Paranoia ✓

XV: Daniel - Dodging the Boulder

Goodbye America. Daniel waved his hand across the window as the Air China flight took off for a 14 hour departure from Ronald Reagan International Airport in Washington D.C. But, right before he took off, he did the unthinkable. He had mounted the steps of treason and released confidential documents of the wrongdoings the NSA had conducted over the past six years he had been working there. He planned to live his life out in China, maybe get a job at a local computer repair store. He did take two semesters of Mandarin in college, although he doubted he remembered most of it. He could only hope for the best.

And to think a couple of hours ago he was having doubts about going through with this. On his way to the airport he was sitting on the Yellow Line on the D.C. Metro and a couple of college students entered onto the train—well Daniel hoped they were college students. They certainly did have mouths like them. They were a racially mixed bunch: with some African Americans, a couple of white girls, and an Asian man thrown into the group. Daniel tried his best to ignore them—but they were obnoxiously loud, and drunk.

Daniel was cursing himself for choosing to fly so soon. He should have waited until morning. Now he had to deal with the college drunkards coming home from events they called "raves." He heard it mentioned a couple of times over conversations he listened into at the NSA. The definition of a rave varied from college to college. However, a majority of the time it referred to an extensively long party, sometimes lasting all night, where the kids drink a lot, smoke a lot of weird drugs, and dance uncontrollably to pulsating electronic music that was so loud it could rock a building to its foundations.

Daniel knew he was in for a rough ride when the drunk group of kids boarded the train. It was 2 A.M. and the Metro was about to close in about an hour. He usually walked to the front of the train because it was a habit. The front car usually contained the least amount of people, especially during rush hour. People loved to crowd into the middle cars, yet they seem to forget the train has multiple cars—or maybe they were just too lazy to walk the distance to the front. In either case, the front car was the best bet to have breathing room at rush hour.

But at two in the morning, there's no competition for breathing room because the entire car was empty. At least, until those college students came on.

The first words he heard mumbled from the group came from one of the drunk white girls who screamed aloud. "I'm so fucking wasted."

There were five of them, three guys and two girls. Two of the guys were black, one was Asian and the two girls were white. Stereotypical college campus ratio nowadays, although it was a bit lighter on the African American side.

"I think we have the car to ourselves," the Asian guy pointed out.

No, Daniel thought. I'm right here. Oh God this can't be good.

"Yo Derek," one of the black guys slurred. "We can knock out number six on the bucket list."

Derek smiled and one of the white girls asked. "Whoa, what's number six?"

Derek turned to the other black guy and laughed unnecessarily loud. "Noah, I'll let you tell them."

Noah unbuckled his belt. "It's when we fuck on a Metro car."

Oh God, Daniel thought. How many more stops till Reagan? He looked at the Metro map and remembered the last stop he was at was U-Street. He had a bit of a ways to go.

"But there's three of you boys and only two of us girls?" one of the girls said almost confused from all the math.

"Yeah, but Sean and I are bi," Derek pointed out. "So which one of you lucky ladies wanna have two dicks inside them today?"