1~

Barney Ackerman, owner of Ackerman's Appliances, closed the door to his office. It was ten minutes until closing and he was tired. Bone tired. A busy day of searching for lost invoices and precious receipts, dealing with ungrateful workers' complaints and even more unsatisfied customers' petty whining, had him drained and made him more than a little surly.

The store was dark for the most part, except for the hallway leading to the product warehouse and the rear entrance, and that was where Barney would normally pass through on his way out of his place of business. He always felt it was more secure. That belief would be shattered tonight.

His mind was preoccupied with thoughts of the new line of Cleanco wares that he ordered last month. Shiny new washing machines guaranteed to take the customers' tiny little minds off the questionably functional devices he had sold them, so far, that he had bought cheap and had repaired just enough to work for a few months, before the inevitable break-downs occurred, prompting them to come to his doorstep to buy, yet again.

He always told them some lie, like, "It's because they were made overseas," or "If American companies thought about the consumer, instead of their own pockets, they wouldn't outsource washing machines from somewhere else," and so and so on.

He couldn't have cared less about the state of American craftsmanship or about using them as a convenient scapegoat for his own duplicity, so long as there were people desperate to keep their laundry clean and needed a washing machine, any washing machine, to do it.

That kind of gullibility gave him a warm feeling as he walked through the warehouse. It told him that the greedy god of capitalism was in his avaricious heaven, and all was right in this dog-eat-dog world.

He reached the reinforced rear door, inputted his code into the security keypad nearby, and opened the door. There, he saw the oddest thing past the threshold.

A floating robot, large, angular and as white as a snowdrift, stared him down with impassive red optics. It quietly and slowly flew inside the warehouse, flanked by two more.

Barney choked on a scream and fearfully back away from it.

The machines opened their formation into something of a search pattern, their domed heads swiveling, silently seeking,. Each took a chosen path and glided deep into the warehouse, sidling up to cardboard boxes and crates and scanning their displayed bar codes.

Although Barney was thankful that the robots didn't attack him, or even acknowledge his presence, he hated being in a position of weakness or not knowing what was going on. He knew that, somehow, he had to take some control of the situation.

Barney walked up to the nearest robot as quietly as his courage would allow and tapped it on its armored back.

"Hey, pal," he told it. "What are you doing here? This is my warehouse, and if I don't get any answers, someone's gonna be sorry."

The robot ignored him.

Despite the situation he found himself in, Barney hated being ignored even more than not being in control.

"Hey!" he yelled, tapping harder on the back of the robot's white, waste paper basket-shaped body. "I'm talkin' to you!"

The robot stopped its bar code reading and smoothly swung around to regard this vexing human, while Barney was satisfied that it was finally paying attention to him.

"That's better. Now what are you and your pals doing in my store?" he asked.

If the robot was going to respond to the question, Barney never heard it. One moment, there was a face off between man and machine, and the next, there was a loud beeping coming from further in the warehouse, in the general direction where one of the other robots had gone.

Barney's interrogation was cut short as the robot that faced him turned around and accelerated into the gloomy depths of the storage area.

"Hey, wait!" he told it, following the robot through the canyons of boxes.

Both he and the machine arrived in time to see the other two robots tearing into large cardboard boxes with heavy pincers attached to spindly, yet deceptively strong arms adorned with strange medallions on their shoulders.

"Hey, what are you doing? Stop!" Barney cried, wanting to step in and take charge, yet thanks to his well-developed sense of self-preservation, thought better of it.

He turned to the robot that he followed. "Hey! You better tell you friends to stop, or I'll take a blowtorch to the lot of ya!"

His dubious threat was answered with that robot moving ahead and joining his brethren in ripping the boxes open, their wrapping and packing material flying in every cardinal direction.

Barney had no idea why these overgrown science toys were ripping through his products' packaging like manic kids on a Christmas morning, but, impossibly, he feared for something far more than his own life. His bottom line, which, in his eyes, was in dire jeopardy.

Summoning what little courage he had in him, Barney, with fists raised, gave a squeak of a battle cry and leaped at the devices. Whereby, he was promptly snatched up in mid-charge by the robot closest to him, its unwavering pincer holding the foolish organic up for it to see, unfeeling optic to terrified eye.

It re-balanced its hardy gyroscopics to compensate for the human's weight, raised its arm, and tossed Barney to the cold floor like an old coat. He landed hard on his stomach, knocking the wind out of him on impact.

Barney barely had strength to lift himself off of his aching belly and turn his head to the sound of profit being lost in the machines' destructive acts.

"Hey..." he managed to croak at them, before the robot who manhandled him took a break from opening more of that group of boxes, and floated over to him.

Barney couldn't see the barrel extending from the center of the opened pincer that pointed down at him from behind, couldn't react to the sound of a laser pulse generator warming up from within.

All he heard before the night brutally ended for him, was the tinny, halting voice of his automated attacker.

"Hay...is for horses," it said.

Then, it fired, its surprising joke punchlined that night by a human wail of agony.

Marcie strolled through the promenade of the Crystal Cove Mall. Normally, the lights, sound and motion of the place would draw her in with thoughts of rampant consumerism. At the moment, however, her mind was on killing the dull ache between her temples that accompanied her all day.

"Ugh," Marcie moaned to any friend within earshot. "I knew I should've took something for this headache before I left home."

Red Herring, walking along with Daisy Blake and Jason Wyatt, asked slyly. "I didn't know nerds could party that hard."

"We can when we put our minds to it," Marcie said. "But that's not what happened. Not really. My dad and I had dinner with some businessman who's been wanting to buy Dad's amusement park. Y'know, standard business thing. Make an offer, shoot it down, negotiate, shoot that down. That sort of thing. Strangest thing, though. I don't remember coming back home. We just woke up in our bedrooms. I guess Mr. Greenman had his servants bring us back in his limo."

"That is weird. You should've call me, Marcie," Daisy said. "I could've brought you back, and in a better car, too."

"Next time, I promise," Marcie told her. "Right now, I have to find an appliance store so I can avert a major crisis."

"What kind of crisis?" Jason asked her, warily. "I want to understand what's going to happen so I can safely avoid it."

Marcie sighed at the cowardice. "Nothing so earth-shattering, Jellyfish. I just have to help my dad look for a new washing machine. Ours is on the fritz."

Jason shrugged. "Oh. Why call it a crisis, then?"

Marcie frowned as a memory reacquainted with her. "You know the nickname people called me growing up. Hot Dog Water," she reminded him. "Because my dad was too cheap to have our hot water heater replaced when it broke down, so I had to bathe in the water from his hot dog concession stand when I was a little girl. That was just my body. What if I have to wash my clothes in that stuff, too? Oh, no. I've already paid to dear a price for his cheapskate ways. Window shopping can wait."

"Speak for yourself," Daisy chimed in. "I'm rich, but there's always time to window shop. Anyway, I've gotta find the hardware store and pick up some screws. I've got this mad posh to get my arts-and-crafts on."

"Arts and crafts?" Jason asked. "What are you making?"

"Well, I found these really cool glass tabletops in an alley the other day," Daisy told him. "Didn't find any table legs yet, but it's a start."

Red leaned close to Daisy, saying, "By the way, Daisy, the next time you take me dumpster diving with you, let me make sure I've had my shots, first."

"What do you mean, Red?"

"I could've sworn something was in one of those dumpsters with me," he said, favoring his left hand, fretfully. "I think it bit me."

Daisy waved it away. "Oh, Red, don't be a big baby. I've been bitten plenty of times. You'll be fine. It's just the competition trying to get between you and whatever cool stuff's inside."

Red didn't look too convinced of such an outlook. "Ya think so?"

Daisy shrugged. "Sure. At least, that's the way I look at it."

Jason took a glance across the busy promenade and perked up, pointing at a store that caught his attention.

"Hey, Marcie. Is that what you're looking for?" he asked.

Marcie looked across the mall and, indeed, saw an appliance store. However, any thoughts of browsing through it were stilled by the spectacle of Sheriff Stone and Deputy Bucky standing outside the facade getting statements from the store owner while other deputies were coming and going from the store's environs.

Bucky took a casual glance away from his duties and happened to see Marcie and her friends watching the scene from their location. He brightened up and waved at them.

"Hey, Marcie," he called out. "How are you guys today?"

Stone looked over to Bucky. "Who are you talking to, Bucky? We're in the middle of a serious investigation, here."

"I know, Sheriff. I was just saying hi to Marcie, that's all. Certainly didn't think we'd see them here, though."

"This is a mall, Bucky," Stone sighed as he watched with annoyance the teens' approach. "The teenager's natural habitat. Ugh, as if I don't have enough to worry about."

Stone brought his broad hand up to halt the gang when they seemed too close to the crime scene for his liking.

"That's far enough, you guys," he said. "What do you want, Macie?"

"That's Marcie, Sheriff Stone," Marcie corrected him. "And don't worry. I'm not here to step on your obvious size thirteens. I'm just doing some comparative shopping. What happened, anyway?"

"That's none of your beeswax, Missy," Stone huffed.

"Yeah," Bucky chimed in. "It's nothing really, guys. Just another appliance store that got hit."

Marcie reflexively asked. "Another? How many so far?"

"There you go again. Asking questions," Stone groaned. "Isn't there a food court you should be hovering around, Miss Skin and Bones?"

"My weight not withstanding, Sheriff, as a consumer, I'd like to know if there are any stores left in town I can get to before they all look like the aftermath of a Black Friday sale."

"Well," Bucky explained to her. "This store make four, so far. The only taken were some washing machines, just like all the rest. Weirdest thing, though. The last store owner we heard from said that he was robbed by flying robots. Says one even shot him in the keister with a laser beam. Strange, huh?"

Again, the sheriff sighed at his deputy. "It's obvious that he was just tired from working too long, walked in on the perpetrators going through his inventory, and hallucinated these so-called robots."

"But, Sheriff, why was he admitted to the hospital with a pretty big burn on his rear-end," Bucky countered. "What explains that?"

"Easy," Stone said. "Again, he was probably just tired. He must've been smoking and he just fell on his cigar."

The store owner brought himself into the conversation, slightly irritated that people were talking about his plight as if he weren't there suffering it..

"Well, I don't know if it's flying robots or not," he said, reaching over to grab the handle to his store's security shutters. "All I do know is that somebody got into my store and walked away with some of my merchandise. Until someone gets to the bottom of this, I'm locking up."

With that, he brought down the shutters, which clanged closed to punctuate the point.

"Maybe I can hold on to what's left." Then he left the law officers and young spectators, fuming.

Jason broke the awkward moment with a question. "Who'd want to steal washing machines?"

"It's probably just some protesters who've got their dirty panties in a bunch because the price of detergent went up," Stone said dismissively.

Then he pointed at Marcie and the others. "Now you listen to me. There's only one big, crime-solving brain in this town and it's under my hat."

"It's a wonder it can fit," Marcie muttered with a slight smirk.

Stone ignored the jibe and continued. "Just don't let catch you impeding my investigation with your theories and deductions. Is that clear?"

The sheriff sniffed at them, derisively, then stomped away from the store.

"Protesters, my eye," Marcie muttered while she pondered to herself.

"So, you're gonna solve this mystery, huh?" Jason asked her, warily.

"I have to," Marcie answered glumly. "The future of my clothes depends on it."