Tom and Sylvia make contact.

Then they did the torture where they spin you around very fast in an office chair-like contraption, then stop you suddenly and spin you even faster the other way. How can I be so important? she murmured, bloody spittle strung across her cheeks and hair. Then she realized: she wasn't that important at all. The torture was completely automated. This was sort of like a car wash whereas before it would have taken an entire team of ensemble actors. Soon it would spit her out on a lawn behind a post office or a school. Not soon enough... she was going to faint... not soon...

What? What was that? A tiny package, a vial... by her foot. She thought she had hallucinated it, but no. It had come rolling across the floor and under--into--mother's shoe. No-Shiv. The red box.

Tom and Sylvia stood holding one another in the parking lot.

Tough Peggy

Mum's pleated wool skirt was soft and absorbent. Her thighs were not so bony as to be scary or uncomfortable against the cheek, and not so big as to be mottled or odorous. Her knees were a wholesome cushion of responsive and supporting tension, a blood-water-fat balance that seemed custom made for Peggy's face. She cried and cried.

If you could step back from that scene, you would see the projector above the door behind Peggy and that her mother's image was a hologram.

In Search of a Paradigm

If they were all the same price, what did it matter?

Tom and Sylvia sat in the waiting room at Pharm-Supply browsing through old catalogues. Way beyond lipsticks, the most curious pages were the symptom and scripting breakdowns for the shivtropics. Their real reason was to see about breaking Peggy out or smuggling a box of No-Shiv in to her.

CLXXIV. Blyway
Neurodigm. You have many interests which you focus on intensely. You are never happy because you are never satisfied with what you are focused on or else why would you be so focused on it. And why focus on anything anyway. In the big picture, you are a rat sniffing from flower to flower for no reason. Are you a victim of neurodigm?

XXVIII. Same-E
Hopinaskipina. Everything seems fine until all the sudden you have to break your healthy rthyum and engage in uncharacteristic behavior. Consequences include loss of productivity and increased stress factor for coworshippers. Signs of disease-specific denial: "had to let my hair down," "just needed to get away," "fuck you; get out of my face." Ask your shiv priest about your doctor. Then, stop your hopinaskipina.

CC. Rock o' Mthyuh
Blight. Something in the air. You're not the only one who's being affected. But not everyone has the nut to do something about it. You stay right in the head because you owe it to your family, for the safety of whom you are like a lioness. You take your Pro-Labique Pharmashiv whenever and wherever you need it: for protection, for peace of mind. You are not a sick one trying to get well; you are a potentially deadly protector of children. Keep taking Pro-Labique. Don't let them down ever again. If you do, do you really deserve to live?

na, junge frau ;>)

Sylvia's next breakthrough: powdered sugar really gave citrus a run for its money without the total blanket of sweetening effect you got with corn syrup.

17. Time is a Liar

"That's good-- only a couple of hours past p-a-t promised arrival time. What's the FedEx?" quizzed Sylvia.
"Hiya. It's Cheap n' Simple. They do mail now," was Tom's answer.
Sylvia stood back to see what Tom would do, where he would go, once across the threshold. He seemed to be wondering as well. He carried his package as some would an excremental urgency; it was what clearly mattered to him at that moment. Sylvia wondered if possibly a digit or other flesh fragment had been sheared off during an accident and he had it on dry ice or...
"Sylvia, come and sit down with me here at your table. Come. Please don't argue."
Sylvia felt odd walking toward him. Did he just order her? It was a physical weirdness. In her legs.
"Remember suit guy at our closing night Herpes for Christmas? Adam's apple. You said his eyes were dead, like Huckabee."
Sylvia thought about that man. She had felt a strong, silly urge to ask him to hold her. Just hold her. But why... "But why..." Sylvia began, sitting down on the high-back stone across from Tom.
"Listen. They sent me this pharmashiv. It's supposed to be someone in the community. I'm just a distributor."
"They..."
"I'm a rep now. First one. They know what I know. I don't want to say I told you so, but even they think it might be evolution, plain and simple."
"And that you are the latest model! Oh, Tom. You are so full of shit! These people will tell you anything, and now you think I'll buy the same fucking bullcrap."
"I told you all along there wasn't anybody. I kept clean and you abreast of all my love needs. All the way up until the day it happened to me."
Sylvia cocked her head in sarcastic interest.

9. Time is a Liar

"AAA had to come and get you where? Was it...? Well then why were you bleeding?" Sylvia was standing in a robe in her kitchen. A stunted grapefruit dropped from the dying tree behind her on the other side of a sliding glass door. "If you'd like, I could... I just have to get dressed and I'll... OK. I'm glad you're fine then. Call when you get in."

She stared back into the kitchen from the living room couch then for a while. Her day had been intended to begin on that cool linoleum floor. With coffee. Maybe sliding open that door to let the cat out. The bright overhead light was still on in there. But she wasn't there. She'd picked up the telephone and listened into it and now she was out of commission. Her day had changed. Or, she guessed, it was never her day to begin with. The day itself seemed to be oblivious, the same slow spin of the planet. The same constant tumult forward or backward, depending on which way you faced. She could almost see herself gliding between the stove and the fridge. Probably what she'd be doing right then. Yawning into the back of her hand. Stooping with a tiny dish of egg yolk for Kitty. Then letting him out the back.

The living room was dark and intended for guests. It really didn't care how or how often it was used. It was set for a strobe of activity, and the blank spots didn't count. This felt like an unexpected layover in a haunted ballroom. The two hours you spend in a matinee, getting surprised every time you walk out and have to squint and figure out who you were again. Tom was the unexpected one. He could be counted on that way. He was a professional variable. In fact, he'd been next to her right there, a few times, on that couch. Realistically, the only reason he still wasn't there is that he got up and walked away. Maybe he was just going to the bathroom or out for a smoke. But he just never happened to ever think to sit down just there ever again. Or at least for a long time now. But let's not blame time, thought Sylvia, after another shot of Teacher's Highland Cream. Time is oblivious. It's Tom's fault.

Kitty sat at Sylvia's feet, cleaning egg from his whiskers.