Familiar

It Starts With a Raccoon

Note:
This was inspired by Lucy A. Snyder's article, Installing Linux on a Dead Badger:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040405/badger.shtml

Lord have mercy, the SMELL.

This is not what I want to come home to: Scout, Polly, and Temple at my kitchen table with a project. At least they had the decency to spread out newspapers under the assortment of tools, electronics, and half my silverware drawer. And the dead animal.

"Oh, c'mon, guys. Are you seriously trying to install Linux on a dead badger again? I thought you all decided the spell's bogus."

"Actually, it's OS X," Scout says, not looking up from her voltage meter.

"Shouldn't you be doing that on a cat then?"

"Technically, a state park, but they're hard to get permissions for, so we settled for the raccoon. Polly found it on the way over."

"It was already dead." Polly winks at me from behind her chunky prescription safety glasses and blows me a kiss. "I'd hug you, but I just got all sterile." She wiggles her blue-gloved fingers in illustration.

"Jory, come look at this," Temple says, beckoning me over. "I installed the USB socket in its cheek - genius, right?"

"I don't want to know where you hook up the power."

"In its chest," he says. And he rolls his eyes at me, because this is an obvious solution to the problem. When I lean in closer to get a better look, he nudges me back. "You don't wanna get too close. I just sprayed it down with flea repellent and they're still hoppin'."

"In my apartment?! Dude!"

"Don't worry - we'll bomb the place later," Scout tells me. "Chill out, you'll make static and blow the Duppy card."

"I'll ward them out when you're done," I grumble. "I don't need all the chemicals in here."

I drop my stuff on the couch. It's a large enough loft, but it's really not built for four people to practice magic in. Especially as three of them aren't paying rent. Or going to be living with the fleas.

"How come you always do this at my place?"

"Gram has a cat," Polly answers.

"And I was on the way over with coffee when I found the raccoon. Oh! There's coffee for you over by the sink." Scout gestures with her chin toward the paper cup. "Double mocha, no dairy,  no sugar."

"Scout called me and said there was an emergency," Temple says. "I thought you'd gotten clobbered by the bag at the gym again or something."

My mood improves dramatically with the coffee. It's entirely possible that Scout magicked it up - it's still hot, for one thing - but if I'm completely honest with myself, I'm not in the mood for an argument that I can't win. What I'm really in the mood for is a shower. Leg day is a bitch. I grab a towel and head to the bathroom.

"Look - just make sure you salt that shit down, ok?" I holler over my shoulder. "I don't want to deal with an old higue at three in the morning."

Engineers, jeebus. Things were so much less messy when we were getting our "Liberal Arts" BAs and learning how to work spells. But you can't get a good job without a Master's anymore, can you? Temple and Polly fell in love with WPI the second they heard about the place. Scout went to MIT just to not copycat.

Engineering, apparently, is the first thing that comes to mind when you graduate college with a magics degree. Or so I'm told. I don't buy it. Seriously, I have never had the stray impulse to reanimate anything or to mix computers with spellwork, ever. Give me solid research and portal/mirror/ley line stuff and I'm a pig in shit. When I discovered that a degree in Library Science means you can stay in the library all day and no one gives you grief about it, I applied to Salem State without a look back. Consequently, three years later I'm the only one with a work-covered insurance package. Seems there's not much of a market for zombie raccoon tech.

I mean, there's a market, yeh, but it's shady. You probably can't get a 401k working in the field.

The lights flicker while I'm rinsing conditioner out of my hair and I think, something's either going very wrong in the kitchen or very right. As my pants are on the other end of the apartment, personally I'm rooting for very right. The last time they didn't go very right the whole breaker box blew and I had to pay to replace it. I also had to lie to the super and tell him that I installed a garbage disposal and that's what roasted it. So now the super thinks I'm an asshole who can't read a lease agreement.

Couple more flickers in the power while I'm drying off, but no one's screaming. Now I'm optimistically curious.