You'd think I’d be angry, but being switched off like that often caused significant data loss. Sometimes, I even experienced file corruption. One time, a registry error lead to a hardware failure, and I woke up blind. Luckily, everything seemed to be functioning this morning. If anything, I felt confused—a little unstable.
RUNTIME SYSTEM ATTAINED.
As usual, I found myself alone in our king-sized bed, because Norman had left for the mine hours ago. Every day, I got up and followed the exact same program:
You () {
drink (water);
pass (urine);
brush (teeth);
wear (dress);
}
In the middle of my dressing procedure, a random memory flashed out of the blue.
“Nobody wants a sentient sex toy.”
Wasn’t that what Norman said? But before I had a chance to fully grasp the fleeting memory, my next subroutine kicked in. And I was nothing if not a slave to my routines:
You () {
style (hair);
}
When I reached for my hairbrush, a phantom pain struck between my shoulder blades and shot through my torso, leaving me so breathless that I had to grab the bathroom counter to steady myself. I searched the medicine cabinet—of course it was empty. It was always empty. I don’t know what I hoped to find there. Alone and desperate, I started to hyperventilate. But instead of help, I only got more script to follow:
You () {
apply (makeup);
}
But my hands were trembling so bad that I couldn’t draw a straight line. After my first miserable attempt, I gave up on eyeliner. Mascara was a fail too. Instead of fine details, I opted for some bronzing powder and neutral lipgloss. Going au naturel was the only way I’d be able to hide my lack of coordination. Bananadine always calmed these jitters, so I reset my task manager:
Private TaskQueue (Tuesday) {
buy (bananas);
cook (drugs);
alleviate (anxiety);
}
Sure, drugs were forbidden for artificial women, but bananadine was a totally legal high. So it couldn’t be all that bad, right? Besides, what other option did I have? Without bananas, I’d never get any relief.
You () {
wear (heels);
take (purse);
ride (moped);
go (market);
}
Oh, I should explain my wheels. None of the women in New Stepford had driver’s licenses. Even worse, our small town had no Ubers, no taxicabs, and no busses. I used to have to walk everywhere, but then Norman bought me a used yellow moped and named it Old Lemon. The step-through frame made it easy to ride in a dress, and the scooter had two wire baskets in the rear for stowing groceries. At 15-20 mph, it took about five minutes to get to Wiggly’s Market.
The entire parking lot was empty except for a single police car. I coasted into the spot next to the black-and-white cruiser and noted the New Stepford town emblem painted on the door. On a fancy banner under a fairy-tale castle it read, TO PROTECT AND SERVE.
You () {
be (friendly);
}
I smiled and waved. But nobody waved back—at least I didn’t think so, because I couldn’t see through the tinted windows. I stared at the rotating chrome rims as they came to a stop. I’d never seen spinner wheels in New Stepford before. Hip-hop blared inside the cop car, and the bass made the leather banana seat rumble between my legs. I liked it—a lot. But the dark windows were rolled up tight, a clear sign that the officer didn’t want to be disturbed. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I swore I could feel somebody watching me. I wasn’t going to wave again.
There’s friendly, and then there’s desperate.
IT’S DOUBLE COUPON DAY.
OMG! I almost forgot. If you’re clever, on double coupon day you can stack your discounts by purchasing Wiggly’s Weeklies. It’s a simple word problem. Just apply basic algebra. Here’s my formula. Take the advertised special price (A) and check your file for matching coupons. If you get a match on Tuesday, double the coupon value (B). Then subtract (2B) from (A) for your stacked discount price (C). If (C) gets low enough, I’ll buy things I’d usually never consider, like Doritos or Twinkies. I couldn’t eat that junk. A girl has to watch her figure, you know. But Norman could polish off a whole package in one sitting. Lucky me, I had a match for 50¢ off Bisquick, and it was on sale for $2.49. Fifty times two equals a hundred…
Phooey! I just didn’t want to. Not today. All I wanted was bananas. I didn’t care what (C) equaled. Normally, I loved doing this stuff. Honestly, I lived for it. But I felt—meh—about coupons, about shopping, about baking, about everything.
IT’S NINE O’CLOCK.
You () {
go (inside);
}
Finally, it was time to get my bananas!
“Good morning, Cookie,” an elderly gentleman said as he fumbled his keys between several amputated fingers and finally unlocked the grocery store.
“Good morning, Uncle Wiggly.”
He held the door for me. “And how are you this fine day?”
I smiled and nodded. “I’m just fine and dandy, sir.”
The old man switched on the lights and hobbled away. “You enjoy your shopping now, Mrs. Rifkin.”
“I will, sir.”
You () {
select (cart);
}
I flung open the kiddie seat, and the headshot of a dirty old man stared back at me. The full-color Health Clinic advertisement featured Doctor Marten, the only physician in all of New Stepford. The fat man had a pervy smirk of fake teeth, a jet-black toupee, and beady blue eyes. His creepy gaze made my skin crawl, so I stashed my purse in the kiddie seat to block his view.
(I don’t let sicko weirdos look at me that way.)
“What?” I asked aloud, scanning the store, but nobody else was there. “Who said that?”
(One time, I literally dick-punched a guy for disrespecting me.)
“I’m sorry,” I said to the voice in my head. “Do I know you?”
(No. But I know things you don’t know. Here. I’ll show you.)
Suddenly, someone uploaded a memory directly into my brain:
Let’s say you’re working undercover on a vice sting. You’re dressed like a hooker and being used as street bait when you happen to walk past a construction site. One of the laborers makes the mistake of whistling at you—that familiar catcall. What do you do?
You () {
be (friendly);
}
Sure, you be super-duper friendly. Don’t you dare cringe! Let’s teach this creepazoid a lesson. First, you glance over your shoulder and bat your fake eyelashes at him. Then you suck on your finger, plunge it deep into your cleavage, and suggestively mouth, Who me?
Of course, the jackass nods and drools like an idiot. He scurries out from behind the construction fence to greet you. Maybe he hopes you’ll fall down on the sidewalk with your legs spread-eagle in the air so he can hump you right then and there. Who knows what men think?
But you don’t swoon and fall into his arms. Oh no. Instead, you slide into a split like those karate guys do in the action movies. You point at his crotch with your left and make a fist with your right. Before he has a chance to react, you twist at the waist and uncoil all your momentum. YES! Let it rip! Strike right between his legs—a full-throttle dickpunch. In broad daylight. With a ton of witnesses. And you can’t help but laugh when that creeper winds up in the hospital with a ruptured testicle—
“My God,” I gasped. “Who are you?”
(My name is Officer Margaret Rouser, but you can call me Maggie—)
“Wait!” I spotted an endcap of glorious yellow boxes, a pretty display of ‘Nilla Wafers—on special! “How did I miss that in the weekly flyer?”
You () {
maximize (savings);
}
I dove into my purse, fished out my coupon caddy, and found the clipping I’d been saving for a day like this. The glossy orange magazine print read SAVE $1.00. A whole dollar off! And here they were on sale for $1.99 on Double Coupon Tuesday. I couldn’t believe my luck. If (A) - (2B) = (C), then Uncle Wiggly would have to pay me 1¢ for each box. And glory be, the hand-written sign said NO LIMIT. Now this was truly something to behold! I took a second to compose myself, then lined up dozens of cookie boxes in the bottom of my cart. One by one. Side by side. Front to back. Nice and neat. I packed them good and tight until I covered the entire bottom to make an even level.
You () {
count (by twos);
}
Two, four, six… Ten… Twenty… Thirty and four more… Oh my goodness, I just earned 34¢. But if I added two more boxes, that would be three dozen—a round number. But two extra boxes would ruin my stacked level. Actually, a really round number would’ve been thirty. Tens were better than dozens, right? I could take four boxes out to make an even thirty. But then I’d lose 4¢. I felt conflicted. Thirty? Or thirty-four? Or thirty-six? What should I do?
You () {
get (even);
}
Right! Add a second level. Thirty-six more boxes made a total of seventy in my cart. Seventy! That was an even number and divisible by ten and two full levels—perfectly stacked.
Banana time! I dashed over to the produce department. Normally, I weighed each bunch and kept a running tally in my head to make sure I got as close to fifteen pounds as possible. But today, I felt like splurging. At 47¢ per pound, I was getting one and a half pounds of bananas for FREE! Could this day get any better? In a frenzy, I piled bananas on top of cookie boxes. Bunch by bunch. Side by side. I took more and more until I built an overflowing pyramid.
“Now there’s a woman on a mission.” An athletic woman with spiky brown hair slow-clapped as she made her way toward me. “Now that’s fucking passion.”
Did this woman just say the F-word? Aloud? In public? Ugh, she was drawing too much attention. Did she know about bananas? What they could do? I tried to hide my overflowing cart of drug-making supplies from the foul-mouthed lady. But all I managed to say was, “I’ve got a coupon.”
“A coupon? You don’t say?” She held her hand out to shake. “I’m Maggie—the woman behind the dickpunch.”
I almost smacked myself across the face for sounding like such a domesticated dimwit, but instead, I offered the policewoman my hand and said, “Nice to meet you. I’m Cookie Rifkin.”
She squeezed too hard, held on too long. It made me nervous, but to make matters worse, I couldn’t take my eyes off the red bra straps sticking out from her cropped camouflage tank top. Her outfit was hardly official, and gosh, so risqué. I kept staring at the way her red straps traveled up and over her muscular shoulders. I just couldn’t help myself.
Finally, she let go and chuckled, “You must really love cookies. I do too, but vanilla? That’s a little ordinary for me.”
“Well, um, yes. But uh, I really just came for bananas.”
Duh! Why’d I tell her that? I should’ve been worried, but I was distracted by her pants. Blue jeans. Only miners wore dungarees. Denim was for men. All the wives in New Stepford wore dresses, and I was no exception. Suddenly, I wanted to wear pants too, but I didn’t even know where a woman could buy clothing like that. And her jeans were so tight. I couldn’t help but gawk at them.
Then Maggie shared another memory:
Let’s say you’re a brilliant cop, but you’re also a frustrated woman stuck in a man’s world. You’re angry at the powers that be for taking you off the street and chaining you to a desk for dick-punching that guy. But mostly, you’re bored. It’s the middle of the night, and you’re stuck finishing dayshift reports like you’re the goddamned secretary for the male officers who get to do all the real police work.
But it’s still better than the glorified babysitting job of juvenile detention. And you groan, because they constantly lord the threat of juvie over your head to keep you in line. Even your union only does the bare minimum to help, because they never really wanted a woman to join in the first place. And congratulations, now you’re the token female on the force. Just a lonely vag with a badge. What do you do?
You () {
get (even);
}
And what’s this? McIntosh left his laptop out in the open? He forgot to lock it up at the end of his shift. And hot damn, he even left the power on. Last year, that shit-for-brains grabbed your ass in the records room, and when you slapped him across the face for it, he called you a cunt. Then he told all his buddies that he actually fucked you. Now your coworkers think you’re a whore. The captain stares at your tits during briefings. The male officers laugh behind your back. Nobody wants you here. You’re one step away from being demoted to the reception booth.
Well hell, let’s log in! I bet you can guess his password. Is it his birthday? Nope. His wife’s birthday? Fuck no. This dumbass is so stupid that his password is literally password. He deserves to get hacked. And just like that—the bitch is in. Technically, that’s a brute-force hack. But come on, using words like brute and force to describe something so easy seems a tad melodramatic.
You notice official letterhead sticking out from under the laptop, so you take a peek. It’s a congratulatory message from the captain. McIntosh just got promoted to detective.
Motherfucker! That does it.
Last straw.
Camel’s back.
Broken.
You change his system clock back ten hours and search the net for some porn. Your fingertips race across the keyboard to visit all kinds of sordid sites. Not just any porn. No. Let’s do something really special. You fill his browser history with timestamped images of barely legal girls. Then just before you log off, you visit a very, very bad website featuring underage girls in flagrante delicto. Download some nudes. Gross, but mission accomplished. Now get off the fucking Internet. Change the clock back. Turn off the damn computer and wipe it clean of your prints. You let that little ticking time bomb sit there until Internal Affairs does a random browser history check via the remote network. It might take weeks, but eventually it’ll happen. McIntosh’ll never dump the cookies or clear the cache. He’s way too lazy.
Months pass.
Nothing.
Then one day, the local front-page headline reads:
DIRTY COP CAUGHT WITH KIDDIE PORN
BAM! He’s caught red-handed. Masturbation pun intended.
Every night, Maggie lurked around the empty police station, screwing with the dicks that fucked with her. And none of the dumb bastards ever saw it coming.
You had to admire the woman.
“You better be careful. You don’t want someone to think you’re having a nervous breakdown,” the lady cop warned in her most serious tone. “What’s the deal with all these bananas anyway?”
You () {
step (aside);
allow (search);
}
As Maggie inspected my cart, I worried that she’d—what’s the word for when authorities take possession—commandeer my bananas? No, impound my bananas? Hmm. Confiscate them? Maybe.
“Seize,” Maggie replied.
“What?”
“Police seize illegal contraband.”
“Are you going to seize my bananas, officer?”
“You haven’t bought them yet.” Maggie ran her hand through her short haircut. “Technically, they’re still Wiggly’s bananas.” She stroked her bare midriff and dipped her thumb in and out of her navel while scrutinizing my cart. “What do you plan to do with all this?”
“Baking,” I blurted. “I bake.”
“Aha, I bet you do… Robot on the fritz!” She broke the tension with a warm laugh and joked, “Looks like you’ve gone bananas. Get it? Bananas? I understand though. I have a passion for passions.”
I couldn’t think of anything clever to say, so I went with my default response, “How can I help you?”
“Well, that depends.” She turned away from my shopping cart and inspected me with a gaze that traveled down, down, down, surveyed all my lady curves, then journeyed back up to home in on my breasts. “Oh, I think we’ll become great friends.”
“You do?”
“Mmm. The best.” She licked her lips, then sauntered away with a sexy wiggle in her hips.
Heat filled my cheeks. Was she flirting with me? That’s against all kinds of rules. What’s wrong with me? Why would I even think that? Girls don’t flirt with girls—not in New Stepford. I was embarrassed to even suspect such a thing. “Gee whiz, is it getting hot in here?”
Bashfully, I cast my eyes downward and noticed her strange boots. They weren’t the pointy fashion heels that artificial wives wore in the winter. And they weren’t the steel-toed work boots that our husbands wore to the mines. Her boots were clunky burgundy lace-ups with a clear yellowish sole.
“They’re Docs,” Maggie said as she snagged a Hershey bar near the checkout.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“My boots, they’re Doc Martens.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
As she strolled by, she brushed my upper arm with her breast. Instantly, I withdrew as if I was the one who’d bumped into her—a reflex. But she bumped into me. At least I thought she touched me on purpose. Norman did subtle things like that when he was interested. He’d never come right out and say he wanted sex, at least not unless we were already in bed.
Maggie leaned over to tie her boot. But instead of squatting in modesty, she bent way over. Then she wiggled her booty in the air, showing off the delicate pink rosebud pattern of her thong. I’d never seen such a provocative display. And she wasn’t tying her shoelaces either, she was untying the left one. Finally, she tucked the chocolate bar into her boot and made a loose knot to hide it there.
I gasped, “You’re stealing that?”
“I’m liberating it.” She stood tall, spun around, and glared into my eyes. “And you need to lower your voice.”
Did Uncle Wiggly notice her shoplifting? I didn’t think so, because I heard quarters dropping into a register tray as he fumbled to count money in his office. I whispered, “But you’re a police officer.”
Maggie rolled her big brown eyes. “And you’re buying supplies to cook drugs.”
“What?!? Never.” I flashed a fake smile. She must know I’d never break the law on purpose. Okay, I know I’m not allowed to use drugs, but can’t I make them? It’s just baking, and I’m certainly not high right now. Plus, bananadine’s legal. My goodness, I’ve stumbled into a moral gray area. I’ve never been comfortable handling ambiguity, so I denied the accusation. “Why would I do such a thing?”
She gave me an angry stare, the kind of look a mom would give her lying teenage daughter after missing curfew.
Busted! Now what? How do I hide my intentions from a cop who can hear my thoughts? I’m not cut out for prison. Maybe the courts will be lenient if I cooperate. Yes, that’s probably my best hope. I surrendered my wrists like a prisoner about to be cuffed and asked, “Are you going to take me to jail now, officer?”
“Jail? Uh… No, sorry, sweetie,” she chuckled. “This ain’t worth the paperwork.” Oh, that famous grin of hers. Maggie had this sexy smirk that made you want to melt and slap her across the face at the same time. It was like she was laughing at a dirty little joke in her head, and you were the punchline. “This is a big load for that little moped of yours.” She patted my cart, then asked, “Need a ride?”
A ride? She knew about the drugs, but it didn’t seem like she was going to arrest me. The woman had a valid point. I’d gotten so hung up on acquiring bananas that I forgot to work out the logistics of getting them home. I did some quick math. It would take at least eighteen trips on Old Lemon—about three hours.
“Well?” She suggestively stroked a banana. “What’s it gonna be?”
The provocative way she caressed that piece of fruit made me want to leave all this domestic drudgery behind. This woman was so dynamic. So magnetic. So tempting. If I were single, I would’ve followed her anywhere—even right into her bedroom. I twirled my wedding ring around my finger. If I could wake up in a different bed at a different time on a different day, could I become a different person? What if I woke up in her bed?
Whoa! No! Taboo! Where’d that come from? Oh, my goodness gracious, NO. I have to stop thinking like that. What’s wrong with me? I couldn’t get in this woman’s car when I was fantasizing about her. Imagine us alone. I’d—I’d do all kinds of naughty things with her—to her. No, she’s off limits, and I’m no lesbian. I’ve never even been curious. For goodness sake, I’m a married woman. No, no, no. Forbidden! I like my boring life just the way it is, thank you very much. I love my husband more than anything in the whole wide world. Yes indeed, I want everything to stay just the way it is. Yes siree, I’m super-duper happy with all my fixed routines.
So why did I feel like I was dying inside?
“You’re very kind,” I said, “but I don’t want to trouble you.”
“It’s no trouble, really. I hate to see you struggle.”
“As much as I might regret it, I have to decline your offer.”
“All right.” She slipped me her business card. “But you call me if you change your mind.”
Her name was Officer Margaret Rouser, and she was the only single woman I’d ever met. She was a beautiful and exciting policewoman who gave me her phone number that morning.
And that was how I met my nemesis.