Midnight Snack and Other Fairy Tales (35 page)
Read Midnight Snack and Other Fairy Tales Online
Authors: Diane Duane
DELIVERY MAN
(over the TV)
I can’t stay here all day. Can’t I just leave them with you?
SHOP GUY
(over the TV)
Nah. These came in from the factory this morning. Might have this malfunction problem. Busted ones go back to sender with you.
The Shop Guy plugs a POWER CONVERTER into the wall and starts pulling the calculators out of their boxes and TESTING them.
TV ANNOUNCER
— The whereabouts of the company’s founder, Robert Erickson, are presently unknown, but the board of directors of Erickson are assembled in London to handle the crisis, with emeritus partner and former co-CEO Michael Carlyle leading the oversight team. The product failure has been attributed to a computer virus introduced into the manufacturing process at the company’s processor manufacturing facility in London…
The Shop Guy continues TESTING the calculators.
SHOP GUY
This one’s dead.
(tests another)
And this.
(and another)
And this.
(and another)
One good one. All the rest go back to Erickson.
He puts the single good one aside, repacks the others and gives them to the Delivery Guy, who EXITS.
A BROWSING MAN who’s been looking at other calculators elsewhere in the store now comes over and peers at the Erickson.
BROWSING MAN
That one working?
SHOP GUY
Yeah. Nineteen ninety-nine.
BROWSING MAN
I’ll give you ten.
SHOP GUY
You kidding? Thirteen quid, mate, and I’m doing you a favor.
BROWSING MAN
You heard the news. What if it breaks like all those others?
SHOP GUY
Okay, ten…
BROWSING MAN
Let me see it running.
Shop Guy loads in the batteries. As he does, the display (pointed toward the counter) desperately flashes: IT’S ME, IT’S ERICKSON, HELP ME, HELP MEEEEEE…
And as Shop Guy flips it over, the display resets to 0.
EXT. PICCADILLY CIRCUS, DAY
Joy and Harry come out of the Underground. Joy carries a bunch of flowers. She and Harry CROSS to the Burger King, stand for a moment as if examining the menu, then PROP the flowers against the wall. In the distance, BELLS are ringing “Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clements…”
PASSERSBY regard the flowers in bemusement. Joy and Harry exchange small somber smiles that broaden, and turn to walk together down Regent Street. Joy starts to drag Harry in one direction, stops uncertainly. They pause: then Harry pulls
her
along that way, and the two of them RUN OFF like happy kids, the flowers stirring in the breeze behind them.
FADE TO BLACK
If you liked this collecttion, you might also enjoy the previous anthology
of Diane Duane’s short fiction:
Uptown Local and Other Interventions
Diane Duane has been writing science fiction and fantasy for more than thirty years, in an assortment of formats—books, short stories, comics, television (both liveaction and animated) and computer games.
With her husband and frequent collaborator, Belfast-born novelist and TV writer
Peter Morwood,
she lives in Ireland in a peaceful rural townland forty miles south of Dublin. There, acting as the
Owl Springs Partnership,
the two of them pursue total galactic domination in company with their cat Goodman, their electronic associates Calanda, Ayeka, Isileth and Spot, an ever-growing crowd of characters, and (at last count) six hundred and twenty-four cookbooks.
To find out more about DD’s other books, please visit
DianeDuane.com,
or her online bookstore at
EbooksDirect.DianeDuane.com.
If you’d like to subscribe to an online mailing list to be informed about new ebook offerings from Diane Duane and Peter Morwood, you can
do that here.
And thanks in advance for your interest!
