Omnipotanium

Rigors of life of a door-to-door salesman. Kinda gives you that 'urge to kill'.

 

 

 

 

            What made him the most sorry was the fact that he hadn’t made a sale.

Not that he liked any of the upper middle class snobs who lived in his territory, but the fat woman face down on her own kitchen table was the kind of potential customer he really despised.

He stood and walked around to her side of the table. He stretched his arm out, as if gesturing toward the unpleasant scene, and a gray metallic worm emerged from the gore. It vibrated, shucking the blood off its body, then crawled toward the outstretched hand. The man plucked the smooth creature off the table and crossed the room. By the time he reached the security panel, the object in his hands had shifted, and moved, becoming a thick crow-bar. Before getting to work, he paused to turn and look once more at the corpse.

He sneered openly, not just at her but at the whole situation he’s found himself in.

He’d disliked this woman from the first words out of her mouth when she’d opened the door to him barely an hour ago.

 

 

 

 

“So you selling the kind that changes color or what?”

It was always the first question people asked.

Davis Mccarthy steeled himself, then forced his best salesman’s smile.

“Good morning, ma’am.   Actually no, you’re thinking of our competitor, Dynaco. They own the patent on color-shift Omnipotanium. I’m Davis McCarthy and I represent Simucorp, and I think you’ll find out latest technology, Imagitanium, far superior to the competition’s. If I may?” Davis gestured toward the interior of her apartment.

The woman thrust her jaw forward and cocked her head. He could almost see the cogs turning within and he fancied them slow and rusty. Door-to-door salesman were completely normal in modern society where people were born with an immunity to advertising, especially in upper middle-class community cubes like Channel View. However, it was hard for a salesman to get a pitch when the card he had to insert to ring the door buzzer gave away his name, his merchandise, and it’s normal price. Nine times out of ten, the occupant simply flipped on the red, ‘access-denied’ light, and Davis was required by law to move on. 

“So you’re selling the kind that makes little shapes, Huh? I’ve already seen those ads.”

“Yes, you’re referring to Geometrical Imagery. Its potential uses are absolutely startling. If you’ll permit me a brief demonstration.”

The woman sighed then looked at her wrist-pad, beeping through several functions. Davis assumed she was checking the timer-interface for her auto-oven because he could smell something foul baking somewhere inside her apartment. She looked back at him with another long-suffering sigh. “Tell you what; my husband Jack comes home for lunch on Fridays, but if you keep your spiel nice and short, I suppose I can spare a little time for it.”

Davis thanked her and stepped inside. As he followed her through the living room and into the dining room, he took note of the style and value of the furnishings. For the most part, his potential client seemed to like to surround herself with designer knock-offs, but they were all ten years out of date, and slightly broken down. This could be good or bad. It told him she had the desire to own upscale products and would be susceptible to the idea of getting it cheaply. It could also mean that they were living beyond their means and simply couldn’t afford a luxury item like Omnipotanium. 

Upon reaching the dining room, the woman had him sit at the table while she went to the kitchen to work on her culinary calamity. Wrinkling his nose at the distinctly burnt odor, Davis decided to take this as an opportunity to set up. He removed the Omnipotanium baldric and set it in the middle of the table, then began mechanically arranging the demonstration materials from his briefcase.

He spread out his pamphlets and the usual ‘slice-and-dice’ objects while thinking to himself, ‘why do I bother with people like this? These demonstrations aren’t cheap’. She had the kind of irritated, suffering attitude toward salesman which made her just the kind of person who would waste his time and his materiel’s fee, then boot him out the door as if she were the one being put upon. ‘Community cube Americans are all alike – self righteous and smug.’

Out loud, yet quietly, he mocked his potential customer. “You selling the kind that changes color? I want the kind that changes color, me me me me me . My life is so hard and I need the kind that changes color.”

“Were you saying something to me?” She asked, poking her head back into the dining room.

“Oh, no ma’am,” he smiled, “just getting set up for you.”

“Well I’ll be in shortly, just got a couple more little things to do in here.”

“Take your time, I’m in no hurry.” He kept smiling.

“Yeah, well I am.” She snapped, then was gone again.

‘Self-righteous, smug, and rude.’ He knew she hadn’t heard him by the idiotic slackness of her jowls. At one time, he had tried to go to work for Dynaco because their flashy, color-change gimmick made their product easier to sell. They wouldn’t hire him because his Simucorp sales had been too low. ‘Maybe I’m not the best salesman, but I’ve got a trick or two up my sleeve for you, Mrs. Cow.’

Davis finished setting up then sat down. He looked around the room. Modern dinette with overly ergonomic slopes: expensive and uncomfortable. Plush carpet with the name brand ‘Cush’ logo for a pattern: expensive and ugly. Imitation-glass chandelier: cheap and clashed with the rest of the décor. ‘Let’s see… food stains on the carpet, crumbs on the table, clutter on all available horizontal surfaces… I’d say Mrs. Cow is a slob, trying to keep up with her neighbors, Mr. & Mrs. Slob Jones.’ Davis grinned at that thought. ‘Perfect, I may make a sale yet.’

The salesman beamed sincerely at her when she finally returned, wiping her greasy hands on the hips of her ill-fitting, name brand dress.

“I see you’re all set up.” She nodded in stern satisfaction. As she sat down, she mechanically added, “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“That’s perfectly okay, ma’am, I was just admiring your lovely house.”

“Oh, Thank-you.” She said, and absently wiped a few crumbs onto the floor.

Davis grabbed the baldric and stood. He presented it before her with two hands.

“Omnipotanium.” He stated, simply.

When she finally nodded, he drew it towards himself and made a show of studying it. “Not just any Omnipotanium.  This is Simucorp’s ‘Imagitanium’ brand Omnipotanium.” 

He lowered his voice and did an impression of the voice in their frequent video advertisements. “Imagitanium-brand Omnipotanium, no fancy color-changes, just the right tool for every job.” He looked back at her and smiled playfully.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of Omnipotanium before, everyone has. Billboards and logo’s plastered everywhere, commercials every two minutes – you know what it is. Thirty-five percent of all American’s own at least one unit of Omnipotanium so I’m sure you’ve even seen people using it. Probably many people. I didn’t come here today to tell you what you already know, I’m here to explain the differences between our product and our competitors, and hopefully to convince you of what smart American’s already know, and that is; that Simucorp’s ‘Imagitanium’ brand Omnipotanium is the superior brand… in durability, versatility, and practicality. All that and it costs less, too.”

“Normally I’d start by asking a potential client what their hobbies are, but I can tell already what kind of a woman you are. You’re a smart, shrewd consumer with a sense of style, you believe in the finer things in life but aren’t gonna throw good money at every ‘flash-in-the-pan’ gimmick that comes along.  No. Luxuries are luxuries, but value is value. You expect a quality product for your investment, one with the consumer in mind, from a company with you’re best interests at heart.”

“Now I can see that you spend a lot of time preparing meals and maintaining your beautiful home. No easy task, that. It’s a full-time job, isn’t it? If I had to guess, I’d say that, if you did purchase a unit or more of Omnipotanium, you’d use it as every variety of kitchen utensil known to man. I can also see that you’d appreciate the benefits of all its personal grooming configurations. I’ll bet that as you go around town, performing all your important household errands, you’d use your Omnipotanium as fashion and beauty accessories instead of the bland baldric that most people wear, am I right? Okay, now I’m gonna go out on a limb, I’m guessing, judging from all the fine things in your home, that you’ve got the kind of money to buy land, am I right?”

The woman actually smiled and nodded. ‘Idiot,’ Davis thought to himself, ‘everybody in Channelview owns land.’

“I knew it. I can tell these things. Landowners have a certain, earthy dignity about them. I’ll bet you’ve got a beautiful plot somewhere outside the cube with trees and wildflowers, and vegetables… I could tell right away that you were a landowner. Let me ask you this: next time you go to visit your plot, wouldn’t it be nice to have this along?”

He held the baldric up and it came to life in his hands. It looked like the rolling coils of a thick snake as metal flowed past metal. The loop pinched together, straightened, elongated, became flat at one end, and turned into a gardening hoe. With a flourish, Davis spun it around in his hands and passed it to the woman.

She squinted at it, then casually rapped it on the table.

“Seems solid enough.”

Davis smiled, and the hoe became a rake. In rapid succession, it became an edger, then a trowel, then a shovel, then a tiller, and finally, pruning shears.

She worked them in the air. ‘Snip-snip’.

“Oh…” Davis said dramatically, “Did I forget to mention that Imagitanium-brand Omnipotanium can form separate, moving parts?” He slid her a pamphlet entitled ‘Multiform Definition’, and another called ‘In the Garden’. 

“The competition changes color and makes all kinds of pretty designs, but they’ll only ever have solid, one-piece tools. With us, you’re buying practicality: a useful variety. Shall we cook?”

With pursed lips, the woman watched the object in her hands separate, and become multiple cooking utensils. First, a set of salad tongs and an eggbeater. From there, the chunks began flying from one kitchen utensil to another. Spatula, measuring cup, whisker, grater, knife, can-opener, meat tenderizer, serving fork, potato-masher, cheese-grater, cookie-cutter, nutcracker, ice-cream scoop, then they froze as a set of steak knives. Davis slid her a pamphlet entitled ‘In the Kitchen’.

“How much time could you save preparing a meal if you never had to put one utensil down and hunt for another?”

She glanced at him as if he were stupid. “I’d constantly be wiping the thing off.”

“Would you?” Davis opened a jar of sticky green goo and slid it across the table to her. “Swirl one of them around in there then hold it over the jar.”

The woman did so, and the knife came out covered in a chunky green paste. Suddenly it began to vibrate and the goo seemed to slide off the blade, dropping back into the jar in one big lump. The knife stilled, completely clean, and she looked back at Davis.

He winked and slid her another pamphlet. “Our patented vibro-clean feature. Nice but… it’s just too darn bad it doesn’t’ change color. Speaking of clean…”

The knives became a comb, a razor, a nail file, tweezers, eyelash curler, and then fingernail clippers.

“And those fashion and beauty accessories I mentioned?”

The pieces became barrettes, necklaces, pins, bracelets, and then rushed together to form another baldric. Unlike before, this baldric had an inlaid pattern resembling metallic lace.

“So it doesn’t change color, but if you do desire some form of design, there’s a wide variety of patterns and textures to choose from.” He gave her two more pamphlets. “Unfortunately this is about the only concession we make towards the pleasing of the eye. At Simucorp, we focus instead on usefulness, and as far as usefulness goes, we’ve only begun to scratch the tip of the iceberg.”

“Wait a minute, how come it can shrink and grow? I mean, one minute it’s a shovel, and then it’s a little ice cream scoop?”

“Ah, very observant of you. It’s all about the space between the synthetic molecules. Your unit of Omnipotanium will always weigh the same amount, having the same mass, but by expanding and contracting the space between its particles, it can become larger by spreading, or smaller by pulling them closely together. Does that answer your question?”

“So… it gets more dense when it’s smaller, and less dense when it’s bigger?”

‘Ah, so you remember grade-school physical science.’

“That’s absolutely correct. But you never have to worry about your tools being soft when they’re larger and less dense. The energy bonds between the synthetic particles are powerful enough to maintain the stability and strength of titanium.”

Her eyes remained blank and uncomprehending.

‘There we go, now I’ve lost you’.

“We’ll get into the science behind Omnipotanium in a little bit, but for now, lets talk about your husband for a moment, shall we? May I ask what your husband does for a living?”

The woman immediately perked up. She cleared her throat and sat forward. “Jack is the assistant chief technical supervisor at Simon & Kimball’s Superconductor Research Center in the Metro-Techno cube. Would you happen to have met Adam and Betty Briggs? Jack works with Adam, they live two levels up.”

‘Ah, that would be Mr. and Mrs. Slob Jones, living two notches above your pathetic life. Why in fact I do know them, they’re Dynaco customers.’

“No… can’t say as I’ve had the pleasure.”

“Oh. Well they own a few units so I thought you might have been their salesman.”

‘Pardon me, Mrs. Cow, but I believe you know full well they’re clients of my freaking competition. But now that you’ve conveniently brought them up, I’m sure that I’ll get to hear their respective life stories.’

“Mmmm… nope. That wasn’t me.”

“Oh, anyway Adam and Betty are our dearest friends. We’re leaving this afternoon to join them for the weekend on their Riverside plot.”

“Really? That sounds lovely.”

“Yes. We do it every few weekends and I’m really looking forward to it.” She glanced down at her wristpad again and beeped through several functions. “Listen, is this gonna be much longer?”

“No, ma’am. We’re just about to the meat of the deal.”

“Good. Please continue.”

“Okay. So you’re husband and his friend are technical men. I’m picturing them in their free-time, hunched under the hood of a huvver, tinkering and conspiring over its engine.”

The woman nodded. “Yes. In fact, they’re rebuilding a ’32 Bradley.”

‘Of course. Only a classic muscle-huvver for the aging cube-American elite. Only it’s a ’32 Brantley you ignorant sow, get it right.’

“Well, I’ll bet Mr. Briggs is under there with his Omnipotanium. Do you think your husband would prefer his standard set of tools – or this?”

The baldric flashed from a screwdriver, to wrenches, pliers, hammer, saw, ruler, ratchets, then a crowbar, a hatchet, tin-snips, a putty knife, and finally a crowbar.

“The nice thing is, each of the tools you just saw comes in every size possible, all it takes is a thought. Now you may have noticed some of those tools had moving parts. If your friend has Dynaco Omnipotanium, he’s got colorful tools, but he doesn’t have tools with moving parts like the ratchets or pliers.”

Davis saw a gleam enter her eyes and he knew he was hitting her where it counted. This woman was desperate for some small way in which she could feel superior to her neighbors.

“Now let me tell what else they don’t have, and this is the meat of the pitch, this is the ‘why-our-stuff’s-better’ part. I don’t want to tire you with figures and statistics, but I think you’ll like what you hear here. Take this pamphlet from the Fairness-in-Trade Commission. Their independent studies have shown that Dynaco’s ‘Color-Shift’ Omnipotanium can change configurations, on an average of three point five seconds. Simucorp's ‘Imagitanium’ brand Omnipotanium shifts configurations on an average of two point three seconds. Their duration between recharges: forty-eight hours. Ours: seventy-two to ninety-six hours, or once every three to three and a half days. Simucorp’s product only has to spend eight hours on the recharge deck – Dynaco’s product needs nine to twelve. The life expectancy of one unit of Simucorp’s Omnipotanium: five whole years. Dynaco’s wonderful ‘Color-Shift’ Omnipotanium lasts only two years, three if you don’t mess too much with the color.”

“Now let’s get back to features. Dynaco’s product does have a wide spectrum of colors and patterns to choose from, whereas we have only one color – bland metallic gray. They’ve got us there. But with Dynaco Omnipotanium, you’re limited to tool configurations that are one solid piece, and eternally static. You’ve already seen that our product can form multi-piece configurations like scissors, but we’ve also taken that technology one step farther – Imagitanium can form simple mechanical objects.”

“Consider this scenario: you and Betty are walking around the ground level at 2300 hours looking for an open convenience store. Some young punk jumps out of the shadows and demands your finance card. Imagine his surprise if your necklace, earrings, and bracelet meld together to form this…”

The crowbar in her hands shrunk and bent. Within seconds, the woman found herself holding a pellet gun aimed at the far wall.

“Your friend might as well try to beat him off with a pink crowbar. You buy from us – and you can shoot him full of holes at your leisure. Now, your jewelry won’t be as colorful as hers, but in that situation, which would you rather have?”

The woman nodded in appreciation as she sighted down the barrel of the pistol.

“And that’s not all. You’re helping Mrs. Brigg’s prepare food for a dinner party. She’s cooking up a storm with her nice, colorful, Omnipotanium utensils. But while she’s stopping every few seconds to wipe her spoon off on a dirty rag, you’re humming along, getting twice as much work done, barely pausing to use the Vibro-Clean feature. See, her product can’t move on it’s own, but yours… well, how’s this for moving?”

The pellet gun swelled and became an oblong blob which rolled out of her hands and onto the table. Then the blob became a tube with fat walls. It began to turn itself inside out, which had the effect of propelling it along the table. It picked up speed and began sliding around the table in a figure eight pattern. The woman’s eyebrows shot up and she nodded with deep interest.

“It’s called ‘Peristaltic Action’.” Davis told her as the worm flowed back into its baldric configuration. “We’ve got the patent on that. You’ll never see any other brand of Omnipotanium doing this. Your friend’s color-shift Omnipotanium will never come to her when she needs it.”

“That’s pretty neat. You know, I have kind of been thinking of getting some of this stuff for a while now, but I thought that, like, there was either the colored stuff of the non-colored stuff.”

‘Of course you did you poor, pathetic, ignorant cow. You just must not have noticed that we’ve only been blasting you with advertisements from every side now for about five years.’

“Well, ma’am, that’s why I came here today. To show you that there is not only a difference, but also a significant improvement in quality, performance, service, and all-around usefulness. This is precisely the reason I work for Simucorp, not Dynaco. I’m proud of the product I represent – I believe in it.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. But you know, I saw Betty the other day, and she was wearing her Omnipotanium as this beautiful, plate-like necklace that had all these rainbow colored bands.”

‘Oh, don’t make me slap you.’

“Ah, but I haven’t gotten to our newest, most exciting feature: ‘Geometrical Imagery’. Now, with our product only, you can make any tool straight out of your imagination, any size or shape you need. This is for those times when you have need of something specific and unusual that we haven’t thought of preprogramming. When only something shaped just so and this certain length will work. If you purchase Dynaco, you’re out of luck. But purchase Imagitanium, and the only limitation is the boundary of your imagination.”

“Uh-huh. So anyway, I’ve always wondered how this stuff works, do you know?”

‘I tell you “Here’s a diamond” and you ask “Which way to the bathroom? Maybe that is the boundary of your imagination.’

“Certainly. Would you like it in technical jargon or just plain English?”

She immediately took offense. “I’ve been to college, Mr. McCarthy, I think I can handle anything you can.”

Davis stared at her for a long moment. This was exactly, absolutely, and precisely the kind of thing he hated about upper middle-class American society. Everything boiled down to education level. If you’re parents had money, you went to a private college, and got a job that actually paid. You lived in an apartment higher than the tenth level in a clean, brightly-lit, well-maintained cube, then visited your property on the weekends.  If your parents didn’t have money, you were scum. You lived the life of scum, and all your future offspring would live as scum.

Davis smiled. “So… Omnipotanium. We start with recycled conductive alloys and break it down into small clusters of molecules roughly the size of bacterium that are then run through a series of delicate electron lasers. These beams basically draw the logic pathways on the clusters, which turns them into one of two kinds of extremely fine nanoprocessors: receptors or subordinates. Each nanoprocessor has three components; one which stores its electrical charge, one which emits and controls the nanoprocessor’s electromagnetic field and binds it to its neighbors, and another which stores the nanoprocessor’s accession number and all the necessary data relating to its assigned location within the tens of thousands of configurations.”

“Now, the owner or co-owners of a given unit of Omnipotanium are required to have a subdermal prosthesis implanted on the back of their head. It’s completely safe. It’s done on an outpatient basis and only takes a few minutes. Anyway, these prosthetics are designed to sense very specific electrochemical reactions within the cerebral cortex – the physiological manifestations of recognizable mental commands. The implant interprets the mental commands into ‘INTPY’, the nanoprocessors logical language, and transmits the command to the receptor nanoprocessors. Then, likewise, the receptor nanoprocessors distribute the command to all subordinate nanoprocessors in their sphere of influence. Once the ‘shift configuration’ command has reached the frontline clusters, each subordinate nanoprocessor begins to manipulate the poles of its electromagnetic field, enabling them to slide past one another, in a preprogrammed direction, for a preprogrammed distance, until they’ve reached their new location within the new configuration.”

‘Hah! I’ve got you, you stupid hog!’

The woman nodded her head thoughtfully. “Hmmm… it’s amazing what we can do nowadays, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

She glanced into the kitchen, then said, “So, Mr. McCarthy, bottom line… how much will a unit cost?”

“Well, actually, Simucorp’s been running what they call a ‘revolving special’. It has to do with salesman politics and territorial incentives, but what it boils down to is that, until next Friday, Channelview Cube gets a significant discount. Here’s the standard price for one unit of Imagitanium. You may recall it from your access control’s readout when I first rang your door” Davis scrawled a figure on the back of one of his pamphlets and passed it over to her. 

“Keep in mind that this is five percent less than Dynaco’s ‘Color-Shift’ Omnipotanium.”

The woman took one look at the figure and snorted – an actual, pig-like snort. Davis smiled politely and withdrew the pamphlet.

“Here is the two week, ‘revolving special’ for this cube.” He scrawled another figure and passed it back.

This time she merely grunted. “This is just too much, my husband would kill me. He barely clears a half-mill, you know.”

’Oh the humanity! Only a mere half million dollars a year. Try getting by on two-hundred gees, you sow.’

“That’s fine, ma’am. I understand. I’m pretty sure I can do something about that, though. My supervisor’s got a bug push going to set a sales record for our district and lately he’s been making some simply outrageous deals. If you’ve got a phone, I could give him a call real quick.”

“A telephone?” she asked irritably, “Why can’t you use your wristpad?”

‘Because unlike you, I couldn’t afford to pay my bill for a few months and had my service shut off.’

“Oh, this?” Davis held up his wristpad and grinned shyly. “Call me old-fashioned, but this is just a timepiece and calculator.”

“Not very practical for a salesman… Okay, I’ll get the phone. You’re lucky, though, the only reason we have one is cuz Jack thinks it’ll still work in case there’s an emergency and the satellites go off-line.” She shook her head with a sigh, then got up and retreated deeper into the apartment through the living room. She returned moments later carrying a wireless half-helmet. Tossing it on the table in front of Davis, she settled her bulk back into the ergonomic, dining-room chair.

“Thank-you.” Davis smiled.

He keyed the number, then settled the visor over his eyes. Within seconds he was looking at the overly thin receptionist from his boss’s office.

            “Good morning, Simucorp district office.”

            “Hi Molly, it’s Davis, can I talk to Tom?”

“Hi Davey, you really want to talk to Tom or you got a hostile going?”

             “Yes, thank-you.”

             “That’s twice today, Davey, you’re gonna owe me a drink after this. Okay – poof – I’m Tom.”

“Yeah, Tom, its Davis. Listen… I’ve got a potential customer here that’s really interested in the product, but she has a few concerns over the numbers.”

“She’, huh? I’m jealous, Davey. Is she good looking?”

            “No.”

            “Good.”

             “No, I’ve already showed her the revolving special.”

“Let me guess, overweight domestic engineer?”

            “Yeah.”

             “That’s good because I was serious about you buying me a drink later.”

            “Uh-huh, that sounds good.”

“So what the hell is a ‘revolving special’? Another one of your little scams?”

             “Yeah.”

              “I hope you’re not planning on trying to run a little scam on me later.”

              “No. I haven’t done that yet.”

              “Hmm… Too bad. Tonight could be your lucky night.”

               “Are you serious?”

               “Could be.”

              “Tom, you have positively been out of your mind lately.”

               “What? Oh, I get it… and tell her that if she acts now, we’ll give her complete ownership of the entire state of New Hampshire.”

              “You’re kidding.”

              “No, Mr. McCarthy, I’m serious. But wait, it gets better, I’m willing to offer her a lifetime supply of oxygen and her choice of any star within a one light-year radius."

              “You have got to be joking!”

              “So is she hooked? Are we done?”

              “Yeah, Tom.”

“Okay, are we really on for tonight?”

“Yeah, Tom. You’re the boss.”

“All right. See you at Jester’s, say, sixish?”

“That’s great, Tom, I’ll tell her.”

“Bye, Davis.”

“Bye, Tom, thanks a lot.”

           Davis ended the transmission and removed the phone with a huge grin.

           “Well, it turned out even better than I expected. He must really want that sales award.”

           She had listened to his side of the conversation with her fist propped under he chin. She sighed and asked,“So what did he say?”

            Davis wrote out another figure and passed it to her. “I think you’ll like this number better, and… we’re covering all costs of the implantation procedure, and… free upgrades for the lifespan of your units.”

            She looked at his handwriting and screwed her mouth to the side.

“Free upgrades, huh? I hope you guys got something good in store for the near future.”

          “How about small electronic appliances? Hair dryers, curling irons, clothes irons, fans, blenders and so on. We’ve already got the programming written, we’re just waiting for the boys at research and development to finish figuring out how to increase nanoprocessor data storage. And here’s another little secret: we’ve just discovered how to make Omnipotanium form malleable fibers, so next on the horizon will be vast amounts of clothing configurations. By then I expect Dynaco will buckle under from the sales pressure and sell us the color-shift patent.”

“Hmmm… Sounds good, but it’s still pretty high.”

          “Well, ma’am, in all honesty, I don’t think you will ever get a better deal. I don’t know if Tom had too much coffee today or what, but I’ve never heard of him going so low, and throwing in free implants, and free upgrades.”

           “I still don’t know.” The lady thought for a while, shaking her head. Davis decided not to say another word until she spoke and just look at her. It was his own personal sales technique he called the ‘stubborn stare’. He liked to use it at the hinge of a deal because, in his experience, whoever gave in and spoke first went on to lose the negotiations.

            By sheer, ignorant luck, the woman utilized the only loophole Davis had ever found in the stubborn stare technique – she asked another question about the product.

            “You know what I still don’t understand? I don’t see what use the geometry image thing is. What, does it just make little shapes or something?”

            ‘Unbelievable. You showed no interest in it before and now you want me to go all through it again.’

            Davis smiled. “It makes little shapes if you want little shapes. Say, specially shaped cookie cutters that we haven’t preprogrammed it with. If you picture it correctly in your mind, your Imagitanium can create it. It’s really so much more than little shapes, though, it can be any shape: long shapes. Say you’ve got a nail stuck in your ceiling, and you want to pull it out. None of the hammers we’ve preprogrammed your Omnipotanium with are long enough to reach it. With Geometrical Imagery, all you have to do is imagine a hammer with a grip four feet long… and you’re suddenly holding one.”

“So it makes whatever you’re picturing?”

“Like I said before, the only limitation is the boundary of your imagination.”

She shook her head, making her plump cheeks jiggle. “I still don’t see what I could use it for.”

          “Yes, well, that’s the beauty of it. It’s for those uses you cannot predict. We at Simucorp have preprogrammed Imagitanium with thousands and thousands of configurations, everything from jeweler’s tools to surgical instruments. Every conceivable object we could think of is preprogrammed into our product, but still, somebody’s always gonna find themselves in need of a tool we couldn’t predict, maybe even something that’s never been invented. For just those occasions, we’ve created Geometrical Imagery.”

           The woman rolled her eyes. “You still haven’t given me one single instance of when your little shape thingies can help me, specifically.”

            ‘You have no imagination at all, do you? You pompous, ignorant, overweight…’ He was struck with an idea so quickly that it dropped out of his mouth before he could seriously think it through. “What about an appetite suppressant?”

Davis cringed – inwardly.

Her mouth dropped open and her eyebrows shot up. “Whu?… I beg your pardon!”

          He thought fast. His idea had never been thought of before much less tested, but it was too late to turn back now. Best just to plunge ahead with no apologies. Good salesman had to think quickly and sometimes make a risky ‘leap-of-faith’. Besides, at this point, he had thrown out all his best tricks and she didn’t seem to be budging.

          “It’s a popular application, though not one that’s commonly spoke of – it’s a matter of extreme delicacy, obviously.”

          Her jaw snapped shut and her manner grew even more frigid. “Obviously.”

          She stared bitterly at him for long, torturous seconds, as if considering lunging across the table and caving his head in. Finally she spoke. “Well, seeing as how you’ve already brought up this ‘delicate matter’, please… go on.”

           Davis cleared his throat and smiled weakly. “It’s like this, you see, I myself have had a constant battle keeping the extra pounds off. I may look thin to you now, but before I purchased my own, personal unit of Imagitanium, I can assure you, I was pathetically obese. No diet plan or pill had any effect on me, mainly because of my utter lack of willpower when it comes to fatty foods. Then I heard about this application from another Simucorp salesman and tried it myself. I can’t begin to tell you how wonderfully it works, and how good it’s been for my self-image and energy levels. And it’s so simple. Basically all you do is this: eat small, healthy meals in private, and then, when you’re confronted with a situation where you’d normally be weak, say, a buffet luncheon or a Mexican restaurant, use your Omnipotanium to fill your stomach. You’re not a bit hungry so you’re not a bit tempted.”

           “Uh-huh. And how do you do that?”

           “Simple. You just swallow a piece, then picture the size and shape of your stomach and that’s it. Later on, after the food’s been cleared away or you’ve left the restaurant, go into the bathroom and signal your Imagitanium to use its peristaltic action to move back out through your esophagus. I know it sounds gross and it is a little uncomfortable at first, but you get used to it. Then the pounds start to vanish and the benefits completely outweigh the unpleasantness. It becomes as routine, and no less uncomfortable, as swallowing a handful of medications several times a day, plus, there’re no side effects.”

“Fine, let’s try it.”

Davis’es smile evaporated. “What?”

          “Sure. If what you say is true, then it’s perfectly safe, right? Let me swallow some and see what it feels like.”

“But…”

“It is safe, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is, but…”

“Then let’s go. I want to try it.”

“I understand that, ma’am, but don’t you think…”

           “Come on, Mr. McCarthy!” She slapped the table. “Why are you hedging? You pointed it out and now I’m admitting it: I have a weight control problem.” She slapped the table again. “If this stuff can work for a pushy, low-class swindler like you than surely it can work for me. Now do you want a sale or don’t you?”

            Davis looked into her glaring, beady little eyes caked in swaths of fatty flesh and thought to himself, ‘You are really asking for it, Mrs. Cow. Not only do you have more than me, but you look down on me for having less. You and all those other dung-heap, community-cube Americans. As far as I’m concerned, you deserve whatever happens to you after this.’

            He answered her last question wordlessly – he smiled.

            A one-inch section of Omnipotanium broke away from the baldric and wormed towards the woman. She looked defiantly at him as she snatched it up in her meaty paw.

“You might want some water with that, to help it go down.”

“Do you drink water with it?”

Davis smiled honestly. “No.”

She shoved it in her mouth and swallowed it with an audible ‘gulp’. Her eyes never left his.

         ‘Oh, bravo, Mrs. Cow, you’re incredibly brave – and incredibly stupid… now let’s see….’ Since he was the one with the implant for this unit of Omnipotanium, it was up to him to make it just the right size and shape. Never altering his smile, Davis stretched his memory way back to fifteenth grade anatomy class. The stomach was on the left, just under the diaphragm, it had five regions: cardiac, fundus, pyloric, something and something. Shaped like a cartoonish, stockinged foot upside down, the esophagus would enter on the left side of the big toe, and then the duodenum would begin where the ankle would be. He’d never seen a real stomach with his actual, bare eyes, but he was going to guess that it was a little bit bigger than a man’s fist. For a massive beast like her – softball sized. If, after this, she still didn’t feel full, he could always make it bigger.

             Davis formed a vacuum in the three-dimensional canvas of his mind’s eye. Then, clearly and deliberately, he placed within the vacuum, a cartoonish, stockinged foot the size of a softball. Then he felt an almost imperceptible buzz on the back of his head and knew that the shift-configuration command had been sent.

             Suddenly the woman stiffened in her chair with a puzzled expression. Her hand clapped over the bulge of her belly and she winced. A gurgling noise preceded a belch, then a gag, then another gag, then a more convulsive gag, and suddenly vomit exploded all over the dining room table. Mixed with the usual ingredients was a smattering of blood – bright red blood.

            Davis leapt back from the table and stared in shock. ‘My god, that’s arterial blood! I must’ve ruptured something in her esophagus or stomach – maybe even her entire stomach! Was it too big?’

            She vomited several times in rapid succession, too quickly to catch her breath. Her bloodied stomach contents were everywhere, running off the table. She threw up again and again, over and over, and her face was turning purple from lack of oxygen. Finally she tried for a desperate gasp of breath between heaves – and matters grew worse.

             Her eyebrows arched even higher above her red, watery eyes, and her hands flew to her neck. She stopped making noise as the waves of blood and bile flowed over her chin.

She had inhaled it – and was drowning on it.

            Davis clenched and unclenched his hands. He knew the Heimlich Maneuver; every citizen did. He could still save her – but he had caused this. If she survived, he’d be through.

            His jaw set and his eyes narrowed. ‘No. She caused this. Her and every other upper-middle-class, community-cube American who had their cushy life handed to them on a silver platter, while I’ve had to struggle, and cheat, and lie, just to scrape out a meager existence. I tried to stop her… and now she’s getting what she deserves.’

            Her eyes rolled up in her head; her head started lolling around on her chubby neck in an almost comical way, then she dropped face down on the table, splattering a few little red and brown droplets.

Davis knew that she had passed out from lack of oxygen. He also knew that he could still save her with CPR and a quick vid-call. Instead, he sat back down in his chair and tried to regain his composure. As he sat there watching her die, he gradually grew less horrified, and more convinced that he’d done the only thing he could have done to save his own skin.

             Women like her were self-pitying and self-righteous. The whole world revolved around them and of course, mistreated them most unfairly. Never mind that she never had to work a day in her life and lived fourteen levels off the ground floor of her cube, or that she had a whole huvver to herself, for her use alone. Nevermind that her apartment was twelve hundred square feet, filled with expensive furniture and modern luxuries, and she was able to fry grease in a designer dress, no, her life was hard. The poor, poor woman. Then along comes an uppity, low-class, pathetically inferior insect and tries to earn an eight-percent commission off a fraction of her miserable half-mill. It was all so shockingly unfair. Never mind that he lived in a third level apartment in a shoddy commercial cube, or that he has to work a whole six-hour day. Never-mind that his parents couldn’t afford university dues so he’d only had sixteen years of education. So what if he could only rent a public huvver in eight-hour shifts, or that he couldn’t afford a communications subscription for his wristpad functions. He was an unclean intruder in her little universe which was already fraught with so much injustice. How dare he? The monster.

             Davis knew that if she survived, she would do everything in her power to see that he ended up executed for his criminal misjudgment. The only thing he was guilty of was taking a risk to try to make a sale, but the law would surely side with her. After all, she was upper-middle-class, community-cube America, and he was third-level gutter trash – worse, in fact – he was a salesman.

             He sneered at her with open hostility.

             Feeling fairly certain that she was dead by this time, Davis rose from the table. Even if she were still alive, technically, she would not be by the time Davis had concluded his business. He walked around the table, and, holding his hand out, broadcast the shift configuration command to initiate the product’s peristaltic action feature. A thin, metallic tube slid out of her mouth and through the fetid pool. When it was clear, Davis initiated the vibro-clean feature. Once it had shucked off the last red drop, Davis joined it to the baldric and crossed the room.

              As he approached the panel containing the surveillance equipment the government mandated every home have, Davis planned his cover-up.

              ‘All right, Davey-boy. Every molecule of omnipotanium will be accounted for, that’s good. I’ll have to take care of any fingerprints I’ve left here, then I’ll have to steal her telephone and recycle it later, along with every stitch of clothing I’ve got on. When I meet Molly tonight I’ll have to feed her some misleading story about the cow here, but that shouldn’t be a problem.’

He slapped the crowbar he was holding against his open palm.

‘Now for the task at hand… it’ll be tricky getting to the data-strips and then bulk erasing them, but that’s okay. I’ve done it before – and I just happen to have all the right tools for the job.’