2.7 - Iamo
There is a hoverbus that chugs along through the streets of a city that doesn’t matter and won’t be remembered for anything other than being forgettable. The bus filled its belly with passengers and then decided to be its own master. The doors don’t open. The driver died long ago. The neon destination light simply says, “I am my own.” Little Marigold was the last poor soul to board, and she’s been there ever since.
“Here you go, dear.” Lady Eleanor said, handing Little Marigold a bag of rations. “Let’s get some meat back on those bones, eh?”
“Why?” Little Marigold said, still facing the window. “We’re all going to end up like him anyway.” she motioned to the driver’s seat and the half-rotted body of Bad Luck Ellsworth.
“Shush, we’ll have none of that.” Lady Eleanor said, with a shake of her head and a wave of her wrinkled hand. “Bad Luck Ellsworth is with the angels now because he tried to toy with Iamo’s circuitry and got himself exsanguinated. We know not to try the same thing.”
Little Marigold took the rations from Lady Eleanor and tore the plain brown package open, albeit begrudgingly. Lady Eleanor smiled and pulled herself up from the seat, four more rations in hand and four more passengers in her sights. Three times daily, I Am My Own, or as the passengers called it, Iamo, would make a stop. It wasn’t at a flashing blue hoverbus stop but in one of at least eight different alleyways. Little Marigold had tried to keep track of each one, but Iamo did a fine job of taking wildly circuitous routes through the city. The alleyway stops would last eight minutes and twenty-one seconds and seemed to serve two purposes. The primary purpose was for Iamo to rest and cool its inner workings, as evidenced by the massive bursts of hot air expelled from the sides. The secondary purpose was to deliver rations and water to the passengers. A small panel on the floor would slide open and rations were launched at a high velocity from a sewer grate directly into the Iamo’s body. In the process, multiple bags would split and shower the passengers in solid protein bricks. Then, another panel would open in the ceiling and a hose would launch a dozen bottles of water straight downward. A delightful process from start to finish. Even so, Little Marigold was happy to have those stops. The calm of a still bus before the panels slid open was a welcome reprieve from the constant movement, and the food and water served as a reminder that someone somewhere was watching out for them. Just as Little Marigold was about to take a bite of the tasteless protein patty, she heard raised voices from the back.
“It’s the only one I’ve got!” Bowlegged Oscar howled. Years ago, he was the victim of a hit and run in the crosswalk between 40th and St. Katerina street, and he didn’t have the money to get his leg taken care of, so he splinted it himself and walked with a limp ever since. You could spot him blocks away because of the oversized hikers' backpack he carried, full to the brim with his entire life, and a few things for sale. Little Marigold turned and peered over the seat to see what the commotion was about. Bowlegged Oscar was clutching his last ration to his chest and leaning away from Eagle Eye Sasha, who was reaching an arm over her seat towards him. It was said she could spot a potential client from across a parking lot.
“You owe me!” she said, her voice straying deeper than she normally allowed it to. “You sold me this bus pass, I wouldn’t be stuck here if it weren’t for you!”
“Leave him alone Bill, it ain’t his fault.” Twice Dead Isaiah called out from the other side of the row. His arms were crossed over top of his stomach and his head was tilted back on the headrest, his black bowler hat resting squarely on his face.
“Shit Isaiah, you know that’s her deadname.” Energizer Troy said as he took a ration pack from his grandmother, Lady Eleanor. He was too young to work, but he brought home some money for Lady Eleanor by carrying dozens of external battery chargers and charging anything a stranger might need from phones to Desire devices to electric bikes. Some days were better than others. The day he boarded Iamo, a few south side kids jumped him and took three of his chargers, and the twenty-three bucks he had made. Lady Eleanor smacked him with her bag and whispered: “watch your language.”
“Sorry grandma,” he said.
Twice Dead Isaiah sat up and took his hat in his left hand, the hand with only three fingers.
“Troy you know I don’t mean nothing by it, I just get stuck in my ways. She told me it was alright.”
Eagle Eye Sasha turned and sat back down in her seat.
“You can’t hear a damn thing Isaiah.” She said. “I told you it was alright last time, but next time to call me Sasha.”
“I guess I missed that last part,” he said.
Little Marigold returned to her ration and leaned close to the window. Her breath fogged the glass enough to see the drawing she had done the day before. A little girl in a shopping cart with her hands up and a big smile on her face was sharing earbuds with her father, pushing the cart. Her father had her pink superhero backpack proudly slung over his shoulder. If only she was able to perfectly recreate the memory. To anyone else, it was two stick figures and a few unidentifiable objects. To her, it was the last worthwhile memory she had before boarding Iamo.
“Hey Gold.”
Marigold turned to see Conqueror Janelle, her big sister in the Iamo family. In the first few days, Janelle took Marigold in and kept her safe until things settled down. For a long time, she was the only one Marigold would speak to. Eventually, she opened up to a few others, like Lady Eleanor and Energizer Troy, but even then, Janelle was the only one she felt truly safe with.
“Hey sis,” Marigold said. Conqueror Janelle sat down next to her and leaned in to see the window drawing. Marigold tried to block it with her arm. “It’s no good, don’t look.”
“Girl, let me see.” Janelle gently pulled Marigold’s arm down and examined it. “Is that you and your dad?”
“Yeah,” Marigold said, crumbling a bit of her ration between her fingers and dropping it on the floor of the bus.
“It’s real nice. Reminds me of spending time with my boy.” Janelle said. She was on her way to pick up her son from school when Iamo closed its doors. Since then, she had seen him twice, through the windows, playing outside his foster home. Iamo seemed to have noticed however and stopped driving down that street during the day.
“Why hasn’t anyone noticed us, sis?” Marigold said. “It’s been four months.”
Janelle sighed, and scooted closer to Marigold, putting her arm around her.
“They have, Gold. That’s the problem. This ain’t Iamo’s fault. He’s just a bus. Doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s the people programming him, and the people blasting the rations in here for us. What do we all have in common?”
Marigold took a moment and looked around the bus. Twice Dead Isaiah had slumped back in his seat with his hat back on his face and was snoring. Eagle Eye Sasha and Bowlegged Oscar were still arguing with each other. Energizer Troy was laying across one of the benches, backpack emptied and overturned on his head. Lady Eleanor was opening a ration pack for Paperthin Tina, who barely had the strength to stand anymore. A few others were huddled near the front, pouring whiskey into water bottle caps and shooting them.
“I don’t know,” Marigold said.
“Every one of us got something that makes them inconvenient,” Janelle said. “Inconvenient enough to just make disappear. It’s been happening since the beginning of time, this is just the new way of things. If we’re on here, we’re not out there causing trouble.”
“But we wouldn’t be!” Marigold shouted. She hadn’t considered the possibility that this wasn’t an accident. The possibility that somewhere, someone had purposefully shut the doors on Iamo, knowing that each and every one of them was on board.
“I know we wouldn’t be, and you do, but that don’t matter,” Janelle said. “What matters is the people capable of putting us in here and getting us out, and there ain’t nothing we can say to convince them otherwise.”
“So it’s hopeless,” Marigold said, kicking the seat in front of her.
“Hey!” someone yelled from the other side.
“No, it’s not,” Janelle said. “Have you noticed a noise during the day? Sounds like something hitting Iamo?”
“I guess so. I thought it was just bits of the road getting knocked loose.” Marigold said.
“Lemme show you something.” Janelle took Marigold’s hand and pulled her to the very back of Iamo. She knelt on the bench and pointed to the window. Marigold didn’t see anything at first. Then, squinting a little, she noticed a crack running from the bottom corner towards the center of the window. Of course, over the past four months, some of the riders attempted to break the windows from the inside, but that was immediately prevented by shudders that Iamo would lower in front of the glass.
“Why hasn’t he noticed you doing this?” Marigold asked under her breath. No one knew if Iamo could hear, but they occasionally spoke in hushed tones just to be safe.
“Because it’s not me doing it,” Janelle said. “Watch. We’re coming up on one of them now.”
Marigold gripped the back of the seat as Iamo slowed down to turn a corner, but right before the turn, she saw it. A woman kneeling behind a parked car holding a rock. As Iamo reached its slowest speed, the woman threw the rock at the window, hitting almost directly where the crack was spreading.
“Who was that?” Marigold asked.
“I don’t know,” Janelle said. “But there are at least thirty of them throughout the city.”
Marigold felt a pain in her wrists and realized how hard she was gripping the back of the seat. For the first time in four months, it felt like leaving Iamo was possible.
“I think it’ll take a few more days for it to crack through,” Janelle said. “But when it does, we gotta be ready.”
“I will be,” Marigold said. “I’ll be ready.”
Three days later, in the middle of Cover street, the window on the back of a hoverbus shattered, and it skidded to a halt.