The andro was dressed to the nines. Fabulosa could feel the heat of the andro’s lingering gaze. Fabulosa shifted on the bench so as to shield herself from the andro’s line of sight behind the straphanger whose crotch lingered two centimeters in front of her nose.
She worried the andro might be rail police –– they worked plainclothes sometimes. She glared up at the arrival countdown clock.
The bleating of someone’s crooning avatar suddenly drowned out the now gentle, rhythmic churning of the train car’s oppositional field generators –– it belonged to some looky-me with a Mercator map of decorative bone grafts across his jaw line. The pixelated avatar acted attention starved as its master, the little neon, eight-bit abomination waltzing above its looky-me’s oblivious gourd, belting out “Old Maid in the Garret”––a tune Fabulosa quite enjoyed under different circumstances –– like tomorrow was a rumor.
Perhaps he’ll get it, after a verse or two, thought Fabulosa, perhaps this clown will see how much his warbling avatar is upsetting me –– how much it’s upsetting half the train –– and reroute the feed to his auditory implant. She watched people shoot the looky-me dirty looks. The boldest among them sighed. The meek shifted uncomfortably on their bench seats. But they all had yet to say anything.
The gourd-shaped company man just beside her –– the guy in the zip up suit sprawled across two seats –– started snoring. His head lolled like a decommissioned robot and came to rest on Fabulosa’s left shoulder. She shirked him off and tried to move over, which earned her an elbow from the, apparently territorial, waif beside her. The waif’s infant dupe in the sling screamed bloody murder.
Fortunately, that managed to wake the company man beside her, who Fabulosa thought might choke on his final snore before coming to. Unfortunately, he didn’t. The wailing baby joined the looky-me avatar’s discordant chorus. Fabulosa looked around to gage other’s reactions –– to see if someone might actually do something about all this ruckus.
She made the mistake of reestablishing eye contact with the lecherous andro still gawking from across the aisle. Fabulosa shifted again so the straphanger whose crotch hovered eye level in front of her established a buffer.
These people were the worst, thought Fabulosa. The looky-me actually had the audacity to up the volume on his avatar. Why would anyone in their right mind, in a million years, thought Fabulosa, ever think an entire train car of strangers would ever want to listen to your crappy playlist?