Review: "The Day the Pod Landed" by Jeff Cross

     What does our increasingly-consumerist society have in store (pun intended)? A future in which corporations have their own armies and invade villages and other corporations to expand their brand, according to "The Day the Pod Landed" by Jeff Cross, which can be read over at Redstone Science Fiction. (Spoilers follow, so go read it first.) These corporations dazzle the vanquished with shopping malls and well-paying jobs, they give them products the likes of which the villagers have never before seen. It's an appealing prospect for Sofia, a villager who has always had higher aspirations.