Number 52 picked the couple up at the Lucky Fortune at around Midnight, where they were waiting for him outside, without jackets in the cool 58 degree weather. As soon as they got in Trevor’s cab, they started to argue, to the point of screaming and then the female began to pummel the male until he got out of the cab and asked #52 to call him another cab, as he walked towards the building entrance. Trevor reached into the female’s mind to find the link that would complete her, but instead he found something that he had never seen before, which was strange, because an NUC agent has seen everything. The female’s mind had been compartmentalized, without damaging any of the connections necessary for functioning, on a primitive planet like Earth. In other words, Trevor was unable to get to the area where the brain and the mind merged to create consciousness, and teleo was impossible. She was anti-teleo, and this was not the work of the ICUD, but at the same time it favored them. It marked a new phenomenon, that could be called a mutation, on an interdimensional level. Number 52, would have to contact the other 11, after he finished his shift. After # 25 arrived, the female instructed #52 to leave.
“Hi!” I said, as my passenger shut the door and began to buckle his seat belt next to me.
“Just get me the fuck out of here as fast as you can, and don’t ask for my god damned address, just take me home,” my passenger angrily blurted out.
Over the past 7 years that I’ve driven a cab here in Salem, I’ve had this guy for a fare at least 100 times, so unless he moved, I knew exactly where he lived. I gave the car gas as I pulled out of the driveway and onto Lancaster as I headed to South Salem. After we got started the guy began to complain about his girlfriend that went in the other cab and said that she was a whore.
“Would you have a whore for a girlfriend?” My passenger asked me.
Years of experience with emotional drunks told me to ignore him, but since I knew what he was like I knew that he would demand a response, so I told him, “No, but then I’m not you.”
“Okay,” he said, but what if she was a whore, what would you do?
“I’ve been married for the last 39 years,” I told him, “so that’s not an issue for me.”
“What if your wife was a whore?” He asked me.
“She’s not,” I said, “because a whore accepts money for sex, and my wife never has,” I told him.
“What do you want to bet that your wife would do me and my friends if the price was right?” My passenger asked.
What my passenger was talking about was the story of Hosea and his wife Gomer, in the Old Testament. God commanded Hosea to marry a whore, and her unfaithfulness represented God’s marriage and relationship with ancient Israel. However, on the here and now level, this is the point that a cab driver has to decide whether to get mad and throw the guy out of the cab, or engage him and see how far he can take it. I chose the latter. “Exactly what are you talking about and for how much?” I asked
At that point, my passenger became apologetic and said that he was sorry and didn’t mean to offend me, which was unusual, because he has never apologized before, for anything. Then as we pulled up to the light he asked me if I wanted to make out, and when I asked what he just said he said he was just kidding, because he was drunk.
This was the same guy who told me that he punched out gay men who purchased him drinks at the 300 Club, back when it was the gay bar. It was the same guy that spent a year in jail because he was forced to protect himself from his drunkenly insane girlfriend, who broke into his house and began to beat him with a blender. It was the same guy who threatened to kick my ass because I was asking him to pay me when I got him to his house when he was ridiculously drunk countless times.
When we finally arrived at his house, he paid me and gave me a $5.00 tip, as he stumbled out of the cab. My next passenger was Frank, the ex minister who now had a gambling addiction, that he appeased after his family went to bed. This time he was at the Stonefront Tavern, and when he got in the cab, he told me that he lost a lot of money and only had $8.00 to pay for his ride home.
“Take the short way,” he said.
I took the shortest way that I knew, but the fare still came to $8.90. Frank gave me 3 singles and a five, like he promised and said that if there was a problem to tell the boss to call him, because he was doing radio advertising for the cab company. I wanted to tell him that he was shorting me and not the boss, who got his cut one way or the other, but decided to suck it in again and told him thank you as he got out of the cab.
Around 2:00 AM, when I was heading West on Mission and was behind an Affordable Towing truck at the light at 25th we both got caught at the light. When the light changed the tow truck took a minute to get going and as I entered the intersection the light turned yellow, when my cab stalled. While I was pumping the gas and putting it in neutral, I saw two flashes and realized that I was flashed by the automatic cameras running a red light.
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