Author's Note: I'm not too satisfied with this chapter, but I figured I had to do it to give you all a better idea of what the technology team does when it doesn't have a specific task to accomplish, and to show that our technology team leader is just a little crazy.

Music Lover's Alert: " If I Had a Hammer" by Trini Lopez (I think it's originally by someone else, but I like the way he sings it best)

Chapter 33 Entropy

"We'll have plenty of time to tackle Global Enterprises and Stellar Defense later. Let's take on a more reasonable task right now," Joan urged.

The Noelite leaders were gathered around their great oak table with files scattered all over the place. Each file contained the profile of a powerful corporation that had done something or other to wrong humanity. Not by any coincidence, the files for the most powerful corporations in the world were also the thickest. They also had impenetrable security barriers that would have been nearly impossible for Noel's action team to overcome.

"What about this one?" Sean asked. The redhead slid a much thinner file across the table towards Joan.

Joan picked up the file and read the bold type on the cover aloud, "Flo*rMart?"

"That's a good one. They sell everything at rock-bottom prices while paying their employees rock-bottom wages. The thing is that Flo*rMart sets up stores in relatively wealthy communities and none of the locals are willing to work for next to nothing, but they will buy stuff at low prices. Therefore, Flo*rMart imports laborers from poorer regions to supply the labor," Tulip summarized.

"Why is that a problem?" Joan asked.

"Flo*rMart pays its workers less than they are worth and doesn't reimburse workers for transportation costs to and from the store. Even though it keeps the prices of its goods low, the wages of the workers are pennies to them. Essentially, Flo*rMart drains semi-wealthy communities dry. If Flo*rMart ever comes to your town, leave."

"How many of these stores are there?"

"North America is infested with them. There are over two hundred of them there. There are five in Japan and twenty in Mainland Asia."

"So… what are we supposed to do with all those stores?"

"Well, we don't have to get all of them. I think we'll raise enough of a stir by getting a few on each continent. There's no need to go overboard."

Joan looked around the table. Sean gave a nod of approval while Penguin, Pretty Pictures, and Jamie leaned forward attentively. "OK. Let's play with this one and see if we can make any progress on it. I'll hang out with the creativity team and see if we can generate any good ideas. As for the rest of you, just go do whatever it is you do."

Jamie rubbed his hands together in excitement, and his anthracite eye shone. He had a few projects on the back burner that he wanted to finish. The group broke, and Jamie went to one of the spacious garages in the facility where his small team of engineering geeks was waiting for him.

They were fooling around with some primitive launching devices when he arrived, and he almost got hit in the face with a stinky rolled up sock when he arrived. His team members looked at him sheepishly for a moment after he caught it and dangled it in front of them. Then, they quickly packed away their toys and snapped to attention.

Jamie cleared his throat. "I see that you're all warmed up and ready to start the day. We have a daunting task ahead of us today, but hopefully you are all up to the challenge. Today, we are going to perfect carbon capture technology. That's right! We're going to pull diamonds out of thin air!"

Everyone stared at him with their mouths hanging wide open. Then Grant, a skinny boy with sandy brown hair and a baseball cap, picked up his jaw off the floor and said. "You realize you are asking us to reverse entropy, right?"

"I know there has to be a way to do it. We just have not found it yet," Jamie insisted.

Jakob, another skinny boy with dark brown hair, smiled enthusiastically. "Yeah! It can't hurt to try, right?"

"That's the spirit!" Jamie said, "all right guys, I have a few ideas on some things we could try." Jamie pulled a few pitiful scraps of paper out of his pocket and passed them out among members of his team.

Grant looked down at the scrap of paper that he had been given. It depicted a contraption powered by a hand crank that forced air through a series of filters. "You've got to be kidding me. The most this will do is to remove particulate matter from the air."

"Good. Build it," Jamie ordered, "we've got to start somewhere."

Grant groaned and set about gathering construction materials. The others did the same. As the day wore on, various odd contraptions began to emerge. Jamie wandered around the garage supervising his team's construction efforts and inspecting the operation of each device.

Some of the devices incorporated lights, sounds, or other waves into their design. Other devices required combustion or electric currents. Still others relied on chemical reaction. However, none of them actually accomplished the goal of turning carbon dioxide into diamonds and oxygen gas. By the end of the day, a dozen useless machines sat in the garage.

Grant put down the drill that he was holding, took off his safety goggles, and wiped the perspiration from his brow. "See? I told you it wouldn't work," he said to Jamie.

Jakob unplugged a circular saw and rolled up the cord neatly. "Of course it worked! We had a lot of fun today. That was the whole point, wasn't it?"

Their boss nodded with a satisfied grin. "One of these days we will actually reverse entropy, but until then we might as well enjoy the journey. I'll see you guys tomorrow!"

Jamie left the garage and made his way to the main meeting room. On his way there, he encountered Sean and Tam. They were walking with their arms around each other's waists.

"Hey Jamie!" Tam called, "What's happening?"

"Not much yet," Jamie replied, "the guys and I were mainly just training today. What about you?"

"Same. With so many different Flo*rMart stores, out there, we didn't see much point in focusing on any one of them in particular just yet," Sean explained.

"Hey Jamie, do you think that your team could put together some equipment for us?" Tam asked.

"Probably. It all depends on what you need," Jamie answered.

Tam spoke more slowly, batting her eyelashes a little as she spoke. "Well, technically it's a medical device, but for our purposes it is going to serve a different function."

"OK… what do we want it to do?" Jamie asked, his anthracite eyes shining with interest.

Tam grinned broadly and ground her hip into Sean's pelvis. "We want it to erase people's memories. It would be a good thing to have just in case someone connects the dots while we are out on a mission."

Jamie looked as if he was about to explode with excitement. "Such a device exists? And it really works?"

"Yeah. It's called electroconvulsive shock therapy, or ECT for short. It is administered to patients with severe depression when all the anti-depressant medications and other therapies fail. Memory loss is a side-effect of the treatment, but in our case that's exactly what we are going for," Tam explained.

"Whow! How did you find out about this thing?"

"I minored in psychology," Tam said with a shrug.

The group reached the door of the grand meeting room and paused outside. Jamie did a little dance and said, "Oh my god! Send me some specs for this thing and I'll build it for you!"

"Thanks, Jamie!" Tam said brightly. She disengaged herself from Sean and gave Jamie a gigantic kiss.

Just then, Pretty Pictures and her younger brother Trevor came walking down the hall. They approached the door of the meeting room and stopped, observing Tam's intimate interaction with the leader of the technology team.

Tam noticed the leader of the creativity team waiting and let go of Jamie. "Well, enjoy your meeting!"

"You can join us if you want," Pretty Pictures offered.

"No thanks. Too many cooks in the kitchen and all that. Besides…" she drifted over to Trevor and linked arms with him, "someone needs to take care of your brother while you're in there."

"He can take care of himse-oh! OK, have fun!"

Tam grinned happily and skipped away down the hall with Trevor while the others went inside the meeting room. Joan and Penguin were already there waiting for them. Penguin stole a kiss from Pretty Pictures as they sat down and tried to steal one from Sean as well, but he spent so much time kissing Joan that Penguin gave up. Jamie would have done almost anything for a chance to kiss the picturesque bisexual bottle blonde, but men did not kiss her; she kissed them.

When they were done greeting each other, they sat down and got down to business. "What kind of ideas did you come up with?" Joan asked Pretty Pictures.

"First, I thought we would do something to the products like we did with Pattel Corporation. However, that would not make much sense because Flo*rMart sells stuff from many different corporations including Pattel, Schroeder, and Bestle. We could do something to the employees, though."

"Like what?" Joan asked nervously. Although Noel did not have many rules regarding its operation, they had one strict rule: no killing unless it protected the life (not liberty) of another. Killing was the ultimate way of preventing a person from remembering details about Noel, but if too many bodies started stacking up around Rakitan Industries, people would start to ask questions anyway. Plus, enough people had already died in the past years at the hands of corporations.

"Since the employees are victims of Flo*rMart as much as the towns are, we could hack into Flo*rMart's computer system and give the CEO a pay cut while the employees get a raise. What do you think?" Jessica asked.

Tulip straightened his glasses. "I think that it would be a nice temporary gesture, but we can't risk doing it on an ongoing basis."

"Why not?"

"The more often we do it, the more likely we are to get caught at it. We have put in place several measures to prevent hackees from hacking back into us, but those will only go so far."

"All right, What else can we do?" Joan asked.

Pretty Pictures's chocolate eyes narrowed. "We have to do something to the stores themselves, then - all of them," she added.

"Seriously? All two hundred plus stores?" Sean asked.

"You got a problem with that?" Penguin asked in defense of her girlfriend.

"Yes. I don't have the staff to pull off that kind of stuff," Sean said firmly.

"It could be something really simply like dropping a banner in front of the stores."

"Um, once we drop a banner at one stores, they would be on the lookout for us at the other stores," Sean pointed out.

"That's why we drop them all simultaneously with a special device. Jamie, do you think you could design an automatic banner dropping device for us?" Joan asked.

"Yeah! No problem!" Jamie said.

"There. Now you can take your time installing them. Right, Sean?" Joan asked.

"I guess so," Sean agreed.

They continued to discuss aspects of their new project, sorting out details until everyone was either satisfied or too tired to continue discussing the problems. After that, they went to whichever beds appealed to them most that night.

Closing Note: I know that chapter was a little awkward in some places and I did my best to fix it, but as I said before I'm more of a scientist than a writer.