|| -------- -- -----  A E R I E   O B L I V I A N A . singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora ------------------- ----------- THE CARBONIZE NEIGHBOR--CUP 12--"CUSTOMERS" <-------  ||  Severe Repair  ||  The Carbonize Neighbor  ||  -------> (Cup SRcn012, Created v2 (6/7/99), Copyright 1999) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Pepperjinc put her hand on Sake's shoulder. "Come on, it's gonna be alright." Sake closed her eyes and nodded, but it was clearly apparent that she was crying. "Okay." The Carbonize Neighbor said, and he strode forward and put his hand on Sake's other shoulder. Sake started to cry harder, and then, without opening her eyes, she said "Look man, what's your story? I gotta have something to work with here. Where are you at?" The Carbonize Neighbor nodded. "That's fair. I'll try to say something. You in trouble. I help you. Got Whintillru Glass, two particular cases, victims, in you and Pepperjinc of Clocks, of the two of the interconnection of the Earths, of called Sweptim and Aconck. See pattern. I see pattern. I help. Cannot communicate fully here. You better off than before. Here is open place, can go on from here maybe. I The Carbonize Neighbor, I help." Sake looked up at the man. "You're having trouble communicating?" "Yes and no." Then he looked up and regarded something in the distance. "Customers." he said. "I will get rid of Leon James Hara. Put him in back room. You take care of customers. Fake it, bullshit a little, you're smart girls, think on your feet, no problem, just play along. Act the part. Relax. Don't flip out. I'm telling you that if you flip out and start asking these customers what world you're on and all that it will only cause a lot of unneeded stress, for everybody." Then he turned, helped a now-semi-conscious Leon to his feet, and walked off with him through a door into the back of the store. The customers, two rich-looking women, approached. They started looking at the cordless phones. Sake and Pepperjinc stood still and exchanged glances. Then Sake started making silly faces at Pepperjinc, who returned a silly face, and then broke out laughing. One of the customers looked over at Pepperjinc and held up a cordless phone. "Excuse me," the customer said, without a hint of humor in her face or voice, but rather a little bitchiness, "could you tell me the range of this phone?" Pepperjinc strode forward and examined the phone the woman was holding. "Well let's see." Pepperjinc said. "What model is this? The Joptortec? The 4115. Yes, that would have the 14 feet of, um, range." The woman holding the phone frowned. She said "14 feet? Is that it? That can't be right." "No," the other customer said, "it says here that all the phones have at least a 40-foot range." "Ah, but," Sake said, approaching the customers, "the CORRECT way to define the range of a phone is to take the distance it can work under the worst conditions. So the 14 feet of this model translates to, in optimal conditions, roughly ten times that distance, or approximately 114 feet!" "Don't you mean 140 feet?" the other customer said. "Probably," Sake said, tapping her finger on the side of her head, "I used to be good at math, but I went through a period in my life when I did a lot of mind-altering drugs, and that kind of takes the edge off the math ability in your brain." Pepperjinc burst out laughing. The first customer was furious. "I don't know what this is all about, but I want to talk to a manager." "Well babe," Sake said, "why don't you MANAGE to get the fuck out of our store? It's easy. Just take your fucking feet and move them any which way as long as they get you closer to the goodamn door!" Pepperjinc went into hysterics, laughing so hard she had to grasp the edge of the cordless phone display to keep from falling over. "I demand to see a manager!" the first customer said. The other customer took her by the sleeve, looked at Sake and Pepperjinc with a worried expression, and said "Look, let's just get out of here. We can call the manager from home. And we can hit the Joptortec outlet store when we go out to Kim this weekend." The first customer acquiesced, but gave Sake and Pepperjinc a very nasty look as she departed. Sake and Pepperjinc again exchanged glances, trying to hold back from laughing. But then Sake said "We tried!" and Pepperjinc broke out into hysterics again. Then The Carbonize Neighbor came back. "What's the matter girls? What happened?" "Oh," Sake said, "um, well the customers, um, they um, they told us a really funny joke... about this guy's penis, and..." The two women broke out into total hysterics, and The Carbonize Neighbor shook his head with a little smile. "What's not funny is," The Carbonize Neighbor said, "this country is going to have a war next week." -------> ------------------- ----------- -------- -- -----