Syboleth ch. 18: Overhead

AN: If you've already read Chapter 17 when I posted it as Chapter ?+4 back in December, please reread between Chapters 16 and 18 before continuing. Basically, I was a big dumdum and posted the chapters out of order at first.

Chapter 18: Overhead

When you had worked in ad tech, every advertisement was a fresh reminder of some new hell.

At the end of a car insurance advertisement, someone had yelled out "It's funny because I'm not boss material!" after being assumed to be the boss. He knew that some sensitivity trainer had suggested this so that children might not be negatively impressioned by the idea of a person not being aware that the joke was on them.

He briefly considered paying to be free of ads, then considered the expenses coming later that week. Including the secret weird one. He would have to make do, he decided.

For some torturously tortuous reason, Garrett found himself thinking about a memory from 2031. He had been babysitting Jess, who had finally decided she was ready to talk about what had happened with her stalker, Davey. Garrett had never, in his life, felt more inadequate to handle a conversation than he had at that moment.

"I mean, a lot of people go through this," he had started, while painfully aware of how stupid he sounded. "You can talk to peo—"

"I've never been attracted to anyone but him. Nobody could understand."

He dismissed the memory.

Outside the window there was nothing to see. Inside there was nothing worth seeing. He put his phone in his pocket and looked at the other passengers instead. This was something he did when he ran out of better options.

There was a woman asleep against the glass, and a man reading something on his laplet. He held the focused expression of someone who was either genuinely interested in what was on his screen or performing genuine interest for an audience that didn't exist.

Well, except for Garrett.

Two teenagers were talking to each other, with one speaking inordinately loudly. He clearly wasn't used to his bone conductors, and wasn't aware of how loud he was talking. He just wanted to be able to hear the sound of his own voice, quite a human impulse after all. Garrett shifted in his seat. His leg was cramping.

He thought about the weird expense.

It was the kind of expense that didn't have a category. Not rent, not food, not the MRI equipment calibration costs he sometimes helped cover when the program's funding cycle ran a bit dry. Something that was akin to all of these things, but without being any of them. He had told himself not to think about it too hard, which of course meant he thought about it with a low-level intensity that was always omni-semi-present but never quite became a formal qualifier in the field of "thinking about it".

The train slowed to a creaky halt.

His stop.

He stood and pocketed his phone, joining the movement of a handful of people towards the doors.

The car insurance ad was probably playing elsewhere in the train for someone else now, the sensitivity trainer's work put into play for an indefinite time for some undeserved fee. It's funny because I'm not boss material. A child somewhere in the country was learning something about the world from that. Something that could be either productive or dysfunctional depending on what the world turned out to be over the next decade.

The doors opened and he stepped out of the train, onto the platform, and towards the exit in the way that he always did; without ceremony or apology.

Next chapter: https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work/Aet%20Lindling/Syboleth-ch-19-Somewhere-162036