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“Probably,” Noel agreed.

  He and Sean got all their stuff together, putting it back into their pockets and their bags, then stood to leave.

  “Thanks a lot,” Noel said to Meyer.

  “Don’t mention it,” Meyer said.

  Then, Noel scooped up the rifle from the table and whacked Meyer very hard in the head with the butt. Meyer crumpled to the ground, unconscious, bleeding slightly from his forehead.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Sean said, frowning. “He probably would have come with us if we asked.”

  “For once, we’re doing this my way,” said Noel. “We’re running late as is. Give me the net.”

  He threw the net over Meyer, then gathered it up into a bag-like bundle and started to drag Meyer.

  “Let’s go,” said Noel.

  Together, they marched out into the hall, dragging Meyer behind them.

  “We really didn’t have to hurt him,” complained Sean.

  “Next time I reprogram you, remind me to make you talk less,” snapped Noel.

  They started to drag Meyer down the corridor. As Meyer had suggested, the corridor was empty. All the anarchists must have still been attending the speech.

  Noel suddenly stopped.

  “It occurs to me that the last two times we were in a situation like this, having just secured the defective person and all, the wall exploded.”

  Noel looked suspiciously at the adjacent wall.

  “I hate it when that happens,” said Sean. “Maybe we should stand in the middle of the room so we don’t get showered by dust again.”

  “Good idea,” said Noel.

  They found a wide juncture in the corridor and dragged Meyer to the center of it, such that they were at safe and equal distance from all the surrounding walls.

  It was at this point that the ceiling exploded.

  Chapter 28

  They were showered with dust, fragments of concrete, and other debris as the ceiling exploded.

  “Damn it,” swore Noel, wiping himself off. “I just got this lab coat dry-cleaned!”

  Similarly, Sean was patting off his patchwork jacket with some apprehension.

  “This is my best coat,” he complained.

  Both Sean and Noel had managed to avoid any of the larger chunks that had fallen when the ceiling exploded, and neither had been buried under the wave of falling debris. Meyer had been partially buried by concrete and shattered drywall, but Sean quickly pulled him free.

  Looking up, Sean saw what had caused the ceiling to explode.

  The sky was full of black helicopters. The one directly above them had lettering on the side that said, “General OmniAll 93rd Environmental Regulatory Compliance Air Assault Brigade” stamped across it.

  Somewhere, an air raid siren started to blare, and looking up through the ceiling, Sean saw anarchist anti-aircraft guns flash to life and begin to fling flak rounds at the helicopters, many of which returned fire. The building rocked and rumbled with explosions. One helicopter in the distance was struck by flak rounds and burst into flames, spinning to its doom against the ground.

  Sean put his hands on his hips.

  “These anarchists and General OmniAll people are very violent. Why do they have to fight all the time?” Sean asked. “Why can’t they just do what that John Lennon song says and Give Peace Some Pants?”

  Noel stared at him.

  “It’s ‘Give Peace A Chance,’ you idiot. Why would you think it said ‘Give Peace Some Pants?’”

  “Well, I can’t understand anything else he says in that song,” Sean said defensively.

  Noel sighed and looked up at the tracer and flak rounds lighting up the sky like so many late afternoon fireworks.

  “I agree they are very violent, though,” he said. “This looks like an even bigger fight than that time deranged nutcase Ted, deranged nutcase Todd, and deranged nutcase Tad walked into the Security Department and challenged anger management Ed and mentally unstable Fred to a foosball game.”

  “Who won?”

  “Hard to tell through all the splinters and blood.”

  “Ah.”

  They paused for a while, mesmerized by the lights and bass rumble of distant explosions. The helicopter that had been flying roughly overhead suddenly hovered a little lower and dropped a half-dozen or so ropes.

  “Those look like the ropes they have in movies that people use to slide down onto the ground from helicopters,” observe Sean.

  “Yeah, they do,” agreed Noel. “Wait...”

  Suddenly, for Noel at least, the spell was broken.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he shouted, and grabbed both Sean and the net containing Meyer, then dragged them back into the shuddering, debris-filled corridor and in the direction of the exit.

  “Run, run!” screamed Noel.

  “Why?” Sean asked.

  Behind them, several heavily armed gunmen dropped down the ropes and started to spray bullets at them.

  “Oh,” Sean said, and started to run.

  They rounded a corner, dragging Meyer. The gunmen pursued them. Noel rounded another corner and stopped.

  “We can’t escape with both you and Meyer,” said Noel, gesturing to Meyer, who was still unconscious in the sack. “There’s no choice. Sean, we’ll have to leave you behind. Delay them and buy me time to escape with Meyer.”

  “No!” Sean said.

  He rounded a corner. A burst of gunfire erupted through the space where he’d just been.

  Noel was panting hard.

  “I can’t drag Meyer any further. He’s heavy. Donut weight, probably.”

  “One of those gunmen looked pretty fat too,” said Sean.

  He poked his head around the corner. There was, indeed, standing next to a gunman with white powder dribbling down his helmet, a very fat gunman. The fat gunman was wearing a full-face helmet with a black visor, and was brandishing a rifle. He had a roll of cookies on his belt and a little plastic baggy with water and something small and golden. A goldfish, Sean realized.

  Wait, a goldfish?

  Sean blinked. A little red dot appeared on his forehead as he did.

  “Mr. Pittward?” Sean said in disbelief.

  There was a pause. Then, the fat gunmen ripped off his mask.

  It was indeed Clarence Pittward, Sean’s old boss, who had fired Sean for gross incompetence, willful negligence, war crimes, and disrespectful behavior towards goldfish. Then, one by one, all the other gunmen took off their masks.

  They were all people from Sean’s old job: Derrick, Maria, and Wayne, and still others Sean knew less well, like Arthur, Nick, and a woman who had worked in procurement and never given Sean the wind-up gorillas that he had urgently requested for highly critical business related reasons.

  Sean stared at them in disbelief.

  They all pointed their weapons at Sean. More red dots appeared on his forehead.

  “Hi!” Sean said cheerily. “How are you all? It’s funny, because I thought you were General OmniAll gunmen come to kill me, but now I find out you’re the people from my old job come to kill me! Isn’t that great?”

  Clarence shuffled awkwardly.

  “Actually, Sean, that’s just it. See...”

  “We finally found out what company we work for,” said Wayne, who had a bunch of white powder dribbled down his nose and front. “We’re not Peruvian cocaine smugglers at all! We work for General OmniAll!”

  Sean gasped.

  “So you’ve been the ones trying to stop us from fixing the defective people?”

  “Defective people?” Clarence repeated blankly. “I don’t know anything about that. We’ve been chasing you, Sean. General OmniAll is vicious and evil. Because we operate in draconian secrecy, our true nature is concealed even from our employees. Also, to prevent proprietary information from being leaked, our company policy is that no one gets to leave the company and live. Since you were fired, your life has to be terminated. Of course, I didn’t know about this policy when I fired you
because I’d never fired anyone before. This would be a lot easier if I had. Also, I want to kill you. I fired you because I received an anonymous tip that you mugged my goldfish, and I can’t have that.”

  He lifted his rifle.

  “Wait,” Noel said, sticking his face out too. “Are you saying that the only reason you’re chasing and attacking us is because you want Sean?”

  “That’s right,” Clarence said.

  “So if I give you Sean, you’ll leave me alone and let me escape with Meyer?”

  “Yes,” Clarence confirmed.

  “Interesting,” said Noel.

  “I can’t believe I was actually working for General OmniAll,” Sean said in amazement. “That’s incredible. Anyway, can you let me escape with my life?”

  “No,” said Clarence.

  “Come on?” pleaded Sean. “Just for old time’s sake. I’d really appreciate it.”

  “No.”

  “But what about all those good times we had together?”

  Clarence raised an eyebrow.

  “Like when?” he asked.

  “Uh... like that time you fired me, for instance?”

  Clarence looked unswayed.

  “Or that time I pumped raw sewage into your office, Maria? Or Wayne and Derrick, what about that time I threatened to ground you up into mush and squeeze you through tiny tubes? Wasn’t that a laugh?”

  They all frowned at him and pointed their guns at him with greater accuracy and intensity.

  “Er, I don’t do any of that anymore,” Sean said. “Noel administered an electric shock to my brain so I don’t threaten people any more, I think. So, if you could find it in your hearts-”

  It was at this point that Noel finished catching his breath and shoved Sean out from behind the wall, whereupon Noel grabbed the ends of the net containing the unconscious Meyer and ran away, and everyone else started to shoot at Sean.

  Fortunately for Sean, they were all lousy shots and none of the bullets hit him, or at least, not in any of the more vital organs. Sean turned and ran, shortly catching up with Noel.

  “I really hate my life,” he said unhappily as they went, gunfire erupting behind them.

  “Then take this pill,” Noel said, offering him a suicide pill.

  “Stop that,” said Sean.

  They turned another corner and found they’d come to a dead end.

  “Uh oh,” Noel said.

  “I’m starting to think we might be really bad at our jobs,” Sean said, observing this.

  “It’s okay; they don’t pay us,” said Noel.

  Sean’s ex-coworkers/assassins rounded the corner. They leveled their weapons at Sean.

  Sean gulped.

  However, before they started to fire, sounds of heavy footfalls erupted down the corridor. Clarence and the other General OmniAll employees turned towards the source of the footfalls, only to see Tribune Alphonse Delroy and at least a dozen anarchists rounding the corner.

  “There they are,” Delroy said, pointing at Clarence. “The corporate fascists! Fight the power!”

  No one did anything.

  “I mean shoot them, you idiots,” Delroy roared, red-faced at the anarchists.

  What followed was a lot of shooting. A bullet struck Clarence’s goldfish bag.

  “No, Goldie!” Clarence screamed. “That does it! Everyone, kill those anarchists!”

  Sean and Noel ducked.

  After several moments of terrifying and intense gunfire, Sean poked his head up to see lots of people on both sides who had taken nice naps on the floor in puddles of their own blood. Clarence and Delroy were huddled behind chunks of debris they were using for cover, shooting at each other.

  “This is for my goldfish!” screamed Clarence.

  “I’m starting to think mother was right,” Delroy muttered to himself. “I ought to do less shouting and more unnecessarily elaborate planning, like my brother Dominique.”

  Sean and Noel took advantage of the two men’s preoccupations with one another to make a quick escape. Dragging Meyer after them, they fled through the Atrium (where the incendiary bomb and the flag had fallen off the statue), then raced outside. They found the donkey cart and its driver waiting exactly where they had parked. After loading Meyer into the back of the cart, Sean and Noel piled in themselves.

  Sparing a look back, Sean saw helicopters whizzing around the top of the building, firing rockets and machine gun rounds into the grounds while more rockets and machine-gun rounds whizzed back.

  “Why can’t they just Give Peace Some Pants?” Sean said mournfully.

  Noel restrained the urge to punch him again, then tapped the driver on the shoulder.

  “Get us out of here,” he told the driver.

  “You got it,” the driver replied.

  With that, the donkey pawed at the ground and twisted the fabric of space-time around it, plus the fabric of the driver’s shirt, and warped them back to the laboratory.

  Chapter 29

  “I’m happy I got to meet my old boss and catch up with everyone,” Sean said as they flashed back into the laboratory. “I’m very glad to hear they’re still trying to kill me.”

  “There’d be something wrong with them if they’d given up,” murmured Noel.

  Both men were climbing out of the cart. Noel ripped the net off of the still-unconscious Meyer. Then, Sean and Noel seized him under the armpits, dragged him over to the brain reprogramming machine, and unceremoniously stuffed him inside.

  Noel wandered over to the brain reprogrammer and scratched his head.

  “Wait, so if his flaw was that he loved corporations, does that mean we should reprogram him to make him an anarchist?”

  “I guess so,” said Sean. “Hey, Noel, how do you use this brain reprogrammer, anyway?”

  “Let me show you,” Noel said courteously. He maneuvered around the glass-and-metal tube that made up the bulk of the reprogrammer and tip-toed over the rat’s nest of wires, then pointed to the panel.

  “This is the panel that lets me reprogram the person’s behavior. It has a user-friendly interface. Watch. I’m going to run Preset #3 on Meyer, so I’ll just open Preset #3 and edit it. Then, I can type in whatever I want to change about Meyer into the panel. For example, if I wanted him to think he was the reincarnation of Attila the Hun, I’d type that in here.”

  Noel typed, “think’s he’s Attila the Hun,” into the program.

  “The reprogrammer automatically interprets my intentions and converts them into electrical impulses to make changes to the subject’s brain. Why don’t you try and set it so that Meyer no longer sympathizes with corporate fascists like us?”

  “Sure,” said Sean. He typed in, “hates corporate fascists and large corporations like us,” into the panel.

  “You got it,” Noel said. “Then, as a safety, I have to actually activate the program from over here... that’s the safe distance, you see. Let me demonstrate. Put on your tinfoil hat so you don’t get affected by the brain resonance.”

  While Sean donned a tinfoil hat and continued to fiddle with the reprogrammer, Noel approached a nearby computer terminal and selected Preset #3.

  An arc of green lightning appeared and started to race across Meyer’s skull. He jolted and writhed from side to side as he had what appeared remarkably like a seizure, and screamed in what sounded remarkably like horrible pain.

  “Welp,” Noel said, watching this. “Let me put it like this: whether the brain reprogramming works or not, he’s definitely going to hate corporations.”

  After a few minutes, the program finished. The arc of green lightning stopped and the brain reprogrammer made a dinging noise. The glass shield on the front of the reprogrammer slid open and Meyer fell face first onto the floor, his forehead smoking and steaming. He was still unconscious.

  Noel threw a bucket of water at his face, and Meyer spluttered and woke.

  “Where am I?” he asked, jumping up. “A large corporation? I hate large corporations! Death to large
corporations! Fight the power! Tear down society! Break the chains of tyrannical-”

  “Perfect,” Noel said. Then, using a mallet, Noel gave Meyer a pretty good conk to the side of the head. Meyer fell back down, unconscious.

  “I probably should have just given him a sedative or something, because it’s not healthy to be knocked out for this long this often,” said Noel unconcernedly as he tossed the mallet aside. “Oh well. What can I say? I like hurting people.”

  He instructed the cart driver to take Meyer back to the headquarters of the Mandatory Organization of Anarchists and clapped his hands together in a self-satisfied way.

  “There we go,” he said frankly to Sean as he sat next to him. “There are no more defective people left.”

  “We should go up to Dinero so he can pay us,” Sean said enthusiastically. “He promised me a big bag of money.”

  Noel snorted.

  “If Dinero gives you as much as a hundredth of a voucher for a penny in the year 3568, I’ll eat my shirt. He’d rather kiss a spider than part with a single dime, not that I was the one who made him kiss that spider; that was a misunderstanding.”

  Noel’s eyes got evasive.

  “Maybe we should go see him anyway,” said Sean.

  “Before we do, why not try my latest invention?” Noel asked, and grabbed a nearby unlabeled bottle, then tipped out a single pill into his palm.

  “Try it,” Noel instructed.

  “Is this another suicide pill?” Sean asked, frowning at it in Noel’s outstretched palm.

  “Oh, no. Certainly not.”

  “Or a suicide placebo?”

  “No.”

  “Or a homicide pill?”

  “No.

  “Or a suicide supplement?”

  “No.”

  “So it’s not a suicide pill or a suicide placebo or a homicide pill or a suicide supplement?”

  “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You don’t have to worry about any of that. It’s perfectly healthy.”

  “What is it?” Sean asked suspiciously.

  “It’s a suicide suppository,” Noel answered smoothly.

  Sean assumed a look of revulsion.

  “Come on now,” Noel said encouragingly. “Bend over and die with dignity.”