Chapter 10

It had been pouring the whole day. Snow liked the rain, but she was trying to finish her syllabus for her examinations.

Someone was at the door. She spoke through the microphone.

“Who is it? How can I help you?”

“Oh dearie, my name is Aphrodite. Wouldn’t you take a look at these new Apple products?”

It was a saleslady from Apple.

Snow went outside and opened the door. Snowy followed behind her and played around her ankles in its programmed cute-irritating way. The saleslady had a brochure of Apple products to show and was giving a sample product. Snow accepted the free iPod, closed the door and went inside.

She decided to take a break from her studies and check it out. She connected the iPod to the computer terminal she was working on. That was her first big mistake. Actually, deciding to use the main computer terminal on the network responsible for the maintenance of the house was the first big mistake. But it would have taken too much trouble to switch to another computer when this one was free.

A virus that Aphrodite, aka Artemis (she was wearing MaskUp virtual make up mask – it made her ‘virtually’ unrecognisable), had placed in the iPod transferred itself to the LAN and short-circuited the entire house.

Snow swore under her breath. “Why just now? Why did the electricity have to go right now?”

She wondered why the power back-ups weren’t working. She went inside the kitchen to look for a solar-powered flashlight.

Usually, given that it was still day, she shouldn’t have required the light. But it was dark outside, what with the heavy rainclouds that were leaking.

Artemis hadn’t gone away. She had decided to stay and make sure that Snow died.

She knew that Snow would go and look for the flashlights. She had made sure that she wouldn’t find them. In their place, she had kept a pile of deadly touch-sensitive heat bombs. One touch in the touch-sensitive area would release a deadly heat wave.

She could easily have handed Snow these bombs on her doorstep. It would have finished the task faster too. The only problem was that the video camera would record everything.

Snow entered the kitchen, groping in the dark. She felt above her head for the shelf with the flashlights. She couldn’t find it. She raised herself on her toes and got hold of one.

Snowy decided just then to barge into her feet.
Snow tripped and fell on the floor and hit her head.
The flashlight flew out of her hand, out of the window and towards Artemis.
Snow had got to her feet, when warm, liquid chocolate came flooding down on her.

If the bomb had been in Snow’s hands, it would have disintegrated her basic elements. Since it was not; it was near Artemis, it was her evil step-mother who faced the heat wave. Needless to say, she didn’t remain alive.

But the bomb also melted a whole portion of the house.

***

When Hansel and Gretel returned, they were not too pleased to find the house half-molten. In all their years, they had never done anything as much as Snow seemed to have done in a month.

Talking of Snow, she wasn’t in sight. What was, however, was a chocolate statue of Snow.

It did seem like a crude joke.

Here you do everything you can to save a girl from her murderous step-mother, and here she rewards you by melting down half your house. They could totally sympathise with Prince Charming at that point.

His wife of a few weeks had left him in favour of someone called Pied Piper. Pied Piper indeed!
Tch, tch, such low-class tastes. Prince Charming was too good for her tastes after all.
They had invited him over to their house to meet Snow. Too bad that she had upped and left as well. That’s what came of rubbing shoulders with the working class.
But they couldn’t exactly tell him not to come now. So what if Snow wasn’t here, they could provide him with company. Weren’t they friends, after all?

And so, he came. He came resplendent in his drop-dead gorgeous looks, that winning smile and that dashing personality.
He was a little curious to see the house looking so … dead.
One part of the house remained almost entirely dark.

When he came up the path, he saw that that part was just debris. He took in his breath a little sharply. He wondered what had happened that had caused this destruction. It looked like the house had caught fire.

But, there in the middle of the mess, stood a statue. The light from the rest of the house shone off its chocolate surface. But there was no denying it, there was a statue of a girl in the middle of the destruction. He went off the path and made his way towards the erstwhile kitchen.

He was struck by the beauty of the statue. The features of the face were not visible. But the statue was most definitely of a girl. Her head was lifted up towards the sky, a long arm was raised, as if trying to protect the face from something. A longish column fell on her back, which could only be her hair. Charming touched the statue’s face. It seemed a little warm.

He touched the hand. The fingers seemed to tighten around his.

He touched the neck. He could most certainly feel a pulse.

Charming was a little taken aback. He broke off a piece of chocolate. He broke off some more. And some more. He held the arm and tried to move it. He lowered the arm. With a crack and a splinter, the arm came down. There were patches of bare skin on the arm.

He broke away more chocolate. He used both his hands. His movements were more and more frenzied now. A chip off the body. A piece off the legs. A chunk off the arms. A segment off the waist.

And then, the statue came alive.

Its arms moved up and down, removing chocolate. Its hands moved faster and faster. It bent down, working on its legs, trying to free its legs. It worked on its face, removing chocolate from its eyes, its nose. Prince Charming was just watching now. He was watching it work.

And then, he edged closer, held Snow, and kissed.

A lot of time later, all he remembered of that kiss was that it had tasted of chocolate.

Chapter 9

About five days later, around 4 p.m., the video camera at Prince Charming’s palace gate recorded a woman in a long blue Bohemian skirt exiting the palace compounds. She had a white shawl draped around her head. Golden-brown hair escaped from under the shawl, shining in the afternoon sun.

On her feet was a pair of glass slippers.

***

Dear Diary

At last.

Artemis.

***

“Do you see why it’s for the best?” asked Snow. “Oh for heaven’s sake say something! Hansel and Gretel are away. Ella has gone and married a man I love. And you don’t speak. I must do something about that. I will. Don’t worry. A bigger problem is, I don’t think Prince Charming knows I exist. He’s probably smitten with Ella and it’s happily ever after for them.”

“See, Artemis thinks I’m dead. I don’t suppose she would be too happy to know that I’m alive and kicking. I can’t do anything until father returns. And then, it would be too late.

“At any rate, I can’t think too much about Charming. He’s not worth that much time. I need to do well in the exams and they’re just round the corner. It pretty much sucks that just when I required Pied Piper’s help to develop that hack, he’s upped and left. Sure, he may be busy. In fact, I might even have upset him. I must go through my message history and see if I’ve given him any reason to block me or stop talking to me.

“Ooh, but the exams are in ten days time! I must study something. Oh for heaven’s sake quit licking my feet!”

It was true. Now Pied Piper had stopped talking to her. Of course, of course, two days is not much. Maybe he was just busy.

With Ella for example?

Those glass slippers had given her away. Prince Charming knew that nobody else’s feet fit those shoes. That had been the giveaway. It was disgusting. A newly married woman, who ran away from her husband’s place just a few weeks after their marriage, didn’t invite the society’s sympathy. Tch, tch, they said. Poor Charming. It had been obviously a bad decision. She befriended the domestic help! After all that Charming did to her. He brought her home. He dressed her, cared for her. She was never required to work hard. And to think, this girl had lived a servant’s life back at her step-mother’s house. Anybody would be thankful, but no. That’s what came of mixing with such … such, um, the masses.

It was a different matter, however, that Charming was secretly a little relieved. He had realized his mistake soon after marrying her. It’s just, she didn’t seem to want to attend those parties. They were boring, she had said. But he had to attend them. So should she have, as his wife. She didn’t seem to be able to get her table etiquettes right either. She had, for example, just a few days back used the beef fork to eat her rice. These things couldn’t have gone unnoticed for too long.

However, he was not willing to get a divorce. He didn’t have too much of an excuse, for one.

Also, the royalty never made bad decisions. If the public got to know that they couldn’t keep their marriages straight, they would never trust them to take decisions for them. A riot would follow, people would get killed, resources would go waste, and then, democracy would be established.

It would involve even more fighting. More people would die. And then, years later, they’d wonder what had been wrong with the monarchy anyway?

So where was Ella now?

That day, she had a meeting scheduled with Pied Piper for 5 p.m. at a flashy little Internet café. It would be just the downmarket joint to go unrecognized. Who, in these days, didn’t have Internet? Most people went to these little places to go unrecognized. The café owners had a little gameplan up their sleeves. They kept a copy of the bills with them. All famous signatures and everything. Rarely, when people asked to pay in cash, they would turn up their noses and say that they didn’t accept cash.

The result would inevitably be, that they’d extort money from the famous people (who were trying to go unrecognized) by blackmailing them with their signatures. It was a very simple equation. If you had gone to such a café, something was “up”.
Luckily for the café owners, most of the rich and the famous didn’t have a single gray cell to call their own.

Pied Piper was sitting at a table in the corner when Ella entered. She was not wearing the long Bohemian skirt any longer.

In its place was a short orange skirt. The white shawl was still covering her face (it must be mentioned here that almost all of the other people in the café were wearing a shawl over their heads), but it looked a little out of place. Imagine a Muslim woman, wearing a black burqa over the face and torso, but a short orange skirt down below.

Pied Piper saw her making her way towards him. His eyes slid down from her covered head to her skirt and lower. The white shawl hadn’t looked very impressive. He hoped it was not there because it had to hide something hideous.

After the initial coffee and sodas and the alcohol and a few trips to the washroom, both of them were feeling like they had known each other all along. It was time, to move somewhere else.

They finished their coffees and asked for the bill. A little robot with an apron around its waist (the nameplate said ‘Irona’) came with it. Pied Piper pulled out his wallet to pay for it when Irona said, “We don’t accept cash.”
There was nothing to do but for Pied Piper to pull out his Inter-Galactic Platinum Card.

Next on the itinerary was the house that Pied Piper was staying in.

Chapter 8

Ella didn’t know what to do. She had thought being married to Charming would be her ticket to freedom from her sisters’ evilness. She had thought that no longer would they ask her to do banal odd jobs all the time. She had thought that riches would buy her the happiness that she hadn’t found with her step-mother.

Obviously, it seemed that she had thought wrong.

Prince Charming was despairingly boring.

Every time she imagined herself in these same circumstances day after day for years and years, she almost cried out in desperation. Imagine waking up and having nothing more to do than read the e-newspaper. Heavens! She didn’t even have to boot up the computer and load the e-newspaper. It would all be done for her. Imagine talking to boring old people in boring formal partied and being polite to them even though she didn’t like them. Imagine growing old doing nothing, watching Charming’s hair gray and his width increase. She really wondered what it was that she had led herself into. And what was more, she no longer had her friends around her! It had been a long time since Snow had just, disappeared. Her servant-friends at Snow’s castle had been left behind. And every time she tried to talk to the help here, they responded a little too primly. And on more than one occasion, Charming had quite summarily told her to stop associating with them. It didn’t become a lady of her present status.

She found a little comfort in talking to her newest acquaintance, Pied Piper. She had come across him on cyberspace. He was quite an interesting fellow. He had many interesting tales to tell too. Little by little, Ella found herself growing closer to him than she had allowed herself to with Charming.

**

Dear Diary

It’s almost ready. The perfect recipe.
I had developed it in those days before my downfall as part of the larger plan.
At that time, though, it had been just a theory.

Quite unexpectedly, it seems that this time, the Gods are in my favor. I just heard the best news since quite a few days. The King has delayed his return indefinitely because Jupiter is in an emergency-like situation. Seems that the poor people have finally lost it. Some twit was not careful and now, the planet is in a major fuel-crisis. Apparently, there isn’t even enough fuel for the King to return. Dear oh dear.

Artemis.

P.S. I’m lovin’ it! (Stupid spell check doesn’t realize that “lovin’” is without a ‘g’ for a reason!!)

***

Rats!: You’re what, married?

Ella3000: Yeah.

Rats!: Rats!!

Ella3000: Marriage has to be one of my worst decisions.

Rats!: Tell me about it, Princess Charming. Did I tell you about the story of my name?

Ella3000: No-o. Pied Piper. Were you a plumber or something?

Rats!: Well, I was a Piper. As in, one who played pipes. I lived in Hamburg till everybody migrated out.

Ella3000: You play that badly?

Rats!: Ah no. You see, one time, a long, long time ago, that place was run over with rats. Live, fat rats and mice. Quite irritating they were.

Ella3000: Ooh. Live rats! Bet they were damn cute. I’ve never seen one.

Rats!: If you had, you wouldn’t think they were cute. They entered everybody’s houses and ate everything they found. Even computer wires. Of course, those times, wireless technology hadn’t reached our little town. No one thought they were cute. Everybody was out to get them killed. But they multiplied too fast.

Ella3000: Ah! No family-planning!

Rats!: Seriously. They hadn’t even heard of abstinence. Everywhere, on the roads, in the houses, tons of rats and mice were busy with just two things – eating, and reproducing. Not, of course, at the same time. It made the people really mad. The Mayor announced a reward of some million bucks if anyone could catch them.

Ella3000: That doesn’t quite amount to much.

Rats!: Obviously, in those days, a million was a huge lot.

Ella3000: Oh yes. I forget. There wasn’t wireless yet.

Rats!: There was. You’re making me feel old. Wireless tech just hadn’t reached Hamburg yet. You forget, inflation.

Ella3000: Of course. Inflation. True. It’s quite once-upon-a-time when a million was worth a lot.

Rats!: Quite. Well, I tried my hand at that million. To be accurate, the actual amount proclaimed was 2,374,991.976 bucks. Anyway, what I did, I played my pipe and all the rats left all their activities and followed me. I was walking rather resolutely towards the river and they were even more resolutely, following me.

Ella3000: And you walked into the water and they kept following and got drowned. Right?

Rats!: Absolutely. But the Mayor didn’t think I deserved my money. They tried to pay me off with a meager 999,988.328 bucks.

Ella3000: Only? How absolutely rotten!

Rats!: Oh well, I had my ways of making them pay.

Ella3000: What did you do?

Rats!: I went onto the streets and played again. But the second time I was playing a different tune and all the kids in the town started following me. They left all their activities everywhere and came after me.

Ella3000: Ooh man. And then?

Rats!: And then I held them hostage till they paid every bit of the reward. Of course, I did feed them. The kids were quite sad to have to leave me and go. Inevitably, it meant school from the next day onwards.

Ella3000: That’s cool. I wish I could do things like this!

Rats!: Well, why not? Let’s get together some day and then we’ll see.

Ella3000: Yeah, okay then.

***

For some days after, Artemis remained inside her room, emerging from it only for visiting the washroom and the odd meal. Everybody assumed that it was just part of her other oddities.

***

The reason Snow was so unhappy with the news of Ella’s wedding to Prince Charming was as much that she came to know of their decision from Gretel as much as that she’d secretly been in love with him.

She’d never been able to tell anybody.

Most of the time, she would be a little too busy to think about it. But with the time that she had in her hands these days, she could spend some of it thinking about it. And she concluded that she was pretty morose now that she’d let Ella take him away from her.

Talking to Snowy about it seemed to help.

It gave her comfort. She convinced herself that it was for the best.

She couldn’t exactly barge into Ella’s life (married) and declare her love for Charming. Oh no, she’d be called a homebreaker and then, everybody would hate her.

Also, that would bring attention to her living status.

She didn’t know that Artemis knew. She didn’t know that she’d sent after her a team of Antsects.

She was blissfully unaware of the last plan she’d made

Chapter 7

Snow had settled in with Hansel and Gretel. When they went to work, she roamed around the beautiful patch of garden around the house and explored the house itself. It was quite amazing what all one could find there. There was the attic that was entirely made up of dark chocolate. And a particular corner of the house was all strawberry bubblegum. That and the Internet kept her always busy. She was working harder at finishing her course-load too. And, she was also, secretly, working on a hack to the newest version of the anti-cheating software. She’d also got back on Pied Piper. He seemed to know a lot about such things and even though he didn’t know it, he was helping Snow develop the hack.

She learnt from Gretel that Ella was getting married to Prince Charming. It was going to be a quiet, online-registered wedding. Everyone said that it was not like Prince Charming to not be celebrating the wedding. Snow was very happy for Ella. But it hurt her that Ella had not contacted her even once after her disappearance. Quite atrocious that girl was turning out to be. Why, if Snow hadn’t taken her to the ball, she would never have even met Charming! But does she tell her about the wedding? Wedding! They had just met once after all! Snow secretly believed that Ella was getting a little deluded with the Prince’s kind of world, especially after the way her step-mother treated her. Even then, one would think that she would have remembered to email her.

Snow was certainly not feeling very happy with Ella.

***

Dear Diary

This is not fair.

Snow is alive.

But where is she?

Artemis

***

Artemis was getting furiouser and furiouser with each passing day. Every time MyrorMe gave out Snow’s name, she was acutely reminded of the fact that she was alive and prettier than Artemis. Aging had always been a sore point with Artemis.

It was all very fine to have anti-aging technology and make-up and cosmetic surgery. But it’s a different kind of a joy to know that you don’t really need those things.

She sent out SnffrDawg 420, the latest in the range of smell-tracking devices a week after Ella’s marriage.

It was on another of those ‘one day’s that Snow saw the little puppy-like creature outside the house. Now she had always loved animals, never mind that this particular one was more of an animal-shaped machine. SnffrDawg reminded her of the Saint Bernard that she had kept as a pet in her childhood. She took it in and reprogrammed it into a docile pet dog that wagged its tail and hung out it metal tongue and licked faces. She called it Snowy. It kept her company when Hansel and Gretel were not in the house. Quite useful it was too. Snowy had GPS installed on it.

Another failure for Artemis. But she wasn’t complaining. Patience was very important.

Also, unbeknownst to Snow, the moment Snowy had located her, it had sent a little message to Artemis with the exact co-ordinates.

At least, now she knew where Snow was.

Next, she sent a team of Antsects (“Guaranteed to ‘bug’ your target to death.”). They were a complete insect package that combined the activities of termites, houseflies, cockroaches, mosquitoes … and ants (of course).

The LakshmanRekha 0.9 around the house wiped them out. If Artemis had bothered to do any research, she would have known. The LakshmanRekha was an essential maintenance tool for the chocolate house. And why not? To keep a chocolate house clean and free from all the insects that would otherwise have flocked to it, such a measure would have been necessary.

It was time, Artemis decided, that she went personally.