The Green Yonder

Promoted

“So what do you think about these drapes for the apartment?” Laureen projected an image from her Holographic Orbiting Life Organizer in front of my face.

I had been trying to catch some rest on the couch, and she was constantly bugging me with meaningless design decisions. “They look fine enough, honey.” I tried my best to fake a smile. I didn’t care about how she decorated the place, it was all for her anyway.

“I don’t want to get something if you’re not going to like it!” She squealed.

I sighed heavily. “Laureen we’re only getting drapes to make you happy. Get what you want.”

She furrowed her brow and pouted her lips. “We’re supposed to be a team!”

I looked at her doubtfully and she turned away.

“…you’re supposed to take care of me…” she mumbled to herself.

Laureen was your typical dome girl. No skills, no talents, but pretty. Very, very pretty. I suppose in the domes, it counts as a talent.

If someone had asked me at that exact moment why her and I were together, I couldn’t have told them. I was sure she felt the same way. We didn’t necessarily want to be together, but we both recognized it was the right move. I needed her like she needed me.

We met at a party a few years before that. I had been working in the shipping yard for a while and my hard work was finally starting to pay off. My countless miserable shifts of pulling endless levers had finally come to a close.

I had just been promoted to foreman of a yard. Not the same yard I started in—it already had one—but a nearby one. Same dome so I didn’t have to commute. I hated the commute. It wasn’t that I hated driving, but the freeways aren’t real driving. You get in a crappy maglev car, which you can’t really even control, and then age some while you wait to reach a destination. Teleportation was fun enough the first couple times, but it pretty quickly lost its luster.

As a soon to be foreman, I had already received my advance pay promotion bonus, and what a bonus it was. My friends couldn’t get enough of it.

“Old Jack Downs, bringing em down!” Tucker made imaginary pistols with his hands and pretended to fire them at me. He was already quite drunk. We sat in a local upper-second bottom-class bar.

“I can’t believe you fucking—” he stopped speaking and put a hand to his mouth in contemplation, deciding whether he should vomit or not it seemed. “We’re cool .” He wiped his lips of the phantom bile. “I can’t believe you fucking got promoted to a fucking foreman.”

He looked down and shook his head in disbelief. “How long were you under Doughty Jack?”

I put a hand to my chin and looked up in thought. “Three years.”

Tucker hiccupped as punctuation throughout his sentences. “I can’t believe. You got promoted. After just three years.” He shook his head in disbelief again. “Most guys take at least ten.”

James chimed in. “Well our boy Jack here, he isn’t no ordinary fellow!” He grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me in affection. “He’s our boy!”

Tucker smiled. It was half emotion and half drunkenness. “He’s the MAN!”

James gave Tucker a look to shut it, but it was too late. I glared at him.

“Or whatever, you know what I mean.” Tucker made apologetic motions with his hands.

James smiled again. “Jack Downs, bringing ‘em down, the best in the town, here to turn it around.” He swooped each arm as he made a rhyme.