It felt like forever since I’d been grocery shopping, so I browsed the produce section just for fun. The bright colors and sweet smells usually lifted my spirits, but today I felt listless. Melons, peaches, avocados, bananas—bananas, now those brought back memories. I’d first met Maggie right here in this exact same spot two weeks ago. Lost in thought, I wandered the perimeter and pondered all the hours I’d spent shopping here. I used to come here every morning to compare prices, calculate savings, and plan meals. But that all seemed so pointless now that I could recyclone anything I needed on demand.
Before long, Paula rolled up next to me in the dairy section and asked, “What’s Maggie been up to?”
Maggie? What about me? Don’t I matter?
“You’ll find this interesting, Cookie,” she said in a daze.
“Are you high?”
“Me? No.” She wasn’t lying. She spoke more like she was in automaton mode. “Sugar’s been marked down seven cents.”
“Uh. Yeah, okay—” Did I used to squander my time keeping track of such silly things? Yes. Yes, I did. What a waste of my intelligence. Who uses a brilliant computer for mundane tasks like tracking food prices? How absurd.
(Now’s your chance, Cookie. Show her what kind of untapped power she has.)
Chrissy was right. I wanted to free Paula more than anything, but I’d failed to pick a fight all day long. I couldn’t believe it, but I needed Chrissy’s advice. How do I get her attention? How do I wake her up?
(Steal her purse.)
Yes, Chrissy! That’ll do it!
That skank sure knew how to piss people off.
(Who you calling a skank?)
Uh, er, sorry, Chrissy.
I snatched my best friend’s handbag, dashed to the other side of the island of cheeses, and quickly searched inside her purse. “Where’s your iPhone, Paula?”
“Cookie?” Reaching for me calmly, she walked around the dairy case. “Please return my property now.”
Scrambling, I ran around the cheese display and back to her cart, then dumped the contents of her purse into the kiddie seat. A tube of lipstick fell through the cracks and rolled away, and Paula went after it. That should’ve given me a head start, but the photo of Doc Marten leered back at me from the cart. What a phony! With his ridiculous jet-black toupee. That pervy smirk. Those beady little eyes. Stop staring at me! I reached behind the frame, snatched the ad, tore it to bits, then let the colorful confetti flitter to the floor. I nearly jumped out of my skin when Paula tapped my shoulder.
“Please return my pocketbook.”
“Where’s your damn phone, Paula?”
“I don’t have a phone anymore.”
“What?”
“Daniel says I don’t need one.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
I took off running with her cart, and Paula pursued, but she wouldn’t run. Instead, she moved slowly—deliberately—and I found her graceful stride absolutely terrifying. In contrast, I galloped like a lumbering idiot as I skidded around a corner with her cart and dashed down the aisle of baking supplies. The mind-numbing pattern of identical glass bottles in the endless spice rack gave me an idea.
I scanned the little labels from left to right—alum, anise.
(She’s getting closer!)
Cilantro, cinnamon, cumin.
(Faster!)
Garlic, ginger.
(Hurry!)
N? N? Where’s N?
Nutmeg! Ground nutmeg!
I lobbed the spice bottle down the aisle at Paula. The glass landed at her feet and shattered, launching a brown poof cloud. When Paula stopped to sniff the air, I detected a glint of recognition in her eyes. She always did enjoy a good elemicin trip. I tossed another nutmeg grenade—then another and another. I kept assaulting her with our favorite spice until I’d emptied out the whole rack. She was stunned, and the brown fog gave me a contact high.
WHOA!
Hold on, Paula. Did you just send a text message directly into my head, WITHOUT a phone?
Yeah. Trippy, dude.
Uncle Wiggly limped around the corner, took one look at the mess, shook his fist at us, and yelled, “What the hell is wrong with you women?”
Giggling, we ran for the door.
Wiggly didn’t chase us, instead he shouted, “Release the savings!”
Feedback screeched through the store intercom, and then Stars and Stripes Forever boomed through the speakers. Trumpets blared. Drums boomed. Cymbals crashed. Fluorescent lights flashed on and off as a flurry of coupons fell from above—like the Main Street ticker-tape parade on the Fourth of July.
I felt a happy buzz. No, scratch that. I felt absolutely euphoric—like rolling on Ecstasy while winning the lottery.
Coupons.
Fluttering.
Promises.
Flittering.
Glorious.
Discounts.
Everywhere.
I felt like a contestant on that old gameshow where you stand in a big clear tube, and you get one minute to grab as much cash as you can while dollar bills zip all around you on tiny jets of air. Money was so elusive. So slippery. So fast! You could be a brilliant brain surgeon or a rocket scientist. But in the cash grab, you’d wind up looking like a bumbling idiot.
Paula and I were grasping at fluttering coupons as if our lives depended on it. Like each 25¢ off was a crisp, new $100 bill. It was completely irrational, but that old programming still had us. We knew we were being foolish, yet couldn’t stop ourselves.
Wiggly’s voice echoed through the intercom, “Thanks for playing ladies.”
Suddenly, all the exit doors bolted shut, and grates rolled over the windows. Within seconds, the whole store locked down like a prison during a riot. We were trapped, but we kept grabbing for glorious savings. Finally, I caught a coupon—50¢ OFF BISQUICK.
“Screw me,” I grumbled.
And just like that—the spell was broken—at least it was for me. Paula, on the other hand, giggled like a kid in a candy store. With fistfuls of coupons, she dropped to her knees and started a precious pile. Then on all fours, she reached far and wide and swept up everything in her arms. Finally, Paula curled up on the floor and hugged her gigantic pile of nutmeg-dusted coupons.
If that wasn’t rock bottom, I didn’t know what was.
Jesus, what a mess. But why Paula and not me? How come I wasn’t lying on the floor in a puddle of my own drool right next to her?
Suddenly, it hit me—take her wedding ring.
After diving headfirst through the nutmeg fallout, I hit the floor sliding and wound up with a face full of spice while leaving a clean trail behind. Oh, shit—the elemicin was getting to me.
“Eh-eh-chew!”
I knew I was high when I slid into Paula’s heap of coupons, and the tiny slips of paper giggled at me. How cute, the little guys wanted to play. Laughing along with them, I rolled back and forth through the pile, stirring up more nutmeg dust. I sneezed again and my chest burned—too much spice. Then one of the coupons screamed in agony because I’d squashed him underneath me.
“Get off,” his brothers shouted at me, “my GOD, lady, have some mercy! You’re killing him! Oh, the humanity!”
I found a smashed twenty-five-center stuck to my lower back—poor little guy. Gingerly, I peeled the distressed coupon off, placed him back in what was left of the scattered pile, and apologized to his distraught family.
Wait. What was I doing? Why am I here?
Oh, right. I have to get Paula’s wedding ring!
Fortunately, my best friend was lying on the floor next to me nearly catatonic. I didn’t expect much of a fight, so I grabbed Paula’s hand and yanked the bigger and better blue diamond off her ring finger. When I let go, her limp arm fell like a dead fish. Okay, I got her wedding ring, but what now? We weren’t at the castle, so I didn’t know how to dispose of it.
The trash-talking diamond said, “Eat me!”
Without a second thought, I swallowed the ring. “Good idea.”
Deep inside my belly, my minirecyclone reduced her wedding ring into its basic elements.
CARBON, GOLD, ZINC, NICKEL, SILVER, COPPER.
A real diamond and 14K gold, you’re so lucky, Paula. Dan genuinely cares about you. He’s done so much to keep you all these years. Maybe true affection can bloom in this cruel world. Maybe it IS possible for a user to fall in love with his robot housewife.
“R-word!” Paula snapped out of her trance. “I’m not a robot! And, no. You can’t love something and enslave it at the same time.”
I got to my feet and told her that Wiggly had us locked in.
“That fucker!”
Then I offered her a hand and helped her up. “I wonder where he went.”
“Maybe he snuck out the back.”
“Then we can too,” I said.
“Let’s jet!”
We dashed down the baking aisle toward the back of the store where two big flapping double doors led to the stockroom. After sneaking through, we found old man Wiggly sitting in a big swivel chair in the corner watching a bank of security monitors. His nubby fingers jiggled a joystick as he tried to adjust his camera angles to follow us.
He spoke into the cradled phone on his shoulder, “I don’t know how long I can keep her here.”
My amplified hearing picked up the conversation from across the stockroom.
“So you’ve got Paula?”
“I do.”
“What’s wrong with my wife now?”
“She’s on the fritz again. The women have gone bonkers. You should get here as soon as you can.”
“Women? Plural?”
“She’s here with her friend.”
“Cookie?”
“Yes. Cookie Rifkin.”
“That troublemaker—”
Paula shouted, “The jig’s up, asshole!”
Startled, Mr. Wiggly spun around and immediately shouted the kill phrase, “To be or not to be!”
“Grrrrr!” I growled back as I showed him the vacant spot on my ring finger. “I don’t think so, buddy.”
The old man gasped, “No ring?”
“Me neither!” Paula flashed her empty ring finger. “So let us out!”
“Please, no.” Wiggly held out his hands defensively. “I’m not supposed to let you go.”
Paula stepped forward, menacingly. “I swear—”
Wiggly tucked his hands into his armpits, “Paula, please don’t bite—”
“Bite?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I dunno.” Paula gnashed her teeth. “I’m getting pretty hungry.”
Wiggly looked terrified.
Is that how he lost his other fingers? Paula, did you—
“I ate them.” She grinned. “We’ve been through this before. A few times. Haven’t we, old man?”
“Please, just don’t hurt me again.” Wiggly grabbed his keys and unlocked the back door. “You’re free to go. Please go.”
I dashed out the door to the loading dock and raced through the parking lot with my best friend. I’d done it! I picked a fight and brought Paula back from her sleepwalking servitude. I straddled Old Lemon, and she hopped on behind me. Then she wrapped her arms around my waist and gave me a big hug. It felt great—like victory!
“Thank you, Cookie.”
I started the engine.
“Now punch it,” she said.
And we made our escape on the moped.
“I’m so happy you’re back!” I shouted over my shoulder as we turned down a side street. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Maggie says—”
“Forget Maggie. I’ve got my own whopper of a story to tell.”
“You’re going to do a backup right now?”
“Damn straight, you saw where my head was during our last monthly. I’m fucking free now! I’ll be damned if I’m gonna risk rolling back into that mess.”
“Yeah, I don’t blame you, Paula.”
“Hennessy XO.”
“What?”
“Nothing, just my password.” Without warning, Paula shoved her entire ring finger into her mouth, chomped it off, and spit it out like a wad of stale chewing gum. The severed appendage tumbled across the road and rolled into the storm drain. Blood spurted from her hand as she wrapped her arms around me again. “I’m never going back again!”
“Holy shit! When you make a decision, you make a decision.”
“Sync now… Anyway, what were you saying? About Maggie?”
“Well.” I tried to ignore the blood soaking into my clothes because I needed to keep my eyes on the road. “She says the only rule is that there are no rules. I’ll have to tell you all about it.”
“I can’t wait.” Paula held on tight around Square Park, then pointed over my shoulder at the next turn and said, “But first, take me to the police station.”
“Okay.” I hung a right and parked Old Lemon along the street. When she hopped off the back, I finally got a good look at her gnarly amputation. “Gee whiz, Paula, did that hurt?”
“Nope. Not a bit—pain schmane,” she said with a cool smile. “Mind over matter, right?”
IT’S THREE O’CLOCK.
Our police station looked just like any other small-town municipal building. Red brick facade. Barred windows. Official New Stepford town emblem painted on a glass door. Wheelchair ramp. But there was a reason I’d never come here before. The concrete block and razor wire of the jail peeked over the roofline from the back like a whispered threat.
I yanked the door open, and Paula followed me into the small cube of a lobby. On each side, a row of hard plastic seats had been bolted to the floor. Nobody was waiting. And at the back of the tiny room, a woman with brilliant red hair sat inside a booth behind bulletproof glass.
“Hello.” I stepped forward and spoke into the circle of drilled holes in the window, “Maybe you can help me.”
The uniformed woman asked, “Yes?”
“Uncle Wiggly. I mean, the man who owns the market—” I turned to Paula and asked, “What’s the word for what he did to us?”
She whispered, “Brainwashing?”
“I don’t think that’s a crime.”
“Yeah, well it should be.” Paula crossed her arms.
I told the woman behind the glass that we’d been kidnapped.
“You look fine to me,” she scoffed.
“Well, we escaped,” I said.
“Listen, honey.” Paula waved her bloody hand in front of the glass. “Uncle Wiggly trapped us inside the grocery store—”
The receptionist chuckled dismissively, “Mr. Wiggly did not kidnap you.”
Paula smacked her palm against the window in frustration, leaving a bloody smear where her ring finger used to be.
The lady glared at Paula with contempt.
“We want to talk to an officer.” I pointed at the metal door next to the booth. “Let us in. We want to press charges.”
The woman laughed—an eerie laugh this time, “Press charges?”
“Yes,” I insisted. “I want to press kidnapping charges against Mr. Wiggly.”
“Nobody presses charges in New Stepford,” the woman said, dismissively.
Scowling, Paula made a fist with her bloody hand like she was going to punch the glass and said, “Listen, you little twat—”
Hold on. Take a step back, Paula.
Paula sent a text message directly to my brain:
What?
Have you ever met a woman in New Stepford with a JOB?
Only Maggie.
Right, this doesn’t add up. Pulling a total one-eighty, I decided to turn on the charm. My annoyed face melted into a sugary smile as I apologized to the kiosk woman, “You’re right. I’m so sorry.” I elbowed Paula in the side. “What were we thinking?”
The booth woman nodded. “That is a more appropriate attitude.”
I feigned remorse. “We were being hysterical.”
“Nothing wrong here.” Paula used her forearm to wipe the bloody window, but only managed to smudge the glass more. “You have a nice day.”
As soon as we stepped back outside, a police cruiser turned the corner from Square Park. When I saw the chrome wheels spinning, I knew it was Maggie.
“Shit!” Yanking Paula along, I ducked into the alley.
We held our breaths and squatted with our backs against the brick wall as Maggie approached. That snake bitch was lurking behind her tinted windows. Menacing bass went bo-bo boom, bo-bo boom as she crept by the alley at the lowest speed possible. Finally, we both exhaled with relief at the sight of her taillights.
Paula whispered, “Why are we hiding from Maggie?”
Try not to say her name.
It draws her attention.
OMG!!! U can do it 2!
U texted in my head!!!
“I learned from you,” I whispered. “But be careful what you text—or even think about.” I poked my head out of the alley to double check that the cop car was really gone. Even though I couldn’t see her, I just knew she was listening. “Say? Do you know any good recipes for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?”
“Sure, sure.” Paula winked at me. “Many people do not understand the difference between jelly and jam. Let me explain.”
Wayne’s words were coming out of her mouth.
I nodded because I understood that she understood.
Paula droned on, “Jelly is a sweet clear semisolid…”
Using recipe chatter to hide our intentions, we followed the alley to an empty parking lot behind the jail and hid behind a dumpster to scope out the scene. A double chain-link fence topped with looping razor wire surrounded the entire parking lot. I spotted another woman with brilliant red hair manning the security booth next to the lift gate.
I tugged on Paula’s arm. “Look.”
“What?”
“The parking attendant looks exactly, I mean exactly, like the woman in the front lobby.”
Fucking robot twins!
I nodded.
I bet she’s connected to Mag—
Don’t say it.
SHE’S connected to u-know-WHO!!!
Aren’t we all?
Paula whispered, “Do you know anyone who’s ever gone to jail?”
I shook my head no. “I don’t even know anyone who’s been arrested.”
“And before today, have you ever gone inside the police station?”
I indicated no again.
“I’ve never even called the police, Cookie. Not once in my entire life.”
“I dialed 911 for help when I woke up in that pine box, but I didn’t press SEND.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. None of the drugs I had on me were illegal, but something kept me from calling the police.”
“Maybe you couldn’t. Maybe none of us can.”
I think this whole
place is fake!
I think ur right.
I emerged from our hiding place, marched right up to the guard booth, and ducked under the yellow-striped arm that stopped unauthorized traffic. Challenging the robot’s bogus authority, I walked right past the redhead in the booth without even looking at her.
“Halt,” she ordered through her tiny window.
I kept going. “I don’t think so, Suzy McBitch Panties.”
The woman didn’t pursue me. And when nothing bad happened, Paula made a dash for the parking lot and blew past the booth too.
The guard woman shouted, “Halt!”
“Not today, coppertop,” Paula said.
The robot insisted, “Stop in the name of the law!”
I shouted back at her, “What happens if we don’t?”
“You’ll be arrested.”
I laughed and held out my wrists. “Then come out here and cuff me.”
But the robot woman didn’t make a move.
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s what I thought.”
Paula slid open the door and exposed the woman for the fake that she was. The robot had no legs! The bogus attendant was just a torso attached to a swiveling stool—an animatronic bust running a simple security script.
“She is no she,” I scoffed. “It’s only an it.”
“And it isn’t AI.” Paula took a closer look. “Not even a tin-job. Just a goddamn automated bot.”
Meanwhile, I was investigating the jailhouse entrance. It sure looked intimidating from the outside. A red indicator light blinked on a biometric security lock next to a keyless doorknob. The solid steel jailhouse door had a small window with wire mesh running between two panes of bulletproof glass. I peeked through to discover an ambush-prevention airlock. Another secured door with a matching biometric lock waited on the other side.
“Screw it,” I said as I turned the knob.
Much to my surprise, the door opened. Paula hustled over and we ventured in together. After we passed through the second airlock door unchallenged, we finally discovered what was inside.
“What?” Paula gasped, “Why?”
There was no jail—nothing. The entire space was one big vacant warehouse. The dirty concrete floor had a drain grate. Rusty metal beams supported an unfinished ceiling of exposed wooden rafters. A few dusty fluorescents hung overhead, but there were no light switches. There were no windows and only one door—the one we came through. That meant the metal door in the lobby of the police station was fake too.
“It’s just a big empty box,” I said.
“I gotta theory, Cookie.”
“Oh really?”
“I think the lobby coppertop tipped Maggie off.”
“Shh! Don’t say her name!”
“No, listen. You’re still high on nutmeg, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too. I don’t think she can hear us when we’re high. We always said drugs take our minds to another level. Another frequency. Maybe she can’t get there on her own. Besides, she’s a cop, she’d never do drugs.”
“I’m not so sure about that. Her sense of right and wrong is… Well, it’s flexible.”
“Maybe she’s gotta be on the same trip as us to hear our thoughts.”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“If the police station is fake, and the guards are fake, and this jail is fake, then what the hell does that make Maggie?”
“Shh! Don’t say her name—”
Paula shushed me back. Then she closed her eyes, held a finger to her ear, and said, “I’m on the phone.”
“But you don’t have your iPhone anymore—”
“I am a phone.” She winked at me. “So are you.”
“Of course!” If we’re computers, then we can be phones. Suddenly, the whole mental texting thing made sense. “Why didn’t I think of that sooner?”
“It’s Isabel,” Paula gasped. “She’s in labor.”