it to buy new bones? Fact was, ’twas “The Thing” from the start. Nothing changed. ’Sides, was being called “The Thing” worse than not being called @ all, or being called whatever else they’d think o’. You can’t lose what you ne’er had; & when it’s for a blessing that none o’ these fools could understand, ’twas a boon. They were irrelevant. ¿What had they to gain from it not getting the bad they tut-tutted ’twould get? They wouldn’t tut tut ’less they benefited, not it — or rather, ’less they enjoyed tut-tutting & knew it wouldn’t change what couldn’t be change, ¿so why change? ’Twas symbiotic, clearly.

This was when Alpha B began to regret the command he gave to the all-powerful Engine.

Though he knew what would happen, he tried to pick up the remote, only for it to melt into the familiar orange-gold liquid he had so recently thought he couldn’t get ’nough o’. After a hoarse sigh, he tried to shake the honey off his hands, but ’twas just as hopeless as he expected.

So he sat there with the autumnal cold creeping into his nerves, causing his wings to shiver. That paralysis — to know you were doomed, & there was nothing you could do but sit & wait for your consequences.

’Twas during her stay @ BU that Leola devised the ultimate instrument for cooking up new realities.

What Leola hadn’t expected when she started attending classes was that she’d develop an interest in computer science as a minor, & in the process develop the info that twined ’tween technology & reality food that would create the biggest revolutionary boom o’ reality cooking since the Green Revolution.

The main invention was 1 that took advantage o’ the recent completion o’ the “Pabulum Project” to break down each meal into a mix o’ elementary foods & encode every elementary food into its own 32-bit integer &, mo’ importantly, the discovery o’ a condiment with a special property, only truly understood during the Pabulum Project: its ability to increase broccoli’s code by 1 per every 2 mg, & later, how mixing it with ’nother condiment would keep broccoli’s other condiment’s property e’en after changing, allowing for the creation o’ any food element from broccoli.

Leola’s invention was an electric-powered mechanism that, given the right inputs would apply the right amount o’ each condiment given a typed in #, creating an alchemy machine that, from the user’s perspective, allowed them to put in broccoli & type in whatever food they want from it. Given better technological refinement o’er the years, this machine became mo’ portable, less buggy, & mo’ importantly, much cheaper, so that e’en the regular populace could afford them.