Wherein I take a band name from Scalzi’s Next Band Name list, and spend no more than 20 minutes writing the story with the band name as a title.

---

Andrew looked down at the brochure, then back up at the caller. He had been waiting for this moment for a long time, and paused to consider just how long.

He had been ten when his parents separated. He knew they had split for good reasons, but there was always that small child in him that thought if only he had been a better kid, if only he had done something different, his childhood would have been different, would have been better. If only he had known as a ten year old what to do, he wouldn’t now be an adult who was afraid to make the wrong choice, for fear of it failing.

Just as the auctioneer stepped up to the platform to resume the afternoon session, Andrew shook himself out of his reminiscences, and looked up. He had other things to think about, more important things, like the next auction.

Andrew knew months ago when he saw the announcement of the tuxedo going up for auction, that he had to purchase it. To him, it was part of what was right in this crazy world: it represented hope and certainty in a realm where Andrew had only fear and uncertainty. He had gathered his funds, he had sold items he had known were less important to him, he pulled the money out of his rainy day fund, all so that he could be here and bid on this next item.

The auctioneer waited for the crowd to silence before beginning. Andrew was on the edge of his seat.

“The next item we have up for bid is the tuxedo worn by Kevin Bacon at his wedding to Kyra Sedgwick in September, 1988.”

Andrew was terribly excited. This was it. The tuxedo worn by the couple that, to him, represented love in the insane place of Southern California. They were together for decades, they were still together. They were together as a Hollywood couple. There was still hope in this world for love. Love that could last.

Andrew wanted that.

Andrew needed that.

“We start the bidding at five hundred.”

Andrew raised his paddle.

Wherein I take a band name from Scalzi’s Next Band Name list, and spend no more than 20 minutes writing the story with the band name as a title.

---

He bounded into the living room.

This was his favorite place to be. It was the hub of everything. Everything, just everything happened here. He ran over to the couch, leapt into the air, turned and landed on the couch butt first.

Oh, that was so much fun, he hopped back off the couch, and ran to the far side of the kitchen. He pushed off the wall, and sprinted back into the living room. Leaping from farther away, this time he stretched out into a Superman pose mid-air, before landing on the couch belly first.

Yeah, that was great.

He looked around the room as he lay there. What else could he do with the house to himself? Oh, there was so much he could do! For right now, however, he just wanted to sleep. He flopped over onto his side, and started to doze.

An hour later he woke. Yeah, he was hungry.

Feet up in the air, he flung them down and used his momentum to twist off the couch and stand. He sauntered into the kitchen, and began tearing into things, trying to find something to eat.

Marie had left some fruit on the counter, so he had some of that, though it wasn’t very filling and, wow, did he make a mess of it. The expensive bread on the counter helped make a tastier meal, though the pumpkin pie next to it was definitely the best part. He looked around guiltily as he polished off the pie, but paused only momentarily before he licked the tin.

Belly full, he wandered back into the living room before deciding, yeah, maybe the backyard would be more fun. He wandered back into the kitchen, out the back door, and into the yard. He remembered Marie saying something about the rose bushes earlier this week, and walked over to them. Without thinking much about it, started digging. The ground was soft enough that digging was easy. Once he had a big enough hole, he stopped, then ran back into the house.

He had just started running around the living room again, seeing how many loops he could do around the living room without touching the floor, using the couch, the chair, the other couch, the table and a giant leap between the last two, when the front door opened. Distracted and unable to stop his momentum, he landed on the chair and tipped it over, landing sprawled on the floor just past it.

Marie paused at the front door looking at the disaster of the living room, and cried out, “CHOCOLATE!”

Chocolate looked over at Marie from the floor where he lay, and wagged his tail.

Wherein I take a band name from Scalzi’s Next Band Name list, and spend no more than 20 minutes writing the story with the band name as a title.

---

Rick bit down on the cookie. A small moan of delight escaped his lips as he chewed. He looked forward to these cookies coming in every week. They were a small bite of heaven, a sampling of happy memories, a taste of home.

Too bad it wasn’t his home.

Rick had managed to lift the box of cookies from the mail room before any of the other guards had noticed it had arrived. This week, he was going to keep them all, just let the other guards think it had been delayed or lost before it arrived here. This week, the box was all his.

Rick and the other guards had recently begun speculating what Brown’s grandmother put into the cookies that made them so good. Several thought it was the right combination of ingredients, maybe the eggs since they knew she had her own chickens. Others thought it was the right combination of chewy inside and crisp outside.

Whatever it was that Mrs. Brown did correctly with her cookies, she completely failed at with her granola bars. Those things were saw dust laced with sand and rocks as far as Rick was concerned. They were usually burnt on one side. No one bothered to steal those, or taste them after the first batch. Brown’s grandmother had included a note with that first box, letting Brown know that she was thinking of his health, and made these with all sorts of high fiber goodness. She was delighted in subsequent notes that he loved them, and kept sending the burnt bricks every week.

Rick was sure Brown wasn’t constipated after she started sending them, but the cookies, now those were worth suffering through the granola bars for.

Rick walked down the hall, approaching the guard sitting at the gated door, laughing with him as he held up Brown’s box of granola bricks. Everyone knew about the bricks, and was in on the joke.

Rick wanted down the barred cells until he arrived at Brown’s cell. “Present for you,” he said.

“Did I get any cookies this week?” Brown asked Rick.

“Nope, none this week, either. Have a box of granola bars from your granny, though, that do?” He grinned an unpleasant smile at Brown.

“Yeah, sure. Granny never could cook very good.” Brown held his hand for the box, Rick handed it to him.

“You’re telling me,” Rick said, and walked away.

Brown watched the guard walk away, before he opened the box and pulled out the granola bars. The guy across the hall from him watched him start his routine, knew enough of it to be bored by it.

Brown took the granola bars to the toilet and dropped them in one by one. He watched them for a short bit, then reached down and swirled them around. Oh, his granny knew how to cook, all right, Brown thought, as he pulled out the small metal parts from the bottom of the toilet bowl.

As he rinsed the small nuts and granola from the metal pieces, he thought about her cookie decoys, and smiled.

Wherein I take a band name from Scalzi’s Next Band Name list, and spend no more than 20 minutes writing the story with the band name as a title.

---

“You did what?” Andi screamed at him.

“It’s not that bad,” Tom replied.

“Really?”

“It’s not.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously, it’s not.”

“Come ON!” she cried out, throwing her hands down in frustration at the same time. “You have GOT to be kidding me!” She turned and stomped off down the street, quickly lost in the line of people waiting at the theatre door.

“Well, that didn’t go well,” Josh commented, pushing himself off the brick wall where he had been watching Tom and Andi.

Tom stopped watching where Andi had gone, and turned to look at Josh. “You think?” he said.

Josh chuckled, “Heh, yeah, I think that didn’t go well.”

Tom looked back in the direction of Andi, then sighed. He moved closer to Josh, and leaned against the wall where Josh had just been. “It seemed like a fine name to me.”

“Really?”

“Oh, not you, too!”

“Yeah, me, too. It’s an awful name.”

“Why? It’s no worse than any of the names we’ve been talking about for months. Every time one of us suggests a new name, we seem maybe okay with it for a day or two, then everyone hates it. This one at least has some relevance.”

“It does?”

“Yes,” Tom said emphatically.

“How?”

“What’s Andi’s favorite show?”

Josh thought for a moment, then looked back at Josh. “Okay, fine, Gillian’s Island. The first part of the name is kinda obvious, too.”

“It is?” Tom was now puzzled.

“Sure. You and Andi are both in love with each other.”

“We are not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Are not.”

“Yes. You are. And the only two people in this whole fucking world that don’t know it or won’t admit it are the two of you. So, yeah, the name makes total sense now.”

“Great.”

“You’re still a moron, though.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you didn’t actually talk to any of us before you named us. We would have chosen something good.”

“Right. Like the five of us can decide on anything. It’s been six months and we have had how many name suggestions? And how many decisions?”

Josh stayed quiet.

“Yeah. This is our first gig, we needed something. We have something.”

They stood there, each in his own thoughts for a bit longer. The sounds of the crowd drove down the street to them, the noise of the traffic, and the life of a city, followed close.

Tom sighed, pushed away from the wall, and started walking in the direction Andi had gone.

“Hey, wait, where are you going?” Josh called after him.

“To see if I can change our name on tonight’s card,”

“Oh, okay. To what?”

“I don’t know. Something that’s the complete opposite of what we have now. Apparently Love Minnows is a bad name for a ska band.”

He kept walking.

Wherein I take a band name from Scalzi’s Next Band Name list, and spend no more than 20 minutes writing the story with the band name as a title.

---

“You sure about this?”

“Yeah, I already said I was, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but, yeah, I’m not sure anyone is really going to believe us when we announce this.”

“Probably not at first. It’s not like we don’t have the proof right here.”

Richards looked down at the white mass sitting in the bowl on the table. What he really wanted to do with that mass is shove half of it into his mouth, and take the other half home, to dole out sparingly on alone-nights when he had the house, especially the kitchen, to himself. He wouldn’t tell his wife about the mass, he didn’t really want to share it with her.

Thompson looked at Richards looking at the bowl, and understood what he was feeling. He had been a boy when the last cow had died, remembered his parents discussing it at the dinner table: his father declaring the end of society and his mother expressing delight that an innocent animal would no longer be tortured and slaughtered for food. An entire industry was struck down in the Cattle Blight of 47, showing a country, and the world, just how far deep the hand of the cattle industry reached.

He was young then.

He was old now.

Richards and Thompson had found the cows living in a remote Transylvanian village, amongst a Gypsy clan that had treated them as pets. After the discovery, Richards had not only managed to confirm their immunity to the virus that had killed every other cow in the world, but he had also, much to Thompson’s surprise, secured enough of the farmer’s herd to guarantee a diverse line for himself. Thompson was happy for Richards.

“Do you want to do a side by side comparison at the press conference?” Thompson asked, as Richards, who continued to stare at the bowl.

“What?”

Thompson asked his question again.

“Really? You want to have blather next to butter, in a side by side comparison?” Richards looked back at Thompson, clearly surprised.

“I’m suggesting it.”

“At the conference where there will be hundreds of people we don’t know?”

Thompson didn’t answer.

“No,” Richards said. “No, I don’t want that. I want to have enough butter to show people that the cows exist, enough to give to the Genetic Corps for them to confirm it is what we say it is, and then I want to start auctioning this stuff off. Someone is going to track down where we have the cows, and I want to have the funds to protect them before someone does find them.”

Thompson looked at Richards a moment longer. “Okay. Don’t expect the Federal Blather Producers Association to be particularly happy about this.”

“I don’t,” Richards answered. “I don’t expect them to be happy about this at all.”

Thompson turned and left to prepare for the press conference.