Mardock Scramble

Even after she had finished on the toilet, washed herself with the bidet, and flushed all the evidence away, there was still a faint smell of medicine in the air. She fixed her clothes and fastened her belt even tighter than before.

Then she put her mind to her earlier feeling that something was out of place.

She soon discovered why—a plastic bubble fixed to the tank that connected the toilet to the flush button. She gave the bubble a wrench and it came off easily, and, shaking it, a tiny fingertip-sized camera emerged.

Balot expanded her consciousness and interfered with the camera’s magnetic field, snarcing it.

The two hundred hours of continuous footage stored in the camera’s many microchips was replaced bit by bit by images of the department store’s mascot doll waving into the camera. As if someone wearing the doll costume was looking into the camera and waving for all eternity.

Balot then put the camera back and took the lipstick from her bag.

A LITTLE HORROR SHOW

She wrote on the wall right next to the bubble. And then she added this:

WARNING

Balot left the booth. Purely for self-defense, she murmured to herself as she washed her hands.

But the department store wasn’t about to stop its dirty tricks just because she revealed the existence of a camera. Balot knew this fact all too well. Bribes given to the cleaners and security guards.

She even knew all about the money paid to the shills, the women who ostentatiously “bought” the most expensive items on display in order to encourage real customers to spend more.

She knew everything, right down to how much they were paid.

03

As she emerged from the toilet, the alarm bell squooged into the shape of a mouse and jumped onto Balot’s shoulder. Without missing a beat he ran to her neck and became a choker complete with crystal pendant.

“You took your sweet time.”

–Don’t blame me, blame the Peeping Tom.

“Look, I…”

–Not you. There was a camera in the ladies’ room. I just fixed it up a little.

“Camera?” Oeufcoque thought about this for a while before it clicked. “You mean illegal cameras set up in order to get close-up footage of women’s bodies?”

–But do you really understand? What that means to me?

“Well, I think I know how you feel, at least. Right now you’re angry. Very angry. And irritated and also embarrassed. Mortified. That’s what you smell of, anyway.”

–Smell?

“Body odor. A mouse like me can read emotions through body odor. Didn’t you know?”

Balot squeezed the crystal tightly and started prodding it with her fingertips. Violently. And full of grief.

And then Oeufcoque did indeed understand Balot’s feelings.

“Oh, sure, sorry. If I’m absolutely honest I can’t tell exactly how you’re feeling. I don’t really have the imagination to comprehend it. I’m not a woman, after all, or even a human.”

Balot found that her feelings were calmed down somewhat by Oeufcoque’s words.

–I think you’re kinder than a human, and more humble too.

Oeufcoque was now attuned to Balot’s change of heart, as if he were sniffing everything up. He noticed the chemicals secreted from her skin, the change in her pulse, and most of all the change in atmosphere.

“There’s a café just above us. We should be able to get some work done there.”

The Internet café that Oeufcoque was talking about was on the top floor of the department store.

They could see the harbor city sprawled out in a mess down below and farther in the distance the thin line of the sea.

The seats were set a comfortable distance apart, perfect for getting down to some work.

When the waiter came over to take her order, Balot ordered a cappuccino by pointing at the menu, and then opened up the laptop-style monitor embedded in the table.

She was about to connect to the net but then she stopped herself.

–Do you mind if we talk for a while about my new hobby?

They’d completely forgotten about this since the spy camera incident. Oeufcoque cheerfully agreed.

Balot took her PDA from her bag and lined up the six colors of markers alongside the instruction booklet for the CG fossils. She chose the yellow and marked one of the words in the heading of the manual.

Then she snarced the PDA and brought up the word that she had just highlighted. The name of a large spiral-shaped shell. As she read the manual she entered a rough commentary into the PDA, adding her personal impressions. The same color as agate, or If these were still alive I’d like one as a pet, that sort of thing.

–I’m going to make a dictionary. My own original.

“Brilliant. When you grow up you could become a linguist, or a poet.”