Adam blinked in the bright light of the transport pod. The other passengers regarded him mildly, not really noticing him, and he relaxed. His nondescript, comfortable clothing wasn’t that much different from other men’s attire on the pod, although the women and ungendered were in fancier outfits. Everyone was perched on individual sleek, padded seats in a black-and-silver motif that matched the trim around the streamlined windowed walls.
He spotted the young woman he’d been following settling herself on the far side of the pod, so Adam slid into an empty seat beside an elderly lady dressed in a scarlet traveling cape, who tilted her wide-brimmed hat to block him from her haughty scowl. The seat on his other side was empty, with a child in short pants next along the row, moving his hands in the air as he manipulated unseen objects on his own Lucid.
The second Adam was seated, the pod beeped and launched itself into its tube, accelerating rapidly to supersonic speed. Adam rubbed behind his ear at the unaccustomed pressure of the pace’s force, even normalized by the pod’s dampeners. With an alert on his display, Adam watched his bank account balance tumble from 102,100 to 2,100, a stomach-churning drop in his finances. He tried not to think about how many years it had taken him to save 100,000. He had no answer for how he would get home again, so he decided not to think about that, either.
