The ugly laugh
Synopsis
A factory that makes laughter, inside the ribcage of something enormous that is still alive. Laughs come out of people as wet pink bubbles with a few teeth in them and are packed into jars.
Plot
The rule, shown whole: a laugh only counts if the thing was really funny, and it only leaves the body once. Sell it and it is gone: you keep the voice, you keep the face, you lose the thing that tells you something is real. And how to undo it is shown before it matters: an unsold laugh goes back in if its owner laughs at the same thing twice, which nobody ever does. The booth needs a part, the only currency here is laughter, and Kenya's ugly honking laugh is worth more than anybody's because it is famously impossible to fake.
Tag
After the credits, a secondary character from this episode, later and somewhere else.
The foreman walks the rows alone at the end of the day, turning each label so it faces out, one jar at a time. She stops at one, picks it up in both gloved hands and holds it against the pink light between the ribs, and her own laugh, the one on her shoulder, turns towards that jar and presses into it.
Trivia and continuity
The price is paid by Tobias, the tester: a kind man who has laughed for the factory so long that nothing reaches him any more, and who still comes in every day hoping today is the day.
Malios
Kenya
The cat