A wooden door in the back of a dimly lit shop opens up and out I pop.

"Hey, Ms. Mann, long time, no see!"

The elderly woman who is my landlady nodded agreeably at me and kept rocking and knitting, one eye cocked at the TV.

Velvet Goldmine...again. If it wasn't Goldmine, it was "DOG: The Bounty Hunter.

I shook some unidentifiable plant detrius from my hair, spilled some purple pebbles from one shoe, amd hopped over to the couch.

"Man, it feels like AGES since I've seen you, Ms. M! How's things?"

She flicked the remote at the screen, and we both contemplated a naked Christian Bale for a second.

"Child, your room's are still there, tried to keep 'em clean and not mess nothing up too bad."

"STILL there?"

Well, crap. Goddamned interdimensional portals. They are so fucking unreliable when it rains.

"How long this time?"

She continued to work at the pink and lime striped baby bunting in her lap. (Well, I assumed it was a baby bunting, except it appeared to have 8 legs. It's better to observe than to ask directly with Mrs. M.)

"Oh, 'bout two years and a bit."

"TWO YEARS!" I shrieked. The old fingers went on calmly purling. "Two years in that glorified wormhole? Oh, I am PISSED about this. And that Gudenov guy up at Castle creepy is definitely getting a very POINTED letter about customer service."

I sniffed. "Ugh. After I bathe. Do I still have any clothes left here?"

"All of them, child. I stopped wearing corsets long about, oh, 200 years ago. Here," and she rose from her chair and pulled out a cut glass decanter with an amythest knob. "It's lavender and fairy musk and the essence of cloissione. Go run youself a nice hot bath and I'll bring you up a nice cup of tea."

Some things never change in Sang Sandre.

Most everything else does, though.

schpluttt!

Hmmm. There's a blueberry pancake on my window. And I'm on the 6th floor.

schplutt

I pull open the file drawer and find the stack of Batman Returns paper plates at the bottom. My drawer full of Things Yet To Be Mailed has a little glass log cabin filled with maple syrup.

I open the window, and wait expectantly.

I lie blissfully sunk up to my eyebrows in hot, perfumed water, enjoying the breeze coming in through the open window. I close my eyes, sigh happily and slide even further under, muscles finally going loose and happy in the heat.

My head is rudely knocked back against the porcelain by a high velocity sponge. I schreech, levitate dripping out of the water and scrabble the thing off my face thinking "Alien baby! Alien baby!"

It appears to be a pancake. I sniff cautiously.

Cinnamon. Cranberries. Pecans.

Huh. I nibble and it's pretty good. So I eat half, arrange the other half into a fragrant eye mask and slide back into my interrupted bath.

From the very sky a golden disc of breakfest food flies and smacks me square in the back, as my minion and I are out about town committing random acts of evil. I inspect the remains of this unwelcome food from the sky.

"It's a pancake sir." Explains my minion.

"I know that!" I smack my minion. "But why pancakes? Why not fire, or toads, or entrails, or something more more...."

"Ominous?"

"Right. This town needs some changes, raining pancakes from the sky simply will not do. I should threaten the mayor."

"You are the mayor sir."

"What?"

"You never actually did any paperwork when you said you withdrew from the race. You were still elected."

"Then changes will me made!"

"What about the city council sir?"

"I assure you they will come to see things my way, by one means or another. Come Deimos there is much work to do."

"Bloody Hell!"

Sgt. Chopper was sitting at the duty desk of Sang Sacre's militia headquarters when he heard the familiar Orkshire accent, and he looked up from his stack of paperwork as Captain Charpe stomped into the office.

"It's raining bloody breakfast food outside."

"Aye, sir, that explains it. I was about to inquire as to why you were using a pancake for an epaulette," Chopper said as he reached for the flapjack in question. He sniffed it, then swallowed it with a single bite. "Blueberry! Tasty, too. Oh, and that wasn't blood, sir. It was raspberry syrup."

"It's an expression, sergeant. Now, if you're quite done having your bloody breakfast, take a squad and find out who's behind it. I suggest you try the usual place first."

"Yes, sir. Castle Gudanov it is."

As I continue to look out the windows, pancakes begin the flap down from the sky. How odd - it's not pancake season is it?

Suddenly, I hear an approaching roar. A six-foot high flapjack goes rolling past the window and continues to roar as it envelops an unsuspecting resident out for a stroll in the cakes.

"Here is the paperwork, boss."

My minion hands me a stack of documents to sign. Increased police funding, good; funding for the new ministry of happiness, excellent; new greatly loosened pollution regulations, wonderful; and finally approval to buy out the Folly and turn it into a Wal-Mart Supercenter, ah priceless.

Nothing like a gang of chaos fiend demons to convince the city council to see things my way.

A lonely man in the bar finishes off his drink and starts to sit up when a hand grasps his shoulder.

"Hello friend." Says a friendly voice.

The man turns to see two perfect people. They are smartly dressed with perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect complextion, perfect physique, warm smiles and lifeless eyes. The perfect man takes the barfly's hand in a firm but firendly handshake while the perfect woman gives him another warm smiles.

"We'd like to talk to you about how you can make our city a better and happier place." Says the perfect woman.

"Um...ok."

After a friendly talk, the lonely man now sports a button with a smiley face and the words "Ministry of Happiness" in small type and a pamplet all the quest to maintain happiness.

On the way out of the bar, he overhears someone complaining about how city hall is handling funds. That's exactly the sort of unhappiness spreading individual the nice people from the ministry wanted to know about.

Bathed, breakfasted (hey, if it's raining lemons, you make lemonade, right? And also stay on the porch to avoid fruit-induced head trauma) and bejeweled, I stride out of my apartment, waving cheerfully to Ms. Mann from under my umbrella.

The pancake rain has dwindled to a blini-size trickle, but still, a girl doesn't like to have pastry in her hair, right?

My intentions are to go down to Jilli's shoppe, find out what's been shaking in Sang Sacre since I've been gone, see what's up with this culino-meterological event and maybe pick up a pair of a new fishnets. (Trans-dimensional hopping is hell on hose. Literally.)

Halfway there, some Anway reps accost me, and try to press some literature on me. They're not actually Amway reps, but they have the same Clinque-Happy-on-uppers kind of scent about them. I tried to sidestep and smile, but they're persistent, and sidle alongside me, talking about the need for happiness. I hem and haw, and finally lose my temper and step on the guy's instep with my pointy heel, while babbling incoherently in Latin.

I hurry the rest of the way to Jilli's shoppe, ignoring the semi-polite mutterings behind me...but I notice a disproportionate number of "Minstry of Happiness" buttons on pedestrians.

Stupid people. Everyone know true happiness comes out of a bottle.

Horrified, I recoil back into the shadows cast by the pillars in the shopping arcade of the Folly. My god, they've made it inside.

Ministry of Happiness. The name gives me chills.

They're as insidious as a leak in a cheap roof. They've buttonholed Charlie the Newspaper Creature there at his newsstand. He started to tell them to move along, that they were blocking his counter, but they just kept talking at him. I could see his mind go blank and a wide smile slowly creep across his face. It looks like it hurts.

The she-creature in pink beams and holds out a button. Charlie starts to reach for it. Nothing for it, I have to act.

"Hey, Charlie, is the new issue of Leatherman in yet?" I say as I move forward. How I can stay so cheerful next to that chemical-floral scent from the Happy Clones, I don't know.

"Uh--I don't know . . ." Charlie is blinking in confusion.

"Could you check? How about i Creature of the Night? Bob's been asking."

"Yeah, sure . . ." He climbs off his stool and looks at the stacks under the counter. The kids always flip through the kinkier magazines and make loud Euw noises if he leaves them out.

The Barbie-clone swivels to look at me. Did I just see her eyes spin? Like an Internet icon showing something was processing. "Hello, friend," she chirps. "Are you happy?"

"I'm very happy," I tell her sincerely.

"You only think you're happy."

"I think, therefore I am. Therefore, I am happy."

"No, you're not."

"Yes, I am."

Charlie hands over the magazines. I hand him a twenty and wave off the change. I don't want to hang around.

The Ken-creature looks at the magazines and frowns. "Those magazines are evil. They will not lead to happiness."

"Yes, they will." The smile is a lot easier, this time.

"No, they won't."

"Yes, they will."

"No, they won't."

"Yes, they won't."

"No, they will--" Ken freezes, and his eyes spin, too.

I run for the elevators. I think this might call for the elephant rifle.