“What’s worse, parliament has delivered a stunning insult to the royal family. Parliament on this day has essentially given the aggressors of the world carte blanche to strike out at her duly appointed knights.”
Interestingly aggressive stance, Wylings thought. Wildly overstated but most dramatic. Good work, Sykes! The man was a slower thinker, but a much more dynamic personality than Dolan.
But it was Dolan who delivered the truly delightful surprise. He stepped up beside Sykes and spoke in his ponderous, serious voice, which often lulled listeners to sleep—but on this occasion it had just the correct tone of morbidity. “For this reason, we have just this day formed a coalition of those within parliament and others within the British government who would like to go on record, and at this moment, to state that we do not wish to condone wholesale arrest and murder of British knights, as have our colleagues in parliament. We stand by the Crown. This debasement of the royal family was perpetrated in spite of our efforts and certainly not with our blessing.”
Wylings almost laughed out loud at the extravagant claims coming out of Dolan’s mouth, but delivered like a dirge. This speech would have impact. The cameras pulled back to show members of parliament crowding in behind Dolan and Sykes as the cameras pulled back—politicians rushing to be seen as supporters, hot offenders of the Crown.
Wylings did laugh out loud at that moment.
The driver wanted to ask him what was so funny, but didn’t say anything. He was in a pretty good mood himself, thinking about his fifteen extra pounds, and he didn’t want to spoil it.
He dropped off the Englishman and was thrilled to get a fifty-pound note as payment in full. He wanted to thank the man, but the Brit was gone already, rushing down the sidewalk to the terminal for private aircraft. Maybe his fare had meant to give him a twenty instead of a fifty. Probably the man was too rich and too hurried to care. The cabdriver sang himself an old pop tune, but he changed the words around. “Hello, Yellow Gold Road.”
He pulled into the shiny new Burger Triumph and didn’t have to wait in line. He ordered a Triple Triumph Megarific Meal.
“You would like to Terrifi-Size that?” asked the cute young cashier.
“What? What are you saying?”
“They make us say it like that,” she explained, leaning over the register to speak confidentially. “It’s their silly way of saying you wanna get an even bigger order of Trium-Phries and an even bigger cup of soft drink.”
“Oh.” The cabdriver was feeling self-indulgent. He was also very thirsty and the soda looked unbelievably good. He could count on one hand the number of times he had tasted a drink with ice in it. “Yes, please, missy, I’ll take the terrifi-super-duper-giant whatever it is.”
She giggled. “Okay, big spender.”
“I’d even be willing to buy a terrifi-size for the terrific girly at the counter if she had a lunch break.”
Oh, did she start giggling then. “Maybe later. I get off in a couple of hours.”
He looked at the name badge on her shirt collar. “Couple of hours, then, Ms. Trainee.”
Oh, you should have heard her giggle. “Actually, it’s Maluuna,” she said as she gave him his heavy bag of food and the obscenely huge soft drink.
He sat in his car feeling on top of the world and sipped the ice-cold drink, thinking he had never tasted anything better.
The tiny metallic bits that had come from the city water and mixed with the soda syrup were too small for him to feel in his mouth. They were too few in number to register on his taste buds. He was one of the first victims to ingest them, and they had yet to procreate in sufficient numbers.
In the Ayounde City water supply, the microscopic devices were fulfilling their reproductive function by pooling in the water conduits where the sediment settled in unused conduit junctions. They gathered metallic particles and worked them, speck by speck, into little copies of themselves. The copies created copies. By evening, a hundred thousand little robots had become a billion.
They were swept away by the millions, traveling up the plumbing and into the homes and restaurants of Ayounde City. They were consumed by the people. Once they sensed the first damaging attacks of stomach acids, they were triggered into performing their second function.
They fought back.
The cabdriver had a slight stomach ache as he waited for another fare that never came. He picked a deserted lot, parked and stretched out in the back seat for a restorative nap, and soon he was in agony, clutching his stomach.
He had consumed only a tiny number of the devices, so they had to work for some hours before they ate through his stomach lining and eventually out of his body. He saw the hole in his gut open up and then he died, thankfully.
