Whatever Gets You Thru the Night #34
DJ Sotto Voce's parents, who were missionaries, always told him, "Charity is the talc that soothes the stranger," so he approached the wayward man with concern for his welfare. Unfortunately, his parents also met at the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, so DJ Sotto Voce used a little too much elocution.
"Ho, stranger," he said. "How might we come to the aid of you and your scarlet steed?"
"Cut the crap," the shovel-wearer responded. "Everything's a dead language now. Talk like a normal human being who's halfway to extinction."
"I was... I was just being polite," DJ Sotto Voce replied. "Making the best of a bad situation."
"Yeah, well, this situation's pretty damn bad, so feel free to dumb it down. A thesaurus ain't gonna bring Burger King back."
"What do they call you?"
"'They'? What 'they'? You're the first 'they' I've seen in six weeks. But if there were a 'they,' 'they' would call me Martin."
"Oh," DJ Sotto Voce said. "I thought with your whole get-up that you'd have some kind of... I don't know, more titular name. Like 'The Digger' or 'Shovel Man' or 'Mr. Jailbreak.'"
"Yeah, well, never been much on flattering myself. It's just Martin."
"Fair enough. I'm DJ Sotto Voce and this is my platonic tapir, Clemons."
"How did a tapir get all the way up here to North America?"
"I don't know. The author's not going to anthropomorphize him like he usually does, so he's not going to tell me."
"You sure it's a 'he'?"
"Good point," DJ Sotto Voce said. "Clemons could be a 'she.' I'm not inclined to check and it's rude to speculate. By the way, I couldn't help noticing you're covered in shovels."
"You're sharp," Martin said. "I'm afraid it's more functional than aesthetic, although this would kill in Milan. If Milan, you know, still existed."
"'Functional'? Pray tell, what kind of function needs 36 shovels?"
"Well," Martin said, scratching his chin and casting a glazed eye on the outstretched sand, "I don't know if you've noticed, but this place isn't really... happening. I'd like to leave."
"But it's the same everywhere else."
"Yup, yup, that's true. However, my parents were fabulist astrophysicists who met at Comic-Con, and there's one thing they always told me while I was growing up that keeps going through my head."
"What's that?"
"They said, 'Son, no matter how bleak, empty, barren, endless, or hopeless your current landscape might look, and no matter how many people either try to deny it or truly don't know... somewhere, there's always a portal."
To be continued.
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