Monday, June 20, 2016

International Velvet

Working as an anachronistic roboticist was amusing, but it was never quite what Candy wanted. Not that she didn't know what she wanted. She did; she wanted to go back to the sporting career that had always been her true calling. To competitive waterskiing, just like her mother.

Marianna "Mama" Brain was no stranger to Candace, or even a sister... she knew Mama as just Auntie Mom. (Except for the last few years, when she didn't know her at all, and the last few minutes, when she knew her as a voice talking through a robotic pool assistant that, undisturbingly for Candy, shouldn't be invented yet.) But the public in the year 1,000,002,015 knew her as the greatest robot-assisted waterskier of all time.

Candy had landed on Mama's doorstep as a strung-out phlurmer, but by the day she left and, well, got back on the road to becoming a strung-out phlurmer again, it was Candy, not Mama, who stood on the robot waterskiing throne. She was bigger than baseball, bigger than competitive Pac-Man, bigger than cricket. And her skis were almost as famous. "Arizona Pie! Arizona Pie!" the crowds cheered worldwide as she swished by in the holograms, almost forgetting the rider for the skis. Twisted by fame, she fell jealous of her skis and sought a scandal to push her up by pulling her down.

But they only pulled her down... backwards in life... backwards in - time? Those two.

Pennybags and Pennywise.

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