Janna struggled not to kiss her pink glob. The traceries of pink and yellow lines beneath its skin were like the veins of fine marble.
"What?!" said Janna. She felt a sliver of ice in her heart. "Freeze my Pumpti? Freeze your own Pumpti, Vero."
"I need mine," snapped Veruschka.
To part from her Pumpti -- something within her passionately rebelled. In a dizzying moment of raw devotion Janna suddenly found herself sinking her teeth into the unresisting flesh of the Pumpti. Crisp, tasty, spun cotton candy, deep-fried puffball dough, a sugared beignet. And under that a salty, slightly painful flavor -- bringing back the memory of being a kid and sucking the root of a lost tooth.
"Now you understand," said Veruschka with a throaty laugh. "I was only testing you! You can keep your sweet Pumpti, safe and sound. We'll get some dirty street bum to make us a Pumpti for commercial samples. Like that stupid boy you were talking to before." Veruschka stood on tiptoe to peer out of the bank's bronze-mullioned window. "He'll be back. Men always come back when they see you making money."
Janna considered this wise assessment. Kelso was coming on pretty strong, considering that he'd never talked to her at school. "His name is Kelso," said Janna. "I went to Berkeley with him. He says he's always wanted me."
"Get some of his body fluid."
"I'm not ready for that," said Janna. "Let's just poke around in the sink for his traces." And, indeed, they quickly found a fresh hair to seed a Kelso Pumpti, nasty and testicular, suitable for freezing.
As Veruschka had predicted, Kelso himself returned before long. He made it his business to volunteer his aid and legal counsel. He even claimed that he'd broached the subject of Magic Pumpkin to Tug Mesoglea himself. However, the mysterious mogul failed to show up with his checkbook, so Magic Pumpkin took the path of viral marketing.
Veruschka had tracked down an offshore Chinese ooze farm to supply cheap culture medium. In a week, they had a few dozen Pumpti starter kits for sale. They came in a little plastic tub of pumptose-laced nutrient, all boxed up in a flashy little design that Janna had printed out in color.
Kelso had the kind of slit-eyed street smarts that came only from Berkeley law classes. He chose Fisherman's Wharf to hawk the product. Janna went along to supervise his retail effort.
It was the start of October now, a perfect fog-free day for the commercial birth of Magic Pumpkin. A visionary song of joy seemed to rise from the sparkling waters of San Francisco Bay, echoing from the sapphire dome of the California sky. Even the tourists could sense the sweetness of the occasion. They hustled cheerfully round Kelso's fold-out table, clicking away with little biochip cameras.
Kelso spun a practiced line of patter while Janna publicly adored her Pumpti. She'd decked Pumpti out in a special sailor suit, and she kept tossing him high into the air and laughing.
"Why is this woman so happy?" barked Kelso. "She's got a Pumpti. Better than a baby, better than a pet, your Pumpti is all you! Starter kits on special today for the unbelievably low price of--"
Over the course of a long morning, Kelso kept cutting the offering price of the Pumpti kits. Finally a runny-nosed little girl from Olympia, Washington, took the bait.
"How do I make one?" she wanted to know. "What choo got in that kit?" And, praise the Holy Molecule, her parents didn't drag her away, they just stood there watching their little darling shop.
The First Sale. For Janna, it was a moment to treasure forever. The little girl with her fine brown hair blowing in the warm afternoon wind, the dazedly smiling parents, Kelso's abrupt excited gestures as he explained how to seed and grow the Pumpti by planting a kiss on a scrap of Kleenex and dropping it into the kit's plastic jar. The feel of those worn dollar bills in her hand, and the parting wave of little Customer Number One. Ah, the romance of it!
Now that they'd found their price point, more sales followed. Soon, thanks to word of mouth, they began moving units from their website.
Janna's dad, who had a legalistic turn of mind, had warned them to hold off any postal or private-carrier shipments until they had federal approval. Ruben took a sample Pumpti before the San Jose branch office of the Genomics Control Board. He argued that, since the Pumptis were neither self-reproducing nor infectious, they didn't fall under the strict provisions of the Human Heritage Home Security Act.
This was catnip for their business, of course. Magic Pumpkin's website gathered a bouquet of orders from eager early adopters.
But, paradoxically, Magic Pumpkin's flowering sales bore the slimy seeds of a smashing fiscal disaster. When an outfit started small, it didn't take much traffic to double production every week. This constant doubling brought on raging production bottlenecks and serious crimps in their cash flow. In point of fact, in pursuit of market establishment, they were losing money on each Pumpti sold. The eventual payback from all those Pumpti accessories was still well down the road.
Janna was bored by their practical difficulties, but she had a ball inventing high concepts for Pumpti care products and Pumpti collectibles. Kelso's many art-scene friends were happy to sign up. Kelso was a one-man recruiting whiz. Buoyed by his worldly success, he began to shave more often and even use deodorant. He was so pleased by his ability to sucker people into the Magic Pumpkin enterprise that he even forgot to make passes at Janna.
Every day-jobber in the start-up was quickly issued his or her own free Pumpti. "Magic Pumpkin wants missionaries, not mercenaries," Janna announced from on high, and her growing cluster of troops cheered her on. Owning a personal Pumpti was an item of faith in the little company -- the linchpin of their corporate culture. You couldn't place yourself in the proper frame of mind for Magic Pumpkin product development without your very own darling roly-poly.
Cynics had claimed that the male demographic would never go for Pumptis. Why would any guy sacrifice his computer gaming time and his weekend bicycling to nurture something? But once presented with their own Pumpti, men found that it filled some deep need in the masculine soul. They swelled up with competitive pride in their Pumptis, and even became quite violent in their defense.
Janna lined up an comprehensive array of related products. First and foremost were costumes. Sailor Pumpti, Baby Pumpti, Pumpti Duckling, Angel Pumpti, Devil Pumpti, and even a Goth Pumpti dress-up kit with press-on tattoos. They shrugged off production to Filipina doll-clothes-makers in a sweatshop in East L.A.
Further up-market came a Pumpti Backpack for transporting your Pumpti in style, protecting it from urban pollution and possibly nasty bacteria. This one seemed like a sure hit, if they could swing the Chinese labor in Shenzhen and Guangdong.
The third idea, Pumpti Energy Crackers, was a no-brainer: crisp collectible cards of munchable amino acid bases to fatten up your Pumpti. If the crackers used the "mechanically recovered meat" common in pet food and cattle feed, then the profit margin would be primo. Kelso had a contact for this in Mexico: they guaranteed their cookies would come crisply printed with the Pumpti name and logo.
Janna's fourth concept was downright metaphysical: a "Psychic Powers Pumpti Training Wand." Except for occasional oozing and plopping, the Pumptis never actually managed conventional pet tricks. But this crystal-topped gizmo could be hawked to the credulous as increasing their Pumpti's "empathy" or "telepathy." A trial mention of this vaporware on the Pumpti-dot-bio website brought in a torrent of excited New Age emails.