This is Chas Hathaway’s 2009 Nano Novel.  What is a Nano Novel?  (IE Why does this story stink so bad?)

When Gertie came shuffling out the back door of the library, she had a stack of books high enough that she had a hard time seeing around them. Roberta got out and opened the door for her. Gertie stumbled her way into the car, and books scattered all over the inside. When everyone was in, Roberta had Scal drive them to a far end of the parking lot under a tree, where people walking or driving by.

“Okay, now before we start reading this stuff,” Roberta said, picking up Here for You: The Unauthorized Biography of Valden A. Martin, creator of the worlds largest chain store, “We have very little time, so we need to determine just what we are looking for.”

“Agreed,” said Scal, “We need a unified POI in order to determine the MOC.”

“What is POI?” Bobbie asked.

“Point of Interest.”

“And what is MOC?” Cary said.

He looked at her as if she had asked which side is left and which was right.

He sighed, “MOC is the Motivation of Causality.”

After a moment of confused silence, Roberta spoke up. “Uh, right. We just need to find out why some Val Mart employees attacked the girls. Were they trying to hide something that was about to be exposed? Did they really think it was a bomb threat situation? Why did the police side with the store, and how could one UPC threaten or damage a whole department store?”

“AND,” Scal said loudly, “how does one chain store put fifty other large chain stores out of business within the first ten years of it’s inception.”

Roberta send him a burning glare, but read off the name of the books to everyone and had everyone choose a book to start with. Gertie had managed in the short time she was gone to get books about Val Mart’s history, founder, technology, and founder, plus books on corruptions within the economy, and a couple books on information-based codes. Perhaps it now proved helpful to have a librarian in the group.

Cary picked a book called, “Capitalist Conspiracies in the Modern Age.”

The car was instantly transformed into a miniature study hall, but with an occasional, “I don’t know if this is helpful, but this says…” followed by a stream of slightly relevant information. Mostly the experience was a class on the history of Val Mart and how UPC’s work. The strangest things, however, seemed to be tied to Valden A. Martin, the guy who started Val Mart. Cary’s conspiracy book said that Valden, affectionately known as Valdie, was suspected of having direct (at least familial) connections to Valde Martini, multi-billion dollar Mafia head for nearly two decades. It also claims that Valden was thought to have fought on the German side of World War 2. Since Val was now said to be sixty two years old, this one had to be a hoax.

From his unauthorized biography, which Bobbie read, they learned that Val Mart played a very pivotal role in putting Wal Mart out of business at about the time Val Mart started implementing advanced technology. The name Valdie was going to be used for the store, but Martin knew they could piggy-back the success of the department store by simply having a similar name, which showed up just above the competition in a directory. For a short time, Val Mart was the new Wal Mart, until Wal Mart buckled over and gave in. After a devastating year and a half, Wal Mart was purchased by Val Mart, and Every Wal Mart on earth became Val Mart almost overnight.

With the change, all of the conspiracies associated with Wal Mart became Val Mart conspiracies. Theorists began to postulate that this had been Val Mart’s plan all along. There were stories of ties with the CIA and U.S., German, and communist governments. They ranged from claims of a Val Mart truck containing thousands of signs that said, “This City Under Martial Law,” to international government surveillance programs intended to send information about citizens to the government – a sort of Big Brother program.

The rumors of surveillance may have been stemmed by the store’s Massive 2 exabyte storage computer for gathering and sorting information on purchasing patterns. The thing that seemed to get people so uptight about it is that 80% of the information stored was audio and video files. Some suggested that the reason so much of it is video and sound is that those file formats take up so much more hard-drive space, but one former security guard for the store said that Val Mart is working on a program that could potentially follow customers out of the store, and even into their homes, though he knew very little of the details.

According to the book, the store countered this claim an interview with CBN News, which went as follows:

CBN: Mr. Martin, there has been talk recently that Val Mart intends to extend it’s research into the homes of your customers. What does this mean exactly?

VM: We place very high value on caring for our customers. We want them to feel as comfortable with us as they do with their friends and family.

CBN: But would this go so far as to invade the privacy of individuals?

VM: I can assure you, our customers need have no fear of interference into their private lives. The research that we do as a company is intended only to provide our customers with the things that they want. As an example, in its research, Val Mart has found that our customers need good product for very little cost. We have taken that information and used it to develop product that is both pristine quality and reasonably priced. Customers are more interested in a good product at a good price than they are about many of the frivolous things that so many retail stores put so much time and money into.

CBN: That brings up another very interesting facet of your company. How is it exactly that Val Mart is able to produce product that is of comparable if not superior in quality to the high ranking name brand competitors, and yet maintain prices that would have made (and no less succeeded to make) Wal Mart gawk in envy.

VM: (with a smile) Now I couldn’t go telling my secrets on national television, now, could I?

CBN: (laughs)

VM: No, really, though. It really comes to a matter of priority. If the store focusses on revenue, growth, and expansion, then of necessity, it neglects the customers, but if a company really knows how to meet the wants and needs of the customer, it does whatever is necessary to bring about those needs.

CBN: And what is necessary.

VM: That is precisely what our research departments are working to determine. As we discover new information, we act on it. Believe me, for a company of this magnitude, it is not an easy thing to make changes overnight, but we do it – we insist on it, when we learn what we are doing wrong, and how we can improve.

CBN: Some have speculated that the greatest groups to suffer from all of this are the Employees of Val Mart.

VM: I think you can speak to almost any Val Mart employee to easily discover that this is not true. On the contrary, not only are our workers well-compensated, but we work hard to supply work and careful training for many who would otherwise be forced by unfortunate circumstance to have no job at all. There are more programs for training those deep in poverty, illness, or disability than any other company on earth. And in that training, we ensure that we only send our most qualified associates onto the floor to work directly with the customers. This is not in an effort to segregate, but to ensure our customers the best experience possible.

Incidentally, the former security guard was only a short time later in a motorcycle accident that left him a paraplegic with permanent brain damage, and never had the opportunity to respond to this interview. One unrevealed source claimed that, “You can’t stand in the way of a mammoth, because if you merely annoy it, it will step on you and say it didn’t see you there.”

The only mention that Cary could find in the book about what Scal said about the UPC technology was a claim that Val Mart was working directly with the government on some branches of technology, and that these programs were either feeding money into the government in exchange for its resources, or the government was funding the projects for Val Mart. This coalition allows the government to keep an eye on the largest retail chain on earth, and allows Valden A. Martin privileges in political economic circles, including a seat in the United Nations.

Ironically, the country most apposed to Martin’s involvement is Germany, though from what Cary could tell, that may have had something to do with the rumor that Valden had ties to Aryan Nazi extremists. While most seemed to shrug these claims off as preposterous, it may be a little too close to home for the German government to feel comfortable with.

Cary put her book down and shook her head. This was much heavier reading than they had her do in school, though somehow it seemed more interesting – probably because of her own suspicions about the store. What was meant by the statement that if you stand in the way of a mammoth, it will step on you? Had Cary and Bobbie somehow stood in the way of or annoyed Val Mart? Was Val Mart trying to quickly and inconspicuously step on them?

It was late in the afternoon before the group started realizing how hungry they were.

“So let’s decide where we will go next,” Roberta said, “Obviously it’s not safe here. If at all possible, we need to get hundreds of miles from here.”

“Um…” Cary said, not sure how to ask her question, “I don’t know what everyone else’s situation is, but…”

“What’s the matter, Cary?” Roberta asked.

“Well, I don’t have much money, and what little I do have is back at camp Winabagel.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Roberta said, “I’ve kept a little cash on me ever since I heard that Bobbie was in trouble. I didn’t know if I might need to help her out if I saw her.”

“Mom?” Bobbie asked humbly, “what are we going to do about bathrooms?”

Roberta almost asked Bobbie why she hadn’t gone before they left, but then she realized how long that had been – and they had been taken by surprise, so it wasn’t like she had a chance on the way out the door.

“Uh, well, yeah,” Roberta said, “public bathrooms are too dangerous right now. We’ll have to use bushes.”

They all moaned, but no one countered.

“But the sooner we get on the road, the sooner we will pass wilderness. So where are we headed?”

After a long silence, Gertie said, “Well, I don’t know what good it would do us, but Val Mart’s headquarters is in Valdie, Utah.”

“Valdie?” someone asked.

“Yeah, it’s near Wide Canyon.”

Silence.

“Near Hurricane.”

So they started driving toward Hurricane, Utah. None of them knew exactly where that was, so at a gas station about thirty miles from their starting place, Gertie pumped gas while Scal went into the store and bought a map and a large pair of wire cutters for the handcuffs. It took him awhile, since he insisted on interrogating each of the employees about the make and model of their UPC scanners and where they got the parts.

“I can’t see how you can expect to learn from a service station attendant the secrets of universal product codes,” Roberta said as they pulled away.

“Sources,” Scal said, not turning his head from the road, “…sources.”

Roberta took a deep breath and said, “Well, I did find some real information about Val Mart’s scanners, as well as UPC encoding. Cary, could I see the doll again?”

After succeeding (with Roberta’s help) at clipping the handcuffs off of Bobby and herself, she reached in her pocket and handed Roberta thee doll.

“Yep, just like I thought,” she observed while examining the code under the doll’s feet, “this doesn’t even meet the requirements of an ordinary UPC.”

“Then how did it scan?” Cary asked.

“I said ordinary UPC. This is a UPC based on a Val Mart’s advanced system. I was reading the book, The New Babylon, which talks all about new advances in technology, but especially about it’s use in international marketing. It doesn’t go into a lot of detail, but what it said might really help us out.”

Roberta explained that Val Mart’s system is capable of reading ordinary UPCs, but that there is a more advanced system that they use called a UMSC, or Universal Macro-Server Code. The difference between a UPC and a UMSC is that a UPC uses a configuration of various bar widths to represent a string of characters, while a UMSC code uses a configuration of multidimensional bars containing digital information that can be used for anything from a computer program to a digital image.

“So they are one of those computery things?” Gerdie asked.

“Uh, yeah. It has to do with computers.”

Roberta showed them that if you look really close on the UPC on the doll’s feet, you could see that the bars are not just solid bars, but contain characters within those bars. She also said that while the code doesn’t necessarily contain an actual digital file, it did contain the information needed for a computer to locate and access a file – or image, or whatever.

“So what do the feet say?” Bobbie asked.

“Other than the number sequence below the bars, I don’t think they say anything,” Roberta said, “the book made it sound like it was digital information, kind of like what a CD has. But…” and she held the code as close as she could to her face, going almost completely cross-eyed, “it almost does look like this has some kind of characters, but I think they are too small to make out. I’d have to at least have a pretty powerful magnifying glass in order to work them out.”

Without taking his eyes off the road, Scal reached over and opened the glove box, spilling junk all over Roberta’s lap. She huffed, but then hushed when he pulled out a massive magnifying glass that must have represented the quintessential private investigator magnifying glass.

“Oh,” she said, “Uh… thanks!”

Among the fallen junk was a pen and paper, and she jotted down the number sequence written below the bars and then handed the paper and pen to Cary. “Here, you write it down as I read it. I don’t know what good it will do, but we’ll see.”

She held the magnifying glass up to look at the code. It was a group of characters, and being as unexpected as they were, she had almost expected a message to be written in them. Instead, it was just a bunch of numbers – which she read out loud, but they weren’t of much help since all turned out to be 1s and 0s.

“01110000 01100101 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101101 00100000 01100010 01100001 01110011 01100101”

After having Cary write down the whole group of numbers, she noticed that two more of the bars had a similar sequence of numbers – all of which were 1s and 0s. She put down the glass and rubbed her eyes, not sure this was worth the trouble.

“Isn’t that computer language?” Bobby said.

“You mean binary?” Cary asked.

Bobby looked around at all of them with a nervous expression, and then back at Cary. “I don’t know.”

“You’re right,” Roberta said, “I think that is binary. But I don’t get it. The book never said anything about this. I thought it was all digitally interpreted.”

“But if it is binary,” Cary said, “how are we going to figure out what it means?”

Bobby held up the book, The Coding Scheme, that she had been trading off with Roberta. “Maybe it has codes other than UPCs.”

It didn’t take them long to find in the book a binary translator chart, but in order to figure out how to figure out the translation, they had to read about the hex, and its role in binary code, and even once they got that down, it took them a great deal of time to try to translate the characters. Likely if they had a computer with the Internet, they could have figured it out easily – but under the circumstances…

“p”

Okay, where was 01100101- oops, no that’s 0110101, I missed a 0. Okay, 01100101 is… now what is the hex for that? No, just the hex, we’ll get the rest after.

“e”

Wait, is the first of the next one a 1 or a 0 – you should have written these clearly. Wait, I can’t find any of the ones that start with 1, okay there they are, and what was after that first 1. Oh, you mean 01. Okay, 011… okay, sorry, wait.

Many hours later, they were halfway to Hurricane, Utah, and their message was halfway decoded.

peter m base

“Who is Peter M. Base?” Bobby asked.

“But we better keep going, there may be more on the next line. It could be Peter M. Based at such and such place.”

“Okay.”

01100100 01100101 01110100 00100000 01100011 01110100 01110010

01100001 00110100 00111000 01100011 00110001 00110111 01100100

So they plodded along, not knowing if any of this was of any value, but no one could think of any more useful thing to do.

By the time it was both too dark to see and too tiring to study by dome-light, they decided to camp a ways off the side of a dirt road. They all decided to sleep in the car, except they made Scal camp outside. “We need you to be night watchman,” Roberta said to convince him.

It was a terribly uncomfortable sleep for everyone, except Scal. He acted like he had slept better that night than he had in weeks. Gratefully Scal had picked up eight boxes of granola bars with the map of Utah. They all knew they would be sick of granola bars in no time, but they hoped they could make more comfortable plans in Hurricane.

It took them the rest of the drive to Hurricane to figure out the rest of the code. Since only three of the bars had the 0s and 1s, they were all left wondering what the message meant when they finally read the full translation.

peter m base

det ctr

a48c17d

Pulling over next to the massive, “Welcome to Hurricane City, Utah,” sign, they all vented their tired frustrations. Once they got their head back together, they talked about what they were supposed to do now. They decided to ask around about a peter m. base. They started by checking phone books, then looking for an address that might have an a48c17d format, but without success.

It wasn’t until they decided that they deserved a real meal and pulled up to a Hardees drive through that Scal asked the person in the window if they knew any Bases from around here.

“Well, there’s the military base.”

“No,” Scal said, “I mean people with the last name, Base.”

“Nope, sorry.”

As they drove away, Roberta said, “Wait a minute. What if M Base was Military Base? Maybe it’s even called something like, ‘The Peter Military Base’?”

So they turned around and went back through the drive-through. Not wanting to look too eager, they ordered ice creams for everyone, too, which proved awkward for Scal, who afterward dripped on his pants every time he turned the steering wheel.

“Yeah, it’s about 25 minutes west of here.”

After everyone’s initial frustration with Gertie for not reminding them that their final destination was Valdie, Utah, and not Hurricane, Utah, she said, “Don’t get upset with me! You were all so concentrated on your code game that you didn’t say anything when we passed Valdie. All I said before is that it was a little bit near Hurricane – you guys were the ones who drove right on through Valdie to get to Hurricane. I told you it’s at Wide Canyon.”

They grumbled, but reached Valdie within a half hour. It wasn’t hard to find the Military Base, because while the city was fairly large for this part of Utah, it was also only a few years old, and there were digital maps of the city on billboards on the side of the wrote. None of them had ever seen anything like that before, but thought it was a clever system.

Tags: nano novel

Cary was confused.  According to the newspapers, Bobby and Cary had placed two bombs in the store: one on the inside near a main computer, and one in the parking lot. Store managers speculated that the bombs had been placed strategically to do the most harm to the most people.

“Some think that all you have to do these days to get what you want is to do a bomb threat, but then carry through with the threat.” says manager Margaret Glenard, “It’s despicable, really, what kids these days will do for attention. I just hope those poor girls get the help they need in order to scrape up what chances they may still have in life.”

According to the report, the inside bomb shorted out just before ignition, causing only a minor electrical discharge, which burned out the wiring on the central computer, shutting down all of the systems computers.  The second bomb went off in the parking lot.  Obviously that one was conjured up from the smoke mess.  But the bomb inside the store… could that have something to do with the price scanner?

“What did we ever do with that Santa?” Cary asked.

“I thought it was still in your pocket,” Bobby said.

Cary reached in her back pocket and was surprised to find the Santa doll still there, fully intact.

The UPC was still there, too, though now Cary noticed that it looked a little odd for a UPC.  Kind of primitive, somehow. She passed the doll around the room to let everyone get a look.

When Gerdie got it, she said, “This looks worse than the ones at the library.”

When Roberta asked her what she meant, she went into a fairly animated discussion about how much trouble she had scanning books, and that it was because the sticker was all scratched up. One of the techy guys at work told her that there were four different widths of lines on a barcode, which she had named the toothpick bar, the pencil bar, the hose bar, and the sewer-pipe bar, and if one got scratched the computer would think a thick bar is actually a thinner one.

“That’s when you have all the trouble,” she said, “then you have to jiggle it around and hope it finds the right size of line.  It’s all a bunch of hogwash if you ask me.”

“But what’s wrong with this code? It didn’t look very scratched at all to me.” Roberta said.

“But it’s all messed up! It’s only got the toothpick bar and the sewer pipe bar.  Personally, I think the scanner machine things just don’t care. Sometimes they just need a good bop on the noggin to remind them you’re in charge.”

Gerdie shook her head, and Roberta could see the obscenities on the motion of her lips.

Someone suggested they take that code to the library to try scanning it there to see what it comes up as, but then they remembered what had happened to the last scanner that had read that UPC.

Cary took the Santa back and looked at the UPC. There were only two bar widths. Maybe that was what made it look so old fashioned. “What does the letter in the code stand for?”

When no one seemed to know, they decided to get out the ol’ Internet connection.  The speed was comparable to dial-up, though the landlord swore it was DSL high-speed.

It took them a while to find anything about UPC codes, but by the time they did, it was getting late enough that everyone felt the need for sleep.  Not wanting to send Gerdie and (heaven forbid) Scal out with psychotic security guards watching, Roberta offered to let them sleep on the couch and fold-out guest bed.

Roberta took the girls into the kitchen and prepared them a smorgasbord of leftovers from the last four days. They ate ravenously, but both felt a little queazy after dinner. Bobby was sure it was the pickled Brussels sprouts, but Cary said she was just glad to eat again.

Just to be sure the police wouldn’t discover the presence  of Bobby and Cary, Roberta filled the room-sized walk-in closet connected to the bathroom with enough blankets and pillows to simulate some decent sized beds.

“You don’t think they’ll search the apartment?” Cary asked.

“I think they need a warrent for those sorts of things, and they would need good evidence that you are here in order to get that, which we will be careful not to give them.”

They had all decided that they would decide in the morning what to do next. Roberta and the girls hadn’t slept much in the last day and a half, and each of them fell asleep quickly.

Gerdie also slept well on the couch, but Scal couldn’t stay in his burrowed sleeping bag for more than a few minutes without getting up and peeking out on the police and perimeter. This wouldn’t have been a big deal to Roberta, but every time he came to the back window, he would walk across the floor, which would creak and wake Roberta thinking someone had broken into the house. Multiple times she asked herself why he had stayed overnight in the living room. It would have been easier to sleep without Scal acting as night watchman.

By 7am, they were eating a cold breakfast together and watching the morning news, not wanting to miss itif there was anything more about the two girls who had tried to blow up a Val Mart store. For the first fifteen minutes, the focus was on the worldwide inflation of dairy prices… except of course at Val Mart, which bragged lower prices on Limburger cheese than could be found anywhere in the world. According to the report, there had been no price that low anywhere since 1973, and that had been in the city of Limburgh in the Netherlands.

Cary was just taking a large bite of frosted flakes when she saw her face on the screen. She choked and spit flakes and milk across the table, and Gertie gave her a windbreaking smack on the back. The bustle had distracted everyone from the TV, and she had to point to it to get everyone to notice that they were talking about them.

“…released a video taken last night, after 10:00pm from our own Channel 8 mobile station. As you can see in the video, there are clearly two young girls jumping out of a tree into the protective mother’s arms. Now there is no word on whether the police have been notified of this newest…”

“We’ve got to get out of here NOW!” Roberta shouted. “Forget the backpacks,” she said, noting Bobby’s attempt to hurry and fill the packs they had planned on preparing for an escape, “The moment the police see this footage, there’s going to be…”

A loud knock on the door silenced the whole group. Roberta ran for the back window and heaved it open, turning around in time to see Scal opening the door wide. “It’s the police!” he shouted over his shoulder, two hulky uniformed officers standing in the doorway. They started voicing a question, but the moment they saw Cary just outside the kitchen, they raised their pistols shouting, “Stop right there!”

Cary froze. Inside the kitchen, and just out of the cops’ view, Roberta was frantically trying to shove Bobby out the back window, but Bobby got her belt jammed on the frame.  But Bobby backed into the house again, her face pale, “The security guard is out there!” she whispered frantically.

Unsure what to do, Roberta rushed to the kitchen door and peaked around to see Scal and Cary leaning with both hands against the wall. But before she could back up, one of the two police officers had come around the corner and ordered her to do the same. Especially terrified for Bobby, but not knowing what to do, she shouted, “You don’t understand! This is all a big misunderstand…”

But she was silenced by the officer’s orders to remain silent, and promised that she could bring her questions to the judge when the time was right. All the while, not sure what else to do, Berdie nervously ate her bowl of cheerios.

They arrested Cary and Bobby, and ordered the rest of them to follow them to the police station for questioning. When they checked Cary for any concealed weapon, they found the Santa Doll in her back pocket. “No!” she begged, not sure of its significance, but after last night’s discussion, she felt that it was the only clue they had to what was going on.  If it was confiscated, how could they study it? “That was a gift from my grandma!”

“We can worry about things like that later,” the officer said, “All non-clothing items found on your person will have to be placed among the suspicious items to be brought before the court, then we can talk about property rights. You’re being arrested, so you have the right to remain silent for the time being.”

As they were taken out to the police car, Cary saw the security guard standing a short way off. She gasped, and he winked. The cop noticed her reaction to the guard and said, “Yeah, he should look familiar to you. He’s the one who first confronted you in Val Mart, isn’t he?”

The officer obviously meant the question to be retorical, but Cary said, “No, he’s the one who shot at us in the parking lot after Bobby got fired!”

The police officers looked at each other. “I see,” one said, “he shot at you. Many security guards will shoot at someone who is threatening a large group of people with a bomb.

“But there was no bomb!” Cary blurted. “We didn’t do anything! I just asked Bobby to scan the sa… uh, something for me, and then I went and bought… stuff.”

Cary was grateful that the handcuffs they had put on them were clipped in the front, so she could still scratch her nose. They had taken Bobby in a different police car. Cary couldn’t help wondering if the police were in on it, or if it was just the store. So far the police had made no attempt to actually harm any of them – which couldn’t be said of the security guard, who Cary noted was following them behind Scal’s black BMW, where Scal, Roberta, and Berdie followed.

Again she tried to convince the cops that it was all a mistake, and there was no bomb.

“Just watch this, kid,” one of the officers said, “and then you tell me there was no bomb.”

On a laptop, there was a video playing that looked like the view from a black and white surveillance camera. Cary could see Bobby and herself running out to the edge of the parking lot. The picture was choppy, so detailed movements were hard to detect, but Bobby was carrying the smoke bomb bucket.  She started running with it, and a second later, the bucket was on the ground, dropped from her hand, and smoke was already bursting from the sides. Withing a couple seconds, all that could be seen was smoke.

“So, ms. ‘there was no bomb,’ what do you call that?”

“Smoke bombs!” She shouted, “when the security guard shot at us, he hit the bucket of smoke bombs.”

They barely heard the second part of her sentence between their fits of laughter.

When they reached the police station, the officers escorted them in the main door, and Roberta, bawling out loud now, and the others all followed. The place wasn’t busy at all, with just a uniformed receptionist at the front desk. The officer who escorted Cary walked up to the receptionist and explained the situation, and the receptionist got out a sheet of paper and started writing down information.  The receptionist was a large woman, and she looked at Cary with distain. “All I can say, girl, is you’re lucky we got to you before the public did. When they learned what was goin’ on, they were all mad and ready to hurt someone.”

The officer took the Santa doll from his pocket and set it on the desk. Cary was close enough she could have grabbed it, but she knew they would just take it back soon enough.

The receptionist asked the officer a number of questions about the time, place, and details of the arrest. Meanwhile the other officer was checking some charts on the other end of the room. “Bigly,” he said, “I’m going to go alert the captain, can you keep an eye on these folks for a bit?”

The officer now known as Bigley nodded slightly, but went on answering questions. When they were finished, the receptionist took the page and copied some numbers into a computer and then ran the sheet under a scanner.

“Filed and ready. Want me to get the inner door for you? She said, walking toward a set of large security doors.

“No, I got it, thanks Finks.”

The reception smiled and stepped out of the room the other direction, and Officer Bigley was punching a code into a box by the first of the glass double-doors.

Cary looked up at the Santa. Such an innocent looking thing. It was that thing that had gotten them into this mess. If she had just left that Santa on the shelf, she would still be at camp Winabagel. What had made such a simple transaction go berserk like that? From what they had discussed last night, it must have had something to do with the bar code. The realization that their only chance of finding out more about that code was slipping away was only surpassed by the fear of what would happen next. Would the police treat her like security had, and try to kill them? What if they were turned over to the store security. And on that subject, what on earth had set the security off on them like that? There was no way it was all a simple mistake. The store – or at least the security and Bobby’s old boss had tried to kill them, destroy them! All because of a stupid doll!

Again she looked at it, and a strange idea came to her. She debated it, for a moment. She looked at the officer, who was still punching code into a keypad by the door. Knowing it was her only chance, and also knowing it probably wasn’t even all that risky, she reached up and grabbed the Santa and flipped it over (not as easy to do in handcuffs, but possible), and ran it under the scanner that the receptionist had used to scan the police report.  When nothing happened, she took her hands down, not having time to replace the Santa before Officer Bigley turned around, the security door open wide.

“Okay, folks, this way,” he said, holding the door for them from the inside. It looked as though they would have to first step inside the first door, close that one, and then open the other.

Scal stepped forward first, “saying, let me get that for you, officer!” But as he stepped forward and reached toward the door, his sunglasses slipped down his face, and he used the hand he was going to get the door with to fix his glasses. But his momentum was too fast to keep his head from banging into the thick of the edge of the door, crashing to the floor. The door slammed shut from the hit, with Scal’s glasses and officer Bigley on the other side of the door. Immediately he tried to push the door back, but it was locked. He shook it, an angry and frustrated expression on his face. Then he started pressing buttons on the keypad on the inside section, but seemed to be having trouble with it.

Cary’s heart started racing as she noticed that the keypad on this side of the door, which had previously been glowing green, was now without any light at all.  She stuck her head over the counter to look at the receptionists computer screen, and it had an error message on it that blinked twice and then went blank. She looked down at the Santa in her hands, and then up at her bewildered group.

“Uh, guys,” she said quickly, “I think this is our chance!”

They all looked at each other for a brief moment of silent decision, and then the whole group filed out the front door.  That is, everyone except Scal, who was as frustrated and befuddled as the officer trying to get the door open to get his sunglasses. Berdie held back just long enough to pull Scal away by the ears as the others ran off down the parking lot.

Sporting a bright pink bruise where he had smacked into the door, Scal followed his shuffling Aunt down the lot saying, “No, oh, no, not my Oakleys! Not my Oakleys! Why does it always have to be the Oakley’s?!”

Within 15 seconds of pulling away in Scal’s BMW, they could hear police car sirens. If they were going to escape, they would have to be quick. They couldn’t stay near, and they couldn’t go far. They knew that as soon as they were spotted by the police, it was over. After a minute of shouting over each other and coming to know clear solution, Gertie suggested they get to the library and park in the back. That way they would be out of sight and not look suspicious – though Cary and Bobbie would have to stay low no matter where they went, not just because they were the town’s most wanted criminals, but they still had the handcuffs on.

It being only a five minute drive, they plotted what to do next. Scal suggested they get some bugging devices to listen to the inside of the police cars, so they would know how close the police were.  Roberta suggested they get as far away as possible as soon as the coast seemed fairly clear. But Cary suggested they do more research on bar codes. When a couple of them grumbled and said it’s too late for that, Cary explained what she had done at the police station, and that it was the Santa that had freed them.

“That’s fascinating,” Roberta said, “and having a ‘building disabler’ on hand might be useful for keeping away from capture, but how will it help us to know how UPCs work?”
“No, no!” Scal broke in, squinting against the light of the morning and clearly mourning the loss of his sunglasses, “Cary’s got a point. If Val Mart was surprised by the Santa’s effects, they sure didn’t show it, because their reaction was quick, efficient, and totally different than most company’s standard procedure. If they had been surprised by the effects, then it would have been a long process of looking into the cause before Bobby would have even got fired. The only way to stop all this is to find out just what happened, and only Val Mart knows that.”

The car was silent. Cary smiled. For a strange, eccentric, confused man, Scal could sure say it straight sometimes.

“All I’m saying,” Scal continued, “is that Val Mart got Bobby fired for a bomb threat that was actually a UPC threat, though more threatening, really… by Val Mart standards.”

Again the car went silent, but for the very opposite reason as before.

“I agree with Berdie,” Roberta said, clearly not wanting to agree or disagree with Scal, “let’s go to the library. The three of us…”

“Two, dear,” Bertie said, “the morning news showed you helping them out of a tree.”

“…the two of you, then –” she looked at Scal, “or maybe just you Gertie, should go in and pick up some books about codes. We can read them while leaving town.”

While Bertie went into the library, the girls busied themselves with trying to figure out how to get the cuffs off, and Roberta sang them a lullaby – just in case it would help.

This is Chas Hathaway’s 2009 Nano Novel.  What is a Nano Novel?  (IE Why does this story stink so bad?)

There was a brief moment of silence, and then Gerdie saw the blotchy redness in Roberta’s face, and rushed to her side, sitting beside her and putting her arm over Roberta’s shoulder.  But instead of saying anything, Gertie started singing, “Oh, Home on the Range.” At first the song made Roberta feel utterly ridiculous, but after the third time through, she felt oddly better.

“Oh, Gertie,” she said, “What am I going to do? My daughter is out there somewhere. I don’t know whether or not to hope the police catch her. What do they do with minors? Do they lock them up? I know they don’t go to prison, but what is Juvenile detention like?”

Gertie rubbed her back, saying things like, “There, there,” and “It’s all right.”

“And what if those troublesome camp girls get her involved in drugs or alcohol? Is she doomed to a life of crime and evil?”

The women sat talking for hour – mostly Roberta at first, but after the first hour, the conversation led to other things.

“What you need is a man at your side,” Gertie said, “then you’ll have more time for your daughter.  Just look at me! If John hadn’t married me, then Sall wouldn’t have been the great successful man that he is today.”

“You raised Scal?”

“Yes! Well… maybe not raised him exactly, but we made sure to visit my younger and his wife at least once a month, and while I was there, I was the mom!”

That poor wife! Roberta thought to herself, but she said, “and you and John didn’t have any kids?”

“No.  But I always tried to be a good mother to Sall. He always needed a little extra attention – you know how it is. Now what about your husband, Max, what happened to him again?”

“He died when Bobby was five.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, dear. What happened?”

“Well, I usually just tell people he was in an accident, but the accident was falling into an aquarium at Sea World.”

“Oh!” Gertie said, “the poor man drowned.”

“No, actually he could swim fine, but… but… well, the Sting Ray swam faster…”

There was an awkward silence in the room, and then a single knock on the door. Roberta thought maybe something had just bumped the door, but she looked through the peekhole anyway. It was scal, scanning the parking lot perimeter.  Had he remained outside this whole time, or was he coming back to take Gertie home? It was rather late – almost 10pm the last time Roberta checked the clock.

She opened the door just enough for her head to poke out. “And what do you want?”

Scal glanced both ways again, and then leaned in and whispered, “I just thought I’d let you know about the status of your position.”

“I see.” she replied dryly. “The status of my position.”

“there are two police cars off the northwest corner of the parking lot, one security car on the southwest corner, and a channel 8 news van tucked behind some hedges across the street.”

Roberta knew that the police had promised to watch the house, but Roberta was surprised at how many cars were watching.  But she didn’t want Scal to know of her surprise. “Yeah, I figured. So?”

“There’s only one thing we can conclude.”

She nearly slammed the door in his face, but instead said, “Which is?”

“That the kids in the trees behind the apartment plan on doing harm to the place the minute the police car pulls away. Now if we…”

“Wait, what did you say?”

“That there’s only one thing we can conclude!”

“No, I mean about the kids!”

“Yeah, I’m sure they’ll break a window or something the moment the security and cop cars pull away.”

Roberta’s heart sped up. Could it possibly be her baby Bobby?

She pushed past Scal and ran around to the back of the apartment. The police car on the corner started its engine. Roberta realized that if it was her girl, walking straight to her would get her caught by the police for sure, and though she didn’t particularly want to harbor a criminal, she certainly wanted to talk to Bobby before deciding anything. Looking around quickly, she grabbed the small garbage can and took it back to her door.

“There’s no one in there,” Scal said, “I already checked.”

Ignoring him, she ran into her house and grabbed a full garbage bag out of the kitchen and took it outside, plopping it conspicuously into the can. Then she carried the can toward the dumpster in the back, trying to look as casual as possible. From the back of the apartment, the only one of the vehicles that was in view was the Channel 8 van.  She huffed and looked around in the trees, looking for any sign of the kids Scal spoke of.

“Mom?” a young familiar voice said from somewhere above her.

“Bobby?” Roberta squeeled, “Bobby, baby, tell me that’s you!”

“It’s me mom! I’m coming down now!”

Roberta looked over at the van.  If they saw her talking to the tree, they didn’t make it obvious.

“Okay, hurry down, but don’t make too much noise!”

When both girls were down, Bobby hugged her sobbing mother for a long time, but then her mom said, “What happened girl? Wait, we’ve got to get you inside – get you cleaned up.  But there are police cars everywhere. We have to be careful!”

“Could you open a back window?” Cary said, “We could climb inside from back here.”

Roberta eyed Cary suspiciously, wanting to kick the girl more than help her. Bobby must have seen her jaw clinch, because she said, “It’s okay, mom, she’s my friend!”

Some friend! Roberta thought. Friends get friends into horrible trouble, almost killed, and take nothing in return. Still, the girl was right about the best way to get them inside.

She hurried back in the front door and through to the back window, ignoring the fact that Scal was back in the house. She opened it as quietly as possible, and the girls climbed in quickly, shutting the window behind them. Seeing her daughter muddy, ragged, and scraped, Roberta hugged her again, sobbing like before. “I thought I lost you, my baby Bobby! Oh, I was so worried!”

“Hey!” an aggitated voice came from the front room.It was Scal’s.  They all braced, expecting him to say that the police were coming to the door. “Did you know there are fingerprints on these portraits? Fingerprints! This could be strong circumstantial evidence!”

They relaxed, but Roberta turned to Cary, venom in her expression. “What do you mean by this?! Getting my daughter to plant a bomb in a public department store? A Bomb?! Was it supposed to be a joke, or where you just trying to get my poor girl into trouble? I should throw you out that door now for the police to throw you into prison!”

Cary stared at her, completely dumbfounded.

“A bomb?” Bobby said, “What bomb?”

Roberta held her daughter back, looking into her face. “The bomb that went off at Val Mart, the reports say – the police and security guards say…”

“You talked to the security guards?” Cary blurted.

“They didn’t try to hurt, you did they, Mom?” Bobby’s voice sounded genuinely concerned.

“Hurt me? What on earth are you talking about?”

Cary and Bobby looked at each other, and both began speaking at once. It took a moment to get the conversation orderly again, but before long the girls had told her mom, and then Girdie, and then (much to Roberta’s annoyance) to Scal, the whole story.

When they finished, Roberta, Scal, and Gerdie had expressions of shear bewilderment.

Scal was the one to break the silence. “There’s only one thing we can conclude from all of this. That V…”

“Scal, will you please just stick a sock in it!” Roberta said, but Scal acted like he hadn’t heard.
“al Mart does not communicate well with Universal Product Code Database.”

“What do you mean?” Cary said before Roberta had a chance to interrupt.

“Well isn’t it obvious?” he said, looking from face to face, as if someone would fill in the rest of the puzzle.

“No, Sall, it’s not obvious,” Roberta said sharply, “that Val Mart’s phone system is malfunctioning, and the employees blew their own store up to make a point. No it’s not obvious that the UPC code blows up when you scan it – can we please forget the conclusions and start coming up with the questions?!”

Scall’s one eyebrow was raised – which was all they could see of his eyes, since he was still wearing sunglasses.

Then he scratched his chin. “Hmmm,” he said, deep in thought, “Actually, I hadn’t thought about that possibility.”

Roberta blew out her breath and sat on the couch, saying to the group, “Well what do we do now?”

Cary was looking at Scal. “But Mr…”

“Wag,” Scal said, using his suave business card motion to give her a card and shake her hand vigorously, “Scal Edward Wag, Private investigator, 3rd class.”

“Yes, well, Mr. Wag, I was just wondering what you were going to say – about the product database thing, I mean.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, sitting and putting his elbows on his knees and pressing his fingers together the way you might picture a mad scientist doing. “The Universal Product Code directory keeps a tight database of products with their corresponding code. Individual stores will enter these codes into their own database and then add their own code to the product to help them keep track of inventory. If a store does not enter the Universal Product Code (or UPC) into their database, usually the product will simply not be recognized by the store’s code-reader. But if, by chance, a code is entered wrongly, it may tell the computer that the customer is purchasing the wrong product.”

“I never should have let you back in the house,” Roberta said.

Ignoring that, Scal continued, “Val Mart took the UPC code reading system to a new level, allowing codes to read more than just the product information. Through their advanced system, they can use a UPC code to pass on any kind of digital information, such as an Internet URL, a digital photograph, or even a musical WAVE file. In fact, it’s possible, using an internal database, to store transferable data onto a particular UPC.”

“That is very interesting…” Bobby said, “So the UPC of a CD could have music on it?”

“Or more!” Scal said. His forehead was sweating, and his sunglasses looked fogged up. Apparently he wasn’t used to this many people actually listening to what he had to say. “Since the UPC is linked to the individual product, and the store code links to a private database, a product can be linked directly to an Internet Server with all the information on that server.”

Despite herself, Roberta was now almost as interested in what he was saying as she was shocked at his sudden intelligence. “Wait a minute, how do you even know all this?”

He straightened and his animated motions changed to a poker face. “I never reveal my sources. It’s bad practice.”

“But wouldn’t that require that the UPC have some kind of microchip or something?” Roberta said, shocked that she was actually asking Scal a question.

“No, because anything that scans the product already has one.”

“So it’s like an access code,” Cary said, “with all the steps to retrieve the information coded into the UPC.”

Scal bobbed his head. “Something like that.”

“So what does that mean for us?” Bobby said.

“Well, it means there is only one thing we can conclude from all of this,” he replied as Roberta squinted suspiciously at him, “that Val Mart sells things cheaper because their UPC’s change the product information to something cheaper than the product.”

Everyone looked around at each other with puzzled expressions. It was Roberta who said, “Huh?!”

“The cheaper stuff!” he said, as if this was the answer to everything. “Why do you think they put Wal Mart, the king of cheap, out of business last year? Cheaper stuff! Why do you think they are monopolizing capitalism itself? Cheaper stuff! Why do you think their product lines drive prices down while all around them products are going up! Cheaper stuff!”

He was standing on the couch now with his arms outstretched like a rally speaker. His voice was beginning to take on the quality of an opera singer, and if there had been varying pitch to his voice, Roberta would have thought he was practicing for a musical. According to the traditional approach to a musical play, he should break into song right… about… now.

Instead, he broke into a coughing fit. Gertie slapped him smartly on the back, and the group slumped back into quiet. Roberta felt that they were back to ground zero.

“Wait a minute,” Cary said, “If what he says is true – about the code, I mean, then maybe when I scanned the Santa, it was telling the computer more than the price.”

“Like maybe telling the store to fire me?” said Bobby, the mournful expression returning to her face.

“Well, maybe,” Cary replied, “or something like… oh! Didn’t you say, Bobbie, that they told you that you broke the store?”

“Yeah,” she said regretfully, her head pointing to the ground, “I broke my first job.”

Roberta stroked her daughter’s hair, saying, “it’s okay, my baby Bobbie, Mom will help you find a better job.”

“But I thought the newspaper said a bomb blew up the store,” Girtie said in an almost disappointed tone.

Roberta ran to her bedroom and retrieved all three of the newspapers she had collected. They took turns reading the articles out loud.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Cary was confused.  According to the newspapers, Bobbie and Cary had placed two bombs in the store: one on the inside near a main computer, and one in the parking lot. Store managers speculated that the bombs had been placed strategically to do the most harm to the most people.

“Some think that all you have to do these days to get what you want is to do a bomb threat, but then carry through with the threat.” says manager Margaret Glenard, “It’s dispicable, really, what kids these days will do for attention. I just hope those poor girls get the help they need in order to scrape up what chances they may still have in life.”

According to the report, the inside bomb shorted out just before ignition, causing only a minor electrical discharge, which burned out the wiring on the central computer, shutting down all of the systems computers.  The second bomb went off in the parking lot.  Obviously that one was conjured up from the smoke mess.  But the bomb inside the store… could that have something to do with the price scanner?

“What did we ever do with that Santa?” Cary asked.

“I thought it was still in your pocket,” Bobbie said.

Cary reached in her back pocket and was surprised to find the Santa doll still there, fully intact.

The UPC was still there, too, though now Cary noticed that it looked a little odd for a UPC.  Kind of primitive, somehow. She passed the doll around the room to let everyone get a look.

When Gerdie got it, she said, “This looks worse than the ones at the library.”

When Roberta asked her what she meant, she went into a fairly animated discussion about how much trouble she had scanning books, and that it was because the sticker was all scratched up. One of the techy guys at work told her that there were four different widths of lines on a barcode, which she had named the toothpick bar, the pencil bar, the hose bar, and the sewer-pipe bar, and if one got scratched the computer would think a thick bar is actually a thinner one.

“That’s when you have all the trouble,” she said, “then you have to jiggle it around and hope it finds the right size of line.  It’s all a bunch of hogwash if you ask me.”

“But what’s wrong with this code? It didn’t look very scratched at all to me.” Roberta said.

“But it’s all messed up! It’s only got the toothpick bar and the sewer pipe bar.  Personally, I think the scanner machine things just don’t care. Sometimes they just need a good bop on the noggin to remind them you’re in charge.”

Gerdie shook her head, and Roberta could see the obscenities on the motion of her lips.

Someone suggested they take that code to the library to try scanning it there to see what it comes up as, but then they remembered what had happened to the last scanner that had read that UPC.

Cary took the Santa back and looked at the UPC. There were only two bar widths. Maybe that was what made it look so old fashioned. “What does the letter in the code stand for?”

When no one seemed to know, they decided to get out the ol’ Internet connection.  The speed was comparable to dial-up, though the landlord swore it was DSL high-speed.

It took them a while to find anything about UPC codes, but by the time they did, it was getting late enough that everyone felt the need for sleep.  Not wanting to send Gerdie and (heaven forbid) Scal out with psychotic security guards watching, Roberta offered to let them sleep on the couch and fold-out guest bed.

Tags: code, creative, nano, nano novel, novel, UPC, writing

It wasn’t easy, driving a road-bike off road, through brush and desert, with Bobby on the handlebars. Bobby would call out if there was a sagebrush that Cary couldn’t see, but her warning call usually came the moment they lurched forward off of the bike. After traveling a number of miles, they decided it was safe to get off the bike and continue on foot. They walked the bike, hoping not to have to use it again, but wanting to have it ready if necessary.

They reached town about the time it got too dark to see anything that wasn’t illuminated by artificial lighting.

“I wonder where we are,” Cary said, trying to keep on the shadowed half of the sidewalk.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe what?”

“Just Maybe,” Bobby replied. “There is another town a few miles west of here, but I always forget the name – Yogurn, or Yoburn, or something like that.”

“Hm,” Cary replied, “but I also wonder about this town.”

“Wonder what?”

“About this town, the name of it.”

“Yeah,” Bobby said in her typical low airy tone, “I always did think it was a little odd.”

Cary was confused. “Well… what is it? Do you know?”

“What?”

“The name of the town.”

“Maybe.”

“You might know, or you’re not sure?”

Bobby stopped walking and looked at Cary, a puzzled look in her eyes.

“What?”

“I do know. It’s Maybe.”

“You mean the name of the town is Maybe?”

“Yeah, but I can never remember the name of the next town. I think it sounds too much like yogurt.”

They walked in silence for awhile, and Cary was feeling colder with each minute. Where would they sleep? They had no camping gear – which reminded Cary that she did have warm clothing and outdoor sleeping gear back at Camp Winabagel. Would it be safe to go back there, though? There’s no way Val Mart could have known who Cary was, but it sounded like they might track Bobby’s apartment.

“How far is your home from here?” Cary asked.

“Um. Maybe like, ten miles. I hope my mom is okay.”

Cary hadn’t thought about that. If Bobby’s mom was home alone, the security guys might hurt her, too. But what could they do? If they were seen, they were dead. If they were going to Bobby’s apartment, they would have gotten there hours ago and done whatever damage they felt they needed. What were they doing? Had Bobby done something seriously bad? Could she have really caused some terribly malfunction? But how would that justify shooting? Was she some kind of serial killer being hunted by the police. She looked at Bobby. She had the fingers of her two hands laced together, and from what Cary could tell, she was having a thumb war with herself, and from what she could tell, righty was winning. Cary couldn’t help but smile.

Regardless of anything anyone said, Bobby was 100% innocent.

Cary realized that the fact that two security guards, a supervisor (or manager, or whatever), and two guys working in a… well, extra building – she had seen the Val Mart symbol on the front door, now that she thought of it. What kind of building was that anyway? The fact that all of those people were in on the whole thing made Cary think that it was the store itself. But how could there be some big twisted plot in a massive grocery store in a tiny town harbor a whole group of criminals without the parent company knowing something of it? It just didn’t make sense.

They found an old barn, practically abandoned, with a floor full of hay to sleep in. Burying themselves to the neck in hay was very uncomfortable, but it did supply a little warmth.

The entire next day was spent making plans. They decided they would work their way back to Bobby’s apartment, but carefully, in case her place was being watched. Afraid of being seen in the light, they decided to wait until twilight again, so they would arrive after dark. So throughout the day they remained in the barn, mostly trying to decide what to do about food. Bobby tried to convince Cary that cow pies were edible, but Cary said she’d rather starve to death than eat cattle dung. They finally settled on deciding to wait and get food at Bobby’s apartment, famished though they be.

\/\\/\//\/\/\/\/\//\/

Roberta Galdalv (whom we would know as Bobby’s mom) stared out the window of her tiny apartment, worried beyond tears about her daughter. She knew it was a bad idea to let her only child work at that overcrowded chain store. Such places were no place for anyone who wanted to become something in the world. It was too close to that overpopulated summer camp for girls. What was it called? Winabagel. Roberta had seen the news and read the papers. Her daughter had been accused of setting off a bomb in the Val Mart parking lot, and attempting to set one off in the center of the store. A murderer. They had actually called her a murderer!

But Roberta new better. Surely that Cary girl had started the whole thing. Her poor Bobby must have been induced or manipulated to help her with a prank, or maybe she was threatened and made to cary out the crime. Poor child. Innocently trying to grow up and become responsible, only to be thwarted by troublesome riffraff. That Cary girl is the one who needs to come to justice, surely! Poor Bobby. Poor, poor child! And then to be taken hostage – oh, the newspapers say they ran off together, but surely that was because they assumed that Cary was part of the trouble. Where had Bobby spent the night? Where was she now? Was she being interrogated? Threatened? Manipulated to commit some other horrible crime?!

The worry worked Roberta’s mind and muscles in knots. She had spoken to the police – the useless men in protective uniforms. They claimed they would tell her the moment they knew anything, but she was likely to learn nothing at all if she just sat at home. She had already called everyone that Bobby knew; friends, teachers, even the local librarian to see if anyone had seen and sign of Bobby, but no one knew anything. No one knew! The mystery of it all was driving her insane.

She decided she needed help. If the police had no answers for her, she would hire someone who could find answers. But she didn’t want a lawyer – surely a lawyer would just push evidence around, discarding anything that wouldn’t put more money into his pocket. No, she needed an investigator. She grabbed a phone book. It was early enough in the afternoon that most offices would be open. Internet Web Hosting, Inventory Service, Investment Securities. Rrrgh. She tried Private Investigator, but the listings went straight from Printers to Prosthetics.

Not feeling sufficiently confident with her Internet abilities, and remembering the deathly slow connection that the apartment provided, she grabbed her purse and headed for the library.

Not knowing for sure where to start, she approached the information desk. The old librarian was scanning books into the computer, smacking the scanner with a book every other attempt, mumbling obscenities at the “high falutin machinery.”

“Umm… excuse me,” Roberta said quickly.

“What?!” the woman barked, but calmed when she looked up and saw Roberta. “Oh! Mrs. Galdalv – I’m so sorry about your daughter.”

“Yes, thank you,” she said, rushing on, “I wonder if you could tell me where I could research local investigators – you know, someone who can do some deeper research.”

“Ahhhh!” The old woman said, dropping her book purposefully on the half-working scanner and coming out from behind the desk, “like Sherlock Holmes! Yes! Oh, did you ever read the one about the woman who’s husband who just…”

“Actually,” Roberta interrupted impatiently, “I mean real investigators – one’s that are hired to look into… well, into any subject.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” The old woman said, “And girl have you got something to research.”

Roberta ignored the woman’s complete lack of tact, and followed her to a reference shelf with some expansive books with business listings. Handing Roberta a large volume, the woman gasped, and for a moment Roberta thought the woman was having a heart attack, because she started tapping Roberta’s shoulder hard, her mouth gaping open.

“I nearly forgot!” the woman blurted, “My nephew – oh he’s a darling. He does investigations. Private investigations, even.” She pulled Roberta closer, and said in voice just above a whisper, “And a right bit less expensive than most of the money drinkers out there, especially for a pretty little thing like you!”

Roberta stepped back, as the woman’s breath was forcing her to suppress a gag reflex. “Well, alright, but is he good? I mean does he really do a good job at it?”

The woman stared at Roberta as if she had just asked what sport Babe Ruth played. “Does he do a… my dear, my nephew solved the JFK shooting mystery, the watergate scandall, and can tell you exactly where Osama Ben Ladin is right now.”

Now Roberta was very suspicious. “But if he knows those things, why isn’t the information public?”

She folded her arms, “Well, now, a private investigator can’t just go blab to the media when they learn something.” She shrugged, “Besides, the government doesn’t believe him.”

Roberta wasn’t sure how to respond. Maybe his aunt was just overenthusiastic about his work. Regardless, she thought she’d have to give him a try. Roberta was supporting her daughter and herself on the mere wages of her community college business class teaching. It was a crime how little she was paid for how many hours she had to put into her job. She thought it almost criminal that a college level educator with a Masters degree in business administration would end up making less money than the average McDonalds restaurant manager. She realized that hiring an investigator would take a lot of money, but her worry for her daughter far outweighed any price.

“Here’s his number,” the old woman said, handing her a paper that she must have written on while Roberta’s thoughts had wandered. “His name is Sall, but we always called him Scab when he was little – always scraping up those knobby little knees. Just tell him Gerdie sent you. He’ll cut you a great deal if you mention that I referred you.”

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

“Wag here.”

At first Roberta thought she must have dialed the wrong number, but when she hesitantly said, “Uh, yes, is Sall there, please?”

The voice on the other end sighed, then there was a few moments of silence. “Who is this?”

“My name is…” she didn’t want to tell her story to a stranger, and if this wasn’t the investigator, she didn’t want to explain her reason for calling, and her last name would associate her immediately with “the girl who tried to blow up a Val Mart.”

“Roberta. My name’s Roberta. I’m looking for an investigator to hire.”

Another moment of silence.

“Okay, but let’s get this straight here and now – my name is Scall, not Sall. I’m assuming my Aunt sent you?”

“Yes,” Roberta confirmed, “but I was sure she said Sall, so I’m sorry if I was mistak…”

“I got it changed!!” He shouted. Then in a more civil tone, said, “Is this case of a private nature.”

“Well, yes, I am wonde…”

“Then we should talk in private – not on the phone.”

“Uh… okay, but I was wondering about your pricing, too.” She wouldn’t have normally asked about that so soon, but they had just been talking about his aunt, and if Gertie was right, that was what would get her the best deal.

“I don’t discuss money over the wire, either. It’s bad practice.”

Within the hour, a black BMW pulled up in front of Roberta’s apartment. A short, greasy looking man dressed like one of the Men in Black stepped out, and looking carefully up and down the street, turned toward her the apartment and took wide strides to her door. She expected a knock, but when none came after half a minute, she walked to the door and opened it.

“Mrs. Galdalv, I presume?”

He was even shorter than he had looked coming out of his car. Roberta estimated an even five feet.

“Yes, but how did you know my last name, I never told you that.”

An eyebrow raised above his dark sunglasses. “I never reveal my sources. It’s bad practice.”

“Okaaay. Come in, I guess.”

He stepped past her, stepping with wide strides. It was as if he thought large steps would make him appear taller. Actually it gave him the appearance of trying to ice-skate on carpet.

He eyed the walls suspiciously without saying a word, then turned and faced her directly. “Now let’s get a few things straight from the start. I do not charge until a case is solved. Good for you. We can negotiate pricing as we get close to that time. If you cannot pay yourself I do accept certain kinds of insurance – but that too, can be discussed later. I would ask in exchange that you give my business card to at least four friends. Good for me.”

He held up three fingers and pulled five business cards from his pocket with all the grace of a Las Vegas card dealer. She took the cards and he swiftly turned back to the pictures on the wall, and then spoke as if trying to start a casual interrogation. “So, I presume that you want me to investigator your daughter’s behavior and mysterious performance of late.” He didn’t make it sound like a question.

“Yes, but I didn’t tell you about that. How did you…”

He whipped his head around to look at her. “Like I said, I never reveal my sources. It’s bad practice.” Then he turned back to the wall and pretended to take interest in a photo of three year old Bobby proudly holding a crawdad in each of her hands.

There was a knock on the door, and Scal whirled around, his face slightly pale. “Don’t answer that! It could be… I could have been followed!”

Roberta looked through the peekhole. “It’s your aunt!” She opened the door.

“I thought I asked you to wait in the car!” Scal said, his face now a deep shade of red.

“Sorry Scal, I know I promised to not interfere with the investigation, but I wanted to ask Miss Galdalv if I could use her ladies room.”

“Sure… was it Gertie?” Roberta said, “Please come in.”

“Thank you.” she replied, stepping inside. “I hope I’m not interrupting. I like to think I’m helping by getting my little Sall here.

Scal huffed. “Auntie, I’ve told you, it’s Scal. And I was the one who drove the car.”

“But you were the one to ask me for directions. You would still be lost in that silly cul-de-sac if I hadn’t come along. By the way, Roberta dear, your place is lovely! Your drapes remind me of a favorite hotpad of mine – knitted by my grandmother.”

Roberta pointed her to the bathroom, and she thanked Roberta, closing the door behind her. “Oh, and this wallpaper is simply charming!” she shouted from inside.

Roberta turned back to Scal, who was massaging his forehead with his thumb and index finger. “Let me guess,” she said, “your source?”

“Let’s just get down to business!” he said gruffly. “I am laboring under the assumption that it is only you and your daughter who live here?”

“That’s right.”

“And who pays the bills?”

An odd question, Roberta thought. She couldn’t help wondering if he was for real or some crackpot who had delusions of grandeur.

“I do, of course.”

“And your daughter…” he rotated his hand in a circle as if waiting for Roberta to finish his sentence.

“…doesn’t.”

He nodded, then scratched his chin.

“I think there’s only one thing we can conclude here.”

“Oh?” Roberta said, baffled that he would be saying anything about “conclusions” already.

Again he nodded and took a deep breath. “From what I can see, you are the breadwinner of the home. You take care of the shopping, clothing, shelter, bills, all that stuff. Your daughter wants independence, but doesn’t know for sure how to achieve it, so she gets a job at a local market to earn money, thinking that will win her freedom to get and become whatever she wants. But in the process of earning the money, she realizes it’s hard work, and when a friend comes along and offers her an easier way to get freedom and independence, she takes her up on the offer. When the ensuing vandalism goes further than either girl anticipated (blows up in their face, in a manner of speaking), both girls run, afraid of the consequential bondage that would destroy their newfound freedom. Now they are seeking freedom through other means. Do you follow me?”

Roberta gaped at him. There was no way this man could be serious.

“I know,” he said with a smirk, “that’s why I do this for a living.”

Before Scal could say another word, he was shoved through the door and padlocked out of the apartment. There was nothing to be said. He was a fraud if not delusional. She slumped on her couch and put her head in her hands. What was she going to do? Her baby girl was out somewhere with police chasing her. What had become of her life? Bobby was a good girl, this was so unlike her! Quietly, alone, Roberta started to cry. The pain and anguish – the worry and fear of the last day and a half, was finally giving way to tears. The whimpers became full-out sobs, and Roberta let them come.

The sound of a flushing toilet shocked Roberta back into the realization that Gerdie was still in her apartment. She took a deep breath and quickly began wiping her face with her sleeves.

Gerdie came out saying, “I think I may have jammed your pipes a bit – but don’t worry, the water never escaped the bowl.”

Tags: code, fiction, funny, humor, mystery, nano novel, novel, online, read, santa, santa code

This is Chas Hathaway’s 2009 Nano Novel.  What is a Nano Novel?  (IE Why does this story stink so bad?)

The man’s words were plenty of encouragement to crawl deeper and deeper into the pipe.  Surely the security guards would think to look in the pipe soon, and neither of the girls wanted to be around when they did.  After about an hour, Cary began feeling terribly claustrophobic.  They could no longer see the entrance, so their entire vision was blackness.  She guessed that they had crawled the better part of a mile.  They would have to come out eventually, and Cary was beginning to wonder if this pipe might not come out until the next town, which was a few miles further if Cary remembered right.

“I don’t get it.” Cary said, “Why are they after us?”

“They said I broke the store.”

“That doesn’t make sense.  How could a single scanner mess up the whole store. It sounds to me more like they were looking for an excuse to fire you.”

Bobby didn’t respond, and Cary realized her words may have made it sound like they had never wanted her to work there. “But it was only your second day, so why would they have hired you if they didn’t think you would be a good employee? Besides, there must be something else going on here, because no matter who you work for, they can’t shoot you. That’s murder!”

They crawled on for a few more minutes, but soon Cary stopped, and Bobby bumped into her.  The darkness was really beginning to creep her out. She kept touching spider webs and wet spots.  It was both disgusting and dangerous.  But worst of all, her knees were killing her.  She didn’t know whether a flat ground would be better or not.  The ruffled aluminum of the canal pipe seemed mostly to dig into the bruises she had gotten falling into the canal in the first place.

They both felt safe enough to stop and rest now, so they began to talk. After a few minutes of griping about how crazy their pursuer’s were, and how weird it was that Bobby’s boss had even been on it, they told each other about their backgrounds.  Cary learned that Bobby lived with her mother in an apartment near camp Winabagel.  She was in eighth grade, because she had been held back in school twice in her grade-school years.  Cary told Bobby about growing up on the other side of the world, and how different South Africa was from Utah.

After ten minutes of sitting, Cary began to notice how cold it was.  “Well, we can’t stay here forever.  Should we keep going or wait and head back later.”

Cary half expected Bobby to shrug, though she wouldn’t have been able to see it if she did.  So Bobby surprised her when she said, “You can be sure they will be searching the tunnel’s entrance when they discover that there is nowhere else we could have gone.  And honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they send someone to watch the other end of the tunnel.  If so, our only hope is to beat them there.”

So they continued crawling. With each minute Cary became more anxious about how far the tunnel went. Bobby passed the time by hooting to make echoes.  At first Cary worried that they might hear, but what would they do, crawl in after them? Besides, they had crawled well over a mile. Soon her hoots turned into a tune, and before long she was singing the Simon and Garfunkle song, “Sound of Silence.”  But by the third verse, the lyrics gave her the heebie-jeebies, so she said, “Can’t you sing something a little happier?  I don’t mind your singing, but that song is a little creepy down here.”

When she started singing, “It’s a small world,” Cary just sighed and crawled on.

Cary could no longer even guess how much time was passing by, and her legs were numb, her neck was cricked, and the air had become terribly musky and thick.  But a rush of hope ran through Cary when she felt a light breeze coming from the direction they were crawling.

“Air!” she said.

Bobby stopped singing. “Where?”

“From somewhere up ahead!  I think we’re almost through.”

As they kept going, the breeze got heavier.  On an ordinary day standing outdoors, a breeze like this would not feel like a breeze at all, but to Cary and Bobby, it was very obvious, and very welcome. As they drew closer to what must have been the other end of the tunnel, two things confused Cary.  First, the distance they still had to travel, and second, there was still no sign of light.  Shouldn’t there at least be a faint glow in the distance? Had they been in the tunnel so long that it was now night?  She couldn’t tell.

Slowly they began to notice a faint hum. Because it came on so gradually, neither of the girls mentioned it, thinking it was just their ears filling in the silence that could only be heard when they stopped for rests anyway. But it wasn’t long before it was clear that the sound was coming from the end of the tunnel where they were headed.  Did the pipe come out near a power plant?

Neither girl felt the need to point out the sound until it was loud enough that they could hear it throbbing. Cary stopped to listen, trying to figure out what kind of hum it could be.  It sounded similar to the inconspicuous buzz that you sometimes hear coming from the refrigerator when the house is quiet, or the hum of air passing through a central heating system, only this sound had a subtle throb as well. And now the breeze was constant.

“Look!” Bobby said, pointing – though Cary wouldn’t have known she was pointing if her finger hadn’t scraped the side of Cary’s nose.  She looked ahead and thought she could see a very subtle light a great distance away.

“There’s light!”Cary shouted, rushing onward, “I think we’re getting closer!”

She estimated the distance to be somewhere between two blocks and a mile, so she startled when she suddenly found that the ground quickly sloped downward, and the light ahead moved upward.  They indeed weren’t far from the end of the tunnel.  In fact, they had reached the end, and were peering down at a ninety degree angle into a very dimly lit room below them.  Having their eyes well adjusted to the dark, they could now see that the pipe actually did continue in the direction they had been traveling, but T’ed down into the large dimly lit room.  The light they had seen ahead had been a reflection of the light from this room on the top of the pipe.

“Whoa!” Cary said, backing up in order to keep from falling. Bobby saw it, too. It looked like a twenty foot drop, though the lighting was dim enough to make it impossible to say for sure.

“That’s a big jump,” Bobby said.

“Are you kidding?” Cary said, “we can’t jump down there!”

But Cary could think of no alternative – even the continuing pipe would take a jump to get across, and with the top of the pipe above them, that was impossible.

They sat talking about ideas, Bobby certain they could make the jump if they used the roll technique they did in the movies, and Cary insisting that there had to be another way, when a light clicked on in the room below.  Both girl’s hushed instantly and inched further back into the pipe.

Two men were talking. Their voices sounded fairly similar, so it was hard to follow both sides of the conversation.  The room was very echoey, too, so their voices reverberated off the walls, making it a little difficult to hear.

“…no chance, it must be eight miles. I don’t think they are in there, but if they are, they’ll come out the exit.”

“Larry’s not so sure. He insists that we gas them out.”

“…do that already?”

“Not from the exit – from here. If we release the emulsive carbon gas, it will either chase them out or kill them.”

“But will there be enough built up to kill them?”

“It doesn’t take much.  Besides, we’re only doing it two days earlier than it is usually done.  It should still release as much exhaust as a parking lot’s worth of cars – that’s sure to kill them.”

“But won’t they want proof to be sure?”

“Yeah, but they’d rather ruin all chances of escape and discover their success later than chance failure and discover it later.”

“That’s true.”

From the sounds that followed, Carly guessed that they the men were putting on clothing.  A zip, a boot falling to the ground, and their voices quieting behind Darth Vader sounding helmets. She couldn’t put it all together at first, and then she realized that the men intended to flood the pipe with some kind of gas and then collect their bodies later. Trying hard not to panic, she grabbed Bobby’s arm.  “We have to go back NOW!” she whispered, “They’re going to gas us out!”

“No!” Bobby said, probably louder than she should have -  but a rising hissing sound below them seemed to hide it. “We have to get out here!”

“But they’re down in the room! They’ll kill us if they see us!” and she started crawling back through the pipe where they had come from.

“Would you rather die fast or slow?”

Cary stopped.  She hadn’t thought of that, but really she didn’t want to think about it.  “But what should we do?”

Somehow in tight situations, Bobby seemed to have more head about her than when she was safe. An odd attribute, Cary realized, but a very helpful one at the moment, especially since Cary could sense her own head losing sensibility.

“We have an advantage,” Bobby said, “two actually. First, we are above them.  Second, they don’t know we are here, and we do know they are there.”  She paused.  “Wait, I guess that’s three advantages, really.”

“But what will we do?  Throw something on them?”

“I think we are the biggest things we could throw at them.”

“Huh?”

Now the hissing sound was loud enough that they couldn’t hear anything the men were saying, and could barely hear what each other was saying.

“Wait here!” Bobby said as loudly as she dared.

“But what are you going to do?”

But Bobby couldn’t hear her.  She was peering over the edge with her rear end in the air like a cat ready to pounce.  Cary grabbed at her leg, afraid she was going to jump, but Bobby kicked her hand away.  Now there was a strong smell in the air that reminded Cary of school bus exhaust, only the smell was stronger, and didn’t go away in the breeze.  She began to cough, and she realized that if they didn’t get out fast, they would pass out within minutes.

Suddenly Bobby leaped from over the edge of the pipe into the room below.  Cary screamed, and reached out as if she were close enough to catch Bobby.  She rushed to the edge to look down.  Bobby was climbing off the man, who was sprawled out on the floor, motionless.  She had actually jumped on him! Cary was about to cheer when the other man ran forward at Bobby.  Bobby was facing the other way, and with the hissing drowning out all other sounds in the room, she couldn’t hear him coming.  Cary shouted out to Bobby, but knowing she couldn’t hear her.

Cary slid to edge of the hole into a sitting position and with a rush of momentary insanity and reflexive screaming, hoisted herself off the side. It didn’t take as long to reach the ground as Cary had expected, though landing on the other man had thrown her position off balance, and she tumbled off backwards with much of the momentum of gravity.  Gratefully, her head only struck the other man’s limp body, and though her arm stunk fiercely for a few moments, she got up and scrambled away from the pair of unconscious bodies.  Rubbing her arm, she realized that their suits were thick, and probably helped soften the blow for the girls, but did little to save them from getting hit by 100 plus pounds at a twenty foot drop.

Now both girls were coughing almost uncontrollably. The room wasn’t as large as Cary had anticipated, which meant they had even less time than they thought. The walls looked like cement and thick aluminum.  Cary ran to the center of the room where the men had set the gas off, but at the large console there were too many dials, knobs, and buttons to know which would do what.  If she clicked the wrong one, she might set off more gas, or even a flame.  She felt herself getting dizzy, and for a moment her vision blurred.

Then someone grabbed her by the shoulder, and she turned to Bobby, who pulled her toward one of the Aluminum walls.  In her dizziness, Cary only vaguely saw Bobby do something with an item in her hand, and the aluminum wall opened like the automatic door in a grocery store.  This opened into a small corridor, and as she entered, she felt the warm but fresher air brush her face. Though this did little to clear her dizziness, it did clear her thoughts enough to run to the far end of the corridor with Bobby, who made another swiping motion with something in her hand against the wall.  Again the wall opened, and this time it was into a large, open corridor.  The girls ran through it, coughing so hard that their lungs and throat hurt.

Gratefully, the hall was empty of people, but with the aluminum doors still open to the gas room, they kept running down the hall, which was actually more of a limp, with all the bruises from the jump – not to mention the achy bones from many hours spent crawling on hands and knees.

Seeing a beautifully luscious green Exit sign above a door, they crashed through the double-doors, and collapsed against the stairs.  Taking a few minutes to cough, catch their breath, and breath relatively clean air, they looked around. They were on the stair exit, and would not have known whether to go up or down were it not for a small sign that said, “2nd basement floor. In case of an Emergency, climb two floors to the ground floor.”

They looked at each other, and then began racing up the stairs. Cary thought of how fortunate they were not to have been seen by anyone yet, and felt elated at the thought of possible escape without notice, but a security camera above the first flight of stairs smashed that feeling.
Moments later, the fire alarm set off. Whether someone had spotted them and used the fire alarm to alert everyone or the gas had flooded enough of the basement corridor to set it off automatically, Cary could only guess, but the sound made her increase her pace even more.

As they reached the ground level and sprinted to the exit, they heard doors open from a hallway behind them. Surely they had been seen. But bursting through the door, they ran around the side of the building, which looked surprisingly small on the outside for how large it had been inside. Cary’s head was throbbing now, and with the dizzyness and stress, she turned and vomited.  Then Bobby grabbed her arm and pulled her behind some hedges that grew next to the building.  The plants scratched at her face and arms, but a few feet in, she could tell that they were at least temporarily well hidden.

People filed out of the building, though Cary only estimated a total of twenty people. She guessed that they had not noticed the girls, because their talk was of interrupting coffee break and hopes to leave for home early.

“We can’t stay here,” Bobby said, “the gas, the guys on the ground – even your barf, we’ve left a trail straight to us if they follow it.”

“And I’m sure they will.”

They inched their way across the building behind the hedge. Cary guessed the employees of the building had been instructed to remain in front of the building in a fire-drill, because no one wandered to the side of the building.

The back of the building appeared empty, other than a few cars in a small parking lot. Since it was almost twilight, a few parking lot lights were on.  But beyond the building and the parking lot, there was a lot of field and wide open area.  It would be hard to go far without being seen.

“You don’t know how to hotwire a car, do you?” Cary asked, half sarcastically.

“No. You don’t know how to ride a bike, do you?” Bobby said.

Cary looked where Bobby was pointing.  A ten-speed road bike leaned against the building. Half relieved and half scared to death, Cary ran to it, with Bobby following. “Who should drive?”

Bobby’s face went slightly pale. “I… I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

“You don’t? You never had a bike growing up?”

Bobby shook her face as if ashamed, and Cary could see the strange clueless girl returning to Bobby’s face. “That’s okay, I’ll drive. Let’s go.”

As they mounted the bike and Cary instructed Bobby how to sit on the handlebars and place her feet on the wheel bolts, they suddenly noticed the sound of distant police sirens.

“Maybe we should stay!  The police will help us!” Cary said.

“How do we know?”

Cary thought about that, remembering that it had been security guards who had first shot at them.

They mounted the bike, riding as quickly as possible into the sunset.

Tags: adventure, christmas, clause, conspiracy, fiction, funny, humor, mystery, nano novel, novel, online, santa, santa code, The Santa Code

This is Chas Hathaway’s 2009 Nano Novel.  What is a Nano Novel?  (IE Why does this story stink so bad?)

Cary looked up into the particularly annoyed expression of the store clerk, who clearly had no intention of being distracted from her shelf-stocking.

“Excuse me,” Cary said.

Cary could see one of the woman’s eyes twitch as she stopped moving and turned slowly toward her, and she instantly regretted her decision to ask an employee for help. Clearly the woman want to be bothered by some fifteen-year-old foreign girl.

“Um,” Cary said when the woman didn’t respond, “I was just wondering where your holiday stuff is.”

The woman turned back to the shelf without responding. Cary was just about to walk away when the woman said, “Three.”

“Sorry?”

“Three!” she shouted.

Not knowing how to respond, Cary backed away. Her foot kicked a plastic bottle of Ranch on the floor, which clattered across the floor. The woman turned back and glared at her. She turned around and walked quickly away. She guessed she’d have to find the holiday stuff herself. Even in a small town like this, Val Mart was huge. Cary realized that the last time she’d had summer camp here in the States, which was about two years ago, there had been no Val Mart here – or anywhere that she was aware of. At that time, there hadn’t even been Val Mart stores in her home town in South Africa. Now they were everywhere, and no matter how identical the stores were, she got lost in every one of them.

It took her fifteen minutes to find the holiday aisle, but that was mostly because an old lady had stopped her to ask Cary to get a box of Cream of Wheat off the top shelf for her. It wouldn’t have taken long, except the woman was still deciding which flavor to get. When she finally chose strawberry, she had to sort through her purse to make sure the strawberry flavor was included on her coupon, which she had apparently left at home. In the end, the lady had decided on Shredded Wheat instead – which was at waist hight, and didn’t need help retrieving.

The holiday aisle would have been easy to see for its size, but it was so disorganized and cluttery that it looked more like the back warehouse shelf of a thrift-store. She was looking for a simple package of fireworks to light for the Camp Winabagel Independence Day celebration coming up the following week. Saturdays were camp cleanup and shopping day, so this would be her last chance before the 4^th of July. There were spinning buzzers and party poppers, and a few Uncle Sam teddy bears, but the part of the shelf advertizing firework sets was empty, except for a gallon bucket of smoke-bombs and a five-pack of black snakes.

She sighed, and picked up the gallon of smoke-bombs. She doubted they were allowed to use smoke bombs and camp Winabagel, but if that was all that was available… She pushed some of the randomly placed items around, hoping to find at least a set of misplaced sparklers, but without success. She sighed, and started back toward the registers. She noticed above the aisle a big number three. Ah, she thought to herself, aisle three. I get it now. She stopped at the edge of the isle where all the after-holiday sale items were. Most of it was Easter stuff, but there was a few Valentine items. She sifted through the front items, reaching back toward the back of the shelf, but pulled back quickly when her hand touched something wet. The motion caused her to knock down a polar bear with heart-shaped sunglasses and a hula-skirt, which immediately came to life and began singing the Norah Jones song, “Cold Cold Heart,” while it’s hips rotated with a buzz that was almost as loud as the music. It’s batteries must have been low, because it sounded less like Nora Jones and more like the deep voice of Elvis Presley.

She moved the junk on the shelf out of the way to see what she had touched. It was a broken plastic snow-globe, leftover from Christmas. Cary guessed it had been broken for a while, because the puddle was a yellowish-green color, and a mildewy smell emanated from the shelf.

Next to the broken snow globe there was a small but intricate Santa Clause doll – or perhaps more correctly, a Saint Nicholas doll. She reached back and pulled it out, taking care not to bump anything else. In the shadow of the back of the shelf, it had looked like a toy, but in light she could see that it was porcelain, with silk clothing and elaborate design. It had carefully crafted wrinkles by its small glass eyes, and a woven silk robe laced with jeweled crosses. It even had a matching gold sash and headdress. A delightful collector’s item, to be sure. Cary found herself looking for an excuse to buy it. Her mother liked intricate things, especially things like china dolls and Japanese dishes. Perhaps she would enjoy a Santa Clause doll, too. The thought almost seemed silly, but she quickly started looking for a price before allowing herself to consider putting it back. The doll had a UPC code under it’s feet, but no price tag.

She searched the shelf, even brushing the green pond a couple of times. She did find a sheet with a bargain chart which labeled all Christmas items at 90% off marked price. At that discount, it could be $50 and she could afford it. Not eager to approach another store clerk, but motivated by the thought that it may only cost a couple dollars, she looked around from where she stood. A very serious looking man with a shopping cart full of PEZ dispensers brushed past Cary. She stepped back and bumped the Hula bear, setting it off with a deeper voice and louder buzz than before. Apparently thinking he had bumped it off the shelf, the man picked up the toy and stared at it for a moment, humming along. Then he tossed it in his cart and walked on.

Cary walked to the other end of the aisle, where a young woman about her age was concentrating on a clipboard, checking off items from a list. The bright blue shirt with an orange vertical stripe told Cary that she was an employee, though she wondered why the girl was wearing a large snow cap. Less intimidated to approach someone her own age, she said, “Excuse me, but do you know what the price of this doll is?”

The girl looked at her with wide fearful eyes, and Cary heard a small gasp escape her lungs.

Cary turned around, expecting to see something terrible or frightening, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. The young woman just gawked at her.

“Uh… are you all right?” Cary asked slowly.

The girl looked down at her clipboard, as if looking for a script of what she was suppose to say next.

Cary waited, but the fidgeting girl looked like she was suffering terribly from the situation.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to distract you from…”

“No!” the girl said with a low airy voice, her eyes darting about. “I mean, it’s okay. I don’t… I mean I can’t… well it’s my second day on the job, and I don’t know the prices of… dolls.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Cary said quickly, hoping to ease the poor girl’s agony. “I was just wondering.”

The girl looked at her and then back at her clipboard as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t have the courage. Cary stood waiting, not sure whether to egg her on or pretend she found the price just to have an excuse to walk away.

“Well,” Cary said slowly, afraid of startling the girl, “thanks anyway.”

She got halfway down the aisle before the girl shouted, “The Price Checker!”

Cary turned around, “Price Checker?”

The girl hesitated, apparently regretting her outburst. Then, working up all her courage, stepped closer to Cary and pointed in a vague direction. “It’s over there.”

“Oh, uh… okay, thanks!” Cary said, trying to sound sincere. She started walking in the direction the girl had pointed, when she realized that the girl was following right behind her. Not sure if her intent was to follow, or to walk somewhere on the same path, Cary tried to pretend she didn’t notice. She began wishing she’d grabbed a shopping cart. The smoke bombs were a little heavy, and made her walk with a slight waddle.

When the girl said, “Right here!” with her low, airy voice, Cary turned around and saw the girl tapping a small scanner attached to a bin full of ½ price bottles of pickled eggs. “The price checker.”

“Oh,” Cary said, now feeling genuinely grateful. “Cool, thanks.”

Cary scanned the bar code on the Santa’s feet. A digital hourglass looped, and a low grinding sound made Cary wonder if the device was out of order. Then with a loud, “DONG!” the screen displayed a beefy, “$0.99”.

“Wow!” Cary said, “that must be the sale price. Awesome, I’ll get it. Thanks again.”

The girl started walking with Cary to toward the register – well, with her in the sense of walking right behind her – when a voice came over the PA system, saying, “Bobby, please report to the main office. Bobby, to the main office.”

“Bye!” the girl shouted before turning and running toward the back of the store. Cary was sure she had never met a more odd girl before – and Cary knew a lot of odd girls from summer camp.

The cashier at the register was almost as bubbly as the gum that she so conspicuously chewed. “Well hi there!” she said in a sing-song voice, “You must be one of the Winabagel girls.” She drew out the word “girls” like a mother trying to entertain a newborn. “So!” she said, cocking her head, “Where do you come from?”

“South Africa. This is my fourth year at Winabagel.”

“Wow!” she replied. The word was drawn out in the same manner that the woman pulled her gum out from between her teeth. Was that sanitary? “Africa! How did you learn about Winabagel?”

“My parents grew up here. My dad’s in the military, and has been stationed in South Africa since before I was born.”

“Wow!” she said again. Only then did she notice the line building up behind her. “Well, say hi to the desert for me!”

Cary hated the way everyone assumed that the entire continent of Africa was a desert.

The woman scanned the smoke bombs but had a bit of trouble scanning the Santa. The register gargled much the same way the scanner had. The bagger boy jumped up from his half slumber when the woman asked him to check on the code.

“What code?” he said, wiping slobber from a grocery sack.

“The bar code,” she said with a forced teasing voice.

He grabbed the smoke bombs and turned to leave.

“No, you silly boy,” the cashier said, her patience clearly draining, but using the same playful wording, “not the smokebomb code – the Santa code. Get me the Santa code.”

“Isn’t that it on the bottom? I think it’s right there.” he said, trying to redeem himself.

“Yeah,” she sighed, “that’s the UPC code, which tells us the price, but we need the product code. We know what it is, but without the matching product code, we can’t sell it.”

“Oh,” he said, taking the Santa. But he didn’t move, and it looked to Cary like he was trying to remember how to look up a product code.

“You know what,” the cashier said, looking at the growing line of steamy customers, “It’s a holiday item – I’ll just ring it up as a holiday miscellaneous… though it’s clearly got it’s own code.” The last part of her sentence was mumbled under her breath. Then taking the Santa from the boy, she punched in a few numbers and gave Cary a plastic smile. “Thanks for being a loyal Val Mart customer, we sell them you buy them!”

“Right. Um, thanks.”

Cary left the store, eager to get back to camp. Why was it that every Val Mart store she ever entered had either insane customers or bizarre employees?

Since Camp Winabagel was only a mile from Val Mart, Cary had walked, and though she had anticipated carrying a large package of fireworks, she hadn’t planned on having a gallon of smoke bombs, which were almost as awkward as they were heavy. She set the bag down on the sidewalk after crossing the parking lot. Removing the smoke-bomb container from the bag, she wrapped the santa in the plastic before putting it in her pocket. The bombs were easier to carry by their own bucket handle than in the shopping bag.

Just then there was a scuffle from the front doors, and she watched as a large woman shoved someone out the door, shouting something about a disgraceful reputation to an otherwise noble economic institution.

Had it not been for the snow hat, Cary wouldn’t have recognized the young employee who had helped her learn the price of the Santa doll. When the woman marched back into the store, Cary picked up the bucket and approached the young woman.

“Are you all right?” she said, careful not to startle her.

The girl still startled, but then stared dejectedly at the ground. “I, I, I got fired.”

“Fired? Fired for what?”

“I broke the store.”

Cary could see tears in the girl’s eyes, and she put a hand on her shoulder – sure she would startle again if Cary tried to hug her. “How could you have broken the store?”

“They said I did something to the scanner, gave it a virus or something.”

“What? That’s ridiculous. I saw you. You didn’t do anything to it.”

The girl looked at Cary. “They said if I come back they’ll call the police.”

“There’s got to be some mistake. I was the last one to use the scanner. Not you. Let me go talk to them. Here, hold this.”

She handed the bucket to the girl and walked back toward the store, but before reaching the door, the same women who had escorted the girl out was coming out the door, accompanied by two large security guards. She held out her hand and was about to speak, when the woman pointed toward the girl and shouted, “Right there, that’s her.”

The two security guards then pulled out their pistols and pointed them at her. “This will be easy,” one said quietly.

When Cary realized that they were about to shoot, she shouted, “What are you doing?!” and slammed into the men (who hadn’t paid attention to her until now) with her shoulder. One of the guns shot, but the aim was thrown off by Cary’s attack. Then she turned and ran toward the girl, shouting, “RUN! RUN!!!”

Remarkably, the girl didn’t startle this time, but turned and ran as hard as she could. By the time another shot rang out, they were far enough away that the bullet missed the girls, but it struck the bucket of smoke bombs, bursting it open. Gumball sized pellets flew in all directions, hitting the ground around them and igniting a massive collection of multicolored clouds of smoke. The girls ran through the clouds, coughing and stumbling down a ditch just beyond the parking lot. Cary got up, quickly checking her bruised leg for any signs of break, and finding none, ran to the girl to help her up.

“Are you alright?” she said as they began running along the ditch that Cary now realized was a dried canal.

“I’m fine,” the girl said, “my name is Bobby.”

“Okay, yeah,” Cary said, still panty, coughing, and trying to think of where to run next. “I’m Cary.”

Since the canal was deeper than their hight, the smoke mainly stayed above their heads. They could hear shouting and coughing from within the clouds, but both were running too hard to pay attention to what was being said. Cary knew the cloud would only obscure their vision for a short time, so when the canal ended with the opening of a large canal pipe, she looked around for any other hiding place, but finding nothing but parking lot, field, and smoke in all directions, she climbed inside, encouraging Bobby to follow.

It was completely dark inside, so there would be no way for the security guys to see them from outside. But that also meant they couldn’t see anything around them except the way they came in. Thoughts of spiders, bats, and slugs tempted Cary to go back. Maybe it was just a strange misunderstanding – maybe they weren’t going to shoot, or maybe they mistook her for someone else. But all thoughts of civil reconciliation were smashed when she heard one of the voices in the distance shout, “Make sure both are stopped. They were both there – they’ll have to be dead before the end of the day. Where did you say the new girl lives?”

Cary compressed a gasp, and Bobby’s voice echoed through the pipe. “Mom…”

Tags: christmas, code, fiction, humor, mystery, nano novel, novel, online, santa

The Matt Robinson story has been placed on (possibly permanent) hold for the Nano Novel, The Santa Code.

Check back soon, there should be a chapter 1 by midnight tonight.

 

1-015

Tags: accident, alice, audio, doctor, fantasy, fiction, hit, hospital, larson, matt, muffin, novel, nurse, podcast, read, truck

A boy on the side of the road.  Something about that struck Matt, and he couldn’t figure out why.

“I should have kept straight, the boy moved away quickly on his own.  But you stepped out the moment I veered to miss him, and… and… well, the whole thing is just awful.”

“I think it may have been the same boy that you saw, Matt,” Alice said.  Then she blushed, “I thought you were teasing me.”  She looked at Larson, “It’s as much my fault as Larson’s.  I didn’t believe you.”

With their words, Matt felt the memory beginning to ease back into his mind, and he shut his eyes to concentrate.  He remembered Mourg’s warning about the marauders, and his worry for his and

Alice’s safety.  From the way Mourg had sounded, the marauders were behind the whole business.  But Alice and Larson could hardly be part of that group.  He had known and trusted Larson all his life.  They had grown up together, played together, and even gotten beaten up by school bullies together.  If Mourg knew the danger of the Ions, he certainly didn’t know Larson as well as Matt did.

He looked at Alice.  He had only known her for a day, if that.  But as she looked back at him, he felt as if he’d known her for longer.  Her sincere, almost eager manner made him want to be stronger than he was, better, really.  On both of his times meeting her previously, he had made a bit of a fool of himself, but looking at her now he realized that his need to improve was not based on some macho need to impress her, but on a sincere reflection of the personality that she radiated.  Was she really so good a person as to make others want to be better just by being around her?  What did he even know about her goodness?

He started to shrug this off as a demonstration of his boyish hormonal instincts – if a guy likes a girl, he automatically thinks she’s amazing, right?  But did that mean he liked her?  Did he?  He turned his gaze away from hers, but not before concluding that feelings or none, she was trustworthy.

He sat a few moments in silence until the doctor sensed Matt’s hope for some time alone with his friends.  He cleared his throat and said, “I’ll give you ten minutes, and then visiting hour will be done.”  Then he smiled and walked out.

“We’ve were quite worried,” Alice said, “when you didn’t wake up that evening.  I’m so glad the doctor says you’ll be fine within a day or two.”

“How long was I out?”

“The rest of the evening,” Larson said, “and all through yesterday.”

“Holy cow!” Matt said, trying again to prop himself up, but finding the motion awkward and virtually impossible with all the contraptions and IVs that went in and out of his body. “You mean it’s been like two days?”

“Almost,” Alice replied.  “We sat with you for the first night.”

“We would have stayed longer,” Larson replied, “but the doctors wouldn’t let us.  So we made them promise to contact us the moment anything changed.  I still can’t believe I did this to you.”

Matt reached his hand up and patted Larson’s arm, since he couldn’t reach his shoulder.  “It’s not your fault.”  Then he made a quick decision.  “Alice, remember how I told you I thought I saw someone across the street?”  He felt silly for asking it, since she had already brought it up.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I didn’t tell you why it worried me.”

She waited, and Matt looked at Larson, who still looked at the floor.

“You guys are going to think I’m crazy.  I’m not making this up.  I would have told you, Larson, about it when you came back to my house and we looked at the books, but you didn’t have much time, and I… well, I was too embarrassed to tell you, Alice.”

Matt then told them the whole story about the ghost, starting with the encounter in his uncle’s study all the way up through Mourg’s walking off into the hospital wall.  He told him all about Mourg’s warnings, as well, emphasizing the moment he saw the boy across the street.

“So when I saw someone watching us, I thought he must be one of these Ion marauders.  It looks like we were both distracted by the same boy – though for very different reasons.

Larson gave a low whistle.  He was no longer looking at the floor, and Matt was glad to hear the accent slipping back into his voice when he said, “Now if you were just waking up from a good knock on the head, I’d have trouble believin’ ya.”

Larson’s wry smile told Matt everything.  Not only did Larson believe him, but he sensed that Larson knew he was forgiven.

“That makes me wonder,” Alice said, apparently oblivious to the exchange, “Nigel does have a lot of ghost stories, but there is a lot more stories of secret missions and travel.  Could the Ions have something to do with that.”

“Travel – that reminds me,” Matt said, unintentionally changing the subject, “if I’ve been out for almost two days, then Uncle Eric must have arrived home yesterday.”

Alice and Larson looked at each other, and then back at Matt.  Alice nearly spoke up, but Larson cut in, “He’s probably doin’ a touch of overtime.”

“You mean he’s not back?”

Alice now looked worried.  “I didn’t know he was supposed to be back yesterday.  We didn’t see him when we stopped by the house yesterday.”

Matt tried again to ignore the sense of panic that began to creep into his chest.  Eric often had flight delays and layovers that kept him an extra day or two, but he always told Matt about them the moment he knew.  Had he tried to call?  Maybe there was a message on the answering machine.

Tags: alice, doctor, fiction, ghost, hospital, ion, larson, marauders, matt, nigel, novel, online, read, uncle eric

Within a half an hour, both Alice and Larson were at his bedside, both with sleepless faces.

“Man, I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Larson said, his head down.  Matt knew that when Larson was worried or very serious, he would lose some of his accent, and this was no exception.  “I don’t think I’ll be able to bring myself to drive again anytime soon.  I mean look at you, all wrapped up and hurting like this.  I ought to be the one lyin there.  It’s horrid, simply horrid.”

“Larson, I don’t blame you!  I’m the one who was stupid enough to walk out into the street like that.”  Matt wanted more than anything to remember the incident so he could come up with a better excuse to blame himself.

“Oh, Larson,” Alice broke in, “tell him what you told me.  Tell him about the boy.  It wasn’t like you were being an irresponsible driver!”

“I can’t make any excuse for doing this!  It hardly makes a difference.”  Larson’s hands came to his face, but Alice spoke for him.

“There was a boy on the side of the road.  He had been trying to avoid a boy on the side of the road.  That was the only reason he took his eyes from where you were standing.  You both came suddenly, but he was swerving to avoid the boy.”

Tags: accident, alice, boy, doctor, fiction, hit, hospital, larson, matt, novel, online, road, truck