Ripples 12 by KimB

[Editor's Note: Ripples is a serial story.
The author makes no guarantees as to completing the serial.
Publication dates are located in the left side menu.]

12 Glare

The glare was intentional.

Shiny display tables, shiny glass cabinets, shiny polished floors, shiny gizmos bedazzling shiny faces.

Shiny, antiseptic, clean, sterile, dead: an advertisement of flawlessness.

Schools of eager buyers moved through the store, looking at assorted plastic holders and tastefully designed technobabble cards. She followed the circling press until she found a break point and stepped towards a white shiny display cabinet letting the current carry the shoals of buyers along the infinite loop of wants and desires.

An eager shiny face appeared moments later.

"Can I help you?", asked the shiny face.

She smiled and nodded in reply.

Pointing at a Fruit Fone, she began to ask the questions that needed asking. Taking time between each to listen to the eager dialogue and probing softly for what she needed to know most.

Not too fast. Not too slow. Steady on.

She played the "What happens if" game and the "Show me how" game and the eager shiny face happily played along. A few times, she had to replay her lines, hardly comprehending what she heard in response. "Is that so?", "Really?", "How does it do that?" were followed by enthusiastic explanations the shiny face had memorized; designed to convince wannabe shiny faces.

There it was. Right there. Right in front. A colored bull's-eye.

FIND ME

The shiny face explained that: if this and that, and this over here and that over there, and this other thing with this option, a Fruit Fone could find itself. It could say where it was. It could reach out and tell.

There is no such thing as a lost Fruit Fone.