Lac’s Roast at the Firework Factory

She twisted the top carefully onto the bottle and juggled her binder as she walked. This time, they passed several people on the path. There was a trickle of folks going in both directions. 

"Watch out for bird poop," ordered Muffy as they passed a very dry looking tree. Muffy stab-walked right under it, but Annie gave it a wide berth, scooting to the very edge of the sidewalk. She heard Muffy snicker. Someone passed her, walking on the grass. Another person walked right into the street. 

The tree was at the top of a steep hill, Annie saw, and somehow Muffy had gotten to the bottom.

She was staring gleefully up at Annie. Annie stepped carefully, got a few steps, then slipped and slid the rest of the way down.

"Be careful!" snickered Muffy as she she turned and dashed into the house at the bottom of the hill. 

Annie got to her feet and adjusted her awkward backpack. She no longer even noticed the strong smell of the onions. She only noticed the meat smell, and that lemony-minty smell.

This place was just as crowded as Jaylen and Patrice’s house. There were a few people mulling around in front before she even got inside. It was getting tiring and awkward trying to get through. 

She stepped into a house with a big, long hallway. There was a big kitchen, and no-one was there. Annie looked around, guiltily, and snuck up to the sink.

"Oh, hey. Are you Annie? That is, I’m pretty freakin’ sure you couldn’t be anyone else." Annie froze at the sound, and turned to see a woman who looked about her own age walking gracefully toward her. She either had very short, gelled hair or a tight, smooth ponytail at just the right angle to be out of Annie’s line of sight.

"Yeah, I’m Annie, from Spiral City."

"Well, cool. Uh, how do you say the other part?" The woman said. At least, Annie assumed this was a woman. There weren’t any pronouns flying around. There wasn’t much talk at all, to Annie. 

"Oh, my name?"

"Yeah, surname, er lastname er all."

"Uh, well, like Mars--like the historian--and then, joy--like the emotional state. Everyone knows my name, then, huh?"

"Yes, lots of folks praying for you. Is it trochaic...uh...stress?" On many levels, she raised more questions than she answered, just like everyone here.

"Yeah. Ooh, you did poetry or something."

"Yeah,  or something. Well, my name’s Crit."

"Crit? Like critical hit?"

"Close, but, uh Kris with a K, but the s is a glottal stop. Like in the middle of ’uh-oh.’"

"Oh yeah, I know about phonetic stuff. I learned it."

Annie was standing an odd distance from the sink, leaning slightly towards it. 

"Oh, you can have some refill if you want. It’s my house. There’s also drinks outside, but it’s really people-y out there." She turned and went to the little screen in a cubby nearby. Annie drank the last bit of water in the bottle and went to fill it up.

She saw little rectangles of color populate the screen. They appeared to have numbers and varying amounts of text on them. She was concentrating and thoughtfully choosing certain rectangles, which changed color, predictably and then faded. Some selections caused multiply rectangles to fade. It seemed like a lame game, but Kris seemed stressed.

Annie filled the bottle, took a big gulp and filled it back up.

"Oh, can I use the toilet-bathroom?"

"Oh, for sure," said Kris, turning from her screen. "It’s that black door right back there. See?"

"Oh, I do see. Thanks."

"Oh, and if you don’t want to wear the backpack, you can set it over by the...well, anywhere besides by the candles. It’s going to be awhile."

"Oh, really? Good. thanks. I’ve been so worried and rushed today. Muffy didn’t even talk to Patrice."

"Oooh, is that so?" cooed Kris, going back to the screen. "Well, she doesn’t have to talk to me if she doesn’t want to, but this is the last stop. She’ll have to go out the front to get to her house."

"Oh, phew. Cool," said Annie. She set the water bottle in its pocket once she set the bag down.

The bathroom was sleekly modern. She was relieved that she didn’t have to do anything different. Even the sound of the flush was exactly like home. As she was washing her hands, she looked around. The shower screen was bigger and nicer than the kitchen screen. Aw, Annie thought in agreement. Shower shows are the best shows. There was some artistic looking triptych-sort-of picture on the wall. Annie leaned in to look at it. 

"You know," came Muffy’s bossy voice, turned all the way up. "You can’t select prayers while folks are still here."

"Whoopsidoodles," said Kris sarcastically. "Can’t see how that’s going to happen. They’ve been trying to stay all night every single day...er...night."

"It’s not fair, you know. I can’t review prayers until I get home," declared Muffy snootily.

"Are you going now?" said Kris, just barely keeping the veil of civility over her contempt.

"Of course not. I had to come back and swap candles. Look what happened to this one."

Annie had been furtively washing her hands for a long time and was casting about for good excuses to stay hidden. She felt a quick sting in her finger. She thought a curse word. Her dry skin was cracking again. She had washed off the liquid skin. She had the sharp pain of a superficial cut that wasn’t bleeding yet but promised it would right away.

"You can always set preference algorithms. It’s easier than checking every one individually," Muffy was lecturing as Annie pressed a wad of paper to her hurt finger. 

"I can?" retorted Kris. "I guess I will, then, right now. I still want to be very careful with so much potential money at stake." 

"Electricity," corrected Muffy, snottily. 

Muffy was huffing and her voice traveled down the hall, past the bathroom. 

"I know you’re under a lot of stress," barked Muffy’s moving voice, growing ever more condescending. "But the keeper and co-host are supposed to be extra polite to everyone, especially the last day. There aren’t any ways to fix things after tomorrow." She had reached a sing-song baby-talk voice.

After some shuffling by the candles, Muffy’s voice traveled back to the kitchen. "Maybe you and Lac will want to apologize later."

Annie heard Kris say, "Uh, sure, maybe," in a neutral tone, but apparently Muffy didn’t.

"YEAH?" demanded Muffy in such a reproachful scold that Annie felt shaken. She dropped her nasty wad of blood paper. She shakily picked it up, tossed it in what she hoped was the right receptacle and tried to roll a new one out. She held the paper roll as she turned it so it wouldn’t thump. 

"Aw, you didn’t hear?" countered Kris. "Too bad. Now I sure hope you asked our guest’s permission before you volunteered her time for your bids."

"Prayers."

"So you sold her labor without consent? My people had--"

"Prayed," affirmed Muffy, with sickening confidence. "You and Lac enjoy the time you have left."

There were some crisp footsteps Annie imagined as struts, and a showy door close, just shy of a slam. 

Kris inhaled and exhaled so loudly that Annie could hear it. Then her graceful steps approached, "The coast is clear. That sparkly monster is gone," came Kris’s wavering voice. 

The door swung slowly open and Annie held up her hands. 

"Uh, I need some liquid skin. If it’s not too--"

Kris was shaking a little and tears suddenly rushed down both cheeks, but she snapped to attend to Annie.

She paused, staring at the tiny amounts of blood. 

"Uh, oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I know what you mean." She stepped past Annie and opened the mirror. "We call it ’Stopical.’" 

"Oh, uh, sorry," said Annie stepping back and out of the way. "I probably could have, but I didn’t feel right going in someone else’s—"  

"Oh, no worries. I’m sorry for a lot. I’m sorry Muffy got you added as her plus-one and then volunteered your services in the ’puh-raaaay-ers.’" she imitated Muffy’s bossy toddler voice. 

She held a little bottle that looked like a logical variation on liquid skin, and applied it just the same way. Annie grimaced and felt her lip split. She made a dumb sound.

Kris noticed and handed her the bottle. Closing the mirror, Annie applied it, then looked at the bottle. "Stopical! Stops blood, stops infection." said the bottle in a thick font. 

"It’s both stupid and cute, that pun, but I love it. You could say I like my brand names like I like my men," Kris said, then coughed sadly. It morphed into a choking sob.  Kris coughed, "Well, I’d better show you what these prayers are." 

Annie opened and closed the mirror as she put the bottle back. She went nervously to the screen to see. So the rectangles were the prayers.

"I take it you don’t have prayers like this in Spiral City."

"We sure don’t."

"Ok, well, does it make sense?" Kris had somehow filtered for only prayers that mentioned Annie. 

Annie examined the words. They were lists of chores, with a lot of mentions of childcare and some words she didn’t know. Some rectangles were listed side-by-side, they all had the same description.  The margin in the side had a number in parentheses, or a star. 

"So, they’re offering to do chores for electricity?"

"Yeah. Services, or goods. They just couldn’t name any goods you have. Sometimes there are more than one offer for the same thing, and if I only need one, I just choose the lowest bidder, unless it’s someone I don’t like." 

"So, your currency is...current?"

"Heh. They don’t make that joke much anymore. Anyway, you could kind of say that. What’s your currency?"

"Well, you could say dreams."

"Heh. Do we all dream of electric sheep?" said Kris with a quick laugh that sounded a little painful.

"What? Why sheep? Is that a quote?"

"Well, it’s something from the apocryphal Tescrolls. Do you have those?"

“Oh, I only read one. My denomination didn’t recognize them."

"Well, here we’ve got about seven different versions of the Tescrolls, and one of them has a kind of commentary..." Kris trailed off.

"Oh, there was another version beside the one my family used, but my mom always insisted it was evil and if we read it we were opening ourselves up to the occult. I didn’t know words when I was that little, so I thought she said ’the colt,’ and that sounded like a good thing." 

Kris was still staring serenely at the screen, still dropping tears occasionally. Annie wasn’t sure she was even listening, but then Kris said, "A giant ghost horse sounds ok right now, even an evil one. Well, maybe not. One of the Tescrolls has a warhorse." 

"Really? What’s it say?"

"Nobody knows. It looks like nonsense translated. Some folks think it’s a sacred geometry thing. Or a numerology thing." Kris sighed. "Well, I don’t know if you can refuse to do any service. I think they’re going to argue you need to earn your keep or something." 

"Oh." 

"That’s a best case scenario. You don’t have an electric storage unit, so they could legally hold all your value for themselves." 

"They?" Annie looked and saw that many people, not just Annie, had submitted prayers. "Why are so many people claiming me?"

"It was just in case. In the event that you could go stay with someone else besides Muffy, they can get work out you."

"Well, that could be useful. I’m not beholden to Muffy that way." 

"With the potential to be exploited by someone else," mused Kris.

"Well, is there anyone worse than Muffy? Well, there’s that Bingo guy."

"Oh, don’t worry about him. I reject all his offers, even the free ones. He still hasn’t gotten the message." 

"Oh, well, I liked Patrice. I liked...um all the—what are they? Tent keepers? They were all so nice. Their families were nice. And Tarah. No one else ever talked to me. So if there’s anyone you think is nice and trustworthy, may as well accept their offers, and then there are options in case some are awful."

"My thoughts, exactly." Said Kris. 

"So, what if I don’t stay with Tarah or anybody?"

"They’re just bids. They don’t get paid until they’re done. Well, some are prepaid, but I can prioritize certain ones."

"So someone else could still get prepaid for something I might never do..." 

"You got me. I don’t know what will happen then. Well, I’ll do what I can. Um, may as well get some food and drinks while it’s free. I’m so sorry. Now, most prepaid are the food people brought to these barbecues, and that’s a whole thing."

She was pressing on rectangles very quickly. Then there was a commotion by the entrance.

"Kris! We’re here."

Kris turned and shouted, "Oh, I’m almost done. Don’t look."

"Don’t look at what?"

She really was almost done. The board was clear. 

"Oh, we accepted so many. May as well. The potential is high," said one of the voices.

"Shhh. We’re not supposed to discuss it," said another. 

Annie got a good look at the arriving crowd and recognized the first three people she’d seen by the tent.  They and their families smiled kindly and hugged Kris. Matt was finishing another oily roll and apologizing for how much he ate. 

"It’s just so good, you know," he said. "All from Vanessa. You’ve to treasure every bit of what you can get from her." He laughed a little and tears streamed out of his eyes. He hugged someone who must have been Vanessa.

"So sorry we couldn’t be here much. You’re doing a great job, Kris."

"You all did great jobs, too. I mean, I didn’t see anything, but I know you did."

"Oh," said one of the redheaded guys, "I don’t want to go out there, but I know we’ll get in trouble if we don’t."

"We’re together. We stand with you."

Annie couldn’t keep track of who was saying what. They were a unit to her. Together they moved outside. At first Annie thought she was walking into blinding bright light. But then it seemed like it was night. Annie felt the feeling of walking down stairs, and then she felt her legs feeling...wobbly. Suddenly she was slamming into something solid, and it hurt, she knew it hurt, but she didn’t feel it. She thought she saw stars, and the stars stretched into lines until everything was light. Then everything was dark.

Next Chapter: Theoretical Strata