All in the family

Who: Zack and Cubie
Where: Back on the ship
When: During all this rescue stuff
Zack and Cubie were at wit's end. No one - but NO ONE - seemed to know
who owned the McDonald's franchise.
"This is ridiculous. SOMEONE'S got to own the lousy thing! Who keeps
rebuilding it, for crying out loud?" Cubie was livid.
Zack shrugged. "Beats me. Wait! Wouldn't Holly know about stuff like
that?"
Cubie slapped her forehead. "Of course! Oh, Holly!"
The nearest viewscreen flickered to life, and Holly's face appeared.
Holly had skeletal make-up on, making him look positively ghoulish. "What
is it?"
Cubie blinked in surprise. "Holly? Are you all right?"
Holly smiled, a somewhat disturbing image with the make-up.
"Certainly. Why? I'm not looking peaked, am I?"
Zack nodded. "Well, actually . . ."
Holly beamed. "Ah! You mean the make-up!"
Zack and Cubie nodded.
Holly's grin widened. "Well, I'm trying out a few ideas for the Blue
Dwarf Halloween party. Hold on a second!" He looked down, then back up as
a sickly orange light shone under his chin, adding to the ghoulish effect.
"How's that?"
Cubie shook her head. "Rather awful."
Holly laughed. "Excellent. Just the look I was after. Now what can I
do for you?"
Zack stepped forward. "We need to know who owns McDonalds. We want to
purchase it."
"Oh, no one owns it right now."
Cubie frowned. "But it was just rebuilt. How can no one own it?"
"Insurance is paid up. In a typo that went down in property insurance
history as one of the classic blunders of insurance contracts, the agent who
wrote the policy put in an automatic renewal clause."
"A wha?" Zack scratched his head.
"An automatic renewal clause. Basically, every time the place is
demolished, part of the payoff goes to renewing the policy, paying a year's
premiums, and adding the cost of the damage to the amount of coverage
already in effect."
Zack shook his head. "And that means . . . ?"
Holly smiled condescendingly. "That means that every time McDonald's
is destroyed, the insurance is prepaid for another year with additional
coverage. The agent wrote the contract so the company couldn't get out of
it unless the owner agreed. And that's impossible, because the original
owner died during Psycho-Bob's first attack."
Cubie thought for a moment. "But if the original owner died, didn't
McDonald's go to his heirs?"
Holly tried to shrug, but the lack of shoulders made it seem like his
head was just bobbling a bit. "No. The man HAD no heirs. He died without
a will, so the restaurant went into limbo holding status with JMC. The Blue
Dwarf is like a foster parent to it right now."
Cubie sighed. "Then it's locked behind tons of red tape."
Holly nodded glumly. "Afraid so. It would take a platoon of lawyers a
thousand years to untangle that legal rat's nest. It really WAS a
poorly-written contract."
Zack snapped his fingers. "What if we adopt it?"
Holly and Cubie stared at Zack. "What did you say?"
"Adopt it." Zack grinned. "Like the wayward son we never had."
Cubie rolled her eyes. "Zack, that is the singe most moronic, idiotic,
half-brained idea you've ever let dribble out of your mouth, and I-"
"Sign here, and it's yours." Holly looked down at a piece of paper
that slid out of a printer slot that was imbedded in the bulkhead underneath
the monitor.
Cubie snatched the paper. "-and I love it!"
The couple eagerly signed the adoption papers. "So? Now what?"
Holly tried to shrug again unsuccessfully. "You should probably get
with the contractors on board and tell them any changes to the floorplan you
want to make before they get started. I believe they're going to clear the
rubble and put up new walls this afternoon."
"Thanks, Holly!" Zack and Cubie darted off to the Promenade to look
over the latest addition to the dysfunctional Richards family.
OOC: Well, I DID ask if anyone owned it, and no one spoke up . . .
~Zack & Cubie~
Temporal Entrepreneurs/Proud Parents