Just another random writing exercise. Doesn’t mean anything or go anywhere. Except a bar, at the end. Spoiler alert.
Warning: Contains the F-bomb. Sensitive readers should avert their eyes.
George peered to his left, around the corner, slowly, as if moving slowly would make his gigantic pressure suit helmet less visible. Dust spattered from left to right. Once, twice. In a vacuum, he could see the bullets, but their impact was silent. He retreated from the corner. They couldn’t hit him here, and they were unlikely to change position. But then, neither could he.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been shot at since he arrived in Luna City. Nobody liked a P.I. snooping into their business. It was, however, his first firefight outside the dome. Just getting winged could make for a very bad day.
Just then, his sandwich buzzed in his pocket. More jets of dust burst to his left. One. Two. Three. His sandwich buzzed again.
“Fuck,” he said to nobody. George took a breath of stale air, swapped his gun to his left hand, which freed his right to fumble in his hip pocket. It buzzed again.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he observed, then added with emphasis, “fuck.”
There it was. His sandwich emerged in his gloved hand, buzzing as it came out. Wrapped in clear plastic, his sandwich was the latest from CUISINE-O-TRON Automation, the corporation behind both Banana-Matic, the banana that tells you it’s about to go brown, and “Avocado-NOW”, which sends you a message the very minute your avocado is edible. The latter product failed miserably because no matter how much lead-time you have with an avocado, it will always be overripe by the time you get to it.
George’s sandwich buzzed in his hand and the wrapper flashed transparent red. This, George snorted, is what happens when you buy a shrimp and avocado sandwich from the corner fuel station.
He could only imagine how it smelled. Thankfully, he couldn’t. In space, as you can probably imagine, you can probably depend on the fact that anyone you meet is almost certainly wearing a pressure suit. In fact, if you meet somebody who isn’t wearing one, it’s almost a certainty that they are a desiccated, frost-covered corpse for the simple reason that there’s no air in space. If you take off your helmet, you’ll definitely bring your day to a sudden and unwelcome end.
George felt his avocado-shrimp sandwich buzz in his gloved hand. The red flashing sandwich wrap left no uncertainty. If he were to eat this sandwich right now, he would be dead within hours.
A geyser of dust flickered past him. It would be really nice, George felt, if people would stop shooting at him. Just then, a thought struck him. He tapped the broadcast button on his suit radio.
“Hey,” he broadcast. Anyone within 30 meters would pick him up. A few bullets spattered dust next to him. “Hey!” he repeated. A much larger impact struck the corner, vibrating the wall and spraying his helmet with brick shards.
“Motherfucker,” he muttered. “Look, I know you’re really keen on putting a hole in me.” A few bullets spattered in the dust, as if in agreement. “I know,” he continued. “But think about this. It’s two o’clock, and you surely must be getting a little bit hungry. I know I am.” A single bullet spattered silently.
“Just to let you know,” he said, feigning casualness, “I have a shrimp and avocado sandwich here.” Several bullet spattered past him. “And I’m ready to let you have it. I mean you can have my sandwich.” There was a short pause, followed by a bullet. A half-hearted bullet, George thought. “Shrimp with delicious mayo and lime.” Spatter. “And avocado.” Silence. Long silence.
After a bit of a pause, a voice spoke through his suit radio. “So… Shrimp and avocado?”
“Yup,” George confirmed.
“Any lettuce or tomato?” the voice asked.
George peered at his red-flashing, buzzing sandwich. There was, if he peered in a certain way, some green involved in it. As for tomato? That was less certain.
“Oh, absolutely.” He confirmed. “It’s got fresh green and some tomato slices.” At two o’clock in the afternoon, nobody is likely to notice or care about a lack of tomato. And hopefully, he frowned, neither would they notice a lack of non-flashing sandwich wrap.
“WARNING!” The sandwich was now broadcasting on suit-radio frequencies. “This package contains hazardous substances.”
“What was that?” The shooter’s voice said with a hint of suspicion.
“Nothing to worry about.” George’s voice rose about an octave. “Having trouble with my suit comp.”
Silence.
“So,” George continued, “I’m totally willing to hand over my sandwich if you were to… Uh… You know.”
“What. If I were to what?”
“Um…Leave.” George finished. “And not shoot me.”
George waited through a lengthy, sweaty silence. Then he heard his shooter say, “Do you have any Clamato juice?”
George’s mind flipped over in confusion. “Um—”
“No, don’t worry if you don’t, ” the shooter said. “It’s just that a shrimp and avocado sandwich goes really well with a glass of Clamato. Or maybe a Caesar cocktail.”
Now George was confused. Clamato? Caesar? He had a dangerously warm shrimp sandwich in his hand—possibly a lethal shrimp sandwich—and here he was trying to figure out which drink to pair with it. What the hell was a “Caesar cocktail”? Some kind of Earther drink, maybe.
He had to say something or lose the moment. “I have the shrimp sandwich, but you know…Caesar cocktails aren’t exactly mainstream on Luna.”
A dozen or so bullets spattered beside him and into the brickwork that sheltered him. “But,” he interjected, “maybe we could stop by a grocery store and pick some up.”
After a moment, he heard, “So, you’ll give me your shrimp and avocado sandwich, and help me make a Caesar in exchange for me not shooting you.”
“Well…basically yeah.”
Long silence.
“I’ve got a better idea.”
Oh, shit, George thought. He didn’t take the bait.
“To be honest,” the shooter said, “I wasn’t that keen on shooting you anyway. How ’bout let’s go someplace and get proper Caesars? And I’ll take the sandwich.”
Denny turned out to be a nice guy, George considered. For a hit man. They met, shook hands, totally without shooting, and hopped into Denny’s car, which was a retro-styled Lunar rover made to look like an Apollo-era buggy. Driving between the domes of L-Town, Denny shouted “Wooooooo!” through the suit radio on broadcast which was exactly the reason why nobody left their suits tune to that channel. Too many assholes.
After some doughnuts in the parking lot, Denny had hopped out and strode into the bar ahead of George. The Lusty Lunatic. George hadn’t been here in years, and for very good reasons that included both a lack of funds and a functioning brain. Anyone with any kind of rational though processes avoided the Lunatic.
They cycled through the airlock, and Denny unsealed his helmet. “Fuck yeah,” he said about nothing specific, stowed his helmet under his arm, and strode into the bar. George followed, frowning as he unsealed his own helmet. Was he really going to get out of this without getting a bullet in his chest?
Over the course of the next few hours, Denny knocked back several Caesars, all on George’s tab, told some unsavoury stories about his time in the navy, and clapped his hand squarely on more than one buttock. Several of those buttocks belonged to women. No woman, however, possessed more than three, due to the immigration restrictions from Eroticon 5.
After a time, George and Denny settled down in a booth with a pitcher of Craterbooze. It wasn’t especially flavourful, but Craterbooze was definitely full of alcohol with a hint of kidney beans, which betrayed its origins. Fucking Luna was a hellhole for anyone with even a fragment of a discerning palate.
“Those fucking bitches,” Denny said, slurring his words with the added emphasis of slapping his palm on the table. “Those fucking bitches didn’t like it when I grabbed their ass. Asses. Whatever.”
George nodded with what he hoped looked like sympathy. “Yeah, what’s the point of grab-assing, if they don’t even like it?”
Denny peered at him. “What the fuck? Are you some kind of…” Denny made a rude gesture. “You know?”
“Heh,” George placated. “No. Neither were those naval officers you felt up.”
“Fucking hell.” Denny grew sullen and said nothing for a stretch, then said, “You got that sammish?”
“Sammish? Oh. Yes,” George began to feel a bit nervous. This was, he knew, the reason for this entire excursion. He reached into his bag for the buzzing packet, unsealed it, and pulled the “sammish” free. A wave of fishy scent and nausea washed over him. It would be a hard sell.
“Here,” he said flamboyantly, “is a shrimp and avocado sandwich. Sammish. Just what you were looking forward to.”
Denny’s eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. “That’s not right.”
“What?” George said, confused.
“That’s not right,” Denny repeated. “You ended your sentence with a preposition, which isn’t right.”
George thought for a moment, then said, “Here is a shrimp and avocado sammish, to which you were looking forward.”
“Much, much better,” intoned Denny, snatching the sandwich from George’s hand. “You can’t have civilization in this fucking place,” he said, taking a bite and chewing through his words, “if you don’t make an effort to stand up for grammar.” Denny swallowed.
George smiled. His ruse succeeded.