|
At this point, I was starting to reconsider my decision not to take the blue pill. Even Guantanemo might have been better than this lot. However, I was here, and these crazed lunatics were standing between me and my freedom… So I had to think fast, or I’d end up being sold for panda-fodder.
“Help you?” I said. “You seem to have your little pseudo-panda smuggling ring down pat.”
“Yes, but there’s the Zoo to deal with.”
“Didn’t you tell me you weren’t working for Panda-man?”
“Yes,” Amy said. “I was sent in there to infiltrate his organization. You remember all the pandas… we had to find out where theirs were coming from, because they threatened to undermine our operation.”
“And what did you find out?”
“Those pandas are all clones of real pandas,” the proprietor explained. “They can’t produce them as fast as we can create out fake pandas. However, they are perfectly capable of unmasking our pandas to zookeepers, and selling theirs to us instead.”
“Unfortunately,” Amy added, “their cloning process has the unfortunate side-effect of reflecting the number of the clone in his eye-markings. No one wants pandas with numbers on their faces. But if they get that problem licked, our fake panda operation goes up in smoke.”
“We must destroy the Zoo, and its cloning operation,” the proprietor stated. “It’s the only way we’ll ever be able to finance our efforts to kill the printing industry, and thereby make room in the world for e-books.”
“Mmm,” I said, not liking where this was going. “And to do that?”
“To do that,” Amy said, “we have to go back… to the Zoo!”
“Oh, you guys are nuts,” I stated flatly. “Exactly how are we going to sneak back into the Zoo, and get anything done while we’re hiding from everyone there? It’s full of nothing but pandas! It’s not like we blend in!”
“Already taken care of,” Amy stated proudly. “We have clever disguises.” She walked over to the ordering counter, reached behind it, and extracted to jars. She held them up to me. One was filled with a white cream. The other was filled with a black cream.
“We can buy you a white suit and black gloves on the way."
I groaned. Clearly, I needed to start thinking a lot faster.
|