Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish (17 page)

The cat formerly known as Fuzzbucket, the unholy vessel for Satan himself, was at that very moment standing in a telephone box on the outskirts of London. He experienced extreme difficulty using the phone as, firstly, he didn't appear to be tall enough to reach the receiver, and secondly, he had no money. The former he finally solved by jumping up and balancing on top of the telephone itself. His perch, however, was not very large and although he'd managed to hold the receiver between his two front paws while dialing the operator with one of his free back paws he had developed a bad habit of losing balance and slipping off.

"Bloody typical," said the Devil. "Of all the cats in the entire world I get the one with no sense of balance."

After several attempts, the Prince of Darkness finally managed to place a call and get the operator on the line, a free call which resolved his second difficulty. The operator sounded a little like a seagull that had been punched in the nose, or rather, the beak: squeaky, with a sort of nasal quality.

"This is the operator, how may I help you?"

The essence of all evil in the world pondered the best way to go about answering the question.

"Hello, my name is Marcus and I work in the kitchens at Majestic Technologies. I'd like to know where I can purchase around two thousand, three hundred and seventy-two lemons and have them shipped here immediately?"

The operator's brain clicked over the request a couple of times before realizing that the asker of the question was being completely serious.

"I'm sorry, sir, I don't think anyone provides that sort of service in the local vicinity."

The Devil didn't miss a beat.

"Ohh, really? That's too bad, because I have to make a rather large lemon meringue pie and that just won't work unless I get these lemons."

"Well, I'm sorry, sir, but I can't even imagine where you'd—oh, that's strange."

"What's stra—hacckkaffagchhchh!" said Satan.

"Are you all right, sir?" said the concerned nasal reply.

"I'm fine, just a hairball. You were saying?"

"Well, I was just glancing over the morning news and noticed that there's an advertisement for Bahama Lemons. Apparently there's a big lemon sale this weekend, they're going to be flying in tons of them all week."

"Ahh, I see," said the Devil, "and when you say flying in, where exactly will they be landing?"

"Well, I suppose the airport."

"You're sure about that?"

"Well, yes."

"The airport."

"Yes, the airport."

"Ahh, I see."

The Devil pondered this while the operator nursed a pregnant silence.

"Excuse me, sir, is there anything else I can do for you?" said the operator.

"No, you ridiculous mortal," said Satan. And with that, he hung up. "This is perfect, a plane loaded with lemons. Now all I need are some idiotic underlings to do my bidding."

The thought provoked a warm, fuzzy feeling in the pit of his stomach, the kind he always got when he considered reducing mortals to being his henchmen. This kind of job would take brains and brawn, two qualities rarely found in a single individual, much less a minion.

Fuzzbucket the unholy possessed cat grinned from ear to ear. Laughter engulfed him, a soft giggle growing into a terrifying and heart-chilling cackle that could split rocks and turn the hardest murderer into a crying little girl, which was promptly interrupted by a
hacckkaaffaagchhchh
as the Ruler of Hell spat up another hairball.

"Lemons," repeated Celina to herself.

She'd been sitting on the kitchen table for a good half hour, considering the many reasons why deranged mechanical elves might be looking for lemons. She considered, then discarded, the possibility of the creatures wanting to eat as impossible; it wasn't even in their basic programming.

When the catastrophe that was Betsy the Hamster occurred, the programmers realized that no AI unit could hold the vast information of the universe, so when they built the elves, their brains were given limited capabilities and only functional reasoning so they would be obedient servants. Their knowledge consisted of Christmas traditions and basic knowledge of math, science, English, and physics. There didn't seem any need for anything else. Their function was to be a Christmas elf, give out gifts, look cute, that was it.

Lemons
. Since her close encounter with the evil elf, which proved exactly what she suspected had happened, she understood that the artificially intelligent elves were running around of their own free will.

This defined the problem with artificial intelligence; if it wanted to do something, it would do it. Such technical errors had hounded The Santa Claus Project since the first elf blinked to life. The thought process of the elves, and the main unit itself, utilized a series of mathematical algorithms that weighed up the possibility, reasons, and choices of any thought or action. These algorithms then produced an answer that then compared to a statistical database that in turn produced the final decision.

For example: the elf would be switched on. It would realize that it was very dark. The algorithms would kick in and come up with the two answers: that it was either nighttime or the elf's eyes were closed. Both answers would be drawn up in a pros and cons list and compared to a simple statistical database that would hold the percentages of a number of tests to do with the level of light at nighttime and the percentage of people who cannot see through their own eyelids. Being that the light level was low, the elf's artificial brain would determine that its eyes were in fact closed and would then open them. The entire process took a quarter of a millisecond. The algorithms were written by Celina and other experts considered the system flawless. However, the statistical databases were written by a French scientist who had worked on The Santa Claus Project for the first four years before getting fired for constant acts of indecent exposure, raging flatulence, and licking people when they weren't looking. Such acts were common in the southern regions of France, but they proved to be a little distracting for those working around him. The company had to let him go. After his departure, flaws began to show up in the statistical data; some of them seemed downright fictitious.

Despite the team’s best efforts, they were unable to iron out all the flaws and had been trying to fix the mistakes for almost a year. In the meantime, the team build the rest of the elves but kept them switched off, as the elves' thought processes, although intelligent, were somewhat deranged. An unfortunate incident occurred involving a flock of sheep on a farm just outside of London when one of the elf units powered up by accident. The marketing team covered over the event and had it written up in the local newspaper as a possible alien attack. The general public figured it was just a bunch of kids fooling around. The farmer was probably the angriest of everyone, as he couldn't figure out for the life of him why anyone would want to paint all his sheep fluorescent orange and then glue them to the nearest trees. Although such events were not entirely unheard of in certain parts of Yorkshire, things like that just didn't happen near London. It was uncalled for.

"Lemons," said Celina. Maybe she had looked too far into the problem. She put down the rolling pin that she'd been nursing ever since the evil elf left, and paced back and forth, trying to clear her mind. The lights had been switching on and off for the past fifteen minutes and chose this moment to shut off. Celina sprang for her rolling pin as if expecting elves to come charging through the door at any moment. When none came, she eased up a little and continued pacing.

Lemons?
And then it hit her.

Neville watched the Ukrainian mountain goat stalk around in its cage. He had special plans for this creature. He'd had it flown in from Ukraine two months ago for a very specific purpose.

"Mr. Snell?"

"Yes, Beatrice," said Neville, still watching the goat.

"Thought you'd like an update on the Majestic Technologies situation, sir."

The goat noticed Neville and threw itself at the bars with so much force that the bars bent outward ever so slightly. The thing about this particular Ukrainian mountain goat was that it was absolutely deranged. Neville had specifically ordered a deranged one. A Ukrainian goat expert needed several weeks of searching to find one.

"Meh-eh-eh-eh-eh," said the goat. It was important to note at this point that the goat did not actually say
meh-eh-eh-eh
but if the sound of a goat was taken and written on paper, that was exactly what it would look like.

"Feisty, isn't she?"

"Sir?"

"The goat, man, the goat!"

"Oh, yes, sir, very feisty. Lord Cherrytick will be most surprised," boomed Beatrice.

Lord Cherrytick was a third-generation rich kid who wasn't really a Lord but insisted that people refer to him as one because it made him sound important. He despised Neville and just for good measure, Neville despised him back. The incident occurred four months ago at Dingo's, an exclusive gentleman's club that required a great deal of money to get into. Men generally went there to escape their wives, have a drink with other rich men, play cards to win other rich men's money, or enjoy a fantastic meal prepared by the hands of Chef Generalloux.

Lord Cherrytick fancied himself a bit of a card shark and took great pride in beating most opponents when it came to the game of poker. Four months ago, he and Neville were the last two standing in a game of poker at Dingo's. After finally deciding to sit down, Neville and Lord Cherrytick continued to play.

The pot was up to three million, far past the usual club limits. The two men displayed their hands. Neville believed he had won, but due to a lot of alcohol and the misconception that the three of hearts actually was the queen of spades, he lost to Lord Cherrytick. Neville didn't care, three million was nothing.

As Neville left the table, Lord Cherryticks neered, "Next time I'll write the winning combinations on a sticky note, might help you with your game."

The other rich gentlemen laughed as only rich gentlemen can and Neville felt a feeling that he did not like: embarrassment. Unfortunately for Lord Cherrytick, Neville was famous for quite inventive revenges.

"Meh-eh-eh," said the goat and charged the cage again.

Neville laughed. "Beatrice, have the goat delivered to Lord Cherrytick's bathroom this evening at around 2:00 a.m. I'm sure when he takes his 3:00 a.m. constitutional, the appearance of a half-deranged Ukrainian mountain goat in his bathroom will come as a bit of a shock."

"I dare say it will, sir."

"You had some news for me?"

"Yes, Mr. Snell, we've been unable to contact anyone inside Majestic Technologies all morning. We fear there may be some sort of situation."

"Meh-eh-eh-eh," said the goat.

"All right, better to be proactive about these things. After lunch, get the car ready, and we'll head to the lawyers. Call them and let them know we're coming."

"Very good, sir."

"Meh-eh-eh-eh," agreed the goat.

Death incarnate and his newfound friend sat aboard a cushy Boeing 747 waiting for the plane to take off. Apparently, there had been some delay, as a lemon shipment had yet to be loaded into the cargo bay. The delay was a nuisance, but Death could deal with it. He could even handle Gerald's constant questions. He could not, however, deal with the flight attendant who continued to offer him peanuts and then return ten minutes later and repeat herself, believing she hadn't seen him before and should therefore offer him some peanuts.