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

The sandwiched mass of commuters parted magically for the upstart making his or her way down the car –– the shouting close enough now that Fabulosa could make out what was being said. A woman’s nasal voice: “Equality for edibles,” she rallied. The protestor’s avatar barreled through the other passengers’ avatars––a simple rectangle, reminiscent of a café sandwich board––BEINGS, NOT BREAKFAST––ticker taping across it in bold, migraine-white lettering.

The keeper of the nasally voice wore her hair in black liberty spikes. A silky, Nanosuelta-tone muumuu clung to her stocky frame. Once she had passed, the other passengers went back to their business of pushing reality back down in its hole, drowning in their customized audio/visual feeds and whatever other cerebral fixes their avatars happened to be feeding them.

But not Fabulosa. She appreciated how this poseur spacenik seemed to make all the other passengers as uncomfortable as they had made Fabulosa feel.

She latched onto the protestor’s forearm as the spacenik nudged her way past. The psyches of those around her erupted like a riled-up hornet’s nest as she did.

“What’s the story?” asked Fabulosa, nodding coolly toward the sandwich board avatar declaring BEINGS, NOT BREAKFAST.

She could feel the spacenik’s arm begin to tremble. Fabulosa feared the woman might burst into tears, or spontaneously combust, right then and there; such was her euphoria that someone bothered to pay the least bit of attention to her.

“I’m glad you asked,” seethed the spacenik, pirouetting accusingly against the backs of the ambivalent commuters pressed against her.

Fabulosa noticed the waif-and-dupe scowling at the spacenik. The dupe screeched. When the waif noticed Fabulosa glaring back at her, she scrunched up her nose like she smelled something dead.

“There are sentient beings down on Point C,” railed the spacenik, “and the corp. suits think they have the right to grind them into breakfast links!”

Fabulosa half wished the development corp. had started with the passengers on this cursed train car if they were looking for unethically harvested foodstuff. She stared up at the portholes in the roof, at the big black empty, dreaming of how nice and quiet and uncluttered it must be out there.

“Sickening.” Fabulosa played the spacenik so as to rob the angry hive of commuters around her of a fraction of a moment’s peace. “Outrageous,” she stewed, “sickeningly outrageous.”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Leave a Reply