Prozacade

"There you go, my pretty," muttered Gladys under her breath, pouring half of her can of Prozacade into  her dragonette's water dish.  The dragonette, a slim pink dragon as long as Glady's arm, watched her from what it considered a safe distance, waiting until she'd moved away from the dish before it came over to see what had changed.  Its long black toenails clicked on the parquet floor, and its tail swayed gently from side to side behind it – not an indication of friendliness, but just a means of staying stable – until it was close enough to sniff the contents of the dish.  Huge nostrils flared until they were as large as its eyes, which, like an anime character's, were too big for its head.  It tilted its head this way and that, and eventually decided that what was in the dish smelled fine.  It dipped its head and lapped up the Prozacade.
"Gladys?"  The voice behind her was soft, caring, and sounded a little tired.  Gladys's back still snapped ramrod straight and she froze as though she'd been caught hacking the nursing home's computers again.  "Gladys, what are you doing?"
"Feeding Lulu," she said.  She turned round to face Dr. Elizabeth, a middle-aged woman with horn-rimmed spectacles and a permanent clipboard held defensively at chest height.  Dr. Elizabeth's eyes moved down until they were focused on the can of Prozacade.  "Lulu likes it!"
"I expect she does," said Dr. Elizabeth.  The clipboard lowered and she took a pen from its attachment point on the side.  She looked Gladys in the eyes again.  "You used to work for BioPets didn't you?  Which is how come you have a dragonette, in fact."
Gladys said nothing, waiting for Dr. Elizabeth to reach her conclusions and go.
"Come on Gladys, you can talk to me.  Dragonettes: theyr'e gengineered pets aren't they?"
"Well of course," said Gladys, irritation forcing her to speak.  "They're not natural, are they?  Or do you have a bunch of them frolicking at the bottom of your garden?"
"That would be nice," said Dr. Elizabeth, a smile brightening her face.  Gladys thought that she still looked like someone's mother.  "How much are they fetching on the open market at the moment?  More than my annual salary, I expect."  Gladys nodded, unwilling to provide numbers, though she knew them all down to the decimals.  "No, they're not natural, and they're expensive and hard to come by even if you have the money.  And yet here you are, feeding your dragonette your Prozacade instead of drinking it."  Gladys could almost hear "like a good girl" at the end of that sentence.  "Why?"
"It likes it," said Gladys.  She stuck her chin out unconsciously.
"Yes, yes," said Dr. Elizabeth, writing something on her clipboard.  Gladys found herself curious as to what was being written, but the clipboard was angled just out of her view.  "But you wouldn't give it something it liked if you thought you were risking its life, would you?"
"Maybe," said Gladys, though she knew she'd not do anything to harm Melchior, her dragonette.
"Maybe," said Dr. Elizabeth, writing on the clipboard again.  She was writing for too long to have just written Gladys's answer down though.  "Maybe."  There was a pause, and then, just when Gladys was hoping that the conversation was over, "You used to work for BioPets, didn't you?"
Gladys stayed quiet again.
"Well, let me answer that for you," said Dr. Elizabeth.  "It's here on your chart.  You did, you were at various points the Dragonette Lead Researcher, the Technical Director for Reptilian Research, Head of Dragonette development, Vice President for Reptiles and Ophidians, and Medical Officer for Xenospecies.  It's a very impressive CV, and it suggests to me that you know exactly what Prozacade will do to a dragonette."
"Make it cheerful?" said Gladys.  She was slightly stunned that all her significant job titles were on her chart – this was just a nursing home after all, for people like her who considered children a nuisance rather than a life-insurance policy – and a little puzzled that Dr. Elizabeth was paying any attention to them.
"Hah, wouldn't that be a surprise?" said Dr. Elizabeth.  "Those things seem to be permanently grumpy unless they're with they're owner."
"They're territorial," said Gladys feeling a little awkward.  "They're quick to identify competition."
"I think," said Dr. Elizabeth, looking at the dragonette appraisingly, "that Prozacade probably opens up some extra branch of coding inside the dragonette.  I think that you did it deliberately; some little trick that you kept secret and took away with you, so that when you got bored with retirement you'd be able to use it to go back to work.  It won't work Gladys, you're simply too old now."
Melchior the dragonette stretched, feeling a little odd.  Its brain felt like it was fizzing and bubbling, as though there was a really big, important thought coming.
"I don't want to go back" said Gladys.  "There was always too much work and too few people."  Dr. Elizabth looked perplexed.
"Then what...?" she asked, just as Melchior opened its mouth, belched, and blew a ball of fire in front of him to crash against the wall and burn up the wallpaper.
Gladys turned to Dr. Elizabeth, who was staring wildly at the dragonette.  "I just want to take out an insurance policy."

Vendomat

They installed the new vending machine in the high school by mistake.
Hervan van den Lufft, the company that delivered the machine produced documentation to prove that they had been hired to deliver to that address.  The documentation was surprisingly lovely; hand-calligraphy on heavy parchment paper, with flowery language worthy of Shakespeare (the local newspaper, the Metropolitan Memo, omitted the literary reference when reporting on the story after the school's Head of English asked who Shakespeare was while reviewing an advance copy), and even illuminated capitals.  An eagle-eyed reader of the Metropolitan Memo pointed out in a letter to the editor that the illuminated capitals appeared to have rather a large number of inebritated and possible drugged young people cavorting and sleeping on the crossbars of the letters but this was ignored by the paper's editors and all copies of the paper were gathered and pulped in a quiet but efficient campaign later that week.  The documentation was all entirely in order, except for the oddity of the sheer luxuriant quality of it.
The manufacturer of the vending machine quickly produced a large number of examples of their standards of dockets and request-fulfilment forms, which were cheaply photocopied with low-toner photocopiers and recycled paper.  Their environmental credentials were high, and it was clear to everybody that they hadn't arranged for the delivery.  It was noted, much later, that they had continued to refill the vending machine for six months after the issue first came to light, but by that point no-one was interested in stirring up the past any more, and the offending vending machine had been removed, so it was allowed to slide into obscurity.
The sixth-form of the school was interrogated by the deputy-head, a fearsome woman that the students spread incessant rumours about.  The one that made it past the Metropolitan Memo's fact-checkers was that she had been a lover and teacher of Pol Pot when she was younger, and had given him ideas.  The sixth-formers appeared to be in rather better health than should have been the case if their rumours were true, and Miss Pyepie never seemed to even pick up the chalk, let alone a bloody soldering iron.  The rumours died quickly, and it was surmised that the students hadn't ordered the vending machine.
Which meant that no-one seemed to know where it had come from, who had ordered it, or where it was supposed to be.  This last fact created the inertia that led to the machine staying put instead of being picked up again and taken back to the manufacturer's warehouse on the ring-road.
The vending machine dispensed medicinal soda.  The notional idea was that these would be installed in hospitals and doctor's surgeries and would speed up certain prescription medicines.  Moreover, a repeat prescription would be unnecessary as the patient could simply pop in when they were passing and pick up a few more cans of Digitali-cola for their heart murmur, or Straight-up, the Viagra fizzy drink.  There was a little concern expressed initially that this would lead to unregulated drug use and people auto-dosing themselves into medical comas.  When the unsubsided cost of each can was revealed though, all such doubts evaporated, and instead questions were asked about how people were expected to pay for such things.
The sixth-form asked no such questions, and found the money for the cans from somewhere.  All the Straight-up would sell out within two days, though no-one was ever seen with a can or would admit to buying it.  More worrying, all the of the Prozacade would sell out just as fast, but people were happy to be seen with three or four cans of it, as though it were somehow a status symbol.  The manufacturers later pointed out to a skeptical judge that if this little accident of location hadn't happened they would probably have never discovered that mixing Prozacade and Red Bull caused the kind of euphoria that's called oxygen narcosis underwater.  Above water, it just made people so happy that they would dance in the traffic, on train-tracks, and occasionally right off the edge of high buildings.
Prozacade now comes in a little plastic package that contains a thin, but strong, strait-jacket just in case.
Parents eventually asked questions, usually only after seeing their can-recycling contributions soar, and the parents of the dead children kept asking questions.  There was much talk and few answers.  Finally, and with very little fanfare indeed the vending machine was taken away again.