“What possessed you to input a request for fruit cake to begin with?” the repair man asked.
I shrugged. “Nostalgia.” I leaned to the side as the food replicator shot out another rock-hard fruit cake. I grimaced as glass shattered. I’d thought I had moved everything to safety. Apparently not.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. You say it’s spewed out nearly a thousand of these suckers?” The man scratched his ass as he dodged the next projectile.
I sighed and surveyed the various Old-Earth Christmas relics, now nearly buried in piles of fruit cake: an aluminum cone that I thought was supposed to be a tree, a tube that said Tootsie Roll that had a slit in the plastic of one end, two tiny crinkled pieces of silver material, and an over-sized sock with the name “Gertie” glued to the cuff in silver glitter, as well as several glass ornaments in bright greens, reds, and silvers, all in various stages of crushed, chipped, and broken.
I’d also found two Bing Crosby albums, a faded red hat edged with gnarly brown fuzz that might have been white once, a creepy elf-like creature that was missing both eyes, and a hard lump of something that might have been food once, wrapped in plastic with a label that said Grandma’s Home Made Fruit Cake. (more…)