But that looks about right!
Part 2
He left the office block by means of a twisted labyrinth of corridors. More than once he suspected he was just wandering in circles and he was, in fact, proved right when he noticed a tiny exit sign hanging over a boring side-door that he had passed at least eight times.
He stepped through the door onto a magnificent set of marble-white steps that fanned out onto a translucent road. Cars, or at least something resembling them, zipped past at motorway speeds. It took him a moment to realise that they were hovering just above the ground.
Nearing the edge of the faintly glowing pavement he stared through it and down into an impossibly azure sea that lapped against energy beams that held up the road. Above and around him a huge network of similar streets were twined about towering skyscrapers of glass. At least he thought they were made of glass until a hovering airship slid neatly through a wall, producing a ripple of grey dots like a broken TV set. Behind him the office building sat squat and grotesque, despite the neatly cut blue panels it was made of.
Clearly he had just left some historical monument, by the standards of this bizarre world. Well, he reasoned, there was no sense in just standing and gaping. Perhaps somewhere he could find something to do with himself.
He considered searching for food, but realised he felt completely full, as if he had eaten only half an hour ago. He also felt no need for that mug of coffee he’d craved only… what was it? An hour ago? Ten minutes? Time seemed odd here. A Spartan sun shone bright and white down on the city, its rays passing directly through the transparent towers.
He followed the pavement along the upwards sloping road for a while, drinking in the sights around him. By the time he reached the crest in the road, the sun was nearing the horizon, and the “ground” below him had darkened to a shimmering blood red. Likewise, the transparent buildings had begun to glow with their own light, soft and sleepy, enough to mark them out against the sky, but not enough to obscure the incredible vista of stars that opened up above him as suddenly as the hover-cars zipped past.
Dave sat down suddenly, dizzied by the incredible sight. There was no way this was the future of the planet earth. Judging by the sheer quantity and brightness of the stars this must be a planet near the centre of the galaxy (or a galaxy, he thought absently).
He was no closer to any sort of building, it seemed travel here was done only by hover-car or airship. He sat down on the pavement and dangled his legs out over the edge. Below him the water rippled and sloshed. A faint voice caught his attention.
He turned and jogged over the crest of the rise to see a tiny light bobbing up and down on the edge of the road. A fat shape sat beneath it, emitting a reedy noise. “Putain de dieu, puissions nous avoir de la moutarde pour soigner ces blessures si profondes! Quand ce soleil si putride nous mange, croyez vous que la tomate puisse nous sauver? Non mes amis! Non!”
David wandered closer. “Excuse me.” He ventured “Uh… I’m kind of lost. Where is this place?”
“The hell you want two-legs?” snapped the fat shape, which Dave realised was an oversized slug with a pair of cartoonish eyes on stalks.
“Uh, sorry, I’m just a bit lost. Can you help me?”
“No, **** off. Can’t you see I’m preaching?”
“I can’t actually, no.” Dave said angrily. This impudent ball of slime was starting to annoy him.
“Oh, right. Well that’s different then! Shoulda said so before. My name’s Kevin.” The slug… uh… giggled. There was no other way to describe it. The thing, Kevin, wasn’t talking, it was making a sort of trilling sound that somehow ended up as words.
“Right. I’m Dave. So where the hell is this?” he replied.
“This? This is the city at the middle of the universe. Weirdopia.”
“Weirdopia? What kind of a name is that?”
“Don’t ask me buster. I’m just a resident. You want a history lesson go to the Museum of Peanut.”
“The Museum of what?!”
Kevin burst out into a shrill laugh. “Just pulling yer leg mate. This is Bantua, the capital of the suits.”
“The suits?”
“Yeah, suits. Y’know. Businessmen, traders, blokes like that. Why’d you think they got all these roads? Nobody sensible’s gonna use a road to get somewhere when they can just hover through a building. These roads are for the big shots to try out their sport-mobiles during breaks. And the transparent buildings are to get more light into the meeting rooms. Hell, you must know this; suits are the same wherever you come from, they’re always looking to get more light into their meeting rooms, so one day some smart-ass says, ‘Why not just make the building transparent?’ So they did.”
“Ok, slow down here.” Dave interrupted “So I’m in some space city built for stressed stockbrokers. Is there some way off this planet? Somewhere I can go that isn’t made of… transparent?”
“Well don’t ask me. I’m just a preacher.”
“Right… what are you preaching?”
“The rights of the slug.”
“And that was… French you were speaking?”
“No; sluggish.”
Dave shook his head. This was confusing. “Right. So where do you live?”
Apparently it was the wrong question. Kevin’s eyes began to brim with tears that dripped onto the road with an audible plop, only to fizzle out of existence in a puff of vapour.
“Live? I live right here, on this goddamned road to nowhere. There’s no way off this road, don’t you see? The only way you can leave it on foot is in the old Blue Glasshouse the way you came from, and there’s no way to get from there to anywhere else!”
“Wait, so you’re just stuck here preaching in sluggish all day? Don’t you have to eat sometime?” Dave asked with a sick feeling of worry in his stomach. If he was stuck here he needed to eat sometime.
“No, you don’t understand! The sun here, it’s not real, it’s an artificial satellite which orbits the planet. It beams down nutritious particles as well as light. We never starve, we never age, we’re just stuck here forever!” The flood of tears increased to a continuous flow of water. “It’s all for those slugdamned suits. They waste too much time in lunch breaks, you see? So one day the same smart-ass who made the buildings transparent makes the sun fill you up too! That way they can have meetings all day long, and spend their lunch breaks getting de-stressed instead of eating…” The trilling cries trailed off into sobs of despair. Dave looked at the pitiful thing and felt a tug of sorrow in his heart. Sure, it was just a slug, but a fate of never ending pavement walking wasn’t something he wished on anyone.
“Look, um, Kevin. We can find a way out of here. There’s two of us, right? Together we’ll think of something.”
The slug didn’t seem convinced. “Ya think?” it asked “What gives you the impression we’re the only ones stuck here? There’s a good twenty of us trapped on the roads, Slugs and Two-leggers and Beebles and even a Twingo-eater. We rack our brains every day but the only ones who ever get off are the lucky ones who look normal enough to get picked up by a suit and taken somewhere. Us slugs and Beebles, we’d never get a lift in a Two-legger car. And don’t even talk about a Twingo-eater in a car!” He shuddered, as if the thought was too grim to imagine for long, and his bulk shifted with a wet slap.
“Right. Well can’t we jump off and swim to a building? Or hijack a hover-car?”
“Good luck stopping a car going at that speed. This road’s one of the slowest. On the bigger ones you can barely see them coming before they’re a speck in the distance. And as for jumping, forget it! There’s no way out of the water. Once you’re in it you’re stuck, and of course the sun beams down oxygen to keep our good old suits feeling fresh, so you’ll never drown, you’ll just sink and stay sunk!”
Dave groaned and pressed his hands to his temples. “Look, I think I need to sleep right now, it’s been a long day and… I don’t really feel like sleeping.” He stopped and sighed. “Let me guess, your sun beams down caffeine too?”
“Nope, it goes the whole way. You’re currently sampling atomic coffee. If you ever leave this place you’ll have the addiction of the century.”
Dave smashed his fist into the now subtle yellow road and felt it buckle slightly under his attack, before oozing back into shape. Wonderful, even the roads were there to annoy him. His hand barely felt grazed!
The noise of a motor reached his ears and he looked up.
“Don’t get too hopeful.” Said Kevin absently.
A headlamp glowed in the distance, something Dave hadn’t seen on the other hover-cars. Despite his pessimism, a glimmer of hope grew inside him. This vehicle was moving slower than the others, barely above the speed of his beloved dumpster, and it was making a reassuring noise.
A red hover-bike pulled into view, and sat on it a young woman with a mane of windswept tawny hair. She swerved to a halt on the pavement, gazing at Dave with an intense yellow stare. “Hey there gorgeous, looking for a ride?”
His heart leapt, and then he remembered Kevin. “Sure, but do you think we could get our slug friend here off the roads too?”
“Ah, sorry, my bike isn’t built for slugs. But the nearest exit’s only half a mile downhill.” She said.
“Wait, exit? Exit off this road?” Dave yelled.
The woman looked at him in confusion. “Yes, what did you think I meant?”
“I thought there was no way out of here!” he cried
Kevin gave a gulp of anguish and said “Don’t take him away, he’s my only friend!”
“You’re friends with a slug?” laughed the woman. “What’s this story about exits?”
“Wait, look, I’ve just arrived here, and this slug tells me that I’m stuck on this road, and that there’s no way off. Now you’re telling me that there’s an exit five minute’s walk away!” He turned to Kevin “You’ve got to be joking, right?”
Kevin shuffled guiltily then ventured “Don’t believe her; she’s got a crab in her pocket.”
The woman shook her head in disbelief. “You must really be new here. First rule is: Slugs are crazy bastards. This one’s pretty well known. Bad luck that you landed on him first I guess.” She shifted forwards on the bike “Look, get on and I’ll take you down to my hotel, let’s leave this weirdo to his delusions.”
Dave gave one last glare at Kevin and heaved himself onto the bike. “Right then. Let’s get out of here um… what’s your name?” He said above the purring of the bike.
“The name’s Lisha. Now hold on tight! We’re off.”
The bike accelerated in a crackle of energy, leaving a dazed slug standing by the roadside. “Well he was very rude, wasn’t he Sharon? What’s that? You think he was just under a bad influence? Yes… yes… perhaps…” his sentence was cut off as a hand grabbed one of his eyeballs and squeezed it.
“Hello there fat boy.” Hissed a voice. “I see you’ve just met with my colleague, David. Well Ronnie and I have a word or two to say to him, so if you value this eyeball, you’re gonna find us a way to get to him.”
Kevin had time only to tremble before he was yanked off down the pavement by two cloaked figures.
