Bubbles

by William Thomas

After the service, which we observed by reading comix wedged into tiny kids' desks in the school library, Nedd declaimed loudly and happily in an unbroken stream of excitedly disconnected autobiographical thoughts Kerouac would have envied or protested whilst the jovial Jesuit did whatever priests do before the congregation in the next room a hundred-thousand light-years from home. Then we got back aboard the Seec and rattled off into the slowly gathering gloom.

Traffic was light. Perched in the back of the open-sided conveyance, arms spread wide between disparate and questionable handholds, I was too preoccupied with not falling out to closely observe the passing shops, sunk in shadows anyway. 

All around us lights were coming on in the living complexes soaring in tapering silvery spires above deserted walkways and abruptly dead-ending cul de sacs. Like on the lurid covers of those sci-fi paperbacks I used to buy for seventy-five cents at Rexall when I was a kid riding my red Schwinn to Grand Haven seems like a million years ago. 

I glimpsed figures moving behind cleargel — quick smiles, brief embraces, animated silent conversations — and turned away, all that cozy warmth and hive familiarity making me feel even more estranged from surroundings I still hadn't grasped and never would.

No sound came from its powertrain as the Seec clattered and banged down the bumpy, budget-challenged boulevard like Roy Roger's jeep —Tinkerbelle? Nelly Bell? Black-and-white cowboy shows vague and distant YouTube dreams. 

It felt strange yet oddly comforting riding on wheels again. Nedd drove one-handed with the other on my knee. This made my homophobia flare up — those years being blond at that all-boys academy still traumatic — until I realized he was just being companionable and this was just another lonely spacer out here.

"Okay," Nedd said and abruptly stopped. After a moment, I guessed I was supposed to get out. So I did. Nedd tossed my duffel down to me. I shouldered it and looked up.

"See you," I said.

"Bubbles," Nedd said. Because he had to say something. 

Then he drove off, leaving me somewhere between No Place and I-Don't-Know-Where in the long Alpha Centuri dusk.    

*     *     *

Author’s Note

BUBBLES emerged from predawn slumber following my unsuccessful web search for details on the then top-secret release of Blade Runner 2045. Suspended between waking and dreaming, this vision presented me with an otherworld clarity of plot points and a single image: two spacers riding in an open-sided wheeled conveyance on some alien world. Alpha Centuri? Presented only with their presence, I was given no clues as to their connection, if any, or what they might be doing there. Though I didn’t catch the driver’s name, the name supplied for the type of their shared conveyance was a seec. Once every scrap of dream was inputted into my bedside notebook, I transferred that file to the Mac and continued following the story — based primarily on the dream-vision’s overall tone — which continued to reverberate in my conscious imagination. 
Tap-tap-tapping the keyboard, I “discovered” the unfolding story, along with the main character, who in accordance with dream rules, was obviously another iteration of “me”. I had no clue what “bubbles” meant or how it would be used until Nedd blurted it out... and the entire story gelled.
BUBBLES will appear in my forthcoming book of hypnogogic short stories, Dreamstates.

Illustration:

Futuristic cityscape -stockcake