Self Freezing Icecube Tray

 

 

On the Shelf:	Behind the Counter:
₵$43 Ghost Tobacco (20)	₵$41 Cleansing Ale
₵$20 Bloody Mary	₵$294 The New Shampoo
₵$50 El Dorado Green (1/4)	₵$480 Four Pack of Beer
₵$30 Black Meat (g)	₵$20 Democracy Honey
₵$1 Slut Root (kg)	₵$20 Level Up Fig
₵$30 Marital Aid Potion	₵$87 D.C. Datura
₵$15 Quetzalcoatl Feathers (doz.)	₵$58 Sex Doll Goon Sack
₵$5 Blue Roses (doz.)	₵$47 START HERE
₵$28 Mythril (oz.)	₵$201 Fireball Thrower
₵$9 BZTCN	₵$108 Blue Angel Mushroom

This Week's Special:

 

Frankie was shitting when she noticed that, from 0:26 to 0:30, the woman looked like gender bent Elon Musk. Like how whitehats receive bounty for discovering vulnerabilities, Reality's mods rewarded Frankie's discovery with the Self-Freezing Ice Cube Tray. If you do not see the gender-bent Elon Musk, that is because the mods patched it.

Filling the Self-Freezing Ice Cube Tray with water and leaving it for an hour freezes the water into ice. The ice shall probably be cube shaped. Frankie does not want the Self-Freezing Ice Cube Tray because she has a freezer at home. The market is someone who wants cold drink after long day of adventuring and who ceebs lugging esky.

That market is Dr. Hasselhoff

Breyerhouse Pie contains venison, rabbit and ptarmigan, available at any Australian supermarket. It is nourishing, healing and ails cabin fever. Negatives include: contentedness, sluggishness, flirtation with scurvy and the starvation necessary to eat the whole thing and get aforementioned benefits. The recipe was purportedly lost.

Dr. David Hasselhoff found the recipe card and he long ago called dibs on anything pie related. He is the Healer in an adventuring party core containing Fighter, Ranger and Wizard. Doc Hasselhoff was designated Healer because he was the only one who brought a first-aid kit.

The party had delved into a dungeon which, they bitched about, went up a steady incline. They trespassed into hoity-toity hunting lodge, where Doc Hasselhoff found the recipe card. He deliberated on whether to keep or sell the recipe, whilst his party deliberated on hunting that moose.

The market for this recipe card is Dorothy, but Albrecht will buy it as a present.

Albrecht side hustles in grave repo, not grave robbing, but takes commissions. Sometimes communities pay to have something discretely removed from their deceased's neighbours, such as a Finger of Sukuna.

Fingers of Sukuna are a plot coupon. Like pieces of Gun Devil, enough must be acquired to face final boss. Also like pieces of Gun Devil, they empower mini-bosses. Unlike pieces of Gun Devil, consuming one bestows power-up, with caveats, to select few.

Dorothy is not select few, but Albrecht suspects that she would try eating it anyway. No, she would marinade it and serve it at a dinner party, garnished and paired with Trapiche 'Pure' 2023 Patagonian Pinot Noir.

Like Notes of Flamme, people are willing to pay handsomely for Fingers of Sukuna. Albrecht does not know these people and he does not want to hold onto stinky thing until he meets them. The market for this creepy digit is the middle (wo)man, the retailer, the ba-dumb-tish-fuck who attempts the buy low, sell high.

That market is Saperavi.

Saperavi is, as of writing, holding a revolver to kneeling Todd's temple. She screams wordless vowels because shrieking is girly. There is a story here but I was taking a shit when it happened. I catch Pedro's eyes but we are both too shitfaced to non-verbal communicate.

Saperavi has come into possession of two Softnose Lasers, one pistol and one rifle. These weapons were designed by cosmopolitan underground society for mining but are weapons because racism. One enterprising pixie smuggled Mudman AA batteries as ammunition for these weapons . Saperavi smuggled these weapons to the Tartarian surface, where AA batteries are plentiful.

 Saperavi intends to sell Softnose Lasers but not in the U.S. because guns. Instead: Australia, where energy weapons can be carried on shoulder or hip and look like toys. The market is not looking to intimidate or make statement. The market is willing to kill in the right circumstance and wants to be prepared for that.

That market is Frankie.

 

* Footnote. 

Mamta's Granny Flat Speakeasy

'... these crickets be wild fed...'

            '...a Breyerhouse Pie like Lambas Bread...'

                        '... a voice, I get that, but to parliament?'

Sojourners beyond the technically real have braved the freeway to drink, this Friday night, at Mamta's granny-flat speakeasy. It is BYO if the drinker so chooses - many do, but exchange their boozes for something more to tonight's fancy, like a market-driven potluck. A cosy, if informally formal, atmosphere is courtesy of a dozen drinkers. A long wail of car horn and Dr. David Hasselfhoff makes the dozen a baker's:

'Ooooh, it's time. Hello, Mamta, what's good?'

'Butt stuff.'

'That's not, uh, I'm sure it is.' David places the Crazy Bones Blunderbuss on the bar. 'For your macaw.'

(Which, digging vibes atop its shotgun perch, bops its head.)

Mamta leans clasped hands on the bar, cleaves a little age and it shows: 'I heard that can only fire Crazy Bones.'

'And so it doesn't need gunpowder.'

Mamta gives David a bottle of 1945 Grand Paladin: 'I don't believe you scrapped with the Baby Born Centipede.'

'I'm a historian. I gave Giuseppe the lead. He didn't want to go back there, so I popped in and grabbed blunderbuss. Salvage law. It's not a toy, so the centipede ignored me. Felt good to be back in the field.'

Mamta gives David a wide glass and he takes wine to an unoccupied table. Mamta resumes drying a Perpetually Wet Pint Glass with an Always Dry Dish Cloth, becoming set dressing which drops eaves. Todd's arms are crossed but he smiles, Elise's cheeks are flushed with laughter, Carl tries a hand on Darrel's shoulder, Sinead gesticulates lit Ghost Tobacco whilst negotiating Quetzalcoatl Feathers with Alexander. This is how Mamta cops a feel of the market which, used to this foreplay, slaps hand away with coy smile.

Mamta tunes ears into: 'You say “wild" but you mean "not meant to be there".'

The voice is Dorothy's. Mamta has gathered that Adrian, pivoted towards Dorothy with elbow on front bar, is trying to sell her some live locusts which he netted during a tour of cropland.

He drinks Hunter Valley Sémillon: 'It's like kangaroo. They're hunted because one less kangaroo is one more sheep that a farm can run. The meat is a by-product, but it's still wild.'

Adrian is hangering after another or Dorothy's Musical Sandwiches. Inspiration had struck Dorothy and inspiration became madness, subconscious engineering genius layering precision strips of cheese, lettuce and ham like piano strings. Halfway through his set, opening for the K-Pop girl group known as Kev, Adrian had killed birds with stone and ate the sandwich from a harmonica neck holder. The sandwich was nourishing for Adrian's body and the audience's soul.

Adrian continues: 'We wouldn't even have to meet. Just leave a sandwich in an esky once a month and I'll swing by and replace it with a sack of crickets.'

Dorothy circles a finger along the rim of an empty glass: 'Yeah, but there's only so much I can do with insect protein. My friends have become adventurous eaters because of my dinner parties, but they've also become more creative with excuses to not attend. One time, their dog ate their child.'

'In other words, you don't think you can pull it off.'

'Your expecting audience would be the first to find out.'

Mamta returns to flicking through audio channels:

'... Tom counting his darts...'

            '... why PornHub doesn't have a dwarf category...'

                        '... NOT ATTEMPT TO USE WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED...'

Alexander bows out to the bathroom. Sinead goes outside for a smoke. Foot in door and Yvette haggards towards the bar. The shot of monkey booze and schooner of dragonspring sake, a 'Long Spark', are ready on her arrival.

Yvette offers her goods: 'I brought the Plus-Point-Oh-Two Watering Can.'

'Which, for every litre carried, only weighs a respective 800 grams. It says it can only carry ten litres, but you seem to fit twelve.' Mamta rolls smiling eyes, song-and-dance. 'Your money isn't good here. Except, maybe, as collateral.'

'What'll it be?'

'Butt stuff. Better but less often.'

'A sex goddess needs inspiration.' The monkey booze makes Yvette wince and raise schooner. 'Another of these, perhaps?'

A long screech and thonk. Sinead calls and Mamta's customers rush outside to poke heads over fence. Someone has tried to cross the freeway and been hit by a car. Colin is dead.

Mamta is going to have to close this speakeasy. She sighs and pours herself a Long Spark. 

The Prototype

A phone call:

'Hey David. I'm at Uncle Malcolm's. Landscaping.'

'Hoffy. Hoffman. The Hoff. John. Speak of the devil, I've been going through late Uncle Michael's -'

'Malcolm.'

'Late Uncle Malcolm's paperwork. Scrapbooked all his receipts in his journal. Meticulous. Monotonous. Fascinating. If he'd died twenty years earlier I'd have had source material for a better thesis than Variations on the Pork Pie in Western Sydney 1826 - 1839. Still no idea why he left us everything.'

'He kept to himself.' Smart. 'I would like help, here.'

Insulted: 'I am helping. Someone's got to find out why Uncle Michael -'

A quiet groan from John.

'- withdrew two hundred dollars at 16:45 every Thursday for something billed under "Lucy" and, well, nobody else has a doctorate in history.'

John lights a smoke and exhales meditatively: 'The irrigation piping runs everywhere. Not sure where I can dig. I need a historical perspective?'

'Oh. Grunt work. I'll get the post-grads.'

Dr David Hasselhoff makes a few calls and more-or-less blackmails one of his colleagues, who he once caught masturbating in her department chair. He leads a convoy of vans, of appropriated archaeology students seeking extra-credits with trowels and buckets and other paraphernalia, to late Uncle Michael's front yard. Standing on the street-front pathway, a bit slack-jawed, John watches twenty-odd students excavate around and under the maze of irrigation, which leads to plenty of pointless dead-ends and often loops around on itself. David stands at his side, hands clasped and rocking on heels:

'See, one problem solved.'

A student calls from the backyard: 'Oh shit, I've actually found something.'

David stops rocking and panic strikes his eyes. Amongst sifted dirt is a Minié ball, the projectile launched from muskets. Speculation begins: who fired the musket? Soldier? Convict? And at whom? Kangaroo? Black man? White man? Something mistaken as the fabled Yowie, a product of imagination  made overactive by a cocktail of colonial-era gossip, rancid booze and venereal disease? Chinese whispers trickle into the government, who form two competing hypothesis. First: the musket was fired by a disaffected First Australian radicalised by Islamist-Marxists. Second: the musket was fired by a disaffected First Australian radicalised by Marxist-Islamists. ASIO moves in. Standing on the street-front pathway, a bit slack-jawed, John watches men in plaid shirts (no women?) cordon off the property with black-and-yellow crime scene tape. He turns to David:

'Bad.'

'Yes, yes, but, I know a guy.'

Stroking beard, David watches the appropriated students, forced off the excavation site, gather at ad-hoc party being thrown impromptu at No. 26: post-grad Carl has been recognised by old high-school friend Lauren and, judging by Lauren's eyes, Carl has bloomed since those acne-ridden days. Lauren has invited Carl in for drinks 'if you're not doing anything...' which has been misinterpreted as an open invitation to all the apprentice archaeologists, spread via phone call ‘and tell the others’, extrapolating a few drinks into a decent-if-not-crowded gathering. Lauren waves this off with a fuck you, popular kids, I throw the party now laugh. (Disclosure: Lauren and Carl will get drunk, make out, almost bang but decide it feels incestuous. In the morning they will rekindle a close friendship, becoming god parents to each other's children in later years.)

John follows David's lead: walk up the party, carry a carton of grog from the university van (appropriated for the booze run) inside to the fridge. They find Tubs the cat, thinking to herself 'the folks will be pissed at Lauren, leaving me the angel child and granting me more biscuits wait wait whaaat?' as John takes her under arm. In the backyard, David gives out hand-rolled cigarettes.

'Is that reefer?'

'You're a cool professor.'

'Thanks Doc.'

'Wait. This isn't dope.'

'It's working on me. It's dope.'

'You don't know dick.'

'No, but I'd like to meet dick.'

‘… Huh.’

John watches those two sneak into the bedroom: 'What is that?'

David: 'Oh, just catnip and organic tobacco. Another guy I know.'

Tom, in full Indiana Jones get up, whip and all, jumps over the back fence and lands next to John and David and, jogging on the spot: 'Post grads. Responsible, but not too responsible. No demon spawn in nine months.' Raising hand for high-five. 'Condoms.'

David nods: 'Brevity.'

'Good enough.' Tom, still jogging, lowers hand. 'You want The Prototype.'

David: 'Yes, we seem to have bitten off a bit more -'

'Yep. Yep. Government. Ew.' Tom's gaze unwavering from the party inside. 'The Prototype. Built by bank robbers. Why tunnel into the vault when you can tunnel the vault to you? Never used it. Discovered they had a knack for engineering. Went legit. Or black ops. Can't remember.'

John drops Tubs: 'Move the earth underneath. No crime scene. House intact.'

Tom: 'Bingo. In exchange, I want this.'

Tom drops a note at David's feet before sprinting inside to the party with a hummed da da daaaa, da duh duummm. The note is about the Plate of Buluc Chabtan, a stone tablet which prophesises, with 37.3% accuracy, the first three numbers drawn in 245 lotteries run in various locations around the globe in the years between 2024 and 2045. It is not easy money but, to the right entrepreneurial eyes, there is potential for profit. A joint project of the Aztec and the Maya, the Plate of Buluc Chabtan was gifted to Bertha (seen here in a black and white photograph from her heyday, kind of like Lara Croft sans the pointy, pixelated tits) after she repelled an army of demons, unleashed from the temple by condo development, with rather nasty but prowessed sack-taps - it's cool, the demons were cunts.

Dorothy Smooshen inherited the Plate of Buluc Chabtan after Aunt Bertha passed in her sleep at 88. Now Dorothy sits with elbows on kitchen table, hands clasped around drooped head, bordering on angry tears. Cloves, wild blackberries, a half-broiled duck and cinnamon sticks are strewn about the table covered in spilt nutmeg. Fourteen open cookbooks dot locations in a wider circumference around the kitchen. This is how John and David find her, having followed Tom's note to the address and been let in by the indifferent bitch who is her housemate.

John feels sad for Dorothy: 'So what's your problem?'

She sniffs: 'The judges of the Heresford Shire Baking Contest are snobby prigs who only appreciate -' she lets slip a small angry growl '- avant-garde, pretentious cooking, so unless I find some niche wank to bake then -' a mewl, a couple of tears shed '-I won't get that win on my resume and -' fists slamming on table '- I will never have my dream job of catering for shadowy private military companies during their mercenary but stabilising security details.'

'Oh.' David's eyes widen. 'Oh, oh, oh. Ohhhhh yes. Yes. Fuck yes.'

John raises an eyebrow, thumb over shoulder: 'He knows pies. Old pork pies. He did thesis. Trade?'

David, now outside, screams at the night sky: 'Fuck yooou, Dad, I was right all aloooong.'

Once calmed down, David provides academic consultation to Dorothy in exchange for the Plate of Buluc Chabtan. John and he return to No. 26 to find the remaining dozen revellers splayed naked and exhausted on the lounge room floor. Three orgies have taken place: the first in the Eleusinian tradition, the second taking inspiration from Mesopotamian Iraq and the last being a mash-up of Saracen technique and Lemurian trope. Tom, head pillowed by someone's buttocks, smiles content at John and David:

'If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to never repeat it.'

The Plate of Buluc Chabtan is exchanged for The Prototype, which is an intimidating 2m tall, 90cm diameter dark grey upright cylinder. John and David are not sure how it works, exactly, but punch the necessary x, y and z values into the keypad to switch the problematic front yard – irrigation, excavation and crime scene – with a piece of lawn from above parliament house. Whilst the two slabs of land are swapped by slow, mysterious mean, David lights a smoke to extend and accentuate his lingering glow of validation:

'You know, after going through late Uncle Malcolm's bookkeeping, I am inclined to believe that this isn’t his place. He paid strata fees.'