Breathing bus farts. It was hot. I was unhappy. I was impatient to go and I couldn’t see what the holdup was. All I could see was the billboard on the ass of a rabid-transit behemoth. After a moment, I realized I was fumbling around on the dashboard, looking for the button to arm the lasers and launch the missiles and wondering why I couldn’t find it. It should have been there. I had the Belchfire V8, with Mach-Turbo-HyperBabble and pre-Lucas Art Drecko Techno-Gingerbread. I had the passenger-eject button, the James Bond axle-grinders, and the sound system from Hell. But I’d forgotten to stop at the ammo store to reload the weapon bays. Q was going to be very unhappy with me. This was California in the 60’s. Our cars were the physical manifestations of our identities. And my identity had decided to be very, very bad. All I could do was go along for the ride. The light changed and I went home. I turned on the typewriter and this rolled out. A bus had stalled at the corner of Sunset and Vine, and a crowd of automobiles quickly gathered around it.
