The first things that Joe noticed when he came back to his senses were pimples. 5 of them, to be exact, were hiding discreetly underneath the make-up that Samantha had liberally applied to her face. Only after studying these surprising archaeological facial finds, did he also happen to notice the worried expression she was wearing and the fact that her lips were moving. Then his hearing kicked in.
“Joe! Joe! Lordy, Joe. Wake up, why don’t ya… He guys, he’s awake!” (Samantha)
As Joe looked around, he saw William running toward him with a huge glass of water, and Jake hiding his head under his arms on the table like he was playing heads up seven up. Jake doesn’t deal well with stress… When they heard what Samantha said, they stopped what they were doing and looked.
“Oh, you’re okay, I guess I don’t have to use the boiling water!” (William)
“!!!” (Joe)
Both of them came over to where Samantha was and helped pick Joe up off the floor. After seeing that he was okay, they all went to sit down at the table again.
“You okay, Joe?” (William)
“Yeah, You okay?” (Jake)
“Yes, I am… In fact, I’m better than okay. This is amazing! I see, hear, smell, taste, and feel better than I ever have in my entire life!” (Joe)
Right about that time, Joe noticed the clock. “Oh no! Clare is gonna kill me! I gotta go now!!”
Up he jumped while swiftly grabbing the bags of groceries. He had to get this home to Clare, deal with her lectures, and then go find a job!
~~Samantha’s perspective~~
Following along behind Joe and his two buddies, I couldn’t help but shake my head at the weirdness of it all. ‘This is the best thing I’ve seen all year’. Thought Samantha as she watched Joe ogle every single object that crossed his vision. Samantha was a huge fan of sci-fi and fantasy movies! She loved to watch weird things happen. As you can imagine, Joe had started to become her absolute favorite person to be around these days. It’s not that Joe wasn’t her friend. He was, but Samantha had an addiction to peculiar events. Since Joe fell, unharmed, off a Sky-scrapper, he had become her #1 favorite person to be around. She was considering bringing popcorn anytime she wanted to hang out with Joe in the future. After all, who knows what might happen next!
So, off they all walked, going to Joe’s home, and Samantha didn’t want to miss a second of it.
“I found a quarter!” Joe said stooping over near a trash can outside! “Oh! Look, another one” Joe whispered as he dashed to another part of the sidewalk.
Samantha followed behind watching as Joe found coin after baseball card after coin for the next 5 minutes as they walked toward Joe’s house. William and Jake were deep in conversation about the money-making potential of Joe’s increased perception, as Joe showed off his $4.36 that he had collected in 5 minutes.
“That’s practically a dollar a minute” Jake said, doing a quick count on his fingers. “Why, that’s almost $60 an hour!” William and Jake huddled together with Joe making plans to sweep the city of all its lost change.
“What about Clare?” (Samantha)
A look of fear/worry/petulant child crossed Joe’s face, as his shoulder’s slumped, and he swung around to continue his journey home. At that exact moment of swinging around, Joe froze, his eyes big as saucers.
“What is this!” He said making a leaping run across the empty street toward a bush on the other side. Bending down, he dug through the hedge and grabbed hold of something that had a dull, black, metallic glimmer. Standing up, we could then clearly see that he was holding a pistol. He glanced at us with widened eyes. With the sound of an approaching car, the rumble of an old, Pontiac Firebird as a matter of fact, Joe quickly pocketed the shiny, black Glock G42. Smiling awkwardly, he waved hello to the passing car, which briefly slowed, seemingly unsure of the entire situation. I couldn’t help but double over and laugh at Joe’s ludicrous acting. What a weirdo! I love this guy, hahahahahhahahahaha.
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After that, we quickly continued toward Joe’s house, collecting an additional $23.67 on the way, mostly due to Joe finding 2 $10 bills wadded up in a corner near his street.
~~Back to Joe’s perspective~~
‘I’m going to be rich! That’s right, rich.’ Thought Joe as he counted the $28.03 he had recovered on his journey home. His little beady eyes sparkled with glee as he scanned the loose collection of money. Bob just stared at him with a slack jaw and slumped shoulders. A feather fell out of his drooped wings and slowly fluttered to the ground. Bob’s eyes widened when he saw this, and he couldn’t help but feel a flicker of fear in his little, angelic heart.
“I.. I’m not feeling to well!” proclaimed Bob with a worried, yet firm expression as he nodded his little head in angelic agreement with himself. “I’m taking a few sick days off. This has been a little bit much for me.”
“But what about my GD points”. (Joe)
Bob just kinda stared at Joe for a moment, unsure if this comment should be taken seriously or not. After a few moments of awkward silence, Bob kinda chuckle-snorted while clearing his throat. He ended up sounding like a British grandfather who had just found out the America’s were no longer colonies.
“Hmph! No need to worry about that, I’ll just engage the A.P.P., the Auto Pilot Program!” Bob said, regaining some of his former vigor due to his pride in anachronism creation. Fluttering his wings, he quickly explained, “It is an algorithm I wrote to detect good and evil deeds and give appropriate awards. Now, I really must be off” With a swish and a poof of silver glitter, Bob disappeared from sight.
Soon after, a voice said, “A.P.P. activated. Now monitoring the immediate vicinity for Good and Evil. Please proceed and have a nice day.”
Joe just looked at his empty shoulder, blinked, looked at the cash in his hands, blinked again, and walked into his house deciding to forget about these things for a moment. After quickly depositing Clare’s groceries on the counter, he jetted back out the door before additional conversations could be had. He knew that Clare would pester him about the job, and he had no answer as of yet.
After bidding goodbye to Samantha, Joe and his 2 buddies decided to walk downtown to look for Jake’s uncle Vinny. As they walked down the street leading to the business district of town, Joe continued to pick up spare change from every nook and cranny.
“You know, a shocking amount of people must drop money in this town” (Joe)
“Yeah, no joke” (Chuckled William)
“My uncle Vinny always said a penny found is a penny that some other poor sucker doesn’t have… I’m not really sure why he said that.” Jake said with a quizzical look.
About that time, Joe noticed a $20 bill floating toward him down the street carried by the wind. Jake and William froze with a look of awe akin to worship on their face for the brother Joe and his sudden magnetism for money. As Joe gently plucked the $20 out of the air as gentle as a butterfly kissing a flower, he heard a small scream! Looking down the street he saw a little girl crying and pointing her finger at him.
“That was my 20! You’re a thief!! Waaahhh!!!” (Little Girl)
“Ding! Evil deed detected. Someone has stolen a little girl’s $20. Your job is to recover the $20 for the girl! The reward is 5 GD points. Good luck” (A.P.P system)
Joe just kind of laughed too himself, “Hey little girl, did you lose this? Here I caught it out of the wind!” Joe said as he handed the $20 to the girl.
“Ding mission accomplished; 5 GD points rewarded”. (A.P.P)
Joe froze… an idea formed in his brain. It wasn’t a nice idea, and it wasn’t a bad idea. It was THE idea. A small smile broke out on his face. Quick as an arrow, he snatched back the $20.
“Ding! Evil deed detected. Someone has stolen a little girl’s $20. Your job is to recover the $20 for the girl! The reward is 5 GD points. Good luck” (A.P.P system)
Joe grinned ear to ear. “Here you go, now keep a better hold on it” Joe said as he stuffed the $20 in the girls tightly balled fist. She just kinda stood there in shock.
“Ding mission accomplished; 5 GD points rewarded”. (A.P.P.)
Then Joe started to grab the $20 and then stuff it back into the girl’s hand repeatedly about 5 times.
“Ding! Evil deed… Ding mission accomp… Ding! Evil deed… Ding mission accomp… Ding! Evil deed… Ding mission accomp… Ding! Evil deed… Ding mission accomp… Ding! Evil deed… Ding mission accomplished; 5 GD points rewarded”. (A.P.P.)
The girl gave a small scream and ran for her life at that point. Joe just stood there staring at his status screen! 35 points! He had just earned 35 points in the blink of an eye! Haha, this is too good to be true.
Oh, you lovely angel of P.M.S. Bob, you have really outdone yourself this time! Didn’t Bob say he was taking a few sick days? Everyone knows that a few means anywhere from 3-5. Joe smiled like a green, grinchy wierdo stealing Christmas as he rubbed his hands together thinking about all the points he could get in the next few days.
End of Chapter 7
