11: Whatever You Please

terminal 0

unfinished

# n

2.0

# n

I should stop talking out loud, everyone on the train is looking at me now. I must have gone farther than I wanted because everyone here is different than me. Why should they care that I’m talking, some of them are talking and about fairly irrelevant things. ‘The ends justify the means.’ ‘Where the is no justification, there is no end. There is only means.’ I thought that they were looking mean, but they were only talking. The noise in the train crescendoes as the train comes into a station, this station is lined with black suited men, and behind them I can see the pantomime of good and evil continue with the sanitation workers trying to mop the black suits off the sunglassed and toupeed men who are not resisting at all.

# n

Indeed, they have nothing to worry about. They can just cling to the constellations of gum, there is nothing the sanitation workers can do about that. Its all just human nature, we don’t fit onto the curve, either. Simply, there is no curve, our science is approximation, good guessing. The suits are going to get me this time, but I’m lucky. I have my keys in my pocket now, and I’m opening the other subway door…

# n

2.0

terminal 1

unfinished

# n

@2.1

# n

I step in silently, and as is the ritual, I block the door with my bicycle and set the traps on the windows. Damn no way that anyone is getting in here without adequate warning. I figure that there is time now to take a good look at this knife that has caused me so much grief and to miss the movie that I was heading for but can’t remember the name of. Its not unusual, plastic about the length of my forefinger. It has two blades that open in both directions, one is a short and the other long. The long one is pretty dull, and the short one is quite sharp. Enough about the knife.

# n

The door opens up, and the bicycle falls over. One of these suited guys is standing in the doorway, impassive and immobile. I’m not scared until I see that the hallway behind him is filled with his clones. I turn over the handle of the knife, and give it a bit of a nasty grin…

# n

@2.1

# t
<teleport to level 12>

terminal 2

unfinished

# n

2.2

# n

I’m back in the hangar again, but now they are all screaming at me. Their arms and legs are no longer attacting my attention. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were talking, but they aren’t. They could talk, too. They aren’t screaming in pain, but in protest. They don’t miss their arms or their legs. They all agree on one thing, they won’t give me the satisfaction of hearing them talk, and I’ll never forget their screaming, pointless and wordless, without justification. (I did this and could have stopped it.)

# n

2.2

# t
<teleport to level 28>