Emma hurried into the kitchen to warm her aching hands against the polished insulated sides of the stainless steel Fryolator. The ghosts of French fries past filled her defrosting nostrils, and the warm, oily air stung her cheeks. The new short-order guy had forgotten the closedown checklist again and left the machine on. Oh well; she had hours to kill, so she might as well precook some fresh fries for the freezer.
Mark, one of the busboys, gave her a look of surprise as he carefully loaded the last of the dishes into the washer. He had clear blue eyes, caramel-hued hair, and always smelled like gingerbread.
“I didn’t think you were still here, Miz Legrasse.” He always called everybody even slightly older than him Miz or Mister. She hadn’t decided if that was sweet or annoying.
“Well, I shouldn’t be, but my car won’t start,” she replied, her face caught between a reflexive smile and a frown.
“Oh, no.” His eyes widened. “I have jumper cables…. “
She shook her head. “The alternator belt’s toast. I could use panty hose to get myself home, if I was wearing any. You don’t have any, do you?”
He blinked, shuffled his feet, turned a little pink. “No, ma’am, I don’t. May I give you a ride home?”
She paused, gazing at the lean muscles in his smooth forearms. He looked like he ought to be a tennis pro serving aces in the Australian sun, or modeling tight jeans under hot lights, not hauling dirty dishes in a Cleveland diner that pretended to be Basque but mostly served the same Panerafied sandwiches and pasta you’d find at any casual restaurant chain.
Mark seemed to be the most beautiful, polite, considerate, gosh-darned charming guy she’d ever met. There had to be something horribly, horribly wrong with him. Benny, after all, never once called her “ma’am” or “miz” and tooted out a silent-but-deadly on their second date.
Mark’s sweet, innocent face was surely a mask for a serial killer.
Or another Laird of Warmongrel fanatic.
“Thank you, but my boyfriend said he’d get me,” she replied.
“Oh.” Mark still looked concerned. “Are you sure you’ll be okay here by yourself? I don’t live far from here … please take my phone number, just in case.”
Mark wrote his number in neat print on a yellow Post-It, said goodbye and went out to his Jeep. Emma folded the note sticky-side in and stuck it in her pants pocket. After he pulled out of the parking lot, she locked the doors and hauled one of the tall stools from the bar into the kitchen. The heck with standing to cook; she’d been on her feet most of the day and her arches were killing her.
She suddenly remembered her mother cupping her pink heels when she was a little girl, telling her she had beautiful feet, feet like a ballerina. Emma roomed with a real ballerina in college and learned that dancers’ feet were cracked and callused. While Emma was at class, the ballerina ate all the Krispy Kremes and denied it afterward, as if her poor battered feet slipped out of bed at night and somehow devoured the donuts on their own.
Emma smiled at the thought of the dancer’s wayward feet, then frowned, imagining a world in which that could really happen. With her luck, one day she’d wake up to find nothing but stumps underneath her own sheets and an awkward toe-scrawled “Dear Emma” letter on her nightstand.
Benny probably wouldn’t bother to give her a note if he ever decided to dump her, just another monosyllabic message on her voicemail. Or maybe she wouldn’t hear anything at all. Jerk.
She pushed the barstool up to the counter that held the wide maple cutting board, got a huge colander down from one of the pot racks, and opened the potato bin.
A glistening, cucumber-sized gray squid with huge parsley-colored eyes sat on top of the tubers, gazing up at her moistly.
“Greetings!” it declared in a voice like a blast from a trumpet half-filled with goo.
She gave a little shout, leaped back and grabbed the nearest kitchen implement, hoping for a knife but coming up with lobster tongs. She brandished the tongs as if they were Excalibur.
“Do not fear,” said the squid, scrambling nimbly from the bin to address her from atop the cutting board. It stood up on gray frog legs, the cascade of tentacles from its face and neck obscuring anything that might grow between them. Two manlike arms emerged from the fleshy ropes and shrugged them aside; the squid-thing clasped its hands over its tentacle-draped belly and bowed to her. “I traveled many leagues and searched for many years to find you, Princess.”
“P-princess?” she stammered. “W-what the heck are you?”
“I am H’telred, incarnation of the Great and Terrible God Beast of the Deeps,” he declared, gripping his tentacles with one hand and raising the other doll-sized arm in a salute. “I am the heir apparent to the throne of Y’harneth, our greatest city nestled briny depths of the Esoteric Trench. But I cannot take my place as ruler until I find my princess, my queen, the only living terrestrial descendant of our resplendent lord and master, Papa Nogad.
“You are that descendant, fair Emma Legrasse, and you are destined for far greater things than mere mortal minds can grasp!”
Nothing was ever as nice as the stories she’d read as a little girl. Her Prince Charming had finally arrived, and he was beyond froggy. “W-what kind of things?”
“Well. You know. Queenly things.” H’telred snagged a nearby red onion with one of his tentacles and used it as a stool. “Being waited on hand and fluke, drinking cosmic wines, enjoying the spoils of a conquered, subjugated Earth–”
“You’re going to conquer the Earth?” She felt dizzy.
“But of course.” He stood up and flourished his tentacles grandly. “I find my princess, take her as my queen, take the throne, mass my undersea armies, take over the planet, and rule over everything as a living god. It’s all right there in the Books of Prophecy,” he added matter-of-factly.
“Aren’t you a little small for global domination?”
He flared his gills at her. “I am precisely the correct size at all times! In my natural state I’d be taller than this building. I merely shrunk myself down in the Astigmatic Eye of Hydron. Our minions in Boston advised me that the shipping charges would become prohibitive otherwise.”
“Shipping?”
“Yes, in lobster boxes. I arrived here today in one. A nice spongy bed of seaweed and some limpets to snack on – it’s quite a comfy way to travel.”
She crossed her arms over her apron, tongs held loosely in her left hand. “So about this queen thing – am I supposed to live in the ocean?”
His tentacles bounced as he shook his torpedoshaped head. “We can rule the world and all its seas from this fair city. The Books of Prophecy say that Cleveland is destined to rise as the center of power of the universe and gleam like a sanguine diamond over the slave cities that fall before the arcane power of our aquatic armies.”
“How’s that going to work? We’re nowhere near the coast,” she pointed out.
H’telred sighed. “First we’ll raise an army in Lake Erie, and then we’ll invade Canada so the engineering minions can widen the Saint Lawrence River – look, we’ve spent centuries planning this. I have the overtime stubs to prove it.”
H’telred blinked his nictitating membranes thoughtfully and gazed through the open door of the employee lounge. “Ah, excellent, there is a couch, and it is leather. I do despise tweed.” He cleared his throat, turned toward her and knelt on one sticky knee. “Princess, I have spent aeons searching for you, and I do admit I am eager to take you as my queen so that I may plow your carnal fields and you may begin to spawn the first of many generations of fierce–”
“Wait, you want to plow my – you want to have sex with me?” Her voice rose to a pitch only dogs could hear.
“Yes. On that couch. Soon would be good.”
“Um, not just no, but heck no!”
“Princess,” he pleaded. “Until I’m back to my natural size, you’ll hardly know I’m there. Think of your destiny. Think of the power, the riches. Think of the sushi.�
��
He got down on both knees and clasped his hands. “Consider your adopted city. Can’t you just lie back and think of Cleveland?”
“Well, mother raised me Republican … so I guess in theory I might be okay with subjugating the Earth … but I need to know that I’ll still have … stuff.”
“Name your heart’s desires, and they shall be granted!”
“Um.” Suddenly faced with listing the things dearest to her, she found her mind as desolate as the salt marshes of an abandoned fishing town. “What about my mother? I don’t think she’ll approve of this.”
“We shall slay her together.”
“No! Well … no. I want her to be … happy. Yes.”
“Then our minions shall take her to the SpaceColored Caves, and there she shall slumber and experience a life of joy and peace inside a comforting cocoon of dreams.”
“I guess that sounds good … but what about my cat?”
“He shall be welcomed as the ambassador of a mighty predatory species. And he shall have fish.”
“What about ice cream?”
“Ice cream gives cats the runs. I’d be against it.”
“I mean, will there be ice cream?”
“Of course. The minions have a fondness for Antarctica Bars and Cool Air Swirls.”
Suddenly, an idea emitted a keening croak from the marsh of her mind. “What about Star Trek?”
“Indeed, it has been cancelled, and for good reason, but you shall have every frame of Star Trek ever recorded–”
“No, I want new Star Trek. I want more. I want it to be good.”
He twitched his tentacles. “That, I’m afraid, isn’t doable. After they’ve served their purpose during the propaganda phase, we shall invite every actor, director and producer to private awards banquets and slaughter them to feed the shogg–”
“I am totally not having sex with you if I don’t get new Star Trek.” She put her hands on her hips.
“Princess, be reasonable! Surely you would not turn down your destiny over this! What has the television industry ever done for you? They’ve insulted mighty Cleveland, scorned this beautiful Forest City, mocked the fair state of Ohio again and again! Hollywood’s used your people as the butt of jokes because they cravenly fear to offend the well-armed denizens of the American South. How could you, a Princess from The Queen City–”
“Cincinnati? I’m from Kansas City.”
“Kansas City?” He pulled a tiny leather-bound tome from beneath his tentacles and opened it. “Your mother’s name is Sandy Lumley, is it not?”
“Uh, no, her name’s Edith.”
“Oh.” H’telred closed the book carefully. “It seems there has been an error, and I have found the wrong Emma Legrasse. Well. I need to consult the white pages. And the Mapquest. Does yon lounge hold a computer?”
“Not anymore, the waiters kept downloading por– wait, you’re saying I’m not the princess?”
“Alas, no. You are destined merely for gibbering slavery. And I come now to regret taking pains to keep you here after hours, for now I must seek the Internets at Starbucks and you cannot carry me hence–”
“Taking pains?” She stared at the pink saliva dripping from his tiny, toothed maw and remembered the icicles on her broken alternator belt. “You sabotaged my car?”
“Well, the cold did make it rather painful to chew–”
The proverbial last straw broke inside her with the snap of tiny slimy neckbones.
“Rat bastard son of a bitch!” she exclaimed, then grabbed him with the tongs, and dumped him into the nearest vat of 250-degree oil in the Fryolator. H’telred gave out a split-second shriek before he burst in a jet of stinky steam. A gray slick of liquefied fat spread across the bubbling oil.
Damn. I’m going to have to completely drain the pan and scrub it out, she thought, dazed, watching the oil curdle to loathsome mayonnaise around his crisping tentacles.
Chilly realizations dawned on her. She’d just turned a tyrannical mini-demigod into very bad calamari. And he had royal minions. His freakish fish-men would surely seek dire vengeance on her once they discovered she’d popped their master.
But more important, she’d actually considered marrying a squid! What had gotten into her?
Well, most any attention from H’telred was bound to be more interesting than what she’d been getting. She stared at the tiny suckers curling into hard brown balls.
Yep, sex with squidboy couldn’t have been worse than Benny.
Dammit. She’d almost been a princess. She’d almost been queen of the world. Her mother would never believe it. Emma stared down at her cold, aching feet. Feet that her mother promised the pink silk of ballerinadom … but denied actual dance lessons.
Something hardened inside Emma like a French fry left too long in the vat. H’telred started to smoke. She fished him out with the tongs, doused his crackling corpse with cold water and dumped it in the trash. Screw her mother’s old wives tales. Screw years of waiting for cold frogs to turn into hot princes. She fetched her phone and called Benny.
“We’re not finished yet–” he began.
“Yes, we are,” she replied. “You’re a nearly useless human being and a crappy boyfriend. I never want to see you again. Goodbye.” She hit the “end” button fiercely and deleted his entry.
She pulled out Mark’s Post-It and began to punch in his number. A serial killer might have practical ideas on how to dispatch fishy thugs. And if he was just a genuinely sweet kid working his way through school – well, she sure could use a ride home.
Another hand to clean the damn Fryolator wouldn’t hurt, either.
Author’s Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editors who gave me suggestions on these stories: Brit Marshalk and Eugie Foster of The Town Drunk, and David L. Duggins of Spacesuits and Sixguns. Very special thanks go to Kyle Niedzwiecki and David Horwich of Strange Horizons; their input really got the ball rolling on these stories. And of course I’d like to thank Pete S. Allen for publishing this collection, and to thank Malcolm McClinton and D.E. Christman for their artwork. Last but not least, I’d like to thank my husband, Gary A. Braunbeck, for his love and support.
The following stories in this collection were previously published:
“Installing Linux on a Dead Badger: User’s Notes” – Strange Horizons, April 5, 2004.
“Your Corporate Network and the Forces of Darkness” – Strange Horizons, June 20, 2005.
“Faery Cats: The Cutest Killers” – Strange Horizons, February 27, 2006.
“Graveyard Shift” – The Town Drunk, November 2006:
“Dead Men Don’t Need Coffee Breaks”
“Business Insourcing Offers Life After Death”
“Corporate Vampires Sink Teeth Into Business World”
“Unemployed Playing Dead To Find Work”
“Authorities Concerned Over Rise of Teen Linux Gangs” – The Town Drunk, December 2006.
“Wake Up Naked Monkey You’re Going To Die” – Horror World, March 2007.
“The Great VüDü Teen Linux Zombie Massacree” – Spacesuits and Sixguns, Spring 2007.
About the Author
LUCY A. SNYDER grew up in the cowboys-and-cactus part of Texas. Although the kids got a school holiday whenever the rodeo came to town, young Lucy yearned to live in a land that featured more seasons and fewer cases of sunstroke. Her first attempts at poetry were inspired by the escape of her beloved pet tarantula during a 4th grade field trip:
I had a big fuzzy spider
I named him Mister Squizzy
He got loose on the schoolbus
He’s not in your lunchbox, is he?
Still fascinated with spiders as an adult, she earned a BS in biology and intended to become a scientist. Unfortunately, she discovered in her senior year that she was horrifically bad at electrophoresis. Still determined to experience autumn and spring, she moved to Bloomington, Indiana to get her MA in journalism. She figured that if she couldn
’t do science, at least she could write about it in newspapers and magazines. Soon after she moved into the dorm, she made her first science fiction short story sale.
Thrilled, she rededicated herself to fiction writing, and two years later she got into the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop in East Lansing, Michigan. At Clarion, she learned a great deal about plot, characterization, and the importance of keeping business receipts. But near the end of the workshop, she made the mistake of turning in a funny fantasy story. The instructor that week began his evaluation of her tale thusly: “This story represents everything that’s wrong with the science fiction and fantasy being written today…”
His criticism didn’t get kinder. Afterward, Lucy naturally figured that humor was right up there with electrophoresis on the list of things she should never try again. So, she spent the next few years designing web sites, editing for various online magazines, and trying to write the best, most serious speculative fiction she possibly could.
That changed in 2002 when she discovered an odd site called Everything2.com. At E2, she discovered she could write about pretty much any weird thing that popped into her head, and she would find an interested audience for it there. Setting aside concerns about producing sellable stories, Lucy began to experiment with forms of writing that were completely new to her.
In early 2004, an E2 user posted instructions for installing Linux on an extremely obsolete piece of hardware. In the site’s chat room, another user sarcastically commented, “What’s he going to do next, tell us how to install Linux on a dead badger?”
Lucy, who’d been reading reams of bad technical documentation for her web design jobs, was much amused by the notion. How would you install Linux on a dead badger? What flavor would you use? What would a Linux-powered badger be good for?
She posted “How to Install Linux on a Dead Badger” to E2, and it quickly became a site favorite. Later, she revised the piece and sold it to the articles department at Strange Horizons; that expanded version got linked from the popular Slashdot site, resulting in a huge surge of traffic for the magazine. Even today, “Installing Linux on a Dead Badger: User’s Notes” is still one of the most popular features at SH.
Installing Linux on a Dead Badger (and other Oddities) Page 6
