The customer is always right.

Artem began by showing Wazzel the proper procedure for handling transactions, explaining at length how to enter an order and store the money.  It was adequately simple, and Wazzel seemed to understand the process well enough.  Business had picked up so much because of the construction across the way that Artem’s Coffee needed all the help it could get, and finding workers had become increasingly difficult due to the rapid growth across town.

“Our duty is to our customers,” Raffe Artem explained.  “Obviously, without them we wouldn’t be here.  It’s our hope that every opportunity they give us to serve them will be met with prompt and professional service, in the hope that they will return.”  He gestured to a small orange button in the lower left corner of the console.  “This is how you cancel a transaction in the event of a disagreement.”  He pressed it, causing the screen to flash for a moment before returning to a line of zeros.  “If nothing else, remember this: the customer is always right.”

Wazzel nodded somberly in agreement.  The customer is always right.

Two hours later the newly appointed beverage service officer was at his post and handling the first of a line of visitors.  Evidently pleased enough with Wazzel’s efforts, Raffe Artem had disappeared into the back room to occupy himself with the more managerial duty of assembling a reasonable budget.  His records were fairly well organized, though they had become less so as of late due to the demands a growing customer base had placed on his time.

One more employee meant one more paycheck to keep track of each week, but the amount of time he would save by letting Wazzel handle the front room would more than make up for the money and effort.

Artem looked up momentarily as the percussive sound of an irritated voice poked under the door.  He briefly debated rushing out to assist, but balked at the idea and went back to work.  He can handle it.  These things happen.

The limiting factor on most of the coffee shop’s operations was space.  There was simply too little of it to adequately handle the traffic.  It’s too bad I don’t have room to expand the dining area, Raffe thought.  I could add one more employee easily, and double the–

His thoughts were interrupted by a dissonant buzzing and a number of even more jarring shrieks from outside his door.  What in the name of Duke Borch?

Artem bolted for the door, throwing it open to see a virtually empty dining area aside from two men in the corner, apparently unaffected by the commotion, reading the news and sipping from their heavy black mugs.  At the apparent center of whatever had taken place stood Wazzel, holstering some sort of ray-weapon and calmly waiting for another transaction.

Artem was speechless for the first time he could remember; so many questions and curses floated around inside his head they seemed to clog all the exits.  It took him a good twenty seconds before he managed to produce an uninterrupted thought.

“You chased off a customer?” he asked, surprised he had managed to produce the entire phrase.  His legs weren’t quite committed to the directions his brain had been giving them either, and he held on to the side of the counter for stability.

Wazzel straightened up defensively and shook his head.  “Your statement is false; I did no such thing.”  He gestured to the still smoldering heap on the patterned tile floor.  “This fool tried to convince me that I prepared his beverage incorrectly.  When I replayed our conversation to him using my personal recording unit, he attempted to damage the device, and stated that I was born without cerebral function.  That statement is incorrect, a falsehood that would logically preclude him from attaining customer status.  He seemed to be a thief, and perhaps he was a lunatic, or an assassin.  I therefore vaporized him.”

La raza.

65,000 words.  225 pages.   I’m finally getting into more of a rhythm between working on it and staying on task with everything else.  And it’s at the point where I could hand it to someone and say “Read this, it’s a story,” without them making it through and wondering why it ends just as the main characters are eating doughnuts and the villain is blowing up a pharmacy.

Also (I say this too often, and not often enough) there’s a chance of storms tomorrow.

Death in the pot.

Maybe not literal death, but it certainly smelled bad enough to do imitations.  Elisha wasn’t around, so we threw it out.

We opened a box of mussels today.  The intended method of preparation was boiling.  They came in handy little bags, ones designed to be plopped into a pot of boiling water.  You leave them in, the mussels pop open, they’re done.

We put them in.  They popped open.  We pulled them out and opened the bag into a dish.  I was asked to carry some into the den for my grandfather, who loves the things.  I made it two steps before noticing something “off” about them.

“I don’t think he’s going to want to eat these,” I said.

Two more steps.

“There’s something very wrong with them,” I said.

By that point the entire kitchen had been overrun by a smell that I can only compare to the worst parts of a zoo.  Not a happy zoo, but a zoo that collects all the animal waste and pours it into giant cisterns and then hurls the reek in giant chunks toward innocent bystanders.  And it’s not as if we were opening a bag of mussels from 1972 either.  They were properly stored, and had not expired.  We’ve had them before.

It was honestly that bad.  Nothing that is intended to be eaten is supposed to smell worse than a sewage plant.  (I’ve been to one.  Foul, but they work at mitigating it.)  We evacuated the kitchen for the front porch, where the foul bivalves were placed in a bag, which I promptly disposed of by hurling it across the border into Canada.

Actually, it’s sitting in the garbage can outside, rotting and reeking and awaiting another victim.  The best part was when a can of lysol or febreeze got pulled out and sprayed around the house like it was going to be out of style.

Those products are the single worst scent-related invention ever.  The only thought that runs though my head anymore upon smelling either of them is “What kind of horrors are they trying to cover up now?”  They were designed for people who are too lazy/constrained by time (take your pick) to actually clean things the right way.  They didn’t improve the situation at all, but merely managed to cause the entire house to go from the smell of excrement and decay to the smell of someone trying to cover up excrement and decay, which in itself is quite disconcerting, and smells just as vile.

 

More bits.

Saunders stepped off the transport, back out into the humid air.  The last four days had flown by for the most part, aside from the terrifying minutes when he was being chased by a pilot with murder on his mind.  Those had dragged on for too long.

But everything had worked out acceptably, he told himself.  He wasn’t dead, he had no reason to worry at this point, and he was not far from being able to get his job back.  It wouldn’t be quite the same, since all that remained of his office aside from the heat-resistant data logs was a dissipating cloud of orbiting debris and possibly a few charred pieces of junk on the surface of the world formerly known as Muhalu.  It would probably take a few weeks to sort everything out to the point where he could go back to work, but that was fine.  He would endure the grilling, the paperwork, the curious questions, and eventually the relative boredom, but he would never complain about it again.

It would all be forgotten eventually.  No souvenirs, no baggage, no reminders of the incident or the crew of the Mayville except the memories he carried.  And why not? he told himself.  For all I know, they could still be responsible for putting me into this mess.

Nothing they had said could be substantiated, and yet…  However it was that they planned to take advantage of him–complacency, inattentiveness, or something yet unseen– he couldn’t imagine what they would gain from not killing him when they had the chance.  They weren’t the worst bunch he’d ever encountered.  Pyria was worth the visit, from what he could tell; at least they had given him that much to remember them by.  Sure, the climate was too close of a match to Encerida’s, but it had people, entertainment and food.

To his right along a smaller side street stood a two-story brown stone building with a large open lower level, apparently a bakery.  The smell of yeast, spices, and warm grain filled the area, beckoning passersby with soft hints of the bounties inside.  Reluctantly, Saunders sauntered through the wide arched doorway, not especially interested in delaying his return to SecRaID, but compelled to enter anyway.

He had always secretly hoped to own something like this eventually, something completely unlike his current job, one that was sterile, lonely, and quiet.

But own it for whom? he wondered.  Me?  He scanned the menu; it was a simple design, slate and chalk.  In the top corner they were promoting fritniks, a local specialty, apparently puffed fried pastries made from fruit-laden dough and copious amounts of sugar.  It sounded edible, and the smells from the kitchen alone would sell at lesser eateries.  He paid and began scanning the tables for an open chair.

I’ve spent the last ten years running from people.  Life finally catches up, and here I am running away again.  A waving hand caught his attention.  The bakery folk were impressively fast.  What could Carina think? he wondered, remembering the girl from his early years.

The lower floor was relatively packed, so Saunders took advantage of the stairs to find a quieter spot above the din.  Woah. These are good.  Any bakery Gregg Saunders ever opened would definitely feature fritniks.  But what’s the point if I have nobody to share this with?

He took a seat on the second floor by one of the front windows.  “Hi, welcome to Saunders’ Baked Goods, we’ll probably never see you again.”  It wasn’t a good motto, he admitted.

He took another chunk off of the fritnik.  There is someone I’d like to share this with, he thought.  I hardly know her though.

He and Anya had spoken briefly, and had discovered… Nothing, really.  She was kind enough, and he had caught her sneaking lingering glances in his direction while he was attempting to do the same, though for all he knew it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with his threatening of her friends on a deserted jungle world.  But she had beautiful legs.

Granted, there were probably a thousand better reasons to start a relationship than legs, but the two of them hadn’t spent enough time together for him to know which ones were applicable to his specific situation.

Skabs, he said to himself.  I missed my chance.  He had only picked up one comm code from the group–the McEllises’ personal line.  It wasn’t Anya’s, but one code was better than he usually managed to do when he met new faces.

Or did I?  As he took a final bite, he pulled his comm out of his pocket and carefully entered the digits.

The sound of the comm being picked up was almost immediate.  “Vic, it’s Saunders.”

“Gregg?”

His tone immediately dropped an octave.  “Anya?  Why are you answering the McEllises’ comm?”

“We’re all back on the ship, and they’re tied up at the moment,” came her reply.  Saunders had never considered himself to be an expert at reading people, but Rayleigh seemed stressed.  “Where are you?”

“The ship?  What kind of vacations do you people take?” he asked, wondering if they had something against actually enjoying themselves.  “I’m at this incredible bakery just outside the transit station in Crunk Glades called Flours and Chocolate.  They’ve got these fried things with fruit in them that–”

“We have to talk.  Now.”

“Uh, okay?” responded Gregg.

“Stay there.  We’re coming to get you, you hear me?  Do not leave.”

“Wait,” he began to protest.  “We?”

His comm went silent as it disconnected.

What was that about? he wondered silently.  Maybe it’s a good thing?

Whatever the meaning was behind it, on a more immediate level it meant he would be waiting in a bakery, and at the moment his plate was empty.  With a grunt, he walked back down the wooden stairs to familiarize himself with the menu yet again.

Step 50,900 of ???,???

Word Count: officially 50,923 53,292 after a reworking- chapter one was almost completely revamped, and word count doesn’t cover editing or take plot development into account.   It doesn’t seem like it’s moved since the last count, though part of that was due to three months filled with work and more immediate pay.
File Count: five? six? There are words in those too… plot details…

Technically, that’s about half of what’s suggested by the publisher whose website I’ve looked through a few times on occasion. (You can tell that’s a big concern right now.)

Length isn’t going to be an issue, and finding someone to take it isn’t a big deal at the moment either, since it’s not close to being finished. Doing the storyline justice is. It’s to the point where I can’t really explain it to people without taking thirty minutes, which is outside the attention span of most for that sort of thing. Hopefully it’s better on paper. Or lcd.

Makery and Breakery.

Technology is magic.

I finally got the chance to build a computer last week–someone else’s, not my own. Still fun though. Seventeen random boxes show up on your doorstep and you have to put them together without experiencing electrocution, setting anything on fire, or calling in bomb threats on hardware companies.

When everything was installed and the last oddball issue was worked out, it was actually a good feeling.

Then this week my six-year old laptop’s hinges finally gave out, causing the backlight on the display to die and making it impossible to open or close without it giving birth to terrible crunching noises. There are few things which compare to trying to find a cursor on a completely dark screen in a desperate attempt to save your files–Thankfully a friend of mine had given me an assortment of parts from his long-dead notebook, ones which oddly enough were nearly identical to mine. (Thanks, again, Matt!)

Also, if you’re ever replacing an lcd mounting on your notebook and you can’t figure out what the irritating little extra wires are for–the ones which lead deep into the bowels of your computer, too far underneath things to be worth the effort of totally ripping your poor defenseless electronic creature to shreds–they’re not grounding wires. They’re probably the antenna for your wireless adapter, and you will probably find it out upon booting up again when the computer is blind to your network. If you have to cut them, leave extra room.
Sometime here I am going to have to find a soldering iron.

Never buy an off-brand thesaurus.

Microsoft Word has informed me that one of the synonyms for the word conserve is marmalade: “Most ships were programmed to shut down the majority of their systems after a few days in an effort to marmalade onboard power.”

Who knew saving battery life could be so delicious.

The Payoff.

Alert: Incoming Sun Chunks

I’ve reported on the aurora here before, and it’s usually been a non-event, so I’ll begin with my apologies.

However… (And with apologies to any heliophysicists beforehand as well)

About a week ago a fairly large sunspot rotated onto the visible solar disk, kicking things off with an m-class flare.

Solar flares are rated by class, a being the weakest (and really not a flare, it’s better described as background noise) through b, c, m, and x. The scale is logarithmic, so each class is ten times more interesting than the one before it. For comparison’s sake, the largest one ever recorded with instruments was somewhere north of an x28. Three days ago the spot again set off a good sized flare, this time an x 1.1 or so.

Because at that time the spot was still rotating toward the center of the disk (where in theory any outbursts have the best chance of affecting earth) the shot (CME/Coronal Mass Ejection) wasn’t pointed straight toward us, though the effects from it are ongoing as I write this. It’s a shame that it was cloudy last night.

Anyway, that’s what our magnetic field has been up to in the last 12 hours. The sunspot was busy again as well; after setting off a whole cartload of smaller flares between the 4th and yesterday afternoon, it let loose with an x 5.4 around 6:00 yesterday evening. Same sunspot, only now it’s almost at the centerline. If we aren’t staring down the barrels of this one, we’re far enough out that it will spray us anyway. And because we caught the edge of the earlier CME, it means that most of the ambient solar material should (in theory) have been cleared out between us and last night’s blob. If that’s the case, this one will be moving even faster than usual.

Whatever the case, it’s scheduled to arrive tomorrow, bringing the northern and southern lights for some lucky bunch of sky-oglers. I’m just hoping it’s not in the afternoon. Northern lights in Russia, though probably quite beautiful, mean absolutely zonk to someone on this side of the world.

There’s a moral here somewhere.

Rather than amoral… certainly not a morel.

Once upon a time there was a really really fat kid named Terrence.
One day he rolled out of his front yard and into the street.
He was hit by a bus.
The bus died.
The end.