Sidney's Comet Read Online Free Page A

“TAKE SEVERAL” in flashing purple lights on all sides. Department of Quality Control personnel wearing black uniforms and shiny yellow half-lemon helmets rolled from machine to machine, checking to be certain that all equipment malfunctioned according to standard.
    Carla focused upon a sign on the back of one Quality Control Technician which read, “ EACH BREAK IS A NEW TASK .” Then she noticed a typist glaring at her and removed her earphones to ask, “What is it now, Margaret? Don’t you like the way I’m calling out punctuation again?”
    Margaret shook her puff-curled silver hair before replying haughtily, “I don’t like the way you call out anything. You think you’re better than we are.” She glared at Carla, then added in a sing-song tone: “We’ve all seen you making goo-goo eyes at Chief of Staff Birthright!”
    “I don’t think I’m better than any of you,” Carla huffed, looking back with hostility in her lavender eyes.
    “You don’t even go to coffee with us now that you’re a G.W. two-five-four. Well lah-dee-dah!” Margaret rolled her eyes upward. “That’s still only one two-hundred-fifty-fourth of a job! My brother is a G.W. fifteen!”
    “You’re just bitter because you didn’t receive a higher calling, Margaret. I got the assignment you wanted.”
    Margaret whirled around angrily on her swivel chair, rose and then sat back down abruptly. A hush fell across the floor as ten white-robed men carrying grey urns emblazoned with the Presidential Seal rolled single file into the department. Margaret recognized General Munoz at the head of the procession.
    “The Council of Ten!” Carla whispered excitedly. “But they were just here yesterday for their regular—”
    “Shuttup!” Margaret commanded, her voice a hostile whisper. “We can see who it is!”
    Everyone rose silently, bowing their heads.
    “Bless this mess,” the council ministers called out, reaching into their urns and scattering confetti as they rolled through the department. “Bless this mess. . . . ”

    From his oval office on the two hundred eighty-fifth floor of the White House Office Tower, President Euripides Ogg heard the distant whine of police sirens. The President was a massive black man in a satin gold leisure suit—in his early fifties but with a lineless face. The eyebrows were dark and bushy, contrasting with a wave of golden hair that was combed straight back from a widow’s peak.
    Ogg stared intently at a desk-mounted video screen as the Technology Square demonstration broke up, squinting his blue-green eyes as sunlight from a solar relay panel outside the window glinted off the screen. He took a deep puff on a tintette, and exhaled blue smoke thoughtfully. Ogg snapped a glance at a sign above the doorway, mouthed the familiar words: “Faith, Consumption, Freeness.” A half-read Sharing For Prosperity report lay on the desk in front of him, and he tried to get back into it. Forty-two additional tasks that could be shared—Uncle Rosy’s Thousand Year Plan. . . .
    He sighed.
    The President looked up, and through drifting blue smoke saw Chief of Staff Bulie Birdbright standing in the doorway. A handsome, tanned man of middle years with bright yellow hair and a small dimple in the center of his chin, Birdbright was in constant demand as a bedmate with the ladies of the office.
    “The Council is here, sir,” Birdbright said. “Shall I send them in?”
    Ogg nodded.
    As the council ministers moto-filed in, Ogg tapped impatiently on his desk with one finger. General Munoz led, followed by Dr. Hudson, who moved along behind the tiny Mexican-American general like an oversized shadow.
    Can’t trust those two, Ogg thought Something disturbing about their alliance . . . and Hudson made moves on my sister . . . until I appointed her mayor of that therapy orbiter.
    Munoz and Hudson were followed by all the ministers of the various governmental super-bureaus. Each wore a hoodless white ministerial robe