A TERRIBLE SECRET REVEALED! : THE POD WOMEN OF TARGET CORPORATION

Anyone who has been in downtown Minneapolis on a weekday during lunchtime (or at Happy Hour) has seen them. Their ubiquity is remarkable, but even more conspicuous is their homogeneity. The same hair, clothes and mannerisms. I had always thought it a result of a prevailing corporate culture. The reality is much more disturbing.

My source deep inside The Target Corporation (I’ll call him “Spot”—to protect his identity) revealed to me the REAL reason these women share such uncanny similarities.

Here is what I have learned from him so far:

-Fully 90 % of female employees at The Target Corporation are genetic clones grown in pods at a secret facility in Apple Valley. They are designated as “Target Pod Unit-Female” (Base Models 1-4.) They have a lifespan of only 10 years. (Those tracked for middle management—Models #MM242 and #MM248 have 15 and 20-year life-spans, respectively.)

-The original genetic material from which all TPU-Fs are spawned comes from one source, Beth Aarsvold Olson. She was the “Princess Kay of the Milky Way” butter sculpture winner from the 1977 Minnesota State Fair. How it was she came to be “Eve” to an army of corporate clones is cloudy, but it has something to do with a sordid and short-lived connection to a scientist in the animal husbandry division of Cargill in the early 1980’s.

-While Target essentially “owns” all TPU-Fs, not paying them a regular salary would obviously attract attention, “The Eye” (as “Spot” derisively refers to Target) arranges direct deposits into each pod’s bank account. Through a series of shell companies, Target secretly owns the following downtown Minneapolis drinking and dining establishments: “Brit’s,” “Cosmos,” “The Local” and “Solera.” The recent popularity of The Cosmopolitan and the chocolate martini is no accident. A predisposition for these drinks is genetically programmed into all TPU-Fs. Thus, at $8 a pop Target is able to recapture most of the money it pays out to its clones.

-The predominant hair color used on TPU-Fs (known internally simply as “Target Blond 11”) is available commercially through the L’Oreal Company as #8.2 Champagne Chili (Medium Iridescent Blonde.) Profits from the patent on this popular color are funneled back into the pod research and development program.

-The Target ID badges TPU-Fs wear on lanyards are in fact tracking and control devices. They are never removed, simply tucked away under their blouses.

-Like many women today, TPU-Fs often employ over the counter teeth bleaching products (or pay dentists in Target’s health plan for expensive procedures.) Unbeknownst to the pods, left alone their teeth will actually whiten themselves automatically through a complex process of osmosis originally pioneered by chemists at the Miss America Labs in Atlantic City, NJ. (The chemical process itself is closely guarded, but sources indicate a time-released sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) compound is imbedded in the dentin.)

The method by which TPU-F’s are eventually “retired” involves the sanitary napkin dispensers in Target office buildings and the details are so horribly unpleasant that decorum prevents me from revealing them.

This is all the information I have at this point. Recent attempts to contact “Spot” have proved fruitless, and I have begun to fear the worst.

Your intrepid investigator,

Brian David Shuey