The Mechjudge

Just a random scene from a 120,000 word Young Adult sci-fi novel I wrote 10ish years ago.

~~~

Claire and Hugh lingered in the café’s entrance.

It was old-school. Sheet metal canopy, bell above the door, large windows rounding about the almost trailer-esque shape of the building. Inside, a jukebox, broken cause it played too many songs, and unfixed because everyone’d heard enough. A long white menu along the wall, mostly just white space, half the menu already on the counter for the eye to see: pies, cakes, coffee. Waitresses curled beneath the menu’s overhang, their elbows cocked, their heads lowered atop their crossed hands. Their red aprons had the sense of having seen better, brighter days.

One waitress mumbled a greeting, but it was swallowed up in the loud ching of a cash register. A man smoking a cigarette and fisting a cloth down a mug tipped his head up, and then returned to his work. The cook was in the back, peering sternly from his grimy kitchen dugout, arms folded over the counter in wait of orders that so rarely called for his services. His face looked like a grease pan. He looked like the man who would destroy a jukebox while everyone looked on.

Hugh ushered Claire in.

The patrons of the place regarded the newcomers with glancing stares.

Claire sat down first, hopping on a stool, but Hugh took her arm and when she stared at her father the man shook his head. They took a booth.

A waitress came by.

“Coffee,” Hugh said.

“And for you?”

Claire thought. “Hot chocolate?” she asked, accentuating the question as if to brace for the inevitable we don’t have that.

But the waitress simply turned on her heels and walked away.

“Fine place,” Hugh said, cozying his elbows up on the table. He pushed a salt shaker back against the wall, looked at it, and then touched it again for no particular reason.

Claire nodded. “Yeah.”

A window gave them a good look of the city streets with all its steam and people and cars and leashed dogs and closed umbrellas and green bins and seemingly permanent scaffoldings and the nonstop mishmash of languages, a world where everyone was at once local and foreign.

The waitress dropped their drinks off. The girl stared at hers in anticipation.

“It’s not too hot,” the waitress said.

“Oh.” Claire pursed her lips in disappointment. “That’s okay.”

“Did you want whip cream? We’re all out so I could maybe use some syrup or…”

Claire glanced at her father.

Hugh smiled and nodded. “We’re fine, thanks.”

The waitress curtsied and with her knees still bending, spun away and left.

“That was weird,” Claire said, curling her hands around the mug. It wasn’t hot at all. She sipped.

Her father nodded to the rest of the café. He kept his voice low and said, “Look around you. These are the people that are going to be left behind.”

Claire swallowed her drink. She stared at her father until he noticed.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re going to be left behind.”

He gave her a flippant wave of the hand followed by a smirk. “Nonsense.”

Claire talked like a girl who had cried enough over the issue. She spoke in seriousness, “You are going to be left behind, dad, and you’ll never see me or mom again.”

And Hugh responded like a man who’d spent his every evening mulling that very reality over, and over, and over: “That’s right, and there’s nothing wrong with it. I don’t deserve a spot more than anyone else.”

A car came squealing down the road and echoing honks chased it into the city’s heart. An old lady stood in the wake of its squall, hollering with gravel in her voice, blaming the entire teenage population for ruining her sense of serenity.

“Besides,” Hugh said, grinning. “I kinda like it here.”

“I’ve seen how people are when it’s good. It’s gonna be terrible,” Claire said, thumbing her mug back and forth. She looked up. “When everyone leaves. It’s gonna be terrible, dad.”

Hugh shrugged. “It will be what it is.” He looked around the diner, eyeing the patrons. A waitress was watching them from behind the counter. Hugh leaned forward and whispered, “Keep your voice down about you going off-planet.”

The girl sipped her drink. It was already cold and the cocoa ran down her throat like grit.

“Say,” Hugh said. “What’s this I hear about you getting into another fight at school?”

Mom, Claire thought rather accusatively. She looked up. “Yeah, it was nothing.”

“Nothing? I didn’t teach my girl to fight.”

“Well, strictly speaking, you didn’t teach her to get beat up, either.”

Hugh bobbed his head, raising an eyebrow and sipping at his coffee. “Fair point.” He set the mug down and crossed his arms over the table. “That’s gonna be it, though. You hear? No more fighting.”

“I can’t control what happens,” Claire said.

“But try, alright?”

“I’ll try.”

“Alright.” Hugh reached over the table and patted his daughter on the cheek. Curling his hand back around the coffee mug, he asked, “So, you think it’s gonna be really bad, huh?”

Claire looked about the diner. Some people glanced away as her eyes passed them. Others kept staring. She sipped her drink and lied, “It’ll be fine.”