Flash Fiction

The Continent Cruiser pulls almost silently into the small city of Wales.

The city has grown, like many on the cruiser route, quite speedily since the initial creation of The Loop, as the route was known. Wales had long been a small, little frequented, first nation town. But because of its location at the shortest crossing of the Bering Strait it had been chosen as a stop site. As soon as the tunnel plans were announced the town of Wales started growing from a backwater to a city with a notional population of 30,000 souls with the cruiser station at its heart. Officially known as Kingkinkgin Stop both it and the area around it have become known as Kinky by both cruisers and locals alike.

As the massive cruiser pulls to its halting, the doors slide apart and ramps fold down. Passengers, popularly known as cruisers, disgorge. It will sit for a standard loop hour, recharging, restocking and recycling. The mass of the disgorged, are mostly recruits for the industries growing up around the new city. The sign above the main exit doors read 'Welcome to Wales, where your heart grows!' No one has ever read it, but most of Wales work for the organ replacement industry. Outside the station cruisers can hire two or three wheeled power cycles or simply take a travelator to their destination.

Like any halt on the loop, outside the station, there are plenty of places to eat and sleep. It is in one of these places, a seemingly respectable restaurant that Akna Aklaq works. She works there not because she needs, or wants, to but because it is an ideal venue to oversee the comings and goings, and overhear discarded bites of gossip. Akna's job is to manage the eaterie, it isn't at all necessary as it is all fully automated. The punters though, like it, especially when they realise she is first nation, a natie. They all sympathise with the crushing weight of all the incomers brought by The Loop, but they keep coming. The information she gathers whilst playing the put upon first nation local is passed along to the leadership of the NFTA. Occasionally she is asked to make an info drop. Today was one of those occasions She is alert from first signing in for her shift. She regularly feels for her wrist wrap. It is always there, always quietly flicking through its data load.

When the doors slide open for the umpteenth time that morning, she knows that this is her contact. The opening of the doors causes a breeze to flutter the ethnic items on the walls of the eaterie. Management thought they added to the littering authenticity. Akna carefully makes herself as scarce as possible and when the contact calls her over to rectify some manufactured issue she deliberately avoids responding immediately. As she approaches his table she deftly touches the load pad of the wrist wrap, she knows the contact will have done the same. The contact waves his hand in a practical manner and Akna, seemingly accidentally, almost casually knocks her wrap against his. When the phoney issue is supposedly resolved she turns, ready to retreat to the quietest area of the eaterie. It is then that she realises that all the other punters in the place have stopped what they are doing and are turning towards her and the contact. They, there are five of them, are all producing stun weapons. Akna briefly thinks of running and she is sure that her contact does too, but neither do. Both surrender.