by C.M. Lanning
Chapter 2: Fare is Fair
The driver’s stomach growled as he rushed down Intergalactic Road 12 to Larissa, a small moon of Neptune. The cosmic body of Larissa really only served as a sort of ship stop for those on their way to the outer stretches of the galaxy.
It was popular among commercial ship drivers because of a legendary pizza place inside. It was called Sizzerano’s Pizzeria, and the pies there were hefty in price to say the least.
“Damn Italian pizza shop owner. . . making pies that I couldn’t afford without saving money. No self-respecting pizza lover should have to save money just to get a pizza. One of the staples of the food is that it is supposed to be affordable,” the driver muttered angrily.
He was in a foul mood as he always was when he was hungry. He was actually about to go on his lunch break when he got called out on this job. He had to take his lunch break at 12:30 p.m. every day he worked, or he simply did not get a lunch.
Trying to eat any later resulted in his boss jumping down his throat for “timecard irregularities.”
The driver could hear his boss yelling at him the more he thought about it. “Lunch is taken at lunch time. That’s why it’s called lunch!”
The problem with today wasn’t simply that the driver was hungry; it was that he missed his lunch break on top of that, and he really wanted a hot meal.
“I guess this makes reason #12 why I shouldn’t skip breakfast every day,” the driver sighed.
The driver liked to stay up late watching movies, so, he usually slept in as much as he could in the mornings. The problem with this was he was usually running out the door to get to work on time, meaning, no breakfast. He always counted on lunch being his first meal of the day.
He put his thoughts on something more exciting to get his mind off of hunger and out of bittertown. Scenes from the previous night’s movie began to play in the driver’s mind. He had taken a chance on a thriller titled “The Call,” and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.
His immediate thought was he hated it, but the more he thought about the slow pace of the movie, the more he realized the writing was actually rather intellectual and artistic. He didn’t normally enjoy movies like that, but this movie was getting difficult to forget about.
As Starla jettisoned past Uranus, he began to think about food again, primarily. . . pizza.
The person he was going to transport was actually being picked up from Sizzerano’s Pizzeria.
“Talk about adding insult to injury. I can’t afford the pizza, but I can pick up the people that make it,” the driver said, his mood souring once more.
He reached over and banged on top of Starla’s glovebox a couple times, and it opened, a pack of cigarettes falling out.
The driver grabbed one and pulled it out of the package.
“This ought to help kill my appetite,” the driver said, lighting up.
As the nicotine entered his system, his sour mood lifted ever so slightly.
“Well that’s about as good as I’ll get,” the driver said.
Half an hour later he set Starla down in front of Sizzerano’s. The old cab groaned as it came to rest softly on the ground.
The station was actually pretty busy. The driver noticed several large ships being parked, and their drivers were going inside to relieve themselves after choosing not to stop at the casino moons that orbited Uranus.
Most of the people were men, but there were some women. . . and then there some women that might as well have been men. They may have been missing the “y” chromosome and necessary reproductive organ to be considered a male biologically, but as far as they could spit, and as much as they could eat, they may as well have been one of the boys.
The driver saw his client coming straight for the taxi. That was one of the advantages of video calls as opposed to simple audio calls. He got to see his passenger before he met them. It was just fortunate that the driver happened to be near a video monitor when the call came in.
A slow moaning could be heard as Starla’s power locks opened to allow the passenger in.
He was very young and seemed to be of Korean descent. The driver had taken people of all nationalities and races wherever they wanted to go for 25 years, so, he could identify someone by their looks or even the language they spoke nine times out of 10.
As the older teen got into Starla, the driver turned and got a better look at him.
He had a very thin goatee that the driver figured he had been working on for quite some time.
The passenger caught him staring and said, “I’m old enough to ride in a cab.”
“I didn’t ask,” the driver said, turning back around.
“I just turned 18. That means I can legally take a taxi anywhere I want,” the teen said.
He spoke great English and had no specific accent.
This kid’s parents are probably legitimately Korean and raised him outside the region, the driver thought.
“Listen. . .-”
The driver was cut off by the legal “adult” saying, “You can call me Jin.”
Sighing, the driver said, “Jin. . . I didn’t ask for your age. If you say you’re 18, you’re 18. I can’t afford to be picky about my clients.”
They sat in an awkward silence for a moment as Jin, who was clearly a firecracker of a repressed teen/legal adult, thought about how to unembarass himself. Of course, when that process was determined to be futile by Jin, he asked, “Why haven’t we left yet? Do you need fuel?”
“I need a destination,” the driver said.
“Oh. . . Midwest City please,” Jin said.
“You commute from Earth to Larissa to work at Sizzerano’s? Damn that Italian must pay good,” the driver said, bringing Starla back to life as he flew the taxi out of the atmosphere.
Jin scoffed and said, “If that man paid good, I’d use the electron transporter and be at Earth instantly instead of riding in this beat-up machine. As it stands, he gets away with paying lousy because the One Galaxy Republic’s tax enforcers generally don’t care about anything beyond the casino moons of Uranus.”
After snapping at Jin about calling Starla by inappropriate adjectives and lighting up another cigarette, the driver thought, This kid just randomly surrenders any and all information about his life. . . who does that?
“And no, I don’t commute. I rent a small room above the pizzeria. . . or at least I did. . . before I quit,” Jin said, looking at Neptune as Starla started to put distance between herself and the blue planet.
The driver stifled yet another sigh putting the pieces of Jin’s life together. The kid had a duffle bag with him and some other kind of large square black nylon bag. It looked like a pizza carrier he’d swiped. . . probably to put some of his things in.
He had run away from home to try to prove a point to his overly strict parents. . . and he’d had enough after a year or two. He was admitting defeat and going home because he hated his boss more than his father.
Jin stayed surprisingly quiet until they passed Jupiter, and he started to ask questions, which annoyed the driver.
“So. . . what’s your name?”
“You can just call me driver.”
“That’s a strange hat. . . where’d you get it?”
“Gift from my grandfather.”
He would normally make conversation with his passengers if they wanted, and Jin clearly wanted to talk, but he was hungry again, and that knocked his already questionable levels of happiness down another few notches.
“You got any tips on what to say to parents you haven’t seen in two years?”
“Nope. I’m an orphan, never had any parents to say anything to,” the driver said.
That shut Jin up again and sent him into another awkward spiral.
The driver didn’t mind the awkward silence. Silence was silence, and it was what he needed since he didn’t have the energy to make small talk.
When they got to Mars, Jin stepped up to the
plate one more time, attempting to draw some kind of personable reaction from the driver.
“Man, I’m glad to be out of that place. You have no idea what it’s like to waste your life at a job that hardly pays anything,” Jin said, only catching himself after he was finished speaking.
“I. . . didn’t mean that-”
“None taken. I actually enjoy driving Starla for a living. It has paid my bills for the last 25 years,” the driver said.
“Good grief. . . how old were you when you started driving? You don’t look that old to have been driving for 25 years,” Jin said.
“I was 16 when I first started. I ran away from the 10th orphanage I’d been in, and my current hard-ass of a boss took pity on me, giving me a job and something to do,” the driver said.
As they neared Earth, the driver decided to give Jin a little break and offer some advice.
At least he’s making an effort to return home. . . that took takes some guts. He was, at the very least, smart enough to realize maybe he didn’t have it quite so bad at his former home. I can somewhat respect that, the driver thought.
“Listen, Jin. I’d just tell your dad what he wants to hear. Say that you were wrong, and he was right. Your family will probably just be so happy to see you alive that they won’t give you too much of a hard time, especially when you admit your wrongs,” the driver said.
“What if I still don’t think I was wrong?”
“Then you’d better be prepared to beg for your job back from that stingy Italian man,” the driver said.
Jin said nothing but looked outside at the traffic that was increasing as they got closer to Earth. The yellow light of the intergalactic road they were on showed deep thought on Jin’s face.
“Admitting you’re wrong gets a whole lot easier when you realize that 90% of the time what you’re fighting over is something stupid,” the driver said, guessing that Jin’s parents doubted his ability to make it in the real world, and that set him off.
Angry, he ran away from home, only to end up near the edge of the galaxy on Larissa, working for a pizzeria owned by an apparently stingy Italian man.
Jin was silent the rest of the trip except to give the driver an address to land at. Midwest City was located in what used to be the United States of America, and it was the agricultural capital of the Earth.
It was a city surrounded by thousands of miles of farmland and the giant spaceport city was where Earth exported its largest resource. . . food.
The driver took Starla into the west part of the city that was mostly made up of blue-collar workers. . . lower middle class.
He stopped outside of a red brick apartment building that went up for at least 20 stories. The street was mostly empty, and it was about 9 p.m. local time.
“This is the hard part of the trip,” Jin said, shrinking in fear.
“Just say what I said, and you should be fine,” the driver said.
“No. . . I meant. . . the part where I tell you that I don’t have any money for the fare,” Jin said, squinting and raising his arms to protect himself just in case the driver decided to punch him.
The driver yelled at the irresponsible “adult” for at least ten minutes before Jin reached for the black nylon case and handed it to the driver.
“I did manage to swipe this before I left. I was hoping you’d accept it as payment?”
The driver furiously unzipped the black nylon case to reveal a pizza box from Sizzerano’s Pizzeria. His scowl faded immediately when he realized what he held.
“Are we cool?”
“Get the Hell out of Starla, Jin. Don’t ever call me for a ride again,” the driver said, giving the kid an out.
“Yes sir,” Jin said, rushing out of Starla, but still taking care not to slam Starla’s doors, lest he make the driver mad again.
“Well. . . that’s fair, I guess,” the driver said, opening the box and taking a slice of cheese pizza.
As he took a bite of the surprisingly still-warm pizza, his eyes widened. He was in love.
“Oh yeah. . . no wonder I can’t afford this,” the driver said, taking time to enjoy his dinner.