A Case of Syrah Syrah

On the Shelf:	Behind the Counter:
₵$27 Ghost Tobacco (20)	₵$220 Four Pack of Beer
₵$20 Bloody Mary	₵$21 Sex Doll Goon Sack
₵$50 El Dorado Green (1/4)	₵$122 Bux. Semp. X Cannabis
₵$20 Black Meat (g)	₵$55 Bottled Emotions (qt.)
₵$1 Slut Root (kg)	₵$30 Self-Cooking Olive Oil (375 ml)
₵$30 Marital Aid Potion	₵$255 Brick of Cocaine
₵$35 Quetzalcoatl Feathers (doz.)	₵$62 Memory Coffee
₵$5 Blue Roses (doz.)	₵$17 Christian Repellent
₵$31 Mythril (oz.)	₵$75 Anti-Flimflammatory
₵$9 BZTCN	₵$9 Extrasolar Teas Box

This Week's Special:

In a golden age, long ago, there lived a precursor race known as Boomers. A sect of this people engaged in a ritual known as 'swingers parties'. They would hang their coats in something known as 'parlour', a decadence since lost to subdivision, before swapping their jollies. Magic happened in one such parlour, of the wholesome dick-on-clit variety.

Magic Coat Hangers happened. Two went to the Dunbars, who brought a wine to drink and a wine for the host. Two went to the Murphys, because he was nice but batting above his average. Two went to the Hands, who had moved into the cul-de-sac two days prior and excused themselves as best they could.

Thirty seven Magic Coat Hangers were created because Tinder and its gay prototype tapped into certain markets. Two have since been destroyed and three are unaccounted for. North Korea has one.

Why should anyone give a shit? If someone hangs clothing on a Magic Coat Hanger in closet, said clothing will be in any closet which they open. This is useful for people inclined to wake up in other people's beds and make hasty getaway in clean clothes. Such people often leave Magical Coat Hanger in their haste, which leaves it with their snoring host.

'I've come into ownership of three Magical Coat Hangers.' Mamta tastes Syrah Syrah. 'Through barter.'

Felicity does not quite hide jealousy: 'Sure. Speaking of barter, gimme' a coat hanger?'

Felicity is offering a Case of Syrah Syrah, which she does not recall buying but found in her cellar. Or, rather, five bottles, because one has been cracked for tonight's sampling. Notes of plum, tobacco and wine. It is the most syrah of syrahs.

'Which,' Felicity reminds, 'really makes someone appreciate our unique Australian shirazes.'

Mamta does not disagree but silently weighs previous offers, eyes behind glass of blueberry, anise. Tonight is not the grand opening of Mamta's new bar - that is pending. This tree house is built in the commons of a commuter town (population: village). The car park was once used for a small primary school. A light drizzle arrives and smokers cluster cigarettes under branches.

'I have a spirit level. And a string level. And a laser level.'

            'Everybody knew that Mr Squiggle was a coke head.'

                        'Which is why Pornhub doesn't have an amputee category.'

There is no roof, so Mamta considers Marks offer of Impossible Ceiling Tiles. Mark had hung T-Bar as part of a restaurant fit out, using a laser level for precision of height. The ceiling tiles were not forced into rails but they gave that impression. Straight rows became zigzags, the flat surface curved in waves, competing centres of gravity dragged gaze this way and that. The relativity of Escher was not part of this contract.

Mark replaced the tiles until the ceiling looked like a ceiling. He boxed the offending tiles until because they were still clean and someone may want easy psychedelic decor. Mark offering this box for three Magical Coat Hangers, which Mamta thought a bit steep. But Mamta loves the market and if you love something you should let it be free.

Dr Woke has also expressed interest in the Impossible Ceiling Tiles, having grown bored with his lair's plain volcano cavern roof. He cannot justify any new renovations after a complete refit earlier this year. Unless he has something to celebrate. Like money.

Dr Woke's most immediate path to money is Protocol: Microscope. This involves threatening world leaders with the release of a patent into the creative commons. This technology can reduce the cost of microscopes by 90%, so it will be commonplace in a generation. The caveat will not be obvious until commonplace: these microscopes glitch at 400x to 1100x magnification. Nobody will be able to see chromosomes, a disaster for certain genetic-disease specialists but super-villains will super-villain.

'And, World Leaders,' Dr Woke has rehearsed in mirror, swirling prop glass of S. C. Pannell 'Dead End' 2021 McClaren Vale 2021 Tempranillo, 'it is biological fact that Woman is cross and Man asks "why". No historian can locate the concepts "male" or "female" earlier than the 1880s. No child has differentiated the genders before learning of chromosomes. Those non-westerns on that island, firing bows at visiting helicopters, are a culture of polyamorous bisexuals.

That is my threat. A world that does not know its chromosomes will not know its genders, sexes, pfft. Extra flesh on chest may make extra flesh between legs turgid but not lead to fucking, because half chance gay. And gaybos won't fuck straights.

Only the bisexuals will comfortably fuck, once they fumble into a decent position. You best hope the stereotypes are true if there is to be anything resembling a birth rate. Is that what you want? A generation raised by frisky bis?'

World leaders will not. Magdalene feels otherwise.

'Fuck yeah fuck yeah fuck yeah do it. I'll be in your debt. We'll do an indentured servitude - ingredients in, potions out.'

Yvette had shown concern with Magdalene's enthusiasm: 'Could I put in a counter-offer for your future?'

'Eh? Sure.'

'So I've recently come into possession of a bathroom.'

This time it is a handicapped/family toilet. It had been graffitied overnight, tags on the fold-out changing table sticking out like trashy navel tattoo. Yvette sprayed Muck-Off and wiped with microfiber. A faint stain remained on the changing table in the graffiti's shape. Yucky.

The next tag was on the hand dryer. She sprayed, she wiped, then she sprayed water and wiped with a second microfiber. Most of the graffiti was removed but what remained mixed with the hand dryer's paint, becoming sky blue against the wall's PSU. Hm, well, Yvette fished white paint from the shed and applied layer of cream, make of that what you will. She hung a 'wet paint' sign before returning to her rounds.

Yvette emptied the shopping centre bins and cleaned miscarriage off the ladies toilet floor.* The handicapped/family toilet was hit with different tags: the changing table, the door, the 'wet paint' sign, which felt personal. Whatevs, Yvette Muck-Offed the graffiti as best she could and rolled the door fresh.

Yvette had lunch and watched a nutrition tier-list video during her cigarette.  Fresh tags appeared on those faded. Fucking school holidays.

Yvette finished the Much-Off and texted before-and-after photographs to the boss, who charges for this work. She binned the microfibers and kept the graffitied 'wet paint' sign as souvenir. Yvette's shift was done.

The process repeated the next day.

Something happened, of the Ship of Theseus variety. The freshly painted bathroom remains at the end of the breezeway, convenient for anyone's pooping. Piece by piece, however, the graffitied bathroom discretely stepped outside reality. Whoever carries the 'wet paint' sign owns the paradox bathroom. Whoever owns the Paradox Bathroom steps into it upon attempting to access any conventional bathroom. This is not useful for someone who needs to access toilets, plural, for their work.

Now, Yvette finds Syrah Syrah overrated: 'And you could do with more space for your alchemy.'

Magdalene growls agreement through her drink. Potions have spilled from her overfull shelf. Through tactical postponements the rental agent has not seen the kitchen glow swamp green during a waxing gibbous moon.

'What, I propose,' Yvette continues, 'is that you use this personal bathroom to make a certain potion.'

Said potion fundamentally alters the drinker's appearance to that of the DNA (gross) added. By applying CRISPR-Cas9 to a piece of drinker's own hair, the potion can fulfil certain aspects of the drinker's appearance. For reasons beyond Roland Barthes, however, the potion which fundamentally alters appearance is brewed in a female's toilet.

Magdalene is cross about this problem. Why? Never has man been able to sate his oh-so-desperate bowels in the sacred ladies' shitter. No man may enter to clean shit off those temple walls. Yvette herself cannot enter the gents  and so must work with a useless man called Aaron. This double-hiring of cleaners, extrapolated for every public toilets, is the sole driving force behind inflation.

(The only unoccupied female toilet that Yvette can recall is on the third floor of her former employers. Said toilet is currently patrolled by Amy, with drill gun: 'Come on out, penis allegory. This is a safe space.')

'But owning this Paradox Toilet will make it yours. A woman's. The ladies.' Yvette continues. Again. 'So you will be able to make Polyplus Potion. And you want to. Maybe for your customers to try out, see if it works. Or perhaps to ease the strain of those earlier, gender dysphoric days. Or perhaps to provide some customers with a lifetime supply, get your own indentured servants.

It could be done. It could be cheaper than existing options and you could still profit. Profit which you'd share with me.'

'Such enterprise would be non-profit.' Magdalene also finds Syrah Syrah to be so-so, but she knocks back her glass. 'But I appreciate the offer.'

Yvette suspected this possibility. Perhaps her profits lie in added values, such as her dabblings in sex lives. Otherwise, she has shown the Paradox Toilet to Cameron, who remarked:

'I could make drugs whilst shitting.'

And so the night continues in this would-be tree house, drunken chattering:

'But with a potion of Perfect "Eyeballing It" you can look good.'

            'Hardly the worst thing done by an Australian children's entertainer.'

                        'Oh - fuuuuuck.'

Someone has leaned too far on the railing and Mamta pours a shot of Monkey Booze. Everyone hears the oomph, 'that hurt' and the shot goes down. A tractor crests over the hill and Steven is still winded. The last thing he sees is headlights.

'Whoa.'

'Gnarly.

'He was a cunt.'

 Mamta is going to have to shut this bar down and start a new one. She will therefore not need the Impossible Ceiling Tiles and the market vibrates with repercussions. Mamta pours herself a Monkey Booze chaser. This drink is known as a Purple Spark.

 

*Ed: this actually happened, paramedics and all, in the handicapped toilets three months ago. 

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. 

Extrasolar Teas Box

Last drinks at the bar of Mamta Jagasia and the publican's long, violet nails rap staccato on bench top Security, a macaw perched atop double-barrelled shotgun, endures heavy eyelids. Pale extraterrestrials, not quite passing as human in black Zoot Suits, have tended to the Polybius cabinet and left. One lingering patron: Michelle's left hand swirls glass four of 'Dear Kelsie' 2019 whilst right hand slowly turns Extrasolar Teas Box so that she may read each side's writing.

Some context: a few months back, Michelle was making and selling her own Rapid Antigen Tests. These RATs, a piece of paper which says 'yeah, you got omicron bro' have been scientifically proven to be more accurate than those on the legitimate market and, furthermore, the demand at the time outstripped conventional supply.  Lo, Michelle made illegitimate bank or, rather, a canvas bag from a major supermarket chain (she works at one, literal half chance of guessing which) full of Ghost Tobacco, El Dorado Green and the Fire Extinguisher of Merg Portua, because CatScript (₵$) works as a mean of pricing but not as a store of wealth.

Michelle has no use for these esoteric inhalants and so is in the process of splurging, by barter, on weird alcohols. With paperwork brought home, Mamta has grown politely impatient and, sideways glance at canvas bag, proffered the Box of Suhwill Tea for Michelle's consideration. This xenobiotic tea comes from outer space. Now that grand scale dick waving has been privatised, commercial space tourism is a thing and space planes must be cleaned because zero-g vomit just gets everywhere. Luke cleans airplanes. He takes stuff left behind by passengers. Luke took the Box of Suhwill Tea from a space plane and sold it to Mamta for a drink-in-a-coconut recently popular in Genoa, Italy. Yeah, that checks out.

Anyway.

Michelle plonks the Flower of Suhwill on the bar: 'I can't get behind this.'

Mamta, covering her own bemused groan: 'Pray tell, why? You like tea. You don't want to awaken your Yeetsu?'

'I suspect that people were exploited in the making of this space tea. Ethically, I can't -' buuurp '- purchase this.'

Care to elaborate? : 'They advertised pretty clearly otherwise.'

Smug: 'They sat "it could never grow on Earth". That's because, on Earth, we have labour laws. How, about, another drink?'

Mamta discretely shuffled to stand in front of the coconuts: 'How, about, benefit of the doubt? They gave the Suhwill safety goggles.'

'Yeeesss, increased the eye health of the tea masters, made sure that indentured servants could work longer.'

'Pfft. Healthy work force.' Mamta seems to be drying a pint glass with rag. 'They don't use machine harvesters.'

'That's, because -' Michelle slaps hands on bar with more force than intended and tilts stoll slightly backwards, four seconds to rebalance herself 'exploiting unexploited foreigners is cheapr than machines aaand parts aaand engineers which, fair 'nuff, are just over qualified engineers. Dated an engineers once. Decent guy, but d'dn't work out. Prob'bly because he was a meteorologist.'

Mamta partly digests that before sensing a need to fill silence: 'They pay the Suhwill the full value of their labour plus 10%. Then three flowers on top of that.'

'Value as judged by an organisation that Evil Tea Evil Corp set up. Full value plus 10% probably is the three flowers.'

Exasperated, checking the box again: 'They're giving all their employees a lifetime supply of flowers.'

'Is drug. Keep 'em doped up, placid. And jus' because they like it doesn't mean is good for them - booze, tobacco, meth. The, uh, stuff is a pesticide.'

'Wait.' Mamta begins gotcha' smile. 'The Tea Masters gouge at the tree's roots with their beaks. Insects don't have beaks.'

Michelle takes the box of tea for her own consideration: 'Jus' 'cause they fly doesn't mean they're birds. See, addiction in rodents - they're bats.'

Reiterating: 'Beaks.'

'Hmmmer then maybe...'

Sexy pose: 'Nobody was exploited in the making of this space tea.  And they're sending that chick's kids, or, ahh, chicks to uni.'

'Yeah, probably study to be engineers. Or meteorologists.' Michelle plonks the Flower of Suhwill on the bar. 'I can't get behind this.'

Zombie Scalp No. 730

Iris is a short, smiley woman in her 20's who has the skill set and qualifications for engineering work but not the penis seemingly required to secure said work. She pays bills by (wo)manning a small goods stall at the market in town and this job sates her need for casual interaction in these socially distanced times. To sate her need to shoot people in the head, whilst distanced and anti-social, she moonlights as a zombie hunter. (She has begun to admit to herself that she is on the other spectrum.)

Much like the bubonic plague, the zombie virus that wreaked havoc in Central America during the 760's is still around. Whilst the plague's threat has been nullified by advances in medical science, contemporary outbreaks of the zombie virus are handled by modern firearms. Iris started out with a bow and arrows fletched with Quetzalcoatl feathers but soon adopted a pragmatic .22 rifle less likely to cause collateral murder. She invested later profits into a lever-action shotgun and four surveillance drones.

There is good money, or at least CatScript, in zombie scalps. Hair and fingernails continue to grow after a person has died, so a scalp detached from undead cranium will continue to grow hair. Depending on the individual scalped and the conditioner applied, this hair is indistinguishable from that of living east-Europeans. These scalps are known, by Marxist wig makers, as a "means of production".

Iris feels good after her first hunt in a month, relieved of that itch within shins that ransoms sleep for a counter-productive run. After swinging by home for a shower, tempeh burger and a touch of ruby lippy, she heads to Mamta's. Mamta works as a high school S.O. and this drives her to drink, so she opens granny flat as a speakeasy most Friday and Saturday nights. However, seeing the trajectory that she was on and deciding that wine snobbery is better than piss freakery, she opts for one bottle or six-pack of the better boozes that CatScript can buy. She trades rare drinks for unique items and unique items for rare drinks, spending the profits on that weekend's esoteric imbibing. It was through her pursuit of charcuterie that Mamta met Iris.

Iris enters with adrenalized smile, arms wide and a full-body bop that starts at the left heel: "She's got it. Yeah baby, she's got it."

"Interesting choice." Mamta, behind the bar, dries a beer glass. "But two blondes and a brunette is a classic."

Lobbing Coles bag of zombie scalps onto bar: "Speaking of. Three brunettes, two blondes, a redhead aaand an albino."

"Mm-hmm." Mamta pours a shot of monkey booze and chaser of Schweppes Sugar-Free Lemonade. "I can take the blondes and the red. Having trouble offloading the surplus of brunette. Shampooing them feels weird."

Monkey booze down and eyes watering: "What? How often do you find an albino zombie? You don't, but I do, and I doubt I could again."

"It's white. Kinda' defeats the purpose of a wig, doesn't it?"

"There's no melanin. Its pre-bleached, you could colour it anyway you want. And the sheen.”

Mamta concedes that there might be a market to an albino zombie scalp and takes on the financial risk. Iris can thus afford a few more Shinobi Firecrackers, slings some shit with the barkeep and takes a bus for a few drives through traffic (Thrill Drive 3 is a game). Thus emboldened to dodge traffic, she departs after haggling with Mamta for a spliff of El Dorado Green in  exchange for the raven-black scalp - on the condition that that Iris saves said reefer for home. The speakeasy is empty and Mamta dries a pint glass. A minute before a tall man bursts through the door, fists held in air and declaring:

"Got it bad, sooo baaad, I'm hot for teacher."

Mamta smirks: "Who has passed the trial of Mamta McDougal?"

The man glances around, grows unsure and lowers his hands: "Heeey. Do you know a guy called Henry?"

Smiling now: "You must be James, the husband."

"The ex."

James found Henry's stash/library of straight anal porn. People watch porn and masturbation happens within marriage, but the volume and frequency of Henry's consumption had a negative correlation to happenings in the marital bed. It felt, to James, like an affair.

They hastened the divorce by splitting the house. James got the wine cellar. A few weeks later, the laundry sink (both toilets fell on Henry's side) attested that James could not drink. He has instead been regifting or selling the ex's booze.

James: "So, I believe Henry bought a McMurdo Eiswein 2017 here. Do you give refunds?"

"Do you have the receipt?"

"Ummm?"

"I'm fucking with you. Do you know how CatScript works? It's all barter. Maybe was can make a trade?"

(The retailer will profit, of course.)

"How about a hair farm?" Mamta nods to the bag of zombie scalps, still on the bar. "I have a healthy albino here. Colour it however you want and, if you get bored with the wig, just wait for more to grow and dye another."

A squirm rises unseen up the right of James' right abdomen. Bored with lockdown and having failed to drink, James had tried to get into his ex's smut (the back shed fell on James' side). Although not aroused, he was struck by the milieu of thin pretences, the new generation of pizza deliveries and pipes needing cleaning: horny step-siblings, tits falling out of low-cut dresses, economic disparity. James found some premises unwholesome but others charming with a camp plot that winked at the audience: we all know that this is a porno.

Weeks passed and James got back into playing the piano or, rather, a Casio keyboard (the Yamaha Arius is in Henry's lounge room). With a Masters in Business, a covid-cocoon and a touch of divorce spite, a side-hustle struck James whilst improvising around the chords of "Grease Is The Word".

Live. Musical. Porn.

A night of theatre, comedy and song that would leave the audience dancing towards hastily booked motel rooms. James' mind collated expenses. Who can sing, act, dance and fuck? How many cameras? From which angles? Most relevantly: wigs, the costumes that distinguish characters and grant anonymity to the hot young things. It seemed financially knife-edge and James had grown despondent, but Zombie Scalp No. 730 offers  a new technology to cut just enough costs to make this enterprise viable...

The Frankie Drake Protocol Glasses

Jessica Fordham in fatigues, left fist on table and eyebrows raised at maximum: 'Question. How possible?'

Mathias Pyne, seated opposite in deep-blue suit with fingers meshed atop stomach: 'I am a busy man. Really, a member of the department -'

'I know where you keep the thylacines, government man.'

'In this downturn, we have less need for keyboard warriors.'

Pissed off: 'I am on the front lines of Australia's cyber defence.'

'In this downturn, we have less -'

'What department are you minister for?'

'The Department of Very Bad Ideas.'

'Oh. Shit. Thought you guys were a joke.'

'Many of our stakeholders maintain that position.'

Frown downcast, Jessica cleans her work desk: photograph of wider family, 5x4 Rubik's cube, potted peyote cluster, nerf-replica Boneduster and taxidermied werewolf head. As she drives home, however, cresting over onto main roads relatively empty at two in the afternoon, Jessica feels something like liberation: she has come into some free time. Old challenges raise their heads. She is determined when she gets home and, as soon as she is through the door, confronts the television with a Phoenix Wright pose:

'Machine! Yours secrets are mine!'

(Soooo, Jessica had one of those Christian homeschool upbringings where television is banned but a computer, supervised by technologically less-literate parents, is allowed. This is how Jessica learned to code, crack, hack and troll. This is also why the television, which came bolted to the wall with the rental property, taunts Jessica with her lack, her failing, a blindside in her cultural education - but no more.)

Six days later and Jessica has made notes:

·         Expected king-of-the-mountain version of 'game show'. Instead got kinky porno overconfident on plot.

·         Why do I want funeral insurance?

·         How do pawnbrokers survive if they don't make sales or have loans repaid?

·         Fast food adds always target when hungry. How do I block cookies from my digestive tract?

·         Frankie Drake Mysteries is just Murdoch Mysteries with slappers. I could do that.

So that is what Jessica sets out to do: remake every live-action television show, with slappers. She does this with augmented-reality glasses. A modified facial-and-body tracking program detects all characters on the television screen. A slapper overlays the character on the glasses' display, work done by an artificial intelligence that Jessica trains - training A.I. is, was, her job with the defence force.  'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a machine to fish and behold the blue revolution. Or ocean-wide extinction. One of the two.' A similar process is done with the audio. Once completed, the Frankie Drake Protocol Glasses open a new frontier of television:

·         Generation Slapper, in which a Rolling Stone slapper is embedded with a battalion of slappers during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

·         The Slapper, in which 14 slappers must compete for the heart of a slapper.

·         Zrrhlfm, best describe as Elfin Lied as animated by SEK Studio and directed by Jean-Luc Goddard. The algorithm does not work as intended with the raw data that is Frasier.

The construction of the Frankie Drake Protocol Glasses was not as simple as this sounds and also required significant funding for components. Jessica therefore contacted Erin, a friend through work who, not to objectify, has a slender black tail sprouting from beneath the waist line of jeans that really suit her ass. It was Erin who suggested that the Frankie Drake Protocol be materialised as glasses as opposed to a supplementary television box:

'If you're at the movies but your date reads the wrong critics, or you're visiting the folks and they're watching Bargain Hunt, you can activate the glasses and secretly watch something better and still seem polite.'

Jessica, unsure: 'Sounds like more work.'

'And I will grant you a larger Angel Investment.' A moment for Erin to read Jessica's smirk. 'Demon Investment, whatever.'

'Tacks of brass?'

'Once completed, you can use it for three months. Then it's mine. I'll sell it for booze.'

'That suits. I just really want it out there, so that someone can share my vision.'

'You are the most kind hearted troll I've met.'

'I should be insulted, suspecting that you know actual trolls of the mountain variety.'

In Jessica's tone: like some of your exes.

Erin plays mock-exasperated: 'I don't mean like that. You know, John asked after you, other week.'

'Your cousin?' Demur. 'He's sweet. But a meteorologist.'

The aforementioned deals take place and Erin ends up with the Frankie Drake Protocol Glasses. (If plot holes or other confusions are apparent, please leave a note in the disabled comments section. And, pre-emptively, everyone knows that Frankie Drake Mysteries and Murdoch Mysteries exist in the same fictional universe.) With corded headphones in ears, Erin bops in the darkness beneath gum trees, behind a safety barrier. Her eyes are on the blue, black, grey or red blips intermittent at roughly three seconds, beneath the saturating light that hyper-reals the six lane freeway. For verisimilitude:

She does not look both ways. Erin thrusts headphones into pockets and vaults barrier with a 'Go go Power Ranguuurs'. She sprints. One lane. Two lanes. A whizz past her back, Doppler-effect horn. Three lanes. Toppling head first over barrier onto median strip, onto arms and rolling smooth onto feet.

Hurdling the next barrier. Four lanes. A gun-metal-blue blur past her front and she flinches, pivots with arms outstretched. Screech. Whop.

Erin rolls twice and lands fifteen metres from the collision point. The ute's hazard lights are blinking, bonnet dented and windscreen cracked, so Ryan pokes head out the window:

'Shit. You all right?'

Erin stands and arches backwards: 'Owwww. Yeah, yeah I'll live.'

Wiggling eyebrows: 'Good thing I was only doing ninety.'

Erin lobs Ryan a ball of money and limps off: 'Let's not get insurance involved.'

'Sure thing. Say -'

She glares over shoulder.

'- you want to grab a drink sometime?'

She shakes head and returns headphones to ears: 'Fuck off, cunt. You have the tact of CUTIFILM Protective Waterproof Film.'

They part ways. Erin limps to and steps over the freeway barrier. She grips the top of a steel fence, 'Nooo ooone, will ever take them down', one, two and she scrambles over. She lands in a four by five metre backyard with a lawn that could do with a trim. Light slips beneath the door of a self-contained granny flat.

Inside: a red velvet couch, Ghost Buster's pinball machine, four backless wooden stools accommodated at a high bar. In the room's top back-right corner, a blue-and-yellow macaw is perched atop a double-barrel shotgun that slowly pivots, hanging from ceiling by two ropes, to stare Erin down.

Behind the bar, a woman cloth-dries a beer glass: 'Who has passed the trial of Mamta McDougal?'

'I have never seen anyone here use a glass.' Erin complains. 'You don't have taps.'

Mamta shrugs and releases her smile.

Erin takes a stool: 'And yes, I crossed the freeway. Not without complications.'

Erin's eyes widen and she hurriedly pats her coat pockets.

Mamta: 'I only serve trusted clientele. Crossing the freeway - its illegal. I trust that.'

Erin places the undamaged Frankie Drake Protocol Glasses on the bar: 'Thank fuck. The thing I told you about.'

Mamta, what can I get you? 'Patupaiarehe Frappato 2012?' Taking bottle from beneath bar. 'Tasting notes. Pomegranate, sweet strawberry, slutroot -'

'Who's tasted slutroot? Maybe something older.'

'Smell is ninety percent of taste.' Swapping bottle. 'How about the kumis of Karakorum's Fountain? A favourite of Möngke Khan.'

'Horse milk? Take those curds away.'

'Six pack of Dirty Granny?'

'Now we're talking. But I reckon you can do better.'

Mamta responds to the goad with a puckered smile and dark challenge in her eyes: 'They say it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and look where that got us. Original Sin. In hindsight, Steve couldn't do any worse.

Perhaps the Powers That Be knew something of this and, hypothetically speaking, ran an Adam and Steve parallel to the Adam and Eve. Now, statistically speaking, both Adam and Steve were straight because, not to stereotype the gays, but there's less of them. That's why they're a minority.

Now, Adam and Steve lived in Paradise with plants and beasts plenty to feed them, and free of all pain. And so, with no knowledge of constipation, they had no need for fibre in their diets and thusly only ate barbecue.

When Adam said "Hey brah, you know that tree that the Big Guy said we couldn't partake of? You wanna partake of it?"

Steve said "Eat fruit? Gaaaaay. You know who eats fruit? Fruits."

And they laughed. "Ha ha ha ha ha."

And the Devil came in the form of a serpent to Steve and said "You're just too pussy to partake of the fruit of good and evil."

But Steve said to the Devil "What are you? I haven't barbecued you before."

And so that happened. Adam and Steve eventually figured out fermentation and just invented aaallll the booze and yeah, fermented the forbidden fruit. But it needed to cellar for six months, by which time they found a microbrewery with beer pong down the street.'

Erin leans on bar: 'Original Sin in a Bottle. Applejack? Fig gin? Tomato wine?'

Tight-lipped smug: 'Adam and Eve, Adam and Steve or Adam and Eve and Steve?'

'The one I'm buying.'

'Oh. Perry cider.'

'Fuck off get me two bottles.'

Oh, and at some point, over a boozy dinner, Adam said to Steve: 'Brah, brah, real talk - I am so glad the Big Guy, like, you are my favourite rib. I mean it.'

And Steve said: 'Duuude, that's what we should have next. Riiiibs.'