Trip on the Monorail to Alma-Thou

While the above-described events were taking place in Analda, which smelled of sperm and sweat, in the blessed city of Jokyo, our old acquaintances, the Kasakhian superhero Nar-Tai and the Joponese professor Ando Minamoto, were heading to the monorail station to visit their mutual friend named Jorge Osorio. They were walking through a park where a man with a guitar case on his back was sitting on one of the benches.

When they passed him, he stood up from the bench to meet them, but instead of greeting him or even nodding his head as polite people should, Nar-Tai and Ando silently walked on, not paying attention to him, and even when the stranger called out to them, they continued walking forward, not looking back, like idiots. Then the guitarist spat angrily after them, but immediately became frightened by his own prank and, jumping up from the bench, disappeared behind the trees.

You're probably wondering now - who was this persistent stranger with a guitar on his shoulder? The answer is simple: it was one of those hired The Omen Ican agents that the lustful Asia Scallop mentioned when recruiting "Damien The Thorn".

It was from the words of this idiot that rumors reached her silly little head that the Kasakhian who had fallen from heaven to earth was heading to the monorail station together with his Joponese friend.

We won't bother you with a description of how this guitarist reported to his superiors what he had seen, but will follow our dear friends Nar-Tai and Ando. When they finally arrived at the station, they saw that there was no one there; only a gloomy Joponese man of indeterminate age was standing at the door, and a few drunks were dozing right under the open sky, sprawled near the entrance...

But the most interesting thing was that there were two identical buses parked next to each other at the entrance to the station. Nar-Tai and Ando looked at each other, and then simultaneously stepped towards one of the buses - but at that very moment they were stopped by a gloomy Joponese man. He said:

"Where are you going? Come back! This is the property of Koji Suzuki's Secondary School No. 3! And you, as I see, are not teachers and certainly not schoolchildren!"

Nar-Tai, hearing these words, grabbed his friend by the elbow and politely but firmly dragged him to the entrance of the station itself. Ando, however, seemed to still be eager to look inside these school buses, but his Kasakhian friend had already managed to open the door and pushed his comrade in with the force of his powerful arm.

Ando, of course, was a little irritated by Nar-Tai's persistence, and therefore could not resist saying a few affectionate words to him:

"Nar-Tai, what are you doing?" he began in a hysterical tone. "That idiot wanted to insult us! I had to punch him in the face!"

"I recognize the old brawler," Nar-Tai answered him peacefully. "But in the end, weren't you the one who wanted to take me to Jorge Osorio? So we came to the station, what are you fussing about?"

Ando couldn't help but agree with his friend's ironclad arguments and calmed down as quickly as he had boiled over. And then both of our heroes marched to the monorail station ticket office, surrounded by bright advertising screens.

Posters with images of the city at night hung on the walls, reminding of the upcoming trip. Behind a glass partition sat a cashier in uniform.

"Hello! Where are you headed?" she asked with a friendly smile, looking up from the monitor.

"We need two tickets," Ando replied. "We're going to Alma-Thou!"

"Got it! That'll be three hundred," the cashier said, typing something into the computer.

Nar-Tai looked a little embarrassed as he looked at his pockets.

"Brother," he said to Ando, "will you pay for both of us?"

Ando nodded with a smile.

"Don't worry, I'll figure everything out."

With these words, he took out his wallet and quickly counted the cash.

"I only have two hundred and fifty in cash, but I can put the remaining fifty on the card," Ando suggested.

"No problem!" the girl accepted his offer with a smile. "I have a terminal," she replied, taking out the device. "Just hold your card up."

Ando did as he was told, and the terminal beeped approvingly, as if someone had stepped on a mouse. The cashier quickly carried out the transaction and, holding out the tickets, said:

"Everything is ready! Here are your tickets. Have a nice trip!"

"Thank you!" Nar-Tai thanked for both of them.

After that, our friends headed towards the exit to the platform, from which even here the voices of people and the sounds of passing trains could be heard.

They went down the stairs - it was completely dark there; a ray of light from the flashlight of a guard sitting in a booth at the entrance flashed ahead, but then quickly went out: apparently the guard decided not to waste his duty time on some quite decent citizens.

Nar-Tai and Ando meanwhile passed through some room with many doors without windows and in complete silence: only occasionally quiet laughter or whispers were heard behind one or another door...

Finally they found themselves at the exit to the open sky, and before their eyes there was a monorail platform, twinkling with lights. The rails, sparkling in the light of the night lanterns, stretched far, far away and were lost Antichrist knows where.

At that very moment, there were several people standing on the platform, waiting for their train, each of them deep in thought. Ando squinted and looked around.

"It's strange, there's usually not enough room to swing a cat here," he said, turning to Nar-Tai, who seemed to be engrossed in something else.

Nar-Tai at this time stared at the huge panoramic window, behind which a view of the illuminated Jokyo unfolded.

The sky above them was strewn with stars, and tall buildings sparkled among them, as if reaching towards them.

"Maybe no one wants to go to Alma-Thou," Nar-Tai replied, not taking his eyes off the city. "After all, you Joponese haven't lost your pride enough to move to the capital of UJK."

Ando wanted to say something at that moment, but then suddenly a horn sounded - at first distant, but gradually increasing - and a train appeared from around the corner, illuminating the platform with bright lights, due to which Ando was forced to leave Nar-Tai's remark unanswered.

When the train finally stopped, its doors opened automatically, inviting passengers inside.

"Let's go!" Ando exclaimed, and he and Nar-Tai were the first to enter the carriage.

There were even fewer people inside than at the station. The carriage was lit with soft light, creating a cozy atmosphere, but this only increased the feeling of emptiness.

Nar-Tai sat by the window, looking at the flickering lights behind the glass.

"Well, it's pretty empty, pretty empty," he said thoughtfully as the train began to accelerate.

Ando shook his head and opened his mouth, but at that moment the carriage suddenly shook sharply, and he was forced to grab the handrail in order not to fall.

Nar-Tai, keeping his composure, also grabbed the seat with both hands to keep from falling.

"Do you know why the carriage is shaking so much?" he asked his friend, looking at the rapidly flickering lights outside the window.

"There must be some kind of problem on the road," Ando answered, listening to the sounds of the train.

Meanwhile, the train continued to pick up speed, and soon the carriage began to shake even more violently. Bags rattled on the shelves, and the other passengers exchanged worried glances.

"It was a fun ride," Nar-Tai remarked, trying to ease the tension.

Ando refrained from commenting, and instead glanced around the carriage and felt that it was actually quite nice here - much better than when there were so many passengers that there was no room to move or sit.

He saw the bright lights of the city blocks rushing past the window and thought that it wouldn't be so bad to leave Jokyo and take the monorail to Alma-Thou. Nar-Tai, noticing his interested look, smiled.

"Look, do you see a bridge?" Ando's voice suddenly caught his attention, pointing somewhere out the window. "That's Rainbow Dash! They say it's the tallest in the area!"

Nar-Tai, turning back, saw through the window a bridge that crossed a river shimmering with rainbow colors in the evening sun. This sight briefly distracted him from his tense thoughts.

"How about we take a walk there when we return from Alma-Thou?" Ando continued in the meantime, with excitement in his voice.

"You know," Nar-Tai said lazily, "I'm not sure I'll want to go back to your Jokyo after I arrive in my native Alma-Thou."

He immediately regretted his words, because Ando immediately frowned and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Are you serious?" he asked with slight irritation. "I made a friendly offer!"

Nar-Tai, realizing he had made a mistake, immediately softened his tone.

"Sorry, Ando, I didn't mean to offend you," he began to explain. "Just get me straight, it's been so long since I've been back home that I don't really want to go back to Jopon without spending a day in UJK."

Ando, still standing there with a frowning expression, sighed and said:

"And I thought you valued our friendship," he said in a tone of offended innocence.

"Of course I appreciate it," Nar-Tai said, trying to calm him down. "And I'll definitely hang out with you at Jokyo. But not today, or even tomorrow, okay?"

With these words, he rose slightly from his seat and, stretching out his hand forward, lightly patted Ando on the shoulder. He shuddered as if from an electric shock and quickly took a step back, but Nar-Tai was no longer looking at him.

The latter leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, trying to think of nothing else now - but thoughts kept creeping into his head: he thought about Jorge Osorio and what he had told him on the phone.

He remembered him saying, "Your abilities, Nar-Tai, will prove indispensable in what I am about to offer you. I want to make you a drill instructor."

He thought it was a joke then, since Ando had introduced Jorge to him as a computer hardware specialist, but judging by his tone, which brooked no objections, he was being completely serious. Nar-Tai at that moment even forgot to ask what kind of profession this was - drill instructor, - Jorge spoke in such a commanding voice.

But now, when he remembered it, sitting in a half-empty monorail car, he realized that this completely unknown person already saw him as his servant. The realization of this fact was so unpleasant for the freedom-loving nature of Nar-Tai that he did not even immediately understand what exactly he felt for Jorge.

Hatred? Or contempt? Or perhaps simply an unwillingness to dance to someone else's tune? He couldn't figure out which. But it was there - and he decided that until he saw him in person, he would not think of him as an object of hatred.

In the meantime, he had to get to his domain with his friend - from the phone conversation, Nar-Tai understood that Jorge was the owner of a fairly large corporation, and this was not so bad. At least, he could count on good profits in the event that they demanded that he pay them as this incomprehensible "drill instructor".

But all this will happen later, and for now he is riding in a monorail car and trying to relax after an adventurous morning. The thought involuntarily came to his mind that Ando was right to some extent - in this world there really are things more important than self-esteem. For example...

Nar-Tai didn't have time to finish this thought, because the train suddenly stopped moving.

"We've arrived," Ando said. "Let's go. Haven't you forgotten that we have a meeting?"

"That's all I thought about the whole trip," Nar-Tai waved his hand, rising from his seat.

He was a little surprised at how short the route from Jokyo to Alma-Thou was. Apparently, a lot has changed in the monorail's design over the past eight years - either engineers have invented some kind of super-efficient engine, or some other incomprehensible thing.

In any case, he and his friend were already in his hometown of Alma-Thou, where he was about to meet the mysterious Jorge Osorio. He followed Ando out of the train and walked down the marble-lined corridor.

Soon they entered a hall filled with cold Jupiter light, where a staircase began to descend, where two guards of the most severe appearance were waiting for them. They were dressed in untrustworthy black overalls without insignia, and their faces were hidden by gas masks.

One of them held a stun gun slightly smaller than a flashlight, and the other clutched a pistol. Nar-Tai immediately realized that he had nothing to fear from these two - they were, so to speak, an honorary escort.

He didn't know what Ando's job title was at Jorge Osorio, but that didn't matter. The important thing was that now, in the presence of these thugs, he could forget about everything and just follow them. And so he did.

The guards silently escorted him and Ando downstairs, then through the crowded passenger check-in area and finally out onto the street. Nar-Tai looked around.

They, Ando and the honorary escort found themselves in a small square surrounded by tall buildings made of glass and concrete - as faceless as the skyscrapers in all the megacities on Earth.