Sidney's Comet Read Free

shopping district.
    Sidney’s pre-programmed car took the next exit, negotiating a spiral offramp onto American Boulevard, a broad avenue dotted with pink, lavender and yellow synthetic flowers and plastic maple trees. On each side of the boulevard, miniature expressways for moto-shoeing people carried four lanes in each direction. Sidney saw moto-shoers entering and leaving the skating thoroughfares via ramps. They traveled in lanes of varying speeds, from a slow right-hand lane to faster lanes at the left. Many wore multiphonic headphones over their ears, and Sidney saw their pudgy bodies undulate to the music he could not hear.
    They shouldn’t move like that, Sidney thought. The Conservation of Motion Doctrine. . . . I’m not the only one with shortcomings!
    At a stoplight, Sidney watched a maple tree shed plastic leaves and sprout new ones. Workcrews in bright orange windbreakers carried plastic bags emblazoned with the Bu-Maintenance crest, which they filled with leaves and litter. The air was still.
    The car accelerated, gliding on its air cushion past the Black Box of Democracy, an opaque doorless and windowless megalith surrounded by rolling green plastic lawn. There were people reading an inscription plaque on the structure, and others taking pictures. Children played on the lawn.
    In the next block, the Uncle Rosy Tower fronted a curving section of the boulevard. Sidney looked up through the glassplex top of his autocar as it rolled by the tower, he could barely make out the ring of the revolving Sky Ballroom on top of the structure.
    It’s Thursday, he thought. Only two more days until my reunion. Just think . . . twenty years .
    Now Technology Square was directly ahead, and Sidney saw the sun peeking through a swirling cloud over New City’s skyline, reflecting off tinted glass windows on the government office towers that ringed the square. A Bu-Cops car sped by, its purple lights flashing and siren wailing. Other sirens screamed in the distance. Throngs of people stood in the square, and more streamed in from all directions.
    Something big’s going on, Sidney thought.
    His car stopped as programmed several hundred meters from the square, and he short-stepped out onto a platform. As his car disappeared into an underground parking tube, Sidney mentoed his moto-shoes. They flipped out of their plastic ankle cases and lifted him gently onto their wheels, and he began to roll down a ramp to the skatewalk. A warm breeze blew across his face as he picked up speed. Changing lanes expertly on the crowded skatewalk, he moved to the slow lane and took an exit designated T ECHNOLOGY S QUARE .”
    The square was dotted with planter boxes, white plastic benches and modernistic government-commissioned sculptures. A large fountain at the center adjacent to Uncle Rosy’s towering mechanical likeness sprayed the air with a thin, metallic moisture. The air was alive with people noises. Angry noises, Sidney realized.
    Recognizing his regular datemate in the crowd of jeering onlookers watching a demonstration, Sidney rolled up beside her. As he came to a stop, Sidney focused upon Carla Weaver’s high cheekbones with a red painted beauty mark on one side. Her nose was distinctly Roman and classically perfect. Curly, golden brown hair swirled about the shoulders of her carmine red pantsuit.
    “What’s going on, Carla?” he asked.
    “Doomies,” Carla said with a glance in Sidney’s direction. “Real freakos. They say a comet is coming!” She laughed, looked full at Sidney with heavy-lidded lavender eyes. “It’s supposed to destroy us all!”
    Carla studied Sidney, noted fat pouches and chubby cheeks beneath large round hazel eyes which stared back innocently. Dark, curly lashes framed the eyes, overhung by thick, dark eyebrows, a high forehead and curly black hair that was thinning at the temples. He’s not very good-looking, she thought, concentrating upon Sidney’s pug nose and ears which protruded like wings. And