Michael Bunker: Pennsylvania

Now he was on the airbus to West Texas, and he could feel the heaviness of the gold coin in his shoe, and somehow the extra unis in his wristband seemed to have an extra weight all their own as well. I feel guilty , Jed thought, and I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. Maybe I should tell someone about the unis and the gold? No. Getting caught with extra unis that don’t belong to you would mean automatic deportation. If he did something stupid, he’d never make it to New Pennsylvania. How was he to know what was stupid in this world? For all he knew, everything he did was stupid. He began to imagine the Transport Police storming into the airbus to haul him off and send him to exile in Oklahoma.

Despite Jed’s best attempts to put them out of his mind, crazy ideas started to flood over him. Maybe I can spend them all at the SGT station when I get there… maybe I can give all the extra unis away… maybe a Quadrille dealer will sell me some drugs and then I can flush them all down the toilet like I did with Dawn’s note… None of his ideas were workable, and most of them would get him deported. It wasn’t a far trip from West Texas to Oklahoma. Not far at all.

The airbus floated silently through the air, and Jed tried to occupy his mind by looking out the window at the ground way below. The polarized windows and the altitude combined to make the view seem not… quite… right. But he’d never been this high before, so he wasn’t sure how things were supposed to look.

Every now and then, looking down, he could see scars on the earth—remnants from the wars—and at one point they passed over what used to be a great city, but from thousands of feet in the air it looked like it was now a massive pile of burned rubble and debris. He wondered why people hadn’t fixed up the cities again in the dozens of years that had passed since the wars. Maybe they left everything destroyed like that just to remind everyone how bad the wars had been, and so that the people would be thankful to the Transport Authority and the government for keeping everyone safe and secure.

“Hey, little Amish boy, you ever been up this high before?”

It was Slicked-back, and he spewed the words, giving the impression that he really didn’t care what the answer might be.

“No, sir,” Jed replied.

“Yeah, I think it’s funny that you Amish get to travel and fly and do everything the rest of us get to do… only you don’t have to live by the same rules as everyone else.” As he said this, he pointed at Jed’s wristband and snorted. He looked around as if everyone else agreed with him, but most of the other passengers seemed to be on the Internet in their heads.

Jed didn’t know what playing by the rules had to do with them being up this high, but he figured that Slicked-back was only looking for trouble and a reason to spew. Jed just ignored him and looked out the window.

“That’s not very polite, Amish boy. I’m talkin’ to you. How come you people don’t have to get implanted TRIDs like everyone else? What makes you so special?” He was raising his voice now, and a few of the other passengers looked over, interrupting their music or videos or chats to see what was going on right there on their own bus.

Jed hadn’t noticed it, but when Slicked-back began his little rant, a large Hispanic man sitting toward the back of the bus had gotten up, and during the one-sided conversation had been walking forward up the aisle. Now Jed noticed him, and he wondered if this giant of a man was going to give him grief too.

Just as Slicked-back finished his last little broadside, the big Hispanic man leaned over to Slicked-back and spoke to him clearly and concisely.

“Do you want to get sent to Oklahoma?”

“What’re you, a Transport cop?” Slicked-back said with a snarl.

“No, friend, but we’re about to be over Oklahoma, and if you’d like me to throw you out of one of these windows, then you keep bothering my friend.”

Slicked-back didn’t reply; he just kicked his feet across the aisle and pushed himself back in his seat. The big man smiled and nodded his head.

“That’s right, little man. Now I’m going to talk to my friend. You should take some Q and chill out so that you don’t make any permanent mistakes.” He stepped over to take the seat next to Jed, but before he did he leaned back over Slicked-back’s face and whispered to him. Slicked-back didn’t respond, but he slowly drew his legs back so that they weren’t blocking the aisle.

“I’m sorry that some people feel the need to attack things they don’t understand,” the big man said. “I’m Jerry Rios.” Jerry stuck out his hand and Jed instinctively clasped it with his own.

“Jed. Jedediah Troyer. But you can just call me Jed.”

“Okay, Jed. Glad to know you,” Jerry said with a smile and a nod. He sat down next to Jed and crossed his long legs.

“What did you whisper to that guy as you walked by?” Jed asked.

“I told him that if his legs were still across the aisle when I walk back to my seat, that I’d remove them and feed them to him.”

“Apparently he believed you,” Jed said as he looked over at Slicked-back.

“It’s good that he did,” Jerry replied somberly. “I don’t make idle threats.”

Jed looked at Jerry to see how serious the young man was. He was serious.

“Anyway,” Jed said, “there’s no eating on the bus.”

Jerry broke down laughing and eventually Jed joined him. Slicked-back just looked up at them and grunted his displeasure.

Jerry was a little older than Jed, maybe in his mid-twenties, and he looked like someone who was not to be messed with. Talking to Jed though, he was personable and friendly, and the younger man was happy that Jerry had been there on the bus when Slicked-back decided to get aggressive.

“Where’re you headed?” Jerry asked.

“I’m a pilgrim. I’m traveling to our colony in New Pennsylvania to live.”

“Well then!” Jerry replied, smiling broadly. “We’ll almost be neighbors. I’m heading to New PA too, but I’m heading to the City. I’m not a country boy.”

Jed stared at Jerry for a minute and blinked several times before he could answer.

“Um… Oh. Uh, I didn’t know… that the English… I mean—”

Jerry laughed heartily. “Hey man, don’t worry about it. I know that your people call all of us outsiders the English . It’s just strange for me to hear, because I’m as far from English as a man can get!”

“I’m sorry, Jerry. What I meant was that I didn’t know that any… non Plain People … were also colonizing New Pennsylvania.”

“Oh, sure! You didn’t think they were going to let you people have the whole planet, did you? Besides, someone has to eat all of that food your people produce!” Jerry laughed again in a friendly way, and Jed was compelled by Jerry’s gregarious manner to laugh along with him.

“I guess I just never thought about it,” Jed said. “In my world, we only talk about the colony that our people are starting there, so I just never considered that there would be others.”

“Well, if you look around, Jed, you’ll see that you’re the only Amish guy on this bus, and I’d guess that most of us are going to West Texas SGT so that we can catch our transport to New PA. That should tell you that there are probably going to be a lot more of us there than there will be of you.”

“I guess it’s always that way.”

“Well, from what I hear, it won’t be bad,” Jerry said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ve read a lot about the colonization process, and it seems that there’s plenty of land and countryside to go around. They say that New PA is almost the same size as Earth, with similar gravity, weather, and all that stuff as this planet, so I figure with such a tiny population, there’ll be plenty of room to stretch your legs… without having to block the aisle.” Jerry winked again and glanced over at Slicked-back. The man was obviously on the Internet in his head now, because he just stared blankly into the distance and hardly moved at all.