2163
Three drinks for each of them, a Friday-night mood, and an elevated stone in the old sidewalk had the girl giggling as she wobbled onto him. Her breasts pressed into his arm, her breath was hot on his neck.
"Hey, let's skip the movie," she said, stare lurid. "Your flat's close, right?" She kissed clumsily at his neck and shoulder.
Considering he hadn't caught her name at the bar, things were going better quicker than he had any right for them to. Not that Aalborg was a small town, but every story he'd heard about a friend-of-a-friend getting this lucky played out in the great Babylons of their day—Bucharest, or Damascus, or Lusaka. Right as he was thinking there had to be a catch, he turned a corner homeward and found himself staring at a large, unmoving crowd.
"Oh for the love of . . . Let's go some other way."
"What's this about?" the girl asked, pulling him forward. He tried to gently resist, but she showed no sign of noticing; any more and he'd risk fouling her mood, so he relented.
His annoyance was sobering him up just enough to notice the peculiar silence of the crowd. Oh sure, people were talking to each other here and there, but it was at most museum chatter. The loudest voices were scattered hecklers, but heckling what?
They could only advance so far before the packed crowd held them at bay. He hoped for a fleeting moment that the girl would lose interest at this obstacle, but she snorted and slurred a few swears together as she looked for another path. He sighed and tapped a nearby tall fellow on the back.
"What's this all about?"
"Some students from the seminary are doing a silent protest against the Tanganyika Group."
"Silent protest?"
A slender, babyfaced man with dreadlocks turned partway to smirk at them.
"He means they're sitting around the fountain and acting pompous."
The tall man seemed personally wounded and surprised by the comment. "Agree or disagree, don't you think it takes guts to stand up for what you believe in?"
The girl was satisfied and leaned into him like she had before.
"Ooh, protesting the big, bad robots," she said as they started walking away. But like any protest, there were vultures at the fringes trying to catch you on the exit. This vulture looked awfully like a stone-faced man shoving a piece of pamphlet at them.
"Excuse me miss, but your boy here has a strong look to him. A bunch of us from around town are forming a militia to train and stand at the ready if the Remnant Church calls on us to mobilize against the machines. We sure could use you."
Without waiting for a response, he moved on to the next mark. The young man barely looked at the pamphlet before crumpling it and dropping it on the ground.
"Give me a break," he muttered.
"Shame, I think you'd look good in uniform," the girl said. "Oh! Oh! Save me from the scary metal men . . . uh, what was your name again?"
Her sheepish smile reassured him that by some miracle, his Friday night would still have a happy ending.