Fiction — The MagicLand Chronicles

The Behavior Scale

Candy wants to leave Chicago but can’t because her Behavior Scale says so.

Author’s note: This short story takes place more than 2,000 years before the events of MagicLand and before The First Eradication. The characters in this shortie do not appear in the novel.

Part One

I work for Google.

I know, right? So, breathe deep, and don’t get your yarbles in your mouth about it. And no, you aren’t my droog and I can’t change your Behavior Scale. It’s an algorithm. Unless you can find a way to smash your past, you’re stuck with it.

Hey maybe you know this — but usually all I gotta do is say I work for Google and whoever I talk to suddenly wants to get my yarbles in their mouth and worship my skin, dig? The conversation ends it just becomes a hands on the floor kinda thing, Nothing else gets talked about. Oh, you do? the person says. Then the fawning starts. The appreciation.

Everybody wants to work for Google. Working for Google isn’t even work. It’s a pathway to royalty. To worship and adulation.

It was always true, of course. It was true when it was just a flirty little search engine. It is true now that it is the reason you can live past 150. Hey. Maybe only cuz of that.

I don’t drive.