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.

"What's that boss?" Pointing to the packaging and product on my workbench.

"The newest Castle Gudanov product, Hans. It's the infinite snooze alarm clock. I expect it will sell really well."

Hans picks up the alarm clock and the thick 500 page manual. "How does it work?"

"Just like any regular alarm clock, only when you hit snooze you are randomly displaced in time by a tachyon emitter for 7 minutes. When the 7 minutes is over, no time has passed in your actual timeframe."

"Huh? So you can hit snooze as much as you like and you'll never be late?"

"Exactly."

"Why is the manual so big? It doesn't look complicated."

"It's simple, it works like any other alarm clock. The last 495 pages of the manual are all just warnings and disclaimers. You gotta really cover yourself when you market temporal displacement devices."

Oooh, new NevR-Late Snooz Clock. What a great idea. It's cute, too, shaped like that. And it comes in colors! Gotta get me one.

Somewhere over in Dogtown, there's a vague rumbling. The local power momentarily flickers. Is it possible that the members of Grooveyard [in what state they were formerly left, I can't recall] could be waking up and plugging in? Handy, that NevR-Late Snooz Clock.

Hello, yes? Is anyone available in the Complaints Department?

Yes, well, you see, I have a bit of a problem. Well, yes, it's my drummer, you see. He appears to have used your clock? And you know how sometimes you wake up even after you hit the snooze button? Well, he did that, and, well, he was apparently somewhere in the mid-16th century. Yeah, I dunno why, either.

What's the problem with that? Well, there isn't any, really, it's just that, he seems to have liked it. Yes, and now he wants to go back. But you know, it's random, so he just keeps hitting the snooze button over and over again.

I mean, sure we were in stasis for all that time, but that was just like sleeping, but really really cold. You know? We're up now, and so long as we are, we might as well try to get some work, but he's like, obsessed.

So can you like, actually, help, or something?