Commuter Games

In the great Game of Life, I have reached many challenging levels, encountered many grotesque monsters, greedy goblins and scary ogres. Battles fought and lost, sometimes full life+, sometimes it dwindled, sometimes it would be gone and I had to start from the beginning. If only I had a rail gun it would have made things easier. But enough about my past relationships, this is about one particular level. The Getting to Work level.

Due to a police officer mistaking what was clearly an impressive 180 degree trick-turn for a "dangerous driving charge", I have found my license under a 12 month suspension or what I prefer to call it: Taking a rest from driving for a bit. This has resulted in a choice of transport modes being restricted to three things: Bus, Train and Walk. Walking, as we all know, is extremely bad for your health and can cause leg cancer and heroin addiction of the eyeball, so that was easily deselected from the option panel I am now presented with.

On the days where I decide that the terrible misfortune that has befallen Prince Arutha’s Princess at Krondor is a far more critical quest than being at work on time, I catch the bus. It’s a great time to relax before work and have a good read. The problem is that it’s hard to read when some FUBU wearing begoateed and unshowered centrelink opportunist is in the seat in front of you wearing cheap headphones, the kind you would find in a discount store in India, in the back room, in the rubbish bin, under a Justin Timberlake CD, like they threw it away before they threw the JT CD out. It’s like the earphones are leaking pretty much all of the Tupac album he’s playing away from his head, or he is so stupid he is wearing them backwards. Either way, he may as well have the Valve Sound System strapped to his head, facing me, with a funnel stabbed into my ear, with Tupac live on stage inside it, doing a Justin Timberlake cover, in Hindi. The other problem is the drivers.

It’s obvious that bus drivers are from the same race of people that orderlies, carnival stand attendants and mercenaries are sourced from. They all have previous "black ops" war experience that no-one knows about like ticking time bombs, they all have that blank long-distance stare, and none of them appear to have legs. They aren’t particularly pleasant to deal with, nor are they unpleasant. You just want to get the transaction over and done with as quickly as possible before you do something to piss them off, like being made of flesh or having a face.

Train drivers are more like God in Alabama, no-one can see him, but you are convinced without a smidgeon of evidence that he’s there. The train for me is a 10 minute walk, which isn’t dangerous levels, and is extremely fast. This is great when you need to be at work on time and have no book. The only issue is the flies. These flies I have never found anywhere else on Earth, and I have travelled a great many bits of it and so consider myself, as most men do, an authority on everything. These flies are tiny, move slowly, suicidal and are magnetic. It’s a well known medical fact that skin is made of skin particles and iron, so this presents an issue when you are surrounded by a swarm of micro sized, magnetic death-wish bugs programmed explicitly to annoy humans. I have found the best thing to do is shoo them towards the person standing next to you. Either that or my next plan which is yet to come to fruition, is carry two cans of fast knockdown mortein in cowboy holsters.

Trains, busses and walking. The bane of my working life. I have about 3 months, 13 days, 9 hours and 16 minutes at the time of writing, approximately, before I am loosed back into the world of asphalt adventuring and this time, I will think twice about doing 180 degree trick-turns, when there is police around.