Ætherglow #38

🌓

“Um, maybe, if you’re not busy, do you want to get lunch?” you say.

It glances at you bewildered. “I was planning to eat, yes, and it is the time of day for that.”

“No, um, I mean, together?”

[Zeta liked that]

“Oh! Sure, okay, if you want to, why not.”

You leave the building together into the cool night air and head toward the food court. It seems most everyone else did too, though, the crowd is intense today. Several conflicting conversations bombard your ears as you walk in. Words and chaotic noise blend together, you lose your grip on your own thoughts. And this is only the hallway leading into the much more crowded looking room where you will find the autokitchens.

Looking next to you, Zeta seems equally uncomfortable, looking guarded with its head down and its arms close to its body. You and it simultaneously reach the conclusion to immediately step back outside.

“Ahh, it’s so loud,” you say.

“We could just go to the dorm building and use the autokitchen there,” it says. “Nobody would be there.”

“That’s sensible. Except, by the time we got there, wouldn’t we not have much time to eat before we had to come back for afternoon class?”

“No. I know a shortcut,” it says, looking into the alley between this building and the next.

“A shortcut, on the wall of a cylinder?”

“Don’t think so linear,” it says. “But, we can eat wherever you want, I guess…I could probably endure this place long enough to use the autokitchen, but I can’t stay in there.”