Diner 2030

Old enough to crave the old times

I wonder what she’s doing now

She’s probably in the fucking matrix like the rest of them.

She’s probably married to some fucking dweeb with a ripped rainbow body and an illusory nine-inch laser dong.

She’s probably—

“Pass the salt, there, old fella,” says this bearded orthodox Jew.

I slide the salt down the bar like Tom Cruise in fucking cocktail. It stops perfectly at his plate. He nods DeNiro style and picks up the salt without any thanks. No one says thanks these days, which is fine. It saves time. If you counted up all the thanks in your life, you’d have an extra hundred days or something like that. Gratitude is implied.

It’s a diner like the type you see on old TV shows, where you order coffee without any elaboration and leave two silver coins on the bench when you’re done—the kind where you ask to use the payphone like Marty McFly in 1955 and everyone thinks you’re a fucking coast guard.

They have an old TV here where you still use the remote to change channels. And it plays back-to-back news. That’s all there is these days—fucking news.

There’s a good-looking news reporter standing in a field on Channel Six.

“Yes, John. Concerns have been raised by farmers as herds of donkeys have been spotted in the wild…”

Yeah, concerns raised by blood thirsty hunters, I’m sure. Who wouldn’t wanna put a bullet between the meaty cheeks of some old ass? Next, we’ll be eating donkey meat cos they're fucking ‘pests’ and selling it as native for the same price as sirloin.

Wagyu donkey $179.99 a kg. It’s a lot for a donkey that’s been fed on cheese and toast and listened to Susumo Yokota its whole life. You know they wank off the donkey, and as it’s peaking and shooting out donkey spunk, they slit its fucking throat. That’s what PETA will say.

Stop slitting spunking donkeys’ throats. Go Vegan.

Guess they had to do something since they tried to put vaccine into beef and killed the lot of them—the cows that is.

Fuck it.

“What can I get you, honey?” says the waitress. She looks like Betty White if Betty had spent her life serving coffee to assholes.

“Two glasses of iced water with ice,” I say.

“What’s that, honey?”

“Nothing,” I say. I clear my throat.

“Coffee,” I say.

“What kind of coffee, honey?”

She’s killing my fantasy here.

“Almond cappuccino, please,” I say.

I want to shoot myself in the face.

“Any food to go with that?” she says.

Let me see. Any good? A-ny-

I open the grim-looking menu. It’s one of those with washed-out pictures of the food. I scroll past the casserole special, which looks like a horse did a shit on a monkey’s brain.

“Fries,” I say, handing her the menu.

I’m only here for the fucking ambience. I’m what they call a future-phobe. Call me a pessimist, but the idea of being gaffer-taped into the matrix in a serious long-term marriage with a collection of zeros and ones doesn’t fucking do it for me.

I wanna kick the corner of the coffee table with my little toe.

I wanna feel scared on the fucking subway.

I wanna catch STDs from the sloppy trans hooker outside Seven-Eleven.

I wanna pay with disease-riddled cash notes that’ve been used to snort cheap no-doze from that same hooker’s stubbly ass.

Two cops walk in, and I hope they don’t have their thought readers switched on. Everyone always acts differently around cops. Even the non-criminals act extra friendly.

“What can I get you boys?” says the waitress.

Where’s my fucking fries?

The younger of the two cops mumbles something to the waitress, who shakes her head twice, then looks up and points at me. I do the obligatory look behind, but there's no one. She’s definitely pointing at me. Fuck.

“Are you Frank T Bird?” says the older officer in a croaky voice.

“Who’s asking?” I say.

There’s a beeping sound, and everyone in the diner freezes.

A woman’s voice says,

GAME PAUSED. MESSAGE FROM DENISE. I’M GOING TO MCDONALDS, FRANK. DO YOU WANT ANYTHING?

Okay, so I fucking lied.

“SEND MESSAGE TO DENISE,” I say. “Get me two cheeseburgers and a chocolate shake and six nuggets with barbecue sauce. Thanks. Now UNPAUSE.”

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