Stick your void in my face and say that you love me.

So said the sign. Putu waited for the bus at the bus stop. Someone had put a large sticker on the sign. The sign was important because it told those waiting how long until the bus arrived. Now it told those waiting to put their void in someone’s face and say you love them.

“Did’ya see?” said a voice next to Putu. “’Bout the fella who killed all those children in the church.” Putu wondered what a ‘void’ was. “Using only tomatoes.” Putu wondered if this person was talking, or talking to him?

Putu nodded and left it at that. People on this planet were stuffed like pores on a skin, no time to get to know them all. He also had a rule to never trust anyone who spoke about tomatoes.

“Did’ya see?” said the voice again. The huddle of bodies at a bus stop always become a temporary nation with a common enemy: tardy public transport. Putu preferred when they united silently, not via idle chit-chat.

A hand fumbled inside Putu’s pocket and Putu was alarmed, until he realized it was his own. His hand stroked the small pair of cymbals like a mother trulophon nursing its conjoined offspring. Lulls through his day, quiet alleys soundproofed by trash bags, a toilet stall, or curled under the desk in his cubicle, the cymbals he always employed then. They kissed like two oyster shells made of eight-ton tacky-tak, they soothed the mind like a hundred newborns massaging the neocortex into a rhythmic hum.

Putu turned to the voice.

First impressions are the handicap of the human mind. Blue, black, big, broad, white at the edges, streaked with silver, or simply riddled with noses. Brains lap these up like cold soup on a holiday to the surface of the sun, all that colour association gets jammed in there and it’s as tough as mould to scrape out.

At least the Splatinator-12 was invented.

The Splatinator-12, or course, splats any human you see with a ghostly, multi-chrome shadow. The entire body, from toe to toupee, is erased and replaced with the average human shape, which dances through a parade of metallic colours like bismuth on a tanning bed. All this technology, packed inside one inch squared lenses squeezed into the cavity walls of the eyeballs.

Putu turned to the voice and saw it had come from a brilliant human form dancing in a sea of silver and pink and it also danced a conservative Lindy Hop with its legs. The Splatinator-12 also washed away the way someone moved, too.

“Did’ya see?” said the starlight blue phantom as it clapped its feet together.

“Hmm, no. What?” said Putu.

“Tomatoes. Forty of them, smooshed straight into the eyeballs. Gorey, eh?” said the Lindy Hopper who now transitioned to a solo form of foot-long Tango.

“Who? At the store?” said Putu.

“No. No – what? At the church, eighteen children. All smooshed – ha! His Splatinator-12 had gone loose, so they say. Thought he was under attack,” said the Tango Hopper.

“How terrible.” said Putu. How his day would have been if he did not have this knowledge now. He cursed his brain for absorbing knowledge, cursed those who gave drivel out. This was likely media-generated mush, made by little intelligent cuts of cortices, and who would trust a teaspoon of brain?

“Do you dance?” said Putu.

“What?” said the Tango Hopper.

“Dance? Sammy Davis Jr., Killo Maine, Brazzy Talic. Dance?” said Putu.

“What? Naw.” said the Tango Hopper. The history of dance was not the history of human catastrophe and so lacked any gory awe. The Tango Hopper turned away.

“I like to dance.” said Putu, stroking the cymbals in his pocket.

The varicoloured, spring-footed figure looked away.

The bus clunked around the corner and rattled itself still. Putu took out his cymbals, tinged them together, and hopped on board.