From: chandler@alaska.net (Chandler)
Subject: Taxi!
Date: Wed Feb 08 03:12:22 MET 1995

and after 'Scenes from a mall.'...

Taxi! injoit4all'swurf!

KamikazeKab 37A36 swerves into traffic gunning it's ceramic powerplant to a
fraction away from redline. The onboard computer lays a steaming trail of
hot rubbery mucus across the 12 lane asphalt desert. Screaming into the
DMV-Exempt lane the pair of blowers mounted on the hood emit a shrill whine
while the gearshift sprints through 4th to 15th in just under a second. The
onboard display zeros out as the transmission retracts from the axle. A fat
red 'OVERDRIVE' pulses across the windshield. The horsepower from the
blowers hits the car like a thermonuclear shockwave, leaving a narrow cone
of shockwave trailing just behind the spoiler. The roads here are laid out
in typical texan fashion ; smooth, wide, and straight as the day is long.
Jonee sits in the rear passenger seat, letting the onboard suck up digital
quarters from a purloined credit card. Cabbies are a thing of the past. No
more whistling jerking the thumb or having your ride snatched out from
under you by some lightfoot street hustler. Just call the central office,
and in 20 minutes or less, your own personal cab will arrive. You can drive
it yourself and save some cash, or have a digital equivalent of MadMax put
the fat lozenge of yellow polycarbon into orbit at something near mach10!
Jonee chose the latter. Not so much because he's got cash to blow, but
because where he's going, he needs a driver with a dedicated IV drip of
ephedrine. The cab swerves past a bulky freighter and out onto asphalt
ruled by the DMV. Jonee's quarry is a cluster of tour busses arranged two
by two in a very tight formation. Doors on the cabs no longer swing out,
they slide up into the roof like the cargo hatch on some military
transport. Jonee finds himself on the edge of the slipstream, on the razors
edge of a 140 mph suburban hurricane. As the cab idles up next to one of
the busses, he pulls out a laminated triangle of waffled circuit boards and
waits for the faint red beam of the laser designator to approve his entry.
It does, and a aluminum grid slides out along the running board of the bus
while a calm mechanical voice instructs him to step aboard. Jonee jumps.
Catching his weight on one of the handholds recessed in the smooth aluminum
siding of the recreational behemoth.


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