2022-07-18 16:26:08Success! Sure enough, the trusty 712 bus had just turned a corner and began its long-awaited journey to the station. Devon’s heart swelled with relief. While Jaxton was busy arguing with Steve, Devon made a break for the bus. He started off at a brisk walk, hoping that he could get on the bus without anyone noticing .Devon only got about half way before hearing from behind:
“…ACK HERE, I’M NOT DONE WITH YOU, YOU FEATHER-HATTED FUCK!”
Behind Devon came the sound of pounding feet and an incensed Jaxton tearing after him, phone in hand, still recording.
Devon made a break for it, sprinting as fast as he could back towards the bus station. Some new riders had gathered at the stop to watch, a few of them secretly recording on their own. But Devon didn’t care—the sooner he could get on the bus, the sooner this stupid idiocy would be over.
As the bus pulled closer, Devon noticed the front of the bus was adorned with a black “pill” affixed above the driver’s seat. Behind the steering wheel sat a driver only half pretending to drive, but mostly reading the paper magazine on his lap.
Devon groaned. It was a self-driving bus.
Self driving vehicles were proof that there was no technological advance that humanity could not suck devoid of all wonder and joy. Thanks to safety concerns and a series of high-profile accidents before Devon’s time, self driving vehicles had been regulated into over-cautious, over-priced carriages that crawled along limited routes at speeds no faster than 30km per hour. But the software was cheap, and economies of scale made them stupidly easy to build and operate. Much to the annoyance of the general public, self driving buses were here to stay.
Down the street came the pounding feet of Jaxton, his face taut with naked aggression.
Swearing, Devon picked up his knees and sprinted as fast as he could, gym bag cradled in his arms like an American football. For a moment, it was almost like being back in highschool P.E. Devon’s feet pounded the pavement, gym bag flapping in the wind created by his own power. Behind him, Jaxton continued to run, panting, swearing in between breaths.
Tump-tump-tump-tump
Devon smiled—it had been years since he played a sport, but he still had the power in him. It didn’t take him long before he made it to the bus station. One middle-aged lady clapped in admiration.
“Oooh, mama, take a bow! That was some display, mmm—mmm!”
Devon smiled sheepishly, sweat dripping down his face. One of the other passengers snorted.
“Feh! Don’t know what the big rush is, looks like we’ll be waiting here for two more hours at this rate.”
Sluggish and excruciatingly slow, the bus trundled towards to the station. The passengers eagerly queued up while the bus gently sauntered along with all the urgency of a mid-90’s dial-up internet connection.
“Come on,” Devon muttered under his breath. “Move, goddamnit, move!”
Finally, the bus pulled up to the demarcated spot at the stop. An automated voice, better suited to a circus than a public bus, announced with bombastic pride:
“DOORS WILL OPEN. PLEASE STAND BACK. DOORS WILL OPEN. PLEASE STAND BACK.”
The doors did not open. One of the other passengers, impatient to get on, had stepped over the curb and was one foot in the street. The bus yelled at him until the middle-aged lady gently pulled him back over the curb.
“PLEASE SCAN BUS PASS AND PANDEMIC PREVENTION CODE”
The passengers grumbled in a flurry of mild swearing—the bus pass and pandemic codes were in two separate apps, each which needed constant updates and acceptance of a privacy policy that was constantly changing and yet so dense and complicated that nobody could read it. Between opening each app, accepting the new privacy policy, and scanning the code, each passenger took between 5-10 seconds, depending on if they had accepted the new policy beforehand. These were all precious seconds that Devon, third in line for the bus, couldn’t afford to lose.
First went the older gentleman. He fumbled with the pandemic prevention app, swearing under his breath.
From down the street called a now out-of-breath Jaxton, “Get back here…fucking…feather hat…koff kahuff… I’m not done with you!”
Next was the middle aged woman. She went to scan her own pass, but stopped.
“I think your friend over there is upset about something,” she said to Devon.
“Yeah, a bit,” Devon said hurriedly. His heart beat in his chest. If the line didn’t start moving soon, Jaxton would reach the line, and then—
—the middle aged woman gently pushed Devon in front of her.
“I think you need to get on the bus a bit faster than I do,” she said with a raised eyebrow.
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Chapter 52
His room had been cancelled. Just like that. No warning, no notice. At the snap of Marc’s fingers, Devon had been unceremoniously tossed out of a Convention that he literally gave up his family to attend. Devon stared at Marc for a while. Then, he laughed. He laughed quietly, then he laughed loudly, cackling, until he had no more breath in him. And still he laughed. This had been, by far, the most ridiculous weekend in Devon’s entire life. He had given up his family in a moment of anger, suffered assault and insult nearly daily, only to befriend some kind of foreign royalty who, while defending his newfound friend, had sacrificed the only housing he would have for the foreseeable future. Ridiculous! His life had become a joke, some absurd and wild story written by a mad idiot. This was a weekend that would define the rest of his life, and it all had just been so unbelievably stupid. Meanwhile, Marc looked as though he were about to leap out of the Executive Lounge window from shee
Chapter 51
Things were getting out of hand. Zayin needed to think quickly; his Prince was going to start digging himself into a deep and terribly expensive hole. Yes, Ali had certain entitlements to his family’s wealth…in theory. But Ali had never tapped into his family’s wealth before—Zayin wasn’t even sure that he could. It was a poorly kept secret that more than one relative had access to Ali’s accounts…including Cousin Sayid. To his shame, Zayin was quietly praying that there was not enough left to embarrass the Prince. He never thought that he would ever wish for relatives to embezzle the Prince’s funds. Even with his Aunts and Cousin Sayid dipping into his funds, Ali’s personal wealth was enough that he could make serious trouble for himself, as well as the Kingdom. And with the stone-set fury on Ali’s face, trouble would come. Perhaps the key to solving the trouble lay in Ali’s ‘brother’. “You.” He pointed at Devon and spoke in English. “Come with me, please.”Quietly, Devon complied.
Chapter 50
It was not the strangest occurrence to ever happen, but it was one of the strangest that had ever happen to Zayin.He stood nearly speechless as Marc, a hotel functionary, sputtered and nearly fell down on his knees trying to explain to Ali how all of this had been an enormous mistake. There had been in Marc’s words, ‘a deep and serious cultural miscommunication that New Hudson Convention Center will work tirelessly to reconcile’. It was ten minutes of this kind of diplomatic nonsense, and Zayin had to admit that he was doing quite well with it. In another life, and with another passport, Marc would have made a great presenter for one of the old State Television channels. More amusing still was, for the first time since knowing him, Ali acted like a prince. This was the greatest shock. Zayin was confident in this assessment—that Ali would be easily brushed aside by his more competent cousins and tossed out of Zhabaiye public life. Cousin Sayid would place him on a farm in the middle
Chapter 49
Since the construction of the New Hudson Convention Center, there had never been a moment quite what Marc Abramov experienced in that Executive Lounge. Since its actual opening some twenty years prior, there had never been so many people silenced all at once with just a few short words. Time seemed to freeze and Marc’s armhairs stood straight on their ends. The VIP…more like the VVIP in fact…was expecting an answer. Why did Marc make the VIP’s brother cry?He clasped his hands and began, “Well—“ Well what? Nothing. The words caught in his throat. Something about the young man’s look—and he barely registered as a man at all—struck him with a sense of absolute terror. The VIP’s gaze encompassed his entire being, utterly and completely, as though he were no more than a fixture of the room. Marc had a sudden, curious idea that there was a sword hanging over his neck. And if he did not speak very, very carefully, that sword would drop and lop his head clean off from his body. There
Chapter 48
Devon sat crosslegged on the floor, squishing his hunter’s hat for comfort. He stared at a spot of carpet, trying to drown out the sounds of the frightening-looking man screaming at Ali. Devon could piece together that the goons all worked for him—some of them were half in costume, others dressed like regular folk. A few wore golden watches. Were they thugs? If so, they weren’t like any gang members that Devon had ever seen, and New Hudson was unfortunately filled with those. These men looked too clean-cut. They didn’t have the casual swagger of the gangs he knew, and other than a little bit of rough-handling on the way to the top-floor lounge, they hadn’t been beaten. Furthermore, gang attacks usually don’t take this long, and by this point they had been sitting in the lounge for twenty minutes. Meanwhile, Ali had begun to shout at the man who kidnapped him. That was the strangest part of all of this--when Ali shouted, the man who kidnapped them listened. And so did his goons. At
Chapter 47
Zayin’s head throbbed. He wished, more than he’d ever wished for anything in his life, that he could wake up back home, in Al-Zhabaiye. He missed his coffee, he missed his 17th story view of the desert, he missed the smell of the cedar paneling of his building’s elevator. All these little things he missed, many of which he had not appreciated before. His head ached until the pain seeped down into his shoulders. So tense were all his muscles that even the slightest movement ached. And it was well to be tense, because his ward, the PRINCE OF AL-ZHABAIYE HIMSELF, chose to behave like a childish idiot. Now Zayin and his security team occupied the hotel’s Executive Lounge, where they had extradited the Prince from a possible attempt on his life. The Prince sat on the couch with his head in his hands, refusing to look at or speak to anyone. One of his security team had thoughtfully prepared a plate of dried fruit and cheese. The plate sat in front of the Prince, untouched. Good. Maybe the
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