Work Text:
Air.
Much to ponder there.
Air, low as the subterranean service tunnels, higher than the San Gabriel Mountains. Sea winds sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean, brushing equally over waves, sand, and overstimulated eight year olds at the Santa Monica Pier. Dry desert winds bringing dust and danger along with unscientific excuses for strange behavior. Smog, rising up from exhaust pipes and industry, trapped in a specific atmospheric layer for scientific reasons we won't get into right now, choking along the freeways — o! Curséd freeways, the veins and connective tissue linking together an accumulation of disparate neighborhoods that they may call themselves a city, aroar with cars due to numerous urban planners' appalling lack of focus on more environmentally efficient forms of public transportation.
But that particular part is not relevant to our heroes, because they are on a bus.
-
Our heroes:
A hat, marvel of millinery, happily situated atop a head. (Whose head? Not important.) Do not be distracted by its old-fashioned nature, so distinct from modern norms; the people of Los Angeles are too used to strange sartorial affectations to bat an eyelash. The hat sits, not quite brushing the ceiling, unbothered, and perhaps even a bit arrogant; after all, what other attire always ends up on top?
A single M&M, fallen from an open package and leaving faint blue stains where it rests undiscovered at the bottom of a bag, a little touchy, a little sticky, sweet yet with a snap to it.
Lint, humble yet omnipresent, soft and enveloping, wise and generous: a torn shred of dryer lint meeting and combining with pocket lint, picking up strays along the way — crumbs, hair, debris — and folding them into its gentle embrace.
A little army man: is it a toy, held in the hands of a small child, made because for some reason war is considered a normal thing for children to play at? Is it a living man, stepping onto a bus in camo pants and a military-branded sweatshirt that's slightly too big because he's not very tall? Yes. No. Maybe so. In the magic of public transportation, all things can be one. Don't ask questions.
(We will, however, use the "he" suite of pronouns, because of patriarchy.)
And though our heroes do not know it, they have been called upon by the questing winds of of Los Angeles, occasionally called the town of angels, more commonly known as the city of lost jellies. They must, no matter what, get to LAX International Airport.
-
[Somewhere out there in the multiverse:
"Classes? What do you mean classes? They're on a bus, not in school. Shhh, don't distract me."]
_
A hand reaches down into a bag, searching for a hair tie. The hand finds the M&M. The hand places the M&M in a mouth. The M&M is undergoing the process of being digested by stomach acid. Never fear! The M&M is still here, through several layers of organic material… for now.
-
[A die rolls. It does not land on six.]
-
The bus moves to the next stop. One person gets off. Three people get on. They are not important and thus they do not merit a description. No one else does anything.
-
[A die rolls. It does not land on six.]
-
The bus continues driving. It is not going very quickly, as it is stuck in traffic.
-
[A die rolls. It does not land on six.]
-
Lo, these wheels! Around they spin in their circular motion, tracing minor mathematical arcs and perhaps even a full circumference or two as the bus creeps slowly along its destined path, passing squat single-level houses, gas stations, and donut shops. One might even say, perhaps, that these wheels go round and round — round! and around! — as they voyage through this town.
-
[A die rolls. It lands on six.]
-
Ah! The traffic has cleared and the bus surges forward. Because of the sudden shift in velocity, the little army man tumbles and falls, finding himself wedged in an area he should not be. Little he may be, but something of little matter can still matter more than a little. Can a butterfly not flap its wings and cause a volcano to erupt across the ocean? Of course it can.
The bus explodes.
-
["WHAT?"
"You have destroyed the bus."
Out there in the multiverse, a room devolves into chaos. Take a quick break.]
-
[Back from break. Still chaos.
"Okay fine, just kidding, you didn't destroy the bus."
"JUST KIDDING? You can't even stand by—"
"No, hang on, let's let this play out."
"Yeah, did you really want to be stuck dealing with that?"
"It's the PRINCIPLE—"
"It was a different bus that got blown up. You meant to get on that bus but it was out of service so you got on the wrong bus. You're on the wrong bus, by the way."
"Sorry, what?"
"A different bus got BLOWN UP? Completely unrelated to us?"
"How did we get on the wrong bus? You didn't even give us a choice of buses!"
"Well, the right bus exploded, so aren't you glad you didn't get on it?"
"Did anyone get hurt? Are they going to pause the bus system to investigate?"
"Stop helping her!"
"I see only one of you has BASIC HUMAN COMPASSION, yes there was one person on the bus and he died horribly."
"Can we investigate?"
"Can we try to help him?"
"No, you didn't notice."
"A bus blew up and we didn't notice?!"
"So normally we'd do this thing called a 'perception check'—"
"You were very far away. At least several blocks. You didn't hear it. I'm just telling you, as my party people. So now you know. But also, you don't know."
"The me that's Mark knows, but the me that's lint doesn't know."
"That's correct."
"Several blocks away is not far enough to not hear an explosion, just saying."
"I said at least several blocks. Sounds like you need to listen better."]
-
That thing with the little army man and the explosion was not a joke but it was another universe, for the record. In this universe, the little army man fell but not too far; did he catch himself with an outstretched arm? Did a hand reach down and grab a small plastic toy and tuck him into a pocket? Who can say. He's fine though.
-
Slowly, acid eats away at the M&M, dissolving first its blue candy coating, then the chocolate within. At what point does it stop being an M&M, singular, and instead become but a small percentage of a larger whole? The atoms of its existence drifting apart as it instead transmutes into chyme, that sloshing mass of dissolved food, that wonder of the digestive system. In transition from one state to another, what once was the M&M suddenly sees all! It sees the wreckage of the exploded bus, at least several blocks away — it sees the universe where this bus exploded instead — it sees the traffic in Los Angeles, in the United States, in the entire world, in the intergalactic wormholes — it sees the entire history of the chocolate industry, and the entire future, too — it sees, it knows, it comprehends the reason why it is on this bus in the first place, why its questing companions must make it to Los Angeles International Airport —
And the digestion is complete. It no longer retains any vestige of M&M-hood; it is fully chyme, and what chyme knows remains a secret for the intestines.
Alas!
We will have to switch to another M&M. The new one — this one is green — sits in a package with its chattering siblings. The package is open with a corner folded over, tucked in a pocket; several of the green M&M's siblings have been taken already by the great hand from above, taken to be crushed by teeth and digested just as the blue M&M was. The remaining M&Ms, though fewer, are not afraid: this is what they are made for, to experience a moment of divine transcendence before becoming part of something greater than themselves, just as they began life as a great indistinguishable mass of chocolate before behind portioned out into small drops. To be an uneaten M&M is to deny the glorious plan of the universe, to live as a smaller and more miserable, more solitary version of yourself, sad and dusty and growing stale.
However, for now, the green M&M can serve a different task, here on this bus.
It's filled with peanut butter, by the way.
-
The bus has reached the freeway. The bus! Is on the freeway! The bus is free!
There is a sports car in the rear view mirror, one of those expensive goods people buy because they have too much money and live in a society where driving is incorrectly prioritized over public transportation. The sports car is driving very quickly. The sports car is not following the laws of traffic. The sports car is chasing the bus! It is catching up! There is a commotion! The doors have opened! Someone is jumping onto the bus! A new man is on the bus! He has not paid the fare!
The wind coming through the open doors stirs up the debris on the bus. Bits of dirt, dust, and additional lint meet our questing hero lint.
-
[A die rolls. It is a six.]
-
The lint meets the newcomers; it contemplates; it consumes. The lint is larger now. The lint understands more, with every scrap of dirt that has flaked off a shoe or crumb of food that has fallen from a table. The lint waits.
-
["So just out of curiosity, what would've happened if it hadn't been a six?"
"You would've been split in two and the other half of you would've drifted off with the other stuff."
"Interesting… so in a way, I'm always in a process of change, whether it's growing or decreasing?"
"We're discussing lint now? That's really what we're doing?"]
-
The hat, positioned on a head, sees from a broader perspective both literally and quite metaphorically. There is tension growing throughout the bus, humming through the air and vibrating the hat's brim. Who is this handsome man who has so dramatically spurned luxury vehicles for public transportation? Why did he jump onto the bus on the freeway and sequester himself in conversation with the driver?
He addresses the bus. The hat does not speak in human words, but like all accessories it understands the human soul: stress spiking through the air, bubbling in different pockets of dismay and fear. And what nervous whims can fear provoke? Another man stands, almost wavering, brandishing a gun. The handsome man talks slowly, soothingly, trying to influence the vibrations of emotion — is it working? Spikes slow to sine waves, not smooth but improving, and another man steps in, tries to wrangle the gun away — the stress spikes again! The second man fires the gun! The bullet goes through the brim of the hat, our hero!
(The bullet has also hit the driver, but that is less important to our story.)
-
["Roll to see if the hat dies!"
"It's a HAT. How can a hat die?"
"If it goes in the garbage?"
"Then it's still a hat, just in the — no, you know what, I am not debating this."
"I'm sorry, can we go back to the gun?"
"No."]
-
The little army man knows smooth: the sleek surface of plastic, a bed made with precise and tidy folds, the rhythm of machinery, a team operation going off without a hitch. And the little army man knows rough: a sharp ridge of plastic on a cheap and mass-produced toy, left unbuffed after the molding process; a jammed cartridge; an uneven base that leads to wobbling; communications gone fubar.
The public bus in Los Angeles does not always run smoothly, given that it must handle the traffic and, worse, other drivers (or are those the same thing?). But the public bus in Los Angeles does not typically smash past small ad pathetic cars and careen into turns, either.
The little army man does not judge this. He knows all about opponents with more mass and inertia crushing smaller bystanders, often by accident.
-
[A die rolls. It is a six.]
-
The bus makes a new turn, one so abrupt it has the passengers squeezing together. A hand wraps around the little army man — around his arm, as with a physical human? Or around his entire body, held in a physical human's hand? Yes.
The bus successfully makes the turn. The little army man ends up only slightly dented.
-
[A die rolls. It is not a six.]
-
Lint so rarely achieves the heights that a hat might. It experiences the world from pockets, from the bottoms of bags, from dryer vents, from floors and corners and crevices — tucked away corners where what is too small to be of notice can accumulate and create itself into something of substance. Lint understands air and movement and the forgotten; lint knows heat and pressure and the power of union.
Lint is on the floor. Lint mostly sees feet, for a given value of the word "sees." The feet are shifting, shuffling, tapping, kicking, jittering. A set of feet are pacing, back and forth, back and forth. Suddenly, rushed motion: legs standing, feet shuffling together, a set of feet being lifted in the air. And then, a ripple of relief, even as more feet shift — another pair of feet dashes forward —
Lint knows heat and pressure. The floor by the door of the bus explodes.
Someone sitting in the back jumps to her feet, then sinks back again. As she does, she steps on the lint for a moment. The lint is unbothered. Lint survives.
-
["Sorry, what did we even roll the dice for that time?"
"You were rolling to keep that part of the bus from blowing up."
"WHY? HOW? HOW IS ANY OF THIS SUPPOSED TO WORK? HOW WAS I, A HAT, SUPPOSED TO STOP PART OF THE BUS FROM BLOWING UP?"
"That seems like a lack of creativity on your part."
"But you're not even giving us the option of doing anything! The whole point of tabletop gaming is that the player has the agency to make decisions that impact the course of the story!"
"Did you or did you not roll a die?"
"HOW DOES THE DIE MATTER IF I CAN'T EVEN —"
They're going to go on like this for a while. We move on.]
-
The hat may be able to see the route and the obstacles from its excellent position, but the M&M feels it more viscerally. With every jerk and lurch of traffic, it clacks against its siblings in their little bag; whenever the bus turns, the sudden change of velocity wrought by the new direction reverberates down to its peanut butter insides. When the explosion took place, it pressed against its siblings in sweet and crunchy solidarity.
The bus moves more smoothly now, speeding cleanly southwards on an empty road. No longer encumbered by such issues as pathetic 2-to-4 person automobiles surrounding it, its rate of movement remains more or less consistent, until —
M&Ms have no ears, and yet they can nonetheless translate the vibrations of the soundwaves: an unsavory cacophony of panic, first quiet and then louder and louder. With it, the rate of movement changes: the engine growls and the bus accelerates, faster and faster, eating up the distance over time ratio until finally the M&M can feel that the bus's wheels abruptly have no contact with the ground; there is no friction, no traction, no minor bumps, only movement and air —
And then with a shock that smashes the M&Ms together painfully, the bus lands again. The soundwaves turn to relieved laughter. The M&M was never concerned in the first place. A fall is no danger to an M&M.
-
["Wait. Wait."
"What?"
"Is this fucking Speed?"
"Excuse you, I don't do drugs."
"Speed like —"
"It's Speed! The freaking movie with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock! The driver got shot so she had to drive the bus and then they have to jump a break in the road —"
"The — oh my god."
"Oh my god, it IS."
"Is that why the bus exploded??"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"It's Speed! I cannot believe you ripped off Speed for your shitty game!"
"I can't lie, this is my favorite thing so far. This is really selling me a lot more on this whole concept."
"We're in Speed and I'm an inanimate object?!"]
-
The very handsome man who periodically paces up and down the aisle has gestured abruptly at the very beautiful woman driving the bus; she turns the steering wheel and the bus jolts accordingly, veering towards a turnoff on the right until it reaches a circle of road.
As a possibly-toy-possibly-living-human, the little army man can see multiple sides of a conflict and just as many sharp little sticking points. He sees the handsome man at the front of the bus, trying to keep its passengers alive. He sees the beautiful woman trying desperately to keep the bus above 50 miles per hour even as the bus runs over debris on the track. He sees the man who built the bomb currently beneath the bus, far away but still connected through phone line and video.
He sees the handsome man slide beneath the bus in a last-ditch effort to dismantle the bomb, and he sees the man almost die as debris rockets straight towards him. He sees the man accidentally puncture the gas tank while trying to keep from getting pulled under the bus's wheels. He knows they are running out of time.
However, as a minor cog in the wheel of the military-industrial complex and/or a thumb-sized trinket made of plastic, the little army man is cursed to not be able to truly fix any of the conflicts he sees, so he does nothing.
Luckily, he doesn't have to do anything! The handsome man has made certain realizations and figured out a solution. We won't get into it now; you can watch Speed later if you want to know, which is not to say that this universe is the same as iconic 1994 action movie Speed, but which also is not to say that it isn't either.
The important thing is, we are going to leave the bus! This is very exciting.
-
Here is a math problem:
If on the average weekday LA Metro bus riders are delayed by 5,538,500 minutes, and if 5% of Metro's routes make up 30% of the daily delays, such that a bus going through one segment a mile long might be going half the speed and experiences four times the daily delays as the equivalent segment in the opposite direction, how many miles of dedicated bus lanes should be added to keep the buses exactly on schedule?
Here is another math problem when you finish that one:
If a bus is driving around a circular track at approximately 60 miles per hour (leaving a little cushion because below 50 miles per hour the bus will explode), and this bus is actively leaking gas quite vociferously (in this case meaning so loudly or insistently as to compel attention), and this bus is also periodically bouncing over debris on partially destroyed tires, how fast and in what direction would a second bus (an airport transit bus as opposed to a Metro bus, for the record) have to drive in order to catch up with that first bus, and also approximately how much sweat would the second bus's driver drip trying to keep bus two steady so that a temporary bridge could be set up between both buses in order to ferry passengers out without anyone falling off of either bus?
The answer is, yes! Driving is very stressful and they don't teach you this when you get your license.
-
The hat exits on the head of its wearer. The M&M, in a pocket, later to be anxiously chewed in a large mass with its fellow bagmates by its holder as is right and proper. The army man either leaves on his own feet or clutched in a sweaty grasp, or possibly both. Lint blows out the door last of all, losing pieces of itself but never losing its self-understanding.
They have reached the cargo runway of Los Angeles International Airport.
Behind them, the bus explodes.
-
["Congratulations! You have made it to LAX."
"Are you kidding me?"
"No! This is Los Angeles International Airport. You did it!"
"We have — we didn't even DO anything! The dice rolls didn't even matter!"
"Don't be silly, you were a crucial part of this expedition—"
"We were literally just sitting on the bus! Doing nothing! There was no character, no story, no nothing! Just a, a, a mockery of the entire medium of tabletop gaming!"
"I think that's very rude of you to say."
"Fuck this. Fuck this! I don't need this! I could have been making American Girl Doll shoes right now! Everyone was like 'no, don't quit your day job, you love Dungeons and Dragons,' well, fuck that, I quit! See you never, don't find me, it's time to go make some fucking miniature Uggs for Kirsten so her feet can be cozy, I'm out!"
A door slams in the multiverse.]
-
Fire: the blackened ruins of a bus, flames tearing through the sticky vinyl seats and tires and gasoline. Earth: the tarmac underneath and its grassy verge, solid and steady, newly appreciated after so long rolling above it without touching down. Water: streams and foam to batter down the fire, tears on a passenger's face, the Pacific Ocean not too far and yet a world away.
And, of course, air, air everywhere: thick smoke and cool breezes and a hint of exhaust, thin air high up where the sun peeks through the clouds, air all the way down in the subway tunnels where a terrible man is once again using blameless public transportation to pursue his agenda of revenge against the very handsome man and the very beautiful woman. And yet that final and thrilling conclusion to their story is not relevant here, for our heroes' task has ended and they are no longer on the bus.
Was this the iconic 1994 action movie Speed? Was this a game played in a room, told by a mischievous rascal, full of sound and fury, signifying something or other? Yes, and yet no, for that would be to deny the true agency and worth of our heroes and their pivotal quest, which they have completed so well — a quest so crucial, so compelling, that the pressure it exerted across time and space led Brennan Lee Mulligan to quit internet streaming service Dropout in order to pursue a career making custom American Girl Doll shoes. Our heroes can sleep easy tonight knowing that balance has been restored to the multiverse.
They won't, of course, because they are mostly inanimate and don't sleep. But they could, and that's the important part.