Chapter 26: Tear Purity Center

Luna was scanning her festering tear ducts with a laser pointer as the woman's teardrops crystallized into grains of salt on the electronic scale.

"Purity 92.3%, excessive sodium content," the appraiser picks up the tear crystals with tweezers, "only redeemable for half an analgesic under the new rules."

Rule #117: All expressions of emotion must be ISO Doomsday certified, Luna's fingernails dug into the console as she watched the data pulsating on the holographic screen - at the moment, Tears of Mourning had been slashed in price due to the Clone Rebellion, and Tears of Remorse had skyrocketed 300% due to promotions at Jax's Temple of the Phallus.

"I have a special tear type!" The woman suddenly gouged out her eyeballs and slammed them on the detector, "It's the holy tear of seeing the eye of God..."

The roar of the machine engulfed her screams.Luna switched to molecular perspective mode and saw the microchip floating in the tear - the very same lie detector part that had gone missing last week, with the radioactive code of the convenience store's headquarters etched on its surface. Even more deadly is the DNA residue on the chip's surface, identical to the ingredients of the cough syrup Cole forced on her when she was three years old.

"Rule 118 addendum." She started the centrifuge to separate the tears, "All religious tears are subject to a 70% faith-based tax."

The power suddenly went out in the identification room.

The moment the emergency lights came on, Luna saw the tear stains writhing on the walls. Those dried salt stains combined to form her father's face, and a pitchy liquid oozed from his eyes, pooling on the floor in a line that read, "Your pain is our best annual financial report."

"Rule 119!" She stabbed the electrolysis rod into the main electrical switch, and the strong current brought the entire wailing wall to life. Salt-crystal human bodies peeled away from the wall, each a clone of the brother she'd killed, their tear ducts connected to stock-exchange terminals that were dumping Luna's traumatic childhood memories in real time.

The riot erupts when the salt crystal man chokes the appraiser.

Luna's laser knife slices through the first clone's chest cavity, and instead of blood, a stream of trading data gushes out. the K-chart reveals that Convenience Store HQ is shorting her uterine options, the collateral for which turns out to be her mother's dying smile before she's dismembered. The oldest transaction record made her pupils quake-her menstrual blood from her first period when she was six years old had been made into bio-bonds and circulated on the black market for seventeen years.

"Sister..." Salt Crystal Man whispered in Cole's voice, "The tears you shed when you killed me... Now worth 3 cans of beef per share..."

The shotgun blasted the salt crystal head, but the splattered fragments reorganized in the air into a holographic advertisement, "Invest in Luna's Tears for an annualized return of 666%!" The appraisers suddenly knelt down en masse and slit their own tear ducts with scalpels, allowing a mixture of blood and tears to fill the tester.

"Rule number 120!" Luna poured the electrolyte into the ventilation system, "All illegally collected tears must..."

Her voice was drowned out by an alarm. The entire floor of the center began to cave in, revealing the lurid contraptions in the basement: three thousand corpses had been converted into living tear ducts, their pituitary glands were connected to distillation tubes, and sad memories extracted from their frontal lobes were being made into tear crystal capsules. The display flickered with the real-time tear composition analysis of none other than Luna - her pupils had formed nanoscale patterns of convenience store price tags on the surface of her pupils.

"Surprise?" Jax's genitals dangled from the vent pipe, "These are tear ducts grown with your dad's semen..."

As Luna's electrodes plugged into his testicles, the basement suddenly played a holographic speech from the president of the convenience store. The father is shown drinking a cocktail of her menarcheal menstrual blood, and the data screen behind him reads, "Daughter's emotional turmoil increases company's stock price by 47%."

"Rule 121!" She squeezes and pops the fire sprinkler filled with tear crystals, "All shareholders must deliver their shares in eye sockets!"

The Salt Crystals cried like babies as they dissolved in their tears, and Luna stomped through the slime to the console, discovering the deepest encrypted file - her every tear feeding the artificial womb at HQ, where a new species was being bred with "Luna 2.0" engraved on its forehead.

Moonlight penetrates the shattered dome, salt crystals congeal on the ground to form a new law of the trade, and Jax's genitals swell and explode in the electrolyte, splattering fragments into a QR code, which is scanned and redirected to the HQ live stream:

"REAL-TIME TEAR AUCTION: Luna's right tear from the moment of patricide, current bid: 9,800 canisters!"

As the last of the salt crystals dissolve into her father's smiling face, Luna drops the first bloody tear of the night on the rulebook. From the wailing wall in the distance comes the sobbing of a new batch of customers whose tear ducts have been transformed into miniature printers that are carving their grief into convenience store coupons.