You’ve never quite liked flights. Being packed into a tube like so many sardines is upsetting enough, but having the damn thing twist and rumble and pop your ears through the whole ordeal is just icing on the shit-cake.
At least I got the window seat, you morosely think. The view isn’t half bad, starting with the triangular Wonder-Res—
“Oh, that’s the Wonder-Resort! ” a voice to your right practically shouts into your ear. Before you can plead for him to calm down, your dad has intruded directly into your personal space, craning his head directly over the book you were reading and resting his arms on your armrest.
He turns his bearded face to you, eyes gleaming, and more needless trivia spews out of his mouth. “Did you know that they have special transport to each borough there? There’s a rocket-shaped magnet-train for Wonder-Galaxy, a horse-drawn carriage for Wonder-Kingdom, and a…”
You try your best to tune him out by turning up the volume for your in-flight entertainment — all Wondertainment media, not that you expected anything different — and you watch your dad’s jaw jabber up and down. You’d shoot a ‘Who cares?’ or ‘God can you be quiet?’ in his direction, but you have enough experience with your father to know it’d have little to no effect on him
Instead of having a somewhat interesting hobby like prostitutes or drugs, your dad had become fascinated with nerdery.
And what’s worse, he was a nerd for Wondertainment Studios. The very same company that churned out roughly eighty percent of the world’s most insipid entertainment and bought out the schmucks who produced the rest of that superlative. You hadn’t really paid attention in Econ — you instead made yourself busy exchanging moon-eyes and notes with Zoe, a girl you rather fancied — but you were pretty sure that some anti-trust whatevers aren't being enforced. Or something.
And what’s worst is that he likes the old stuff. The sword and sandals live-action shows and cartoons of the eighties, or sci-fi dreck with the ‘aliens’ made up in rubber prosthetics and three inches of makeup. You could barely change a channel without an aside glance and a scoff from your pop, about how “This is nothing like what they had when I was your age.”
His company had a sales contest that he was utterly disinterested in till the grand prize was announced; a two-person trip to WonderWorld; and some sort of special package at that. You had never seen him work like that before and the way he looked by the end of the whole rigmarole — eyes ringed with dark circles, a forest of stubble across his face, and his voice hoarse from all the calls he made. But he had won, and thus sealed your fate.
The last you had seen of your house was your mom’s sympathetic eyes gazing at you from the window; most of your mother-son bonding time was through the shared misery of the family costumes he forced you into for some esoteric convention.
You risk a look at your dad’s seat, but thankfully, his attention is off you or the window. Unfortunately, he’s watching one of his favorite shows, the reason you took this trip. You stifle a sigh.
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