Scrumdiddlyumptious mochi prevents early morning disaster.

    Sat down in the wet grass opened his sandwich bag, Ted gave him a look, Lucky was like "wut ?" Ted pointed no where in particular and... "you know if you'd get here earlier you wouldn't have'ta be out in that heat."  Lucky took a bite of his delicious egg sandwich, chewed, and slurped his iced tea.  "Look at Garcia, he gets here so early he's usually gone before ya even leave your apartment."  Lucky looked in his bag for a treat, the egg sandwich came with a treat.  Ted shouts down to Garcia  "Garcia what time cha get here." "Early" Garcia shouts back walking down the side of the shed to his first call.  Ted looked up at pyramid five, the irrigation was shutting off from the top terrace to the bottom terraces in sequence - a mildly interesting event.  The last bit shut off and he assumed an unfocused, and slightly over dramatic pose, " you've always been like this, so I should get used to it.  If it doesn't bug you - it should't bug me."  Lucky had to finish his yummy raspberry mochi and fully recover from it's effects before he could answer - "Yep... I'm fine with it, it's not as good as second shift, but it's less hectic than driving that rig around in the morning rush."  He sat there for hour or more moving down the side of the grass covered shed just enough to keep out of the sun,  going in to hang out on the dock after the shade ran completely out, thankfully Ted was called up, and finally he was the only one left.  Just as he was getting hungry, and about to break into his lunch, he was called up.

Morning rush at the agropolis.

  A warm wind blew through the wall of open, over head, glass doors and through lobby, bringing with it the smell of thousands of people going about their early morning habituation;  the red sun lurking over the misty horizon, sending a beam through the short strait street he was heading for; an early pod of over head seeders lumbering out of a shed, humming and clicking down the street into that misty sun beam -  he stepped over the thresh hold, and a warm dank morning tried pinning him down with that widening beam of stellar light, the premonition of heat, a hypnotic fulcrum, probing.  It wasn't a long walk, and he was soon at his building.  He checked with the dispatcher, threw his lunch box and thermos in his rig, and left before his maintenance technician could give him the business over his alleged mistreatment of the equipment.  Four little shops infest the front of his shed, and one of them was a decent place for breakfast, there's always a line at the window, and a wait for one of the ten stools is out of the question.  He bought his egg sandwich and ice tea and walked up the grassy side of the shed to sit on the roof with the rest of the operators.

Riding the man lift down.

  Lucky stared at the wall of the metal tube creeping past, smoothed by the gaskets that fit the buckets tight, polished by the backs of people leaning on the moving wall, some kid had dragged a green crayon over the wall on the way down, making line that Lucky stared at.  It swayed back and forth then sprung quickly with a snap, then back and forth with an occasional loop,  suddenly squished up against the belt and a hand nearly knocking his off the belt handle, " Oops sorry I didn't see ya" and the invasion was over - the tenth floor was full of nitwits.  Man lifts were slow, a slight hazard, and only designed for one rider per bucket, and were modeled after the the man lift in a grain elevator; the lift had been the favorite part of his job at the CO - OP, he would go out of his way to take a ride, they were a just big enough, two feet on the platform attached to a belt with a handle, no walls.  The line of green crayon went right and and ended, and it was time jump off into the main floor lobby, packed full of school kids, back packs, lunch box's; people heading out or coming back from work, loiters, holiday makers, a sales man, and a tour group being shouted at by a lady in a funny hat.  Lucky fought his way through and was only stopped once, talked at by one of his mom friends - she had a problem with her implant and couldn't get on the net, and bla bla blu, bla ble bla - "Ya might as well stop the inoculation and just get infected, that's the only reliable link" shrugged his shoulders, and was out the door walking down the street.  

a regular festival of the hot happy stinks

  Two hundred yards down the main hall, lines had formed in front of a cluster of elevators.  A noisy talkative crowd going to work as slowly as they could, slurping morning drinks made at the Steam Engine, his floors cafe.  Lucky didn't usually make his presence known at that establishment,  he would always head up to the Kings Chair, the bistro at the top of the building.  The cool breeze is delightful, and views were the best, the staff made the most of it by screwing down each chair in position, giving every person an unimpaired view out over the grand prairie.  The Steam Engine was always a chaotic mess full of loud families, student study groups, and inebriated coffee drinkers - a regular festival of the hot happy stinks, playing the latest funked up rhythm of flu, for the enjoyment of the twenty eighth floor.  He could still hear a drunken party left over from the night before, it sounded like Wade, Jen, and L.J. slurring out a song and playing badly tuned instruments.  fairly certain they were using his small acoustic bass, and briefly considered walking down there and snatching it back, but that was to much, so he went over to the man lifts and caught a bucket going down.

The error of enlightenment.

Perched in the nanny tower,  lucky tranced out -  in the heavy haze of mental clarity - on the event horizon of enlightenment - the pineal gland softening.  A reverse bell, one of his numerous modified sounds he had made and put in the system, during the hours of boredom that necessarily is an integral part of being a robot nanny, went off.  It seemed to be coming just over the edge of that event horizon.  He had changed every sound in the system and wasn't sure what this one signified,  focused in on the instrumentation, and thought it was hog 48 with and err 06,  hyrostat failure - then he was jarred out of the trance.  A loud hyperventilating sound was blaring in the tower cab,  lucky hit the hardwired button just seconds after the err message had been sent to service department, looked at the panel and saw that he would have to go out after hog 48, the hyrostatic drive had failed.

Getting up early, and it's already hot.

   Sometime in the middle of the night the ceiling fan put a chill on to him like a cold wet wind; and then he woke sweaty on the bare mattress, with the sheets bundled up off to the side, his head stuck to the pillow and the fan spinning out bad breath.   Sat up, on the edge of that that swampy nest, looking out the fogged up window into the fogged up world, the Sun still thirty minuets to the east, a full Moon making its best attempt at daylight.  The Moon is always in competition with the sun, but never does even come close in the race to illuminate; the Sun will boast on its win by showing off it's power in the visible light category,demonstrating at the same time that it can do much more, and will pour on the heat, just to make that point stick.  Detaching from the bed he went over to his dresser and felt around in the moon light for all the right clothes.   The air kicked on for a bit, made his bowl of cold cereal, went to the bathroom, opened the fridge, grabbed a can of pop, a thermos,cold cuts,cheese,pear - and fled the apartment.

MMMM a steaming hot mug of Plasma.

   He was intentionally ignorant of what the FOOF would do.  Blind to its ability, once the coolant had been stopped, to burn a hole though the earth and at the same time turn that very same earth into magma.  Hot molten goo that was so credibly reactive it would melt a hole in a metal pipeline and fill it with hot oozing ultra reactive plasma.  The exothermic magma would come in contact with water, and that would empower a secondary reaction, and burn through the pipe destroying a vast length of it.  All this was supposed to happen with out a surface disturbance, and hopefully the destruction of the mostly forgotten unused pipeline would be undiscovered, and in fact be a perfect trial run for the main event.