A regular bus ride home is slowed down by some kind of accident. Minutes turn into hours. At first, the napping bus riders are oblivious to the situation they are in. Then there are posts to instagram and snapchat, publicizing this moment when something out of the ordinary has happened. This makes these people special. But after an hour, the feeling of specialness has dissipated, and all that is left is a deadened frustration and a fullness of bladder.
It’s a Friday, a day of hope and possibility. Ahead of you is two full days of productivity, joy, and self-fulfillment. There is power to an early Friday afternoon: it’s the moment when you lean forward, your toes lift, and finally you begin to fly like you always thought you could. But it all comes to a crashing halt, right now, in this overheated neon green bus full of people heavy with reality.
The clock reads 16:03. School lets out at 14:00, but you had hustled out, rushing through the doors are 13:57, feeling like you’d just won something. On any other day, you would’ve already arrived at the station, walked home, and eaten lunch. On any other day, you’d already be in your bed, wasting away the hope of a Friday afternoon. But today you’re here, feeling personally attacked by the universe, feeling more trapped than usual.
At this point, everyone is beginning to look around. On public transport, there is a sheen of invisibility over everything. Eyes are clouded over with the veil of a daily routine. Curiosity is dulled and the mind is put on screensaver. Slowly now, the bus world becomes conscious of one another. Glances flick about, looking at the cross section of humanity here on this boat. Outside, there are other containers of trapped humans, but they may as well be a world away. The doors are pressure sealed and controlled by the man at the front. In this moment, the bus has ceased to be a bus, and has begun to be a self-contained ecosystem.
What will happen in this ecosystem that has no input or output? How will these creatures, thrown together by chance and bad luck, interact with one another? Who will survive? And what will be destroyed? These are questions that will be answered in the next riveting installment of: bus people.
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