Memes

Sable saun­tered into the Burg­er Lord. It was ex­act­ly like every other Burg­er Lord in Amer­i­ca. [But not like every other Burg­er Lord across the world. Ger­man Burg­er Lords, for ex­am­ple, sold lager in­stead of root beer, while Eng­lish Burg­er Lords man­aged to take any Amer­i­can fast food virtues (the speed with which your food was de­liv­ered, for ex­am­ple) and care­ful­ly re­move them; your food ar­rived after half an hour, at room tem­per­a­ture, and it was only be­cause of the strip of warm let­tuce be­tween them that you could dis­tin­guish the burg­er from the bun. The Burg­er Lord pathfind­er sales­men had been shot twenty-five min­utes after set­ting foot in France.] McLordy the Clown danced in the Kid­die Ko­rner. The serv­ing staff had iden­ti­cal gleam­ing smiles that never reached their eyes.[...]

Sable went up to the counter.

“Hello-my-name-is-Marie,” said the girl be­hind the counter. “How-can-I-help-you?”

“A dou­ble blaster thun­der big­gun, extra fries, hold the mus­tard,” he said.

“Anything-to-drink?”

“A spe­cial thick whip­py chocobanana shake.”

She pressed the lit­tle pic­togram squares on her till. (Lit­er­a­cy was no longer a re­quire­ment for em­ploy­ment in these restau­rants. Smil­ing was.)