Yep.

Shortly before the three, Matt and Penny stepped out of the house with their hands held high. There was a group of about fifty people standing on his lawn. One of them, a strikingly attractive young woman, stepped forward to greet him.

"Hello, Matt," she said cheerfully. "And hello, Penny. Thank you for agreeing to come with us without bloodshed. You can put your hands down. This isn't an arrest."

"You motherfuckers are not going to assimilate me," Matt fumed as he lowered his hands and walked forward.

She gave him a tight-lipped, sympathetic smile. "Of course not. We have no desire to, just as you have no desire to **** us for no reason. I'm Madeleine, by the way."

She put out her hand but he ignored it. "Let's just get Crystal to a hospital so we can get back here as soon as possible."

"Of course," Madeleine said soothingly. "We'd love to take this opportunity to show you around town, though. I think you'll be quite surprised how much has changed since you last came by."

She ushered Matt and Penny into the backseat of a large van, then slid in beside them.

Matt sat sullenly in the middle seat. On his left was Penny, who had reverted to her regular boosted state and was staring out the window in quiet awe. On his right was Madeleine, who was smiling at him, of course.

"Now, Mr. Norman, for the duration of your stay in our town I'll be your guide and liaison. If you have any requests or questions, I'll be by your side at all times. We will be happy to provide you with anything you desire."

"Anything?" Matt asked. "Is this some kind of lovebombing thing?"

She laughed and put a hand on his knee. Penny laughed too, not understanding why but happy to join in.

"Of course not! I can see why you might think that, though. The truth is we've got several grumpy citizens in town and we treat them extremely well. Since y'all can suffer and we can't, we dedicate our lives to making yours as pleasant as possible."

Matt looked pointedly at her hand. "You dedicate your lives to serving us?"

"Of course," she said. "I can give you my background to illustrate. I was an aspiring actress before I took the anesthetic, and what I lacked in talent I made up for in attractiveness. When I took the anesthetic, I relinquished my deep-seated need for validation and understood what my true utility is."

"Yeah?" Matt said skeptically. "What is it?"

She grinned. "If you've seen Dead Inside or Hammer, you already know. I installed a webcam in my shower and bedroom; people can see me nude anytime they want without having to sit through forty-five minutes of a terrible B-movie first. That frees me up to contribute to society in other ways, such as this."

"You just let people watch you shower?" Matt asked with shock.

"And masturbate," she said. "I feel no shame or modesty. People like to look at me naked, so I let them. When I'm not putting on a show as part of my daily routine, I do other jobs. When New Fredericksburg announced that they were becoming a grumpy resort, I volunteered for the job. They try to surround the grumpies with extremely attractive people and, to be honest, I'm very, very hot."

"So the whole town is full of hot people who want to serve me?"

"That sounds wonderful," Penny said dreamily. "You're really hot. Matt, you should fuck her."

Matt coughed and blushed but Madeleine didn't balk. "That's certainly one of our more popular services, one that I look forward to providing. But to answer your question, the town isn't exclusively dedicated to serving you. We have a lumber mill and several software development companies as well as all of the positions needed to keep a town running. We just also function as a grumpy resort. Of course, any of the normals will be happy to help you with whatever you need as long as it doesn't interfere with their duties or cause harm."

"You call yourselves normals and us grumpies?" Matt asked. "I don't love the vocabulary."

"Oh?" Madeleine said, mildly surprised. "We recently changed because it was upsetting grumpies."

"Really? What was it before?"

"Normals and dickheads," Madeleine said flatly. Matt stared at her in shock for a moment before she burst out laughing.

"A little New Fredericksburg humor for you," she said as she slapped him on the back. "Welcome to our town!"