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.

Deep in my gut, I feel a pull. Shopping. I need to shop. NO. I am needed by shoppers.

I follow my gut. The Folly, eh?

Smiley-faces! Smiley-faces everywhere! Gah! A few keys punched on my hand-held, and a SEP field is securely up around me. The smiley-face-giver-outers won't be messing with me.

I track them down, and observe for a short time. "Are you happy?" my foot. Folks have a right to be morose, melancholy, and even moody if they want.

Happy you want: happy you will never escape. In the name of all that is snarky, I doom The Perfect People to a lifetime of "Up, Up and Away (my beautiful balloon)" played for their on-hold listening pleasure.

On second thought, may it be always on-hold and never answered into the bargain.

On third thought: May The Perfect People be eternally earwormed with an ersatz Karen Carpenter humming "Up, Up, and Away" rather than the original version by The Fifth Dimension.

Dang all, I can be mean if I don't get enough chocolate.

A fourth thought: What if these Perfect People are just constructs, empty shells, automatons? Hmmmm.

Tinkering a little with the vengence spell, I cause earworm to devolve upon whatever intelligence controlls The Perfect People.

The buffet line inches slowly forward, filled with smiling, vacant eyed people. Which is odd, considering that the chef is scooping slightly gritty flapjacks off of the floor and placing them on the plates eagerly thrust in front of him.

Then the humming starts.

“Marilyn McCoo?” I ask the two cats seated beside me. El Negro just stares at me. “Yeah, you’re right. It sounds like the Carpenters’ version.”

The chef is reaching the bottom of the stack of pancakes on the floor beside him when a brand new batch flies in through the open window. He takes a break from serving to pick up two or three that overshoot the hot trays of food in the buffet line and land in the salad bar beside it. As he’s arranging the flapjacks into a neat stack, Gert stumbles in. It’s not every day that you see someone from a chaos dimension covered in smiley face stickers.

“Did you know that the whole front wall of the hotel is covered with these things?” She points at an innocuous yellow sticker on her shoulder. Then she pauses, looks around at the dining room, the buffet line, back at me. “Should you be letting Jose serve pancakes off the floor like that?”

“He’s getting most of the mugre off.” I shrug. “Besides, all these people are getting a free Continental Breakfast and I think half of them aren’t even staying here.” Gert gives me a skeptical look. “It was her idea.” I offer, pointing at La Chica.

“It was her idea to book that berserkers convention, too. And look how well that turned out. $15,000 worth of new lawn furniture.” La Chica stretches and lets out a single, low growl. “I know they paid for it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a bad idea in the first place.”

“Alright, let’s just let it lie, shall we? Besides, these people are perfectly happy with their breakfast. Just look at them. They’re even singing.”

“Yeah, with their mouths full. Doubly annoying and gross.”

“You have a piece of maggot in your teeth.” Gert reaches for one of the toothpicks sitting in the porcelain holder in the middle of the table.

“Aren’t you curious as to why it’s raining pancakes? Or why the dining room is filled with singing zombie happy people?”

“It’s Saturday morning in Sang Sacre." Gert raises an eyebrow at me. "If you want to know, go exploring.”

Gert points at her smiley face covered self. “I did!”

“And?” El Negro, La Chica and I look at her expectantly.

“A new local government agency. The Ministry of Happiness. At least, about the happy people. The pancakes are still a mystery.”

“Ministry of Happiness? That doesn’t sound good.” I look at La Chica. It’s worth a try. “Mozo.” One of my new waiters, Pedro, appears silently at my side. I make a mental note to hire more teleporters. “Pedro, a little music please. La Chica will tell you the one.”

A few minutes later, a deep, sorrowful voice begins to sound through the Bose speakers. “Te vas de mi lado porque eres cobarde, y porque le temes a mi situación; después de engañarme me dejas rodando, sufriendo les penas de tu falso amor.”

“Sosa? An interesting choice. Well, you can never go wrong with the classics.”

As the bolero plays on, speaking of how Placido lost everything, home family, sacrificed his whole life, to follow in the path of the woman he could never have, the vacant eyed people in the dining room begin to shake their heads, look around as if trying to figure out where they are.

“You see?” I say to Gert. “Boleros make everything better. Why don’t you take that CD to the local radio station?”

As Gert is leaving, a confused looking woman approaches the table, almost apologetically. “Excuse me, but why are there leaves on this pancake?” she asks, holding her plate out for my inspection.

“Organic.” I reply with a smile.

Ah, what a fine day...a good sorcerous grimoire, a decent pipe full of horrible cheap tobacco (only the best of the worst for me) and a bright sunny day. I stomp along the sidewalk reading about "worm-holes" and "quan-tum superposition" and how it relates to demonic conjuration and apocalyptic happenings on several planes.

"Excuse me, are you happy?"

"Yes," I grunt and continue on my way.

The idiotic person falls into step with me. "I don't think you're truly happy."

"Well, I am." Quantum gravity? Interesting...

"Deep in your soul I believe that you are truly not happy..."

I stop and look up at the imbecile shadowing me and prattling. "Yes. I am."

"Your face is all frowny. You don't seem happy."

"Well, I am."

"But the frowny..."

"Look. YOU are making me do the frowny. I was perfectly content to walk along and smoke my horrible eye-wateringly bad tobacco and read about quantum thingies and you decided to rudely interrupt said stomping horrible-smoking quantum thingy reading and bother me with your ignorant puling about 'true happiness'. YOU are the source of 'not happiness'. So...if you want me to be happy...fuck off." I continue on my way.

"Sir, I think your unhappiness is deeper than that..."

"It isn't."

"I think it is."

"All right. But you're wrong, it isn't."

"But I think..."

"ALL RIGHT!" I snarl. "You got me. I am NOT truly, deeply and completely happy."

"I think I can help you with that."

I smile. "I think you can, too."

Forty-five seconds later Smiley Man is not so Smiley. He is, in fact, screaming as incomprehensibly terrible and terrifying demonic beings from another realm suck him into their world and devour him alive.

"Now I'm happy."

My minion is driving me through the city in my Hummer. Ah, the people look happy in that forced way I like so much. I'm happy to see that the ministry of happiness is on the job.

As we pull up to the Folly/Wal-Mart my minion points out the police arresting a jaywalker. Between the helmet with the full face reflective visor and the head to to black uniform, I can't tell if it is one of the old officer or one of the new recruits. Probably one of the old ones, since they are being too gentle. Time to ramp up the brutality program.

The new Wal-Mart Supercenter in the Folly looks, well, like any other Wal-Mart on the inside. We see all sorts of products, household appliances, drugs, food, electronics, evil...

I drag my minion into the evil section. Damn, they are undercutting my prices on everything. "How can they ritual sacrifice daggers for this price?!"

My minion picks one up. "They're made in the Chinese hell of poor labor conditions sir."

"Something must be done Deimos! Something must be done!"

I shouldn't point swords at Bob. It makes him cranky, and not in the way that can be so much fun. But there's a principle at, um, stake.

"You're not going down there," I tell him, my back against the door.

"You're being silly." His eyes are glinting red in the light. Not a good sign. "They've got printer paper cheap, they've even got those chips you like that you said you missed. There's nothing evil about shopping at Wal-Mart."

"Not in a strict moral point of view, no. But they evicted the porn shop to make room for them! They said there'd be departments to serve all the people in town, but where's the section for the pervs, huh? Where can an honest person go for their regular dose of pretty pictures of pretty people doing interesting things to each other?"

Bob scuffed his feet on the carpet. He muttered something.

"Bob, if you dare utter the phrase 'family values' within these walls . . ."

"Wasn't! And there's Ali the Mad's place just down the street for porn, you'll never miss Penelope's Fun4All."

"Look I'm not patronizing a place where I don't know if I'm getting a good time or selling my soul to the nether creatures of darkness. You're already dead, it doesn't matter to you, but have you ever noticed that the credit card receipts at Ali's all have a line about swearing your allegiance to some Should Not Be Named dark god right above where you sign your name?"

"They do?"

"Yes, they do." I readied my big gun. "Sure, Wal-mart's got stuff cheap, but you know what else they've done? Their lease says there can't be competing shops in the same complex. Wal-mart sells groceries, no other grocery stores in the Folly. Guess what Wal-mart is planning on opening next, Bob. A hair salon."

He stiffened in shock. Heh, stiffen. Anyway. "We've already got a salon."

"Won't for long."

"They're not going to force out Bikini Cuts."

"That's the plan."

He very rarely lets me see the full-on fangs-and-glowy-eyes thing. "It shall not be borne."

I let him go. Never get between a vampire and haircuts done by good-looking people wearing skimpy swimwear.

Note to self:

Need to schedule cut, color and brow wax at Bikini Cuts. Although I still think it slightly wrong to get arch advice from a bethonged unibrowed gay ogre.

It's not the thong that gets me, let's be clear. It's the unibrow.