🚀 go-pugleaf

"Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn.
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many."

       _The Waste Land_, T.S. Eliot.

HARD TIMES #6:

"Aaar!"

-------------------------------------------------------------

City Councilman Albert Morraine was not happy. He knew happy, and
this was not happy. Happy was being elected by an overwhelming
landslide by a populace which didn't know about his more interesting
habits, to say nothing of his eight Swiss bank accounts, his three
mistresses, or the fact that, many years ago, he had managed, while in a
drunken stupor, to run over two people, nine dogs, and a pushcart
containing well over two hundred soft pretzels.

Indeed, it is interesting to note that those interesting habits, the eight
Swiss bank accounts, the three mistresses, and that interesting fact
were, in fact, part of what was making Councilman Morraine unhappy.
Or, more specifically, the photographs of him partaking of those
interesting habits with a vacuum cleaner, the photocopies of the
bankbooks, the tape recordings of him and each of his mistresses, and
the 70mm, eight-track stereo footage of his schnapps-induced vehicular
escapade.

Morraine had been unhappy for some time, in fact. Months. Years. In
fact, he hadn't had a lot to be happy about since that first phone call
from his blackmailer. True, the demands had not been onerous, up to
now...a bill quashed here, a road routed there, but a sensation of
impending doom is not entirely conducive to a joy-filled life. And then
this whole mess had started.

Now, he spent his time sitting in his office staring at his phone, waiting
for his master's voice. Occasionally, he'd go out and make another
speech against Intercontinental Salvage. After which, he'd return to his
office.

He was in his office now, staring at the phone.

He looked around, staring at the plaques, the bookshelves, the wet bar
...

Then he turned back and stared at the phone again.

Time passed.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Pinky glanced at the piece of paper in his hand. "Three seventeen North
Maple." he said. "Roosevelt Apartments."

"Roosevelt Hole-In-The-Ground," Thieftaker stated, quite evenly.

Neither spoke for a moment.

"Heck," said Pinky. "How are we going to find a new apartment for the
team when we can't even find an intact apartment building?"

Thieftaker turned to Pinky. "For the team?"

Pinky turned back. "Well, yeah..."  he said, uncertainly. "Yeah?"

"Pinky, we're not finding a new apartment for the team. We're finding a
new apartment for _us_."

"We are?"

"We are."

"When did we become us?"

"What?"

"Well, I didn't know that we were moving in together."

"I thought that was obvious."

"I'm clueless. You know that."

"You're not clueless. You're just ... well, okay. You are clueless. But
you're fun anyway."

"But how are we ... gah, I like the sound of that ... how are we going to
afford an apartment without Safety's OSHA subsidy, the Captain's
disability pension, and 'Proof's royalties? It's not like I've got a _job_ or
anything. Superheroing doesn't exactly pay the bills, ya know."

"Don't worry about it."

"Don't worry about it?"

"Well, for one thing, I'm still on full pay from my old job. Solving one of
the Hundred gets you automatically forty years' equivalent of service in
the pension fund."

"Welll..."

"And then...but I won't mention that. Trust me. Something's coming up."

"Tell."

"Nope. Now, come on. We've got five more apartments to look at."

-------------------------------------------------------------

The phone finally rang.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Morraine. Guess what you're going to do now?"

"What?"

"Call that construction company you own. Have them buy about a
hundred or so prefab buildings. You're going to donate them and the
labor to put them up."

"A ... a hundred or so? Donate? But ... but .. but .."

"Morraine, which would you rather be? Bankrupt but free or rich and in
jail?"

Morraine conceded defeat. "Yes, all right, fine. I'll make the calls."

-------------------------------------------------------------

Fu put down the phone. Things were going well.

In fact, things were going a bit too well, perhaps. Fu hadn't expected
Intercontinental Salvage to go on strike quite that soon. It had thrown
off his timetable a bit. Instead of letting public opinion slowly tilt away
from Intercontinental Salvage during the contract talks, he was now
forced to put Morraine's about-to-be-ordered prefab buildings into play
to _start_ the public distrust he needed, rather than to cap it off.

Wasteful. He was destroying Morraine, one of his most prized
possessions, earlier in the game than he had planned.

"Oh, well," said Fu, and turned his chair away from the phone back
towards the television set. Celebrity bowling was on.

-------------------------------------------------------------

"Hello? Mister Grant?"

"Yes?"

"Hi, this is Wally Manchu. You know that list of supplies and stuff you
wanted me to get?"

"Yeah?"

"I just faxed it to you. All the stuff on the list is available, and I've put
reservations and deposits down on most of it."

"Deposits? Wally?! We can't refund you for contract work, especially
work done without IS approval! How ..."

"Don't worry, Mister Grant..."

"Linc."

"Don't worry, Linc. They're deposits; not down payments. If IS buys 'em,
IS'll pay the full price, and I get the deposit back. Okay?"

"And if we don't buy them?"

"Then I'm stuck. Not for much, though. Nobody's buying construction
supplies in Bob these days, not with IS in town. I put less than a tenth
of a penny on the dollar down."

"Okay, okay. If you want to take the risk...I'm away from my desk.
What'd you reserve for us?"

"Well, lessee. Cement, wiring, a boatload of steel trusses, tar paper,
Tyvek housewrap, a _lot_ of  sand, a big chunk of lumber and a hell of a
lot of prefab buildings. Quonset huts, Levittown houses, minimall kits,
you name it, I got a deposit on it. I figure that if you're, we're going to be
moving fast, they'd help."

"Hmmm. We usually don't use prefabs; don't need'em that often. But,
hey, can't hurt to keep some around."

"So how's the strike going?"

"It's going all right, I guess. Morraine's still got the council in a mess.
Once he shuts up, we'll probably roll inside of a day."

"Why's he doing that?"

"Got me. I'm tempted to start muttering about 'who will rid me of this
turbulent City Councilman?'"

"What?"

"Don't you know your history?"

"History I know. I don't know what you said. I'm in a ba..I'm in a noisy
room."

"I said, 'Who will rid me of this turbulent City Councilman?'"

"Oh! I get it. St. Thomas Beckett, right? Saxon Chainsaw Massacre?"

"Yeah. Wait...is that singing I hear?"

-------------------------------------------------------------

Sarah McInnery looked up from the Coke machine standing outside the
Intercontential Salvage site office. Was that...? She turned to Tom
Allison, the cassion shop steward. "Did you hear ...?"

"Yeah. 'Who will rid me of this turbulent City Councilman?'"

"Do you think...?"

"Yeah."

"You think we should?"

"Hey, that's Linc talking. What do you think?"

"Let's go get the guys from High Steel."

"And Bill from Demolitions."

"Oh, yeah. Him, too. Come on."

-------------------------------------------------------------

"You got that, Wolfram?"

"I got it, Mr. Morraine. Hundred-some prefabs, start construction aye
ess aye pee."

"Right. Don't worry about construction codes, don't worry about licenses
or permits. I'll take care of all that. Just get those buildings up."

"Yessir."

-------------------------------------------------------------

"Well, boys, the boss wants us to buy ourselves a hundred prefab
buildings and put 'em up."

"Why? Isn't IS in town?"

"IS is on strike. Remember?"

"Oh, yeah."

-------------------------------------------------------------

"What do you _mean_, you don't have any? You had fifty just last week!
What? Who's going to put a deposit down on fifty-five prefab buildings?
Who _needs_ prefab buildings?"

-------------------------------------------------------------

"Mr. Morraine? Sir? There aren't any prefabricated buildings available
in Bob; somebody's put down a deposit on all of them."

"_What_?"

"Yessir. All of them."

"Oh, no...no..."

"Sir?"

"There aren't _any_ available?"

"We had to go outside of the city to find some. We got a really good deal
on a batch of a hundred and fifty residential buildings from a company
on Hokkado. They're getting shipped in tonight. Is that okay?"

"Okay...okay, oh, god. Whatever."

-------------------------------------------------------------

"Okay! Get that plane unloaded! We've got four more in a holding
pattern, moveitmoveitmoveit!"

-------------------------------------------------------------

"Jeez. These things look cheap as hell, boss!"

"They _are_ cheap as hell."

"But they look cheaper. I mean, honest to god, they look like cardboard!"

"They're cheap. Whaddaya expect?"

-------------------------------------------------------------

And in a small bar, somewhere on the south side of Bob, a piratical
trashcan, an exotic dancer, and an architect were attempting to teach
five aliens the words to "Penny Lane."

        I'M NOT EVEN GOING TO PUT ANY
        TEASER QUESTIONS DOWN.

        _I_ KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN.

        _YOU_ DON'T.

        AND THAT'S EXACTLY HOW I WANT IT.

        SO BE SURE TO STAY TUNED FOR THE
        NEXT EXCITING ANAGRAM OF ...

        SEPURGY!