FL0005
"NICE LOTUS"
DATELINE: AN ISLAND (4:05 AM, year unknown)
Fellow passengers, it’s another beautiful day in the Limoverse. Darkness shatters into pieces once again and red-handed dawn slips away with the night. When the coast is clear, we follow.
Over the glassy water we glide until a breeze chatters by and banks us east towards wisps of smoke rising from a fire. We alight on a sandbar where four technicians are busy sacrificing a tractor. They dismember it gear by gear, dousing the best valves with gasoline and sorting the rest by market price.
Didn’t imagine we’d see you so soon, says the one up front. His lips don’t move, but we hear him. You’re not here for us anyway. Not today. You’re here to see The Readers.
We find them behind the junk pile: crows, each the size of a refrigerator, beaks tuned to the babble of the breeze.
“The Readers don’t talk unless you trade with them,” crackles a speaker mounted high on an old windmill. We turn our pockets inside out but there’s only banana peels and crumbs.
“Unacceptable,” the speaker declares. “Come back with something they want.”
Dispirited, we flag down a passing beach vendor and order
It’s the best thing we’ve had for as long as we can remember. “Our secret here is that the water is never too hot and never too cold,” the vendor confides. “If you’re free you can always stay a while...”