Dollar For Your Thoughts, Part 7/14

        We secured the car and went into the lounge. It was then that I recognized it as something that I’d helped implement. It was an IFEE stop-gap retail shop. There was a tiny food court set off from a general shop through short walls made of formica stapled onto frames made of 2x4. (They had tried, bless them.) One of the clerks had serving duty there. It was one of the shops created through the Imno Full Employment Edict (2120). The workers, as you may know, were given stop-gap employment in retail until the time came when jobs were available in manufacturing consumer goods which were still in the design stage at that point. The workers were known through the acronym as “IFEE’s”. Connie sniffed as we entered the lounge.

            “Oh. Micros.”

            Our server that day was an IFEE with a name-tag that read: “Clarissa Weisengaard”. She breezed over and regarded Connie, who was now in that trance. I told Clarissa that she was taking a power-nap, and that I would order for her. The arrangement in an IFEE shop was thus: An order would be given, and the price of the food preparation and service was tacked onto the bill. The food was taken out of refrigeration and heated using microwave ovens. The entrée came with chilled side dishes.

            “She doesn’t like her food microwaved, though,” I told Clarissa.

            After 24 hours with Connie, and several trances, we knew each other well. Or, at least, pretended to.

            “They don’t have microwaves in Tenger?”

            I winced, and made note of the name. Clarissa Weisengaard would make a good recruit.

            “I wouldn’t know.”

            I wasn’t too worried about this server, though. She had a wavy, auburn bob that naturally resisted tending, and blue eyes which were on our side.

            “Good answer,” she said. “But we get a lot of foreigners here.” She looked down at Connie, who was asleep with her eyes open.

            “This is Oak Falls,” she informed me.

            “I know.”

            “Imno.”

            “Then you have Turkey Ts’.”

            “Aw! We’re fresh out.”

            Connie exuded a ‘hn!’ Clarissa lit up a bit more, if that were possible, and jiggled a pen toward me.

            “But you should know that. We have cold-cut sandwiches, though. If you’re lookin’ for the fresh alternative.”

            “Bring us the hoagie special, with chilled sides then,” I told her. “In deuces.”

            “Deuces!” Clarissa sang, “You’re smart for a commissar.” She spun around, and then back. “Should I ‘86’ the apple pies, though? We nuke them.”
           Connie was now in attendance. She muttered: “Bring ‘em cold, Clarissa.”

           Clarissa pointed her pen at her and clicked. “Itt’l be its own a la mode.”

            I had faith in her, smart-ass though she was. I asked:

            “Do you accept tips?”

            “Shore!” she told me. “But I’m not destitute. I front for a new-new wave band over at the ballroom. ‘Paver Base’.”

            Clarissa warped off. Connie turned her attention to me.

            “Charming help. Now. You were saying?”

            The thing about laying tile is that I never have, and, there in that linoleumed hole in the wall, I didn’t know why I was. I came to and bit into a cold apple pie out of curiosity. Connie asked:

            “You were saying?”

            I told her that the trances were coming faster because whoever was using our brains knew that we were on to them.

            “Who?”

            “I dunno. Aliens?”

            “Haw. I haven’t seen any little green men hereabouts, but I’ve seen plenty of horned toads.”

            I was so bewildered and exhausted that I went into pat cant.

            “There are no horned toads in Imno. Remember that, and your stay here will be fine.”

            “He’s right.” We spun our heads to Clarissa. “But they’ll be in Albert Lea this time next year if Tenger’s not careful. Anything else, kids?”

            We shook our heads.

            “I’m sorry,” she then told Connie. “I was flirtin’ with him earlier. Didn’t know you two were a couple.”

            I settled our bill with a tip. Clarissa continued to needle poor us. I have to admit, I didn’t half unlike it.

             “Remember,” she told us. “Saturday night at the motel ballroom. ‘Paver Base’. Not ‘Power Base’. That’s so ‘headbanger’. And not ‘Pave Her Face’. I’m the only ‘her’ in the band, and,” she turned to Connie, “such puns hurt.”

            Connie grinned. She’d been jolted out of a pre-trance.

            “Only a dollar cover!” Clarissa continued. “And when you’re in the mosh-pit, call me ‘Jet’.”

            Connie shook her head and told me that we were going nowhere.

            “But we need to get to Fort Covington for your friends to save us.”

            “Change in plans. We need to get a room.”

            Her expression jolted me awake. At this point, by all appearances, we were lounging and chatting, but everything was out of control, calling for split-second decisions.

            “No room anyway,” I told her.

            “Where there’s a motel ballroom, there’s a motel.”

            “Don’t be so sure. How long have you been in Imno?”

            “Think!”

            Lucidity became focus.

            “I’ve been considering your theory,” she said, “and I sabotaged my last trance.”

            “Wha’d you dream of?”

            “No time for that now,” she glanced to and fro, over the gritty, grimy plastic landscape. Our tormentors were ubiquitous. “Let’s just say that those expecting bolts got nuts, and visa-versa.”

            “You screwed them.”

            What usually would have gotten a chuckle out of Connie didn’t work.

            “Perhaps you haven’t had enough time between trances to notice, but between the two of us, we’re always in one.”

            “But if we stop here, we may stop forever.”

            “I’ve considered that.” She glanced around again, then stopped and rolled her eyes at herself. “We don’t have to go anywhere, and we shouldn’t. The problem is always with us. So, it follows, that this is the place. Get it?”

            “I’m with ya. It follows us.”

            “It may be either of our gloms with technology way past what we thought we have, or it could be extraterrestrials. They may be able to read our thoughts.”

            She considered the food before her.

            “Eat. Finish up. I have a surprise for them. But it’s our last shot.”

            We found the motel desk in some far corner of the complex, and got a room on the second level. Connie briefed me more as we walked to it. Sabotage was our only hope. We probably wouldn’t be able to judge how effective it was. But to be effective with it, we had to go against every rational impulse in our conscious life. We had to live contrary, so we would react contrarily in a trance. She slid the card to open the door to a room with two queen beds.

            “The only downside is that we might be harming people. The task in a trance is probably metaphorical. When I was sorting hardware, I might have really been, say, performing triage,” she told me.

            “It’s more likely that they’re using us for harmful purposes. And they shouldn’t impose tasks on us in the first place.”

            Connie tossed her jacket on a bed. “So, we proceed. And we have to do it in a controlled situation. It’s not something we can do in a car.”

            I sat on the other bed.

            “Not with my chronically inflamed meniscus.”

            Connie grinned. I could tell that I was wrong, but I was right. She sauntered through the room, looking for perks, which were few, as she spoke.

            “I like you, Merle. I wouldn’t want to be in this situation with anyone but you. But I wouldn’t screw you if you were the last man on Earth.”

            She went to her bed, dug in her jacket, produced the candy-toy, and leaned toward me.

            “I don’t want…candy,” I told her.

            She raised an eyebrow. “You have to, to be part of the team.”

            I put out my hand and she put the toy on it. Well, not quite on it. The toy had a face and it spat out a candy-lozenge into my palm. I put it in my mouth. It had a tart taste, like a dry sweet drink, and it gave easily when I bit down on it.

            “This is candy!”

            “Of course it is! You never heard of PEZ?”

            She swung back to the bed, lay down and laughed.

            “I guess you haven’t. I’m sorry. I minored in 20^th century popular culture. I dig PEZ.”

            But she still was laughing at my expense. Punctuated with snorts.

            “And your face! Each time I ate one…”

            “Now I have a question for you,” I said, interrupting her giggle-fit. “Swear to me that you weren’t sent here by Tenger.”

            “I wasn’t! Oh…” She sat up and wiped her eyes. “I went rogue. I’m in trouble with Tenger as we speak.”

            “Would you…take a polygraph?”

            “Sure! Is there one here?”

            “No. But I have a particular method.”

            Her expression went to skeptic-ridicule. I went for broke.

            “Kiss your badge. Here and now.”

            She gave a resolute nod, lifted the laminated badge on its lanyard, and said:

            “I wasn’t sent by Tenger.”

            Then she kissed it, betraying a little disgust in the meantime. I leaned forward and took the badge. I lifted it at angles, regarding it in the light. I rubbed the surface with a finger.

            “Well?” she asked. “Am I lying?”

            “Jury’s still out on that.”

            She wrinkled her nose at my comment.

            “But I got you to kiss your badge. That’s something.”

            I didn’t see her hand. I was stepping back at that point. She had my left nipple in a pinch.

            “Are you a triple-agent?”

            “I don’t know!” I cried.

            And this was through three layers of clothing. Connie had talents. My plea of ignorance worked for her. She let my nipple go and went to the phone. I went into and out of trances for the next few moments (raking leaves), but I did register some of the conversation Connie had with the front desk. Establishing, against vague, happy customer service rhetoric, that, officially, room service didn’t exist in the establishment. But that ‘Smiddy’ was available to run for some things for a fee. Connie led with lobster thermidor, but was talked down to the possibility of salmon filets. Then they settled on ‘Ham sandwiches and keep ‘em coming’. Blanc de Blanc went the same way, downgraded to ‘Cold Duck has been seen in these parts’, then to word that a fifth of cherry vodka, a Tenger import, was available. Connie was firmer on the mixer.

            “I don’t mean do you have Imno Mountain Breeze Lemon-Lime written down as a formula with the label design in the beta stage,” she told the unfortunate clerk. “I mean is it actually bottled and on the shelves.”

            Sprawled in a large chair during this rant, I eventually became cognizant. Connie hung up the phone and turned to me.

            “Ok. I’m finished focusing on the administrative angle. Now is the time to assert our prerogative to party.”

            She glided over, bent down and gave me the kiss of portent.