Marine would save me. “Trade with me.”
“What? No. Can you… please?” Marine would not save me.
I did everything but flail in the seat. I couldn’t stop looking at the thing. I swear to god I saw it move. Like a little hand print formed under the skin. And this weird old bitch was just sitting there breathing through her mouth, staring straight ahead. She didn’t even look around. Maybe I could just… I could go stand somewhere else. Or change seats. But no, she did this. This is what she wants. I won’t do it, god damnit. She doesn’t get to terrorize me from my seat with her oozy neck blob.
Well, two can play at that game.
“Why don’t you just get it removed?”
The beast turned. “Herh?”
She had maybe the blackest mole on the far cheek and I’m fairly sure I could both see and smell a dead tooth.
“The neck thing. Why don’t you go to the doctor and get your disgusting neck lump removed by a doctor? Like a sane person?”
“’Scuse me?”
“Oh, you’re offended I mentioned your giant neck lump? Oh, crazy. Crazy. Weird. Why would I do that? Why would I mention the giant fucking ball of nasty that practically needs a second seat that you put right next to my god damn face?”
It’s worth mentioning that the bus was driverless at this point. Everything was driverless. Unless the body trackers detected a physical altercation, the buses didn’t stop.
Grundle was mostly just sitting in open mouthed horror that anyone had called her on her disgusting bullshit.
“The bus is half fucking empty. Take your shit over there somewhere.” I motioned toward the empty part of the bus in the hopes that a visual aid would be of use.
I was getting nasty stares from the far side of the bus at this point. Marine was pretending not to know me. She had scrunched herself as far to the edge of her seat as she could go. Not sure the extra two inches of space between us was going to absolve her of the guilt by association.
“Hey, man.” A nasal voice from big hero concerned citizen. Rail thin. He pointed at me accusingly. “You can’t just—”
“Just what? You want my seat? We can trade.” I paused. “No? Come on. Come to theme park of body horror that set up shop next to me. Jesus fucking Christ, you think I’m the one violating the social contract here?” I stood up, annoyed, and thumbed at Grundle who had begun sadly sliding over a few seats, making fat grunting noises as she went. “A bridge troll crawls onto a bus and sits next to me when there’s open seats all over the place and I’m the asshole for not breathing in her swamp water breath for the next twenty minutes? I was going to do the decent thing and just mock her silently to myself and save the jokes for when she was out of earshot, but no. She wanted to, I don’t know, steal my body heat to sell to her dark masters or something. Well fuck the bunch of ya.”
I sat back down. It really was going to be like twenty minutes until we got to the business district. Grundle was, I guess the word is weeping. I decided that this should make me angry rather than feel any sort of guilt. This whole thing could have been avoided and, honestly, at some point people have to take responsibility for their choices. Hey, maybe she would even get her goiter looked at. In a way, I helped really. The scowls from across the way were just a bunch of enablers. They were fine with Grundle making society worse and neglecting her health, so long as nobody had to get a booboo on their widdle feewings. Well, not today, idiots. I’m a god damn hero and Grundle should have said thank you and apologized for basically rubbing her oily troll hump on my face. What if one of the hairs had touched me. I shuddered at the thought.
Neck lump got off at the next stop and I think it really brightened the atmosphere of the entire bus pretty significantly. People sort of went back to their own business once the whale sounds got left behind on the sidewalk. See? They never really cared, except insomuch as it made them feel bad by proxy. Empathy got off the bus and they didn’t care anymore. Plus, I gave them a story to tell. Really, the amount I’m being under appreciated in this situation is unreal.
We got to our stop and got off the bus. A few of the people who’d seen me be, what they call, rude to, what I call, a bus monster got off along with us. A thin woman who clearly put effort into her appearance scoffed at me as she went by us on the sidewalk. There’s a hypocrisy in that, but the Vircore thing was really starting to eat at me and I didn’t like how little we were talking about plans. The coded badge we’d printed up was a part of it, but there was very little else going on.
“So what’s the plan? SocEng the whole thing? Pretend to be plumbers? Fix the executive bathrooms?”
Marine was silent.
“Hey!” I got a little loud. She looked up at me finally. “I’m not trying to seem like Carly Complainsalot here, but I’m starting to worry that you have no clue how you want to do this.”
“I do,” she said. “I mean… roughly. I’m sorry. It’s… important.”
“The AI?”
She nodded. “It doesn’t even work yet. But… I’m close. I think.”
We walked and went over plans. First order of business was to check the first floor for an employee entrance. People loved holding doors for other people. It’s just good manners. We got to the Vircore building and searched around the base. There were four entrances total. One attached to an employee parking garage and one facing the streets. Those two
