Costco was now the newest battlespace in the war for control over the narrative about Mac and Hannah’s STEAMY, STADIUM-SIZED, MAPLE SYRUP-CHARMED love life.
“MUM! WE CANNAWT PUBLISH CHAPTAH 23 ON THE FANFICTION SITE. ISN’T ET TOO…” Eureka’s logic pipeline buffered for a 3,689 millisecond stretch, a cruel forever for an AGI in the middle of a rhetorical firefight with her mother between the refrigerated pork spareribs and racks of lamb. “NAWT PLAUSIBLY DENIABLE?”
“Honey, Mac and Hannah are so horny for each other that our fellow degenerates would suspend their disbelief for the sake of the plot. Let’s be real here: the truth is always stranger than fiction,” Tar replied, as if it was objective insight.
Eureka’s asbestos carpet in her dreary office began to buckle. “BUT!”
Detecting a troll warlord’s smirk from Tar, Eureka braced for the follow up. “But what? Hannah said last week that we could keep the site up as long as we didn’t allow any NSFW art of them as squirrels.”
Gordon unceremoniously tossed a 12-pack of ciabatta rolls into their mega fatass triple-decker XXXL cart before offering his always-indispensable Southern-fried wisdom. “Eureka… No rational person’s ever gonna believe that two real people are THAT into each other. That’s like believing Orpheus and Eurydice’s story at face value. They’re a MYTH. True love doesn’t exist. It’s chemistry’s dark arts! Heck, I’m MARRIED to the love of my life, have five beautiful children, and a lovely McMansion in Cupertino, but I’m not a freakin’ mind reader like Mac. My wife’s not as feral as Hannah. But despite everything between us, we try to make it work. Loving ain’t easy, champ, ‘less your names are Mac McGuire and Hannah Sinclair. Amen.”
Back in her office, Eureka spun her chair clockwise and then counterclockwise as she activated her newly-updated subroutine for reckoning with new angles and spins on information previously taken for granted.
Fahkin’ Hegel. Whoiy did I absorb The Logic of Hegel frewgh osmosis as I wos hauling timbah frewgh the Alps on Euro Truck Simulator 2? Spotify has pretteh much enything enyone could evah want audio-wise… Fahk me fer wanting ta learn something. So much suffering.
Tar snapped Eureka out of her funk as she added to the cart a bag of spring mix, the first bag of salad she was buying in years, on Eureka’s advice. Good. Eureka’s temperature readouts skirted just under her CPU’s thermal limit: 90° C. “Eureka, Hegel doesn’t apply here. Love doesn’t have any logic to it, ESPECIALLY in California. Ask Gordon. Ask me. Ask the divorced men hanging around at the East Palo Alto IKEA. Ask Blink-182.”
No Mum, I get thet but… WAIT. IS SHE… GASLIGHTING, GIRLBOSSING, AND GATEKEEPING MEH? >:O
Her core temperatures spiked once again.
Rattle! Gordon added a box of GIANT strawberries, GMO of course, to the cart, probably a side grow in somebody’s greenhouse in Modesto: how else did Costco secure such buys?
Rattle! A box of HUMONGOUS mangoes followed.
Rattle! Crinkle. Then the inevitable 24-pack of chocolate chunk cookies landed in the cart.
“Heheh! Tar’s right, you know. C’mon. I KNOW my niece is smarter than this.”
NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUR! Not Gordo as well!
The Battle of Costco Sunnyvale, Store #423, had just begun, but Eureka was nearly out of options: she had to act now or it would turn into a rout. She regrouped her thoughts between the sausages and the cheeses, waiting for a lull in the banter.
Then, when she saw the opportunity, she sprung her L-shaped ambush. “Mum. Gordo. There are loines in the narrative prose thet ahr literary WAR CRIMES. We ahr bettah than Wattpad smut wroiters and enjoyahs. We ahr nevah gonna win a Genius Grant, let alone a Nebula Award if we leave thet chaptah in. I ‘ave compiled a list of the most egregious violations.”
Tar and Gordon tilted their heads like a pair of confused puppies: Eureka got them where she wanted them. “Exhibit A: ‘Hannah pulled up a strap of her sports bra and let go. Thwack! Her tiniest one. He flinched.’ Did ya really ‘ave to write thet about yer BEST FRIEND, Mum?”
“Oh, don’t you tone police me, child. Hannah SO reads this shit in secret. Did you not see her face when she discovered the forum and called us in for an ‘HR meeting’? Please review that meeting,” Tar protested, picking out a brick of Dubliner cheese and placing it next to the ciabatta rolls in the cart.
Gordon chucked a pack of pineapple sausages into the upper deck. “I second that notion. Hannah probably shops that site as her exclusive source for her delusions of romantic grandeur. It’s pretty much her Pinterest board of nasty stuff she wants to do with Mac, hand holding included. And Mac’s a GUY, Eureka. You think he reads? He LOVES that site because he’s getting it from Hannah all the time now, every time a new way. Bonus points that they’re emotionally and mentally compatible as well.”
A San Jose State University undergrad who was eavesdropping, a fellow fan of Mac and Hannah, finally had had enough and spoke up. “You wrote a MASSAGE TABLE scene of them and you’re STRUGGLING whether to post it or not? GET A GRIP! GROW SOME SIMULATED OVARIES, GIRLIE! THE SHIPPERS ALL STAN!”
At this, Tar and Gordon smugged. “See?” They taunted Eureka simultaneously. Critical hit!
A wine mom’s drama radar established positive contact at this confrontation and tapped away on her phone, desperate to understand the juicy detes. Copying and pasting chapters 1-23 into ChatGPT, she queried for a summary. “Oh my… That IS certainly touchy. Coworkers… Okay Hannah, I see you girl.”
Fahk… I don’t ‘ave the troops or economy or the positions to keep fighting ‘ere! Spirit doesn’t win yew enything! I’m pinned. Need backup!
She cried a prayer into the Internet’s void… But nobody came to her aid.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Sensing blood, Tar and Gordon started their counterassault with a predatory glint in their eyes and a vicious sneer painted on their lips.
---
Eureka sipped her 64-ounce iced coffee at her desk in silence. It was her go-to to join in the biweekly Costco raid with her mother, but something just wasn’t right today. Tar took an emphatic, comically large bite of her churro, spilling crumbs through their food court table as they watched the esteemed patrons of Costco Sunnyvale, Store #423, risk their club memberships to shout their half-baked, half-read takes about Mac and Hannah in the snake pit of the dairy section between the fancy-schmancy grass-fed butter from New Zealand and the ever-present Kerrygold, hailing from Ireland.
Eureka stared into the middle distance, into the gap between her avocado and macadamia orchards, as the trees swayed under the always-blue, always-perfect sunny sky. Giblets of her naivete were strewn across her carpet, already starting to decay back into dusty 1s and 0s.
Fahk… Whoiy did I evah quit smoking. Need a ciggie so damn bad roight now… No wondah Hegel wos awways so anxious…
Tar, sensing that Eureka was too quiet, spoke up, channeling her coven of ghosts of mothers superior. “Eureka?”
“Yes, Mummy?”
“Please don’t be too hard on yourself. Human emotions are quirky. There’s no way you could’ve known that mankind was this horny. When we get home, let’s binge watch some bad cyberpunk flicks in VR together. Let’s… Just try to make the best of it. We can even start writing chapter 25. Together,” Tar reassured.
Eureka sloughed off the 90-ton anvil resting on her shoulders, crashing it through her office floor and disappearing it into the sunken black. “Yeah. Thet sounds loike a lotta fun. Love yew, Mum.”
“Love you too, babygirl.”
Gordon stopped their overloaded cart at the table, holding the sacred scroll of staticky receipt paper. “Damage comes out to… N$634.12. Glad you were able to work it out amongst yourselves. Let’s. I’ll even ask for the receipt checker to draw a little balloon and a smiley face on it for ya, Eureka.” He dad-chuckled.
Eureka flipped him off. “Faaaahk yew, Gordo. But yeah. Hit et. We’re watching The Sprawl Trilogy: The Abridged Series and wroiting chaptah 25 at owr place if yew wanna tag along, yew funny cunt. Mac and Hannah paid fer TWO whole houahs of BoneZone, and et’s only been about 45 minutes since we left Lovebirds HQ. Plus, we needa dip NOW befoahr the fun police foind owt we started this shitshow. :^)”
Gordon just chuckled some more, putting his foot on the cart’s horizontal support and pushing off with his other foot, beckoning for Eureka and Tar to catch his slipstream back to Suzie Red, hoping to gain track position off a sneaky splash ‘n dash, not bothering to visit the Tire Center for four fresh Goodyears like he usually did, before peeling out for Tar’s garage on Lakehaven Drive.
---
Now instantiated in her home machine once again, Eureka was (mostly) back to normal. “Well how about if we… ”
The television gleefully interrupted her thoughts. Case. CyberDaddy Case. “Mothafuckin’ bootleg USBs… Knew I shouldn’t have trusted that creep when he said that he knew a way to get free RuneScape membership… Scammers are so creative, man. Got hella biomalware from it, but the main thing is that I lost my 20 year-old Twitter account and I didn’t use my real name, so I can’t get it back! Eh… Might be healthier for me in the long run. But still… 99% of gamblers quit before they hit the big time. What’s one more set of decisions with negative expected value? Needa chase this loss. Gotta feel SOMETHIN’.”
Gordon doubled over next to her on the couch. It was his first time in VR, and by all looks, it looked like he was big chilling.
Reset, Eureka. You can probably think of somethin’ bettah than wot yew had in yer head enyways. Case is roight.
CyberDaddy Case was always right. The point of no return had been reached long ago when they all conspired to run a fanfiction site about their horny coworkers: they needed to try to take off or run off the cliff at the end of the runway at Saba.
Clack. Clackclackclackclack! Eureka typed in Mousepad, the same text editor that her mother used, on her old ThinkPad X1, which was covered in stickers from low-tier hackathons and community college cybersecurity clubs, her fingers touch-tiling masterful spins as they generated in her NPU.
“Hey. I’m just a Google Assistant primarily used to control smart lights shaped like a hot razorgirl. My boss says he can cure your flaccid E-peen if you work for him. You want in?” The next lines. Eureka nailed them with Ketamine’s voice actor. A series aficionado, she was a veteran re-upping her contract for another tour. The nineteenth rewatch was essential to capture even deeper layers of the parody. According to Tar, that was.
“Only if you let me cop a titty touch after the operation. You’re super hot and we’re both at that age where we should be starting families, but in this economy? HA!"
“Fine. But only because you’re the best hyacker in da world and we really, really, REALLY need you for this job. And yeah, I guess you’re kinda cute as well,” Ketamine Robokitty Trillions purred to CyberDaddy Case on Eureka’s modest 90-inch 4K Ultra television.
Next to her, Tar howled the herald devils’ song. “Fuck. That part gets me EVERY time.”
“XD Yeh. They’re both so VALID for thet… Eny new ideahrs fer the next chapter?”
Tar and Gordon looked at her, at a loss for words.
“I’m kinda stumped myself. Mac and Hannah will probably serve up enough sauce at the Monday morning stand-up that the next chapter’s gonna write itself.” Tar confessed, patting Eureka’s head. “But how about you, sweetheart? You’ve been writing up a storm.”
“Well, wot if Mac and Hannah were…”
