1st 5 Pages September Workshop - Yuen

Name: Sunni Yuen
Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi
Title: The Germ Factory

Saskia chucked the damp rag into the waste bin and splayed her fingers over the old-fashioned cash register. The muted sheen of the long brass keys reflected the pink of her nail polish. Perfect. She gazed down the sun-dappled aisles of Uncle Peter’s corner store, inhaling the comforting scent of paprika and honey. The shelves were laden with bottles of sunflower seed oil, chocolate wafers, and crusty loaves of poppy seed bread. The beets and pickles glowed ruby and moss green in their jars.

The corner of Saskia’s mouth twitched upwards. She had worked hard all summer stocking inventory and working the till to show Uncle Peter she could run the store. And now, it was actually happening. She, Saskia Brennan, age fifteen, one week shy of high school, was managing the store without any adult supervision. Once school started, she could work late afternoons and weekends freeing Uncle Peter to focus on his research.

“Why are you smiling? No one else is here.” Chloe asked with a stifled yawn. She wore a petulant expression and slumped low on her stool, legs dangling.

“I’m here,” March said. He leaned over the counter, absorbed with applying a bead of Elmer’s glue to his stamp book. Stamps were his latest obsession.

“I meant customers. People who matter,” Chloe amended before she clamped her lips around a red braid of licorice and sucked hard. That behavior might be tolerated from a ten-year-old like March but definitely not a high school student. Chloe used to be Saskia’s closest friend and normal. But once Chloe fell in with the computer geek crowd, she began rejecting anything mainstream. At least March was still the same boisterous boy, even if he was a pain-in-the-neck to his sister. But that was Chloe’s problem.

“Don’t listen to her, Saskia,” March said. “Chloe’s grumpy because she wants to play that dumb computer game but Mom and Dad made us come here.”

“Excuse me, dumb game?” Chloe scowled at March.

“Dumb and boring game. All you do is shoot smoke rings,” March taunted.

“The game’s not just button-mashing!” Chloe declared hotly. “There’s way more to it. It’s Pygmalion’s Quest! It’s about—it’s like – it’s, erm,” She fished for an adjective. “Well, you have to try it.”

Saskia decided to indulge Chloe. “How does it start?” she asked.

Chloe closed her eyes. “The game loads and it’s like stepping into ancient Greece. It’s white everywhere. The floor is chalky. The walls are marble but with blue veins so thin and faint, they’re like cracks. There’s a man crouched over. Suddenly you see he’s surrounded by pedestals but there’s no statue on the closest one. He raises his face – there are white handprints on both cheeks.” Swaying gently, Chloe hovered her palms two inches from her own cheeks for dramatic effect.

“Then what?” Saskia asked, slightly perturbed. Did Chloe really think she lived in this game world?

Chloe’s voice became sing-songy. “The man is Pygmalion, who creates a statue of a woman. In the Greek myth, he falls in love with the statue, and she comes to life. But in the game, when she comes to life, she panics, slaps both sides of his face, and runs away, which is less cheesy than her falling in love with him at first sight. Pygmalion is devastated. He doesn’t know where she’s run. He’s so heartbroken the other statues come to life.”

“And then they run away and you hafta catch them,” March volunteered as he flicked little balls of dried glue from his fingers on to the counter. Saskia frowned and swept the glue debris into the waste bin.

“No,” Chloe said impatiently. “They’re avatars. There’s a queen, bishop, king, knight, rook . . . ”

“Like chess,” Saskia commented.

“Nuh-uh. Mine’s a mage. The cool part is that I get to give special powers to my mage by writing code. Like firebolts! I had to work out the physics of the temperature and the speed depending on the angle,” Chloe explained, eyes shining with excitement.

This sounded complicated. “Mmm-hmmm,” Saskia said.

“So if a robber attacks, Chloe can save us!” March laughed.

“Can we please not talk about robbers?” Saskia interrupted. She wasn’t superstitious but she could not help glancing out the window. Luckily, the street was clear. A robber was the last thing she wanted to think about on her first day working unsupervised.

Chloe waved her arms. “March was the one who brought up robbers. Anyways, my point is that playing Pygmalion’s Quest challenges your mind. Plus, the team that finishes first gets to help design the next release from Fossilware. I mean they’re only the most cutting edge game developer ever! It’s pure torture to be this close and not finish when school is about to get in the way.”

“Get in the way?” Saskia shook her head in disbelief. “Gee Chloe, high school actually matters. You need to join the debate club or Model UN and build your resume, learn to put on makeup, dance with boys–” Seeing Chloe flail her arms about in a mock waltz, Saskia paused and pressed her lips thinly together. Chloe needed to grow up, badly.

“What should I be learning?” protested March in a tone Saskia recognized as his give-me-attention voice.

“Fractions and to stop rolling down hills like a feral child,” Saskia said and she jabbed a key on the register for emphasis. The metallic clang punctuated the silence followed by tinkling wind chimes. A customer had arrived. Good thing too because March was about to ask and discover what “feral” meant, which would have resulted in an argument.

The customer hovered inside the entrance. He was tall and his broad shoulders were hunched over in a rumpled trench coat that fluttered to his ankles. He wore a battered fedora, under which Saskia could see a deeply lined forehead. He looked haggard. He wordlessly surveyed the store, eyes roving down the aisles to the back where Uncle Peter kept his workshop.

Saskia tossed her hair over her shoulder and greeted the man with a weak smile. She walked up to him and offered a pair of tongs and wax envelope. “Can I help you?” She spoke in her most grown-up voice.

He leaned close, and she caught the odor of burnt matches and sour yeast. He licked his lips. “Where’s the hive?”

“Excuse me?” Saskia’s nostrils curled. There was something unsettling about this man. His hand kept drifting to the pocket by his left hip, as if he sought to reassure himself that something was still there.

“The hive,” he repeated as he took the tongs and wax envelope from Saskia. “Where is it?”

“If you’re looking for honey,” Saskia said, fishing for comprehension. “It’s in the far left aisle.”

The man lumbered in that direction, pockets clinking. Saskia watched him stoop over the bins and snatch handfuls of dried apricots, toffee, and black pepper crusted walnuts. These he jammed into the same wax envelope. It was going to be a headache to ring him up.

The man was now running his finger along the inner rim of an open jar of beets. He stuck it in his mouth and smacked his lips. “Trace remnants of elementals.” He whistled softly, rapping on the walls. “Where are you hiding? It’s no use. I’ll find you.”

Saskia stiffened. What was he rambling about? He patted the pocket by his left hip again, briefly flashing a black metal handle.