One Way Ticket on a Moonbound Train – James Edward O’Brien

Fabulosa firmly believed that the universe, stretching on in eternal tedium, was one of the solitary things as bloated and simultaneously devoid of substance as the human ego. Albeit the universe did not rely so heavily on third parties taking note of it.

Fabulosa felt the repugnant body heat of the thigh pressed up beside her –– the thigh of the sprawled-out man in the zip up suit. He stank of stale sweat and cologne. Fabulosa half-wondered if she should have just braved the lonely, stinking livestock car like some hobo of old.

The passenger car had filled. A press gang of crotches lingered eye level, their owners yammering at their avatars and pawing grab rails above their heads like jungle primates who’d lost all joie de vivre.

The car shuddered. A chime sounded shrill over the feed. The door lock whispered shut. Fabulosa felt dizzy. She’d smuggled her way aboard and was off to a whole other world. Just like that.

The train bucked. Standees latched onto the grab rail. They swayed like a drunken conga line. The lodestones and discusses deep that composed the engine’s oppositional field generators sounded off like sleeping giant’s molars ground amidst uneasy sleep.

The faces through the passenger car window, protestors and switch operators, drones, clones, pickpockets, and vagrants, washed to fleshy blurs as the train picked up speed––the station, the star scrapers and hovels, the entire ecosphere Fabulosa had called home, gone in a wink as the train plunged into the exit channel, out into the soundless, colorlessness of space.

Her heart beat like a battering ram against her breastbone. Fabulosa was confident she’d keel over and die before getting anywhere near Point C. She’d seen the moon through the TV Eye her entire life, walked its streets via virtual implant, but could still not imagine what it would be like to actually be there –– to be anywhere but the only tired, tiny place she’d ever known –– to breath Point C’s recycled air and hear the musical lilts of its population with her own ears, not some virtual approximation. To finally be.

The train cars steadied on their course. The passengers returned to their business, as if being slingshot through space was the most natural thing in the world. An andro sitting in the row across from Fabulosa flashed her a smile. Fabulosa smiled back and dropped her eyes.

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