Demo-lition Derby!
The two women sitting at the table in Starbucks were like any two women sitting at a table in any Starbucks, of which there are many. They were, at first glance, of a similar age, and build. Both women were slim and led the unsuspecting observer to assume that they were only in here with their coffees because they were trying to kick their weight-maintaining cigarettes. They were attractive, in a plain sort of way, and looked intelligent enough. The combination offset each other and anyone who would have been foolish enough to horse around their table in an attempt to get noticed and perhaps score (yes, that would be the word they'd use) a phone number would be put off by their intelligent look, which was bound to leave them embarrassed and demoralised, should they work up the nerve to perform the aforementioned horsing around.
So the women were left unmolested by yahoos, and were free to carry on their conversation over coffee.
"Wait. What?" This was the brown-haired one, with curls. She didn't like her curls, but she had them, despite all her attempts to bludgeon them out of existence with a hair straightener.
"Yes, we've had many advances in the future." This was the other brown-haired one, with full-on curls. No attempt had been made to tame them, whatsoever. She was also the one from the future. She'd found that it didn't pay to try and straighten your hair if you were going to time travel, you'd just wind up with a mop of very frizzy hair if you did, which would curl in the first rain whenever it was you were traveling to, which almost inevitably came within fifteen minutes of arriving at the time you'd targeted. This was a rule imposed by temporal laws, which most people suspected had been put in place by whatever force had laid these laws in the first place to discourage people from time traveling simply to get better weather for their picnic or outdoor birthday party.
"But... like what?" The woman who was not from the future attempted to walk a fine line between incredulity and patient understanding. She settled somewhere in the middle of shock, which could be nicely adapted to many interpretations.
"Well, you'll be glad to know, and I know this, because I researched my blip down here by catching a few tapes of you discussing such matters with friends, that we have figured out some very important facts about the human body that were just lying there, undiscovered, for all this time. Pretty obvious, now that we've discovered them, of course. Err, when we'd discovered them, of course. Like the thing about men and babies, of course. That was a big one."
"Men and babies? What about them? Did they discover the chemical that makes them fully capable of sleeping through a crying baby, no matter the time? I'd imagine that would have solved the whole insomnia thing, then."
"No, not quite. That's a good idea, though, we should look into that." The future woman pulled a pen from her bag, which was leaning against a table leg and jotted something down on the napkin she extracted from beneath her coffee cup. "No, we've figured out how to allow men to give birth."
"What!" The present woman was losing her attempts to retain the incredulous air about her.
"Well, 'allow' might be the wrong word... it's more of a forcing it upon them, seeing as how not too many of them were entirely thrilled about the prospect, but, then, that's what you get when women finally get around to studying the sciences. The thing is, these things have side effects. For example." The future woman thumped her fist and the butt end of her pen down on the present woman's hand, which had just been lying casually beside her coffee cup. Some coffee sloshed over the edge of her cup and on to the table. "Feel that?"
"Jesus! What'd you do that for?" The woman held her hand and sat back away from the table and the future woman across from her. Out of striking distance.
To be continued next week.
disclaimer:
Oh, next week we do have a treat for you, yes we do indeed.
If our publishing system works the way it's supposed to, that is.
As it is an automated publishing system there's a really good chance it won't work at all, and the 'treat' will wind up being nothing. In fact, it'll be worse than nothing, because it'll be exactly what you got this week, and that'd be a real bummer.
Okay, okay, I don't want to ruin the surprise, here, but it's going to be the conclusion of this week's story.
So, off to bed now, kids, and wait with bated breath until next week!
NB. Don't bate your breath too much, because a week is a long time to keep up bated breath.
Good luck.
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