＃１２３
“Hey, Sarah…?”
“Yeah! so good to meet you.”
“You too! I’m glad you showed up — like, you’re not a bot or something”
“...did you think I was?”
“Nah, you seemed pretty real. I’m just kidding”
“ok haha good. I was about to be likee, well *I* thought the conversation was good!”
“You can take all the credit for that. Shall we grab a seat?”
“yeah! let’s head in”
“how about there?’
“yep. wait, no, i’ll be freezing. let’s go the one with the heater”
“yep”
“have you been here before?”
“no! i’ve been meaning to, i’m glad it’s like the photos”
“yeah, yeah me too. It’s weird that this strip didn’t have one of these before”
“you mean a wine bar?”
“Yes but also any bar that isn’t just totally skeezy.”
“oh, yeah! haha”
“I mean they can be fun but-”
“now that you mention it, I haven’t been here for a while and that’s probably why.”
“Yeah.”
“also all my friends are like, their kids are at school now, and they’re busy, and i’m workingg, and-”
“Life stuff”
“yeah, life stuff”
“So what do you do for work?”
“Well, right now I’m a spring force but i might be shifting out of that soon.”
“A spring force? That’s cool. To me, at least”
“It’s been good, it’s been fun. There’s just a lot of bouncing around, you know? It’s hard to get a lot of skill development going when you’re all over the place like that”
“yeah. You know, I’ve never even thought about that”
“mmhm”
“and do you ever, like, work with any quantum guys? or girls?”
“you mean quantum oscillators? yeah, occasionally.”
“Cool.”
“they do a lot of that stuff in-house nowadays, but for simple models yes they will bring us in to help”
“Right. that must be….?”
“ugh, dont get me started. every quantum oscillator I’ve ever known has turned out to be a total fuckboy”
“Oh no”
“yep. there was this one guy— do you mind?”
“yeah, no, I don’t get jealous”
“great- there was this one guy I ended up seeing, don’t ask me how, but we’re seeing just casually but then it’s his birthday so I go over to his house to see if I can surprise him”
“Mmm”
“guess what I find.”
“you find……. tell me.”
“I find him in bed with some random double slit experiment, coked completely off his ass, whip marks all over his back”
“oh Shit! damn”
“i know, right?? and it’s like, we’re not exclusive, it’s fine, i don’t get jealous, but like-”
“Just tell me.”
“just tell me! exactly. so i know not to worry you’re spending your birthday alone or something”
“Total fuckboy”
“total fuckboy. anyway, i’m rambling already. What do you do for work?”
“First, what do you say we get some wine?”
“oh! we totally didn’t get any wine. yes, umm-”
“are you more of a red or a white girl”
“you know, I thought I was a red girl, but I actually don’t remember the last time I bought a bottle of red”
“Maybe you don’t remember because you’re a red girl and you can’t stop drinking it when you do.”
“Ha! you’re funny”
“Should we just get a Grenache?”
“you’re a red then?”
“Oh, no I meant Grenache Blanc. This one”
“Feli— how do you say that? Felli-sette? Felice-ette?”
“I think it’s Feli-sette”
“let’s do it. do we go up, or..?”
“so, you were just about to tell me allllll about what you do for work”
“I’m air resistance.”
“Air resistance? No way! I’ve always wanted to date one of you guys”
“Really?”
“yeah! Like, it’s not a goal. I didn’t write it down. But you get to do stuff with clouds and birds and stuff right?”
“yeahh, we do…”
“That’s so cool!”
“But actually I’m in High Speed now.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, you’ve got the whole department, right? Air Resistance and we’re all under Fluids. But then you’ve got specialties. You’ve got guys that do birds, guys that do skydivers, and so on. I’m in High Speed which is mostly planes”
“That’s still cool! You’re among the clouds at least?”
“It’s fun getting up there, for sure. Get to see the sunset and everything. But then you spend the next nine hours facefirst into a jet doing an intercontinental and, uh, that’s not so fun”
“ooooh. Right. Well I’ve never thought about that, either.. is that our first thing in common, not knowing anything about each other’s jobs?”
“Turns out you know more about a job if you actually do it. Who knew?”
“haha! so.. can you take me up there?”
“Yeah, I could.”
“really?? they let you?”
“I mean, they can’t really stop you. They just don’t want you messing with anything big. But if you pop on the local ATC you can pretty-”
“what’s ATC?”
“sorry, Air Traffic Control. You just listen to them on the way up, make sure you’re not going to mess up some other guy’s day, and you can pretty much do your thing. No-one’s going to care if you make a goose fly a bit slower or whatever”
“I was soo right. That is really, really cool.”
“I’m glad you think so. How are you liking the wine, by the way?”
“honestly? It is really good. I’ll remember it”
“How would you describe it?”
“it would beeeee— um……”
“Come *on* already. Pretend you’re writing the label. Very first words that come to mind. Go.”
“ok. floral. SHIT.”
“Floral?!”
“you rushed me!”
“That is the most generic description you possibly could have-”
“i KNOW, you rushed me though!”
“Are Grenaches even meant to be floral?”
“Well, actually, number one it’s a Grenache Blanc, we covered this, and number two tasting a wine shouldn’t be about your preconceptions but the Actual Experience you have on the Pal-ate, so if it tasted floral to me, there is nothing wrong with that. So nyah.”
“you still said floral, though.”
“quit it!! you rushed meee”
“maybe I’ll call you Daisy from now on”
“quit it!!!!”
“actually-”
“-if this is another tease I swear-”
“No, I’m stopping, I’m stopping. It just reminded me of a story.”
“oh! what’s the story”
“Well, before I went to High Speed I was originally in Pedestrian.”
“Like just for walkers?”
“Yeah. They don’t really think about it unless there’s a wind, but we’ve gotta do Air for every single one of them. Someone would notice eventually if we didn’t.”
“that still sounds really dull”
“It’s not so bad. I do like High Speed better, but Ped was fine and in cities you usually work on multiple people at a time-”
“ohhh, of course”
“-because the forces are still pretty light. They also have this promotion ladder thing, where if you’re good at let’s say Pedestrian you go up to Car, then that goes up to Truck, and at each stage you can also move laterally, right? Like Truck can move into Boat and it’s just a transfer form”
“mhm”
“But it’s a stupid system because the escalation ladder was originally based on force, and now with automation that’s way less of a thing. What you really want these days is flexibility, and you actually need a lot more flexibility for Ped than for Car because pedestrians have many more axes they can change direction in, right? They also all have rampant ADHD, I swear, but that’s another thing-”
“mhm”
“so if I were managing High Speed and I wanted an internal for a role, I’d much rather a superstar in Ped than anyone in— ah.. anyway...”
“no..! keep going! you’re just rambling like i was. it’s super cute, trust me.”
“Well, that was really it anyhow. But that wasn’t the story. The story is, I’m working in Ped and this human couple takes a walk through a park, right? and in Ped what you do is you follow someone till you reach the edge of your working area, then there’s a handover to another Ped guy in the next zone, and you go find someone else”
“mhm”
“So this guy and his girl go through the park, and it’s dandelion season so those things are going everywhere. I mean there are thousands, it’s romantic as shit for these guys”
“that’s really nice”
“The thing is, dandelions are so light that you don’t actually need to allocate any staff to them. You can mostly let them do whatever they want and the humans will think it’s whimsical, even though technically it’s a huge breach of physics going on”
“oh I totally just made the floral connection!! I was like where’s this going but that’s why you brought it up”
“Exactly”
“I’m with you now, go on!"
“As it turns out, the handover line is right in the middle of this park and the couple is heading towards it. I spot my guy and I signal him, and as we get ready for the exchange, I start noticing this guy is agitated. Like really agitated, he’s bouncing around and hyping himself up and stuff-”
“why?”
“I don’t know. I still don’t know. Maybe he was new, maybe he was trying to impress someone to get into Car, who knows. But anyway this dude was antsy as hell and as the couple get close to the handover line they decide to stop and make a wish together. With one of the dandelions they pick off the grass”
“they blow on them, right?”
“Yeah they do this blowing on it thing where the seeds carry their wishes or something. I’m not a hundred percent on the specifics. But some guy from Wind will come over-”
“You’re not wind?”
“Wind’s a specialisation. Humans measure that stuff a lot so they have to be a bit more precise and they work with the heating guys more closely than we do.”
“But the human’s just blowing a dandelion…?”
“Yeah, I know. It’s weird. But the logic is once you have these guys specialising in wind, you don’t wanna just have them sit around when it’s a still day. So they get trained in related stuff too and over time that becomes part of their regular job description.”
“like blowing……”
“Yeah, like— oh, you’re cheeky.”
“maybe *I* could work in Wind…”
“Send me a CV and I’ll see what I can do.”
“yes, sir.”
“..ANYway, jesus, sorry, this has been going forever”
“i’m fully invested, keep going”
“So this couple stop riiight before the handover and they start building their wish together out loud… how they want to spend the rest of their lives together as soulmates and stuff-”
“awww!”
“-but my guy on the other side is getting more and more agitated and he starts yelling at me to push them at him, hand them over already-”
“what a dick”
“total dick. he doesn’t want to wait, he’s yelling things, the guy from Wind comes over and we’re both trying to calm him down but he just goes off even louder... and riiiiight as the couple go to blow their dandelion wish together, he reaches out and just clamps down on it like you wouldn’t believe.”
“noooo”
“Like this is the amount of Air we’d use in High Speed, strong guy, and he’s using it to still the florets on a fucking dandelion”
“so what happened?”
“Well, the guy from Wind still does his job properly, blows the dandelion and all. But he’s not gonna get involved in some dick measuring contest with this rando Ped newbie, so he just uses a normal amount of air which of course does nothing.”
“and that would mean— wait, let me figure this out. You’re not Gravity…”
“We’re not Gravity. Gravity’s still on. But-”
“let me do it! but these seeds normally float anyway despite gravity, so… I don’t know, I’m guessing the seeds just stay there? It’s heavy air resistance all round, right?”
“You could.. actually totally work in Air, you’re right. They just stay there.”
“isn’t that fine?”
“Well, no, because the humans expect the seeds to go everywhere when they blow on them.”
“oh, right”
“Yeah.. so this couple tries to blow their wish for eternal romance into the breeze like ten times in a row and the flower head just does not cooperate.”
“haha!”
“I’ve got this guy going off at me, the guy from Wind kind of shrugs at me like I tried! and goes off to tell his boss, I’m fucking crying laughing inside at the whole thing even as I'm trying to fix it, and the couple try to laugh it off at first too but get increasingly upset at this wish absolutely refusing to budge. The girl makes this joke that maybe the universe is telling them to break up but it just comes out sad instead-”
“the poor girl! ohmygod that’s terrible”
“It gets worse. This handover guy eventually realises that, you know… Ped’s very relaxed but you can’t openly defy someone trying to accomplish something that’s guaranteed to work by their laws of physics. That’s a step too far. So he realises he’s gonna get in trouble for this and he lets go—but the Wind guy’s gone, remember? He’s not blowing anymore.”
“nooooo!”
“Meaning that because the seeds have already physically detached from the stem, I guess from all the jostling earlier… and because now there’s zero lift to propel them into the air but also zero air resistance to stop them falling…”
“they just fall straight down”
“They drop right to the pavement like anything else. Plop.”
“that’s so funny”
“I swear, I have never seen a human look so heartbroken. You should have seen the look on this girl’s face.”
“aw. I’m sure she was okay in the end. Did they keep walking, or..?”
“I’m not sure. Wind guy’s boss came over and told me he’d handle it from there, so I didn’t stick around to see what happened. But I’d bet the Ped guy got a big talking to.”
“i bet. that was a good one! good story”
“Thank you.”
“very welcome. just get me a job and we’ll call it even”
“ha. I’ll try”
“please do.”
“So… I’ve gotta ask at some point . . ”
“noooo, haha. I know what’s coming from the look on your face”
“What are you looking for from Union?”
“you go first”
“No way, I asked first”
“I’m a lady! You can’t ask a lady that”
“I just did. You gotta answer, that’s the rule”
“fiine. But you answer after”
“Of course.”
“wellll…. I would say that I’m *open* to something serious…”
“there’s a ‘but’, I know it”
“…buuuuttt I’m not necessarily seeking it out. Is that bad?”
“No! no, that’s perfect. I mean, me too.”
“oh thank god. I mean you’re a great guy and if something happens—”
“yeah”
“—then I’d love to see where it goes, but, you know. This is nice too”
“yeah. That’s good. I’m glad to hear you say that, actually.”
“mm?”
“I’m actually- well, I’ve been divorced a few months now”
“oh, I’m sorry!”
“no, it’s fine, it’s fine. It was the right decision for both of us. She worked in cable and there was always so much tension, and—”
“Aw”
“Yeah. It’s for the best. That was July, so, you know, I’m the same. If something happens then-”
“Absolutely.”
“Yeah.”
“well, now. you know what I’m going to ask you back”
“…I don’t think I do?”
“you totally do”
“I, uh.. nope. Hit me”
“welllll….. what are you into..?”
“Aw, shit, haha. have we really had that much already? Oh, we totally have, wow. Are you up for another—”
“You’re dodddg-iiiing”
“Of course I am! A very pretty lady at a wine bar just asked me what I’m into”
“just telll meee. I answered your thing.”
“okay, well, uh…… just to be clear, I’m not expecting you to be into this too, buut-”
“okay…”
“I kind of have a thing for inertial stuff? Is that weird?”
“Oh! Like, um… big girls?”
“yeah.. yeah”
“Okay.…. that is definitely good to know”
“I shouldn’t have said it, it’s really-”
“no! no this is great. I’m all about communication. I’m just wondering, like… am I…. your size? Does that make sense?”
“What? Sarah you are perfect”
“whaaaaat? no, you’re being nice”
“You are perfect, I’m telling you. I mean I probably shouldn’t say this either but do you know what my first thought was when I saw you outside the bar?”
“what?”
“I thought damn. I wonder what she can do with that ginormous k coefficient.”
“you did not!! You are a dirty boy”
“I know, I know. I couldn’t help it. It was the first thing I saw, and you were in that dress, and-”
“you still want to find out?”
“—what, you serious?”
“dead serious. let’s get out of here”
“okay. okay let’s get out of here. You, uh— whereabouts are you coming from?”
“my place is 5 femtominutes away. We could go there?”
“okay, let’s go”
I do not know exactly what’s going here, but I like it. The dandelion story is so captivating and bizarre — I’m imagining some type of AI’s dating app situation, and these AI’s now run a simulation of the world or something, and they’re so self aware at this point they just behave like humans talking about work and what not. Love it.