You want that?”
“I feel like you’re keeping this stupid dated thing for my sake. It makes me feel pathetic.”
“Don’t be stupid–you should be proud of it. Never mind if some kids think it’s dated. I don’t think they even notice or care.”
Del thought it ironic that people were exposed to this huge portrait all day, and yet passing him on the midway had never identified him from it. Talk about embarrassing. Talk about salt in one’s wounds.
“Oh well, should move along,” Del muttered to Too. “I’ll be around later, if I can.”
“If you can? Thanks a lot.”
“Have a nice day.” Del raised his candyfloss in a salute, started away. Behind him, the Screamer yelled a song by Sputum as the first riders of the day filed up to the mounting ramp.
Noelle wanted to walk about first, get her bearings, but Bonnie said, “I want to spin around a little, get in the right frame of mind. Get the juices whipped up.” She flicked a silvery “button” into her mouth, gulped it. Presumably, she saw the Screamer as a blender which would violently mix the blood and adrenaline and drugs in her body into one high energy fuel. The line wasn’t too bad and they paid the man at the foot of the metal ramp a certain amount of the tickets from those they had purchased at a booth near the gate. Bonnie ran up the hollowly clanking ramp, lifted the restraining bar of a cab and slipped in. Noelle climbed into the cab ahead of Bonnie. The cab rocked from side to side. Noelle watched an insectoid alien, squat and tiny-headed, its naked body a lovely sky blue, pass her on the walkway and enter the car ahead of her. She couldn’t see its cat-sized head over the backrest of the car but heard it chittering, maybe in excited anticipation.
Deafening music blasted; Noelle didn’t recognized the group. Punktown’s menu of music was as diverse as its inhabitants, and it wasn’t until the song was half through that she noted the racing, growling vocals weren’t in English, obscured as they were under bombastic layers of music like a multiple car collision, with flipping cars rolling over and over, while a further background layer was of pigs being slaughtered. “Noelle!” She twisted around in her seat. Bonnie was rocking her cab with her weight. “Get it moving–it’ll be wilder when it starts running.”
The last rider was locked in; an operator in an army jacket thumped down the walkway past Noelle, out of sight. A man’s voice cut into the music over the intercom.
“Okay, we’re just about ready to roll…rock and roll, that is. Keep your limbs inside the cars, please, and hold on tight.” The music came back. The cars slowly began to turn around their axis. Noelle had ignored Bonnie’s suggestion, scrunched down in her seat and gripped the bar as casually as she could appear. Her car rode up a hill in the surrounding metal catwalk, and as it came down the machine began to engage. Speed was picked up quickly.
With each revolution, the speed increased. The alien song ended, a new song started up, rousing and wild. Columns upholding the circular roof whizzed by like archaic telephone poles on a highway. Beyond, the whole world spun like a tornado around Noelle. A train of faces, the next batch of riders waiting in line, all seemed to be staring up at her as if to gauge her fear or dizziness, like scientists observing an astronaut in a training machine. The Screamer had reached, and leveled at, its apparent highest speed. Noelle rocketed up a hill, down into a gully, up again, and the cab was flying sideways in the wind, rocking without her intervention. Noelle didn’t like the rocking and tried to stabilize against it, bracing her feet on the floor and firmly planting herself in the middle of her seat so as to maintain a balance. When the cab dove down into the gully her organs scrambled high into her rib-cage. When it climbed the hill the cab inclined more sideways and Noelle was a little afraid of it
“I feel like you’re keeping this stupid dated thing for my sake. It makes me feel pathetic.”
“Don’t be stupid–you should be proud of it. Never mind if some kids think it’s dated. I don’t think they even notice or care.”
Del thought it ironic that people were exposed to this huge portrait all day, and yet passing him on the midway had never identified him from it. Talk about embarrassing. Talk about salt in one’s wounds.
“Oh well, should move along,” Del muttered to Too. “I’ll be around later, if I can.”
“If you can? Thanks a lot.”
“Have a nice day.” Del raised his candyfloss in a salute, started away. Behind him, the Screamer yelled a song by Sputum as the first riders of the day filed up to the mounting ramp.
Noelle wanted to walk about first, get her bearings, but Bonnie said, “I want to spin around a little, get in the right frame of mind. Get the juices whipped up.” She flicked a silvery “button” into her mouth, gulped it. Presumably, she saw the Screamer as a blender which would violently mix the blood and adrenaline and drugs in her body into one high energy fuel. The line wasn’t too bad and they paid the man at the foot of the metal ramp a certain amount of the tickets from those they had purchased at a booth near the gate. Bonnie ran up the hollowly clanking ramp, lifted the restraining bar of a cab and slipped in. Noelle climbed into the cab ahead of Bonnie. The cab rocked from side to side. Noelle watched an insectoid alien, squat and tiny-headed, its naked body a lovely sky blue, pass her on the walkway and enter the car ahead of her. She couldn’t see its cat-sized head over the backrest of the car but heard it chittering, maybe in excited anticipation.
Deafening music blasted; Noelle didn’t recognized the group. Punktown’s menu of music was as diverse as its inhabitants, and it wasn’t until the song was half through that she noted the racing, growling vocals weren’t in English, obscured as they were under bombastic layers of music like a multiple car collision, with flipping cars rolling over and over, while a further background layer was of pigs being slaughtered. “Noelle!” She twisted around in her seat. Bonnie was rocking her cab with her weight. “Get it moving–it’ll be wilder when it starts running.”
The last rider was locked in; an operator in an army jacket thumped down the walkway past Noelle, out of sight. A man’s voice cut into the music over the intercom.
“Okay, we’re just about ready to roll…rock and roll, that is. Keep your limbs inside the cars, please, and hold on tight.” The music came back. The cars slowly began to turn around their axis. Noelle had ignored Bonnie’s suggestion, scrunched down in her seat and gripped the bar as casually as she could appear. Her car rode up a hill in the surrounding metal catwalk, and as it came down the machine began to engage. Speed was picked up quickly.
With each revolution, the speed increased. The alien song ended, a new song started up, rousing and wild. Columns upholding the circular roof whizzed by like archaic telephone poles on a highway. Beyond, the whole world spun like a tornado around Noelle. A train of faces, the next batch of riders waiting in line, all seemed to be staring up at her as if to gauge her fear or dizziness, like scientists observing an astronaut in a training machine. The Screamer had reached, and leveled at, its apparent highest speed. Noelle rocketed up a hill, down into a gully, up again, and the cab was flying sideways in the wind, rocking without her intervention. Noelle didn’t like the rocking and tried to stabilize against it, bracing her feet on the floor and firmly planting herself in the middle of her seat so as to maintain a balance. When the cab dove down into the gully her organs scrambled high into her rib-cage. When it climbed the hill the cab inclined more sideways and Noelle was a little afraid of it
Similar Books
