The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1) (5 page)

The waitress reddened. She bit her bottom lip.
 

“Mate. Drink your tea and be happy with it,” the cockney shouted. He was looking over, his gorilla shoulders raised.

“It’s okay, Darren,” she said, holding her hand up to him. “I did rush this one a bit.” She turned back to Aidan. “I’ll make a new one.”

She took this one away and came back with one that was marginally better. At least the milk didn’t look like it had been gobbed in there.

He forced a smile and pictured himself grabbing the kettle, still hot from pouring the tea, taking it to the waitress and …

Not now … he’s here.

He stopped his train of thought and saw a man open the door and walk in. His hair was a long mess of grey, and his beard was down to his chin. He looked like he’d stolen his clothes from a charity shop. They always do. Odd trousers, jumpers that didn’t fit, all unwashed. He could’ve been sleeping on the streets for all Aidan knew.
 

He watched as the man grabbed a handful of change from his pocket and placed it on the table.
 

The waitress walked over to him and asked what he wanted.

“Something hot, and … full of caffeine,” the man said.
 

“Coffee?” the waitress suggested, her lips still smacking together.

“Well, I guess that will have to do.”
 

The waitress tutted and went to make his drink.

Aidan watched as the man sheepishly shuffled in his seat. He hadn’t been doing well. Perhaps sleeping rough, panhandling, using the change to buy the odd bit of food or drink.
 

That’s him. That’s the target.

Aidan nodded and thought about drinking some of his tea, but he’d left it for too long. The bag had stewed. Aidan could see a fine film of oil floating on the top.

He sat, waited and watched as the man drank his coffee. He seemed to be enjoying every mouthful. Even dipping his spoon into the mug and then licking it, trying to get every last bit of coffee out of it.

When he was done he paid the waitress and then left.

Aidan stood.

Behind him, he heard one of the builders mention finding a hair in their beans and he gagged a little. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the exact change for his tea and left it on the table, before following the man out to the street.

Gary

Gary woke up and rolled onto his back. He stretched his legs out as far as they could go before rolling onto his front. He was hungry. He needed the toilet. He needed sex.

He yawned and then stood. He hadn’t seen the Tall One for a long time. They should begin the mission soon.

He climbed into the litter tray and pushed the pebbles around a bit with his paws but it didn’t feel right. Gary never did something if it didn’t feel right.

Gary could remember the day he was born. Not many humans could do that, but Gary could. And he wasn’t even a human.

He remembered coming out, tail first. He remembered his mother. He remembered his family. He missed them all.
 

He walked over to the bedroom door and dug his claws into the carpet. As he did so, the cool material soothed his nerves. He pulled at it and the strings of fabric tore. His old companion would’ve been angry at him, but he would do it anyway whenever he wasn’t looking. It felt too good not to. You know how it is. Gary had seen more of life than most Tall Ones. For this reason he felt that if he wanted to scratch something, he should be allowed to scratch something. Gary remembered the first time he met a Tall One — a hairless, pink giant. He hadn’t been sure if Tall Ones were food or friend. He pulled his claws out of the carpet and jumped back onto the duvet with cartoon pictures of turtles. He sniffed it. The new Tall One had some strange smells. Like dirt.

He wandered up the bed to where the Tall One rested his head. He pushed and pulled on the fabric. It felt right. He squatted down and peed. Once done, he pushed the fabric around to dry his paws and waited.
 

Tonight, he thought, it will begin.

Moomamu The Thinker

As Moomamu fled the grassy banks with his hands full of Earth currency, his feet began to hurt. The paths were solid and flat and covered in tiny rocks. He kept standing on them, and whenever he ventured to the wrong part of the path the human-moving machines would scream at him.

“Shut up,” he shouted back at them, remembering to point and flick his beard as he did. It was all about dominance, he remembered.

Some of the vehicles were monstrous red blocks full of gatherings of humans from all different tribes. There were humans from a suited clan, always with little cow-skin cases by their sides. There were those from the tribe of black makeup, black hair, and sour facial expressions. The most interesting clan he saw was difficult to describe. Their facial hair came in all shapes and sizes, they were all in early adulthood, they wore ill-fitting clothing from a decade or two prior, and they all had a sense of superiority about them. An unusual tribe for sure.

As he ran past the screaming vehicles, he came across a small round building full of the latter tribesmen. On the sign above it read ‘Shoreditch Grind’.

He smelled the dark roasted caffeine seeds and the cow’s milk seeping out through the open door. The nonsense music followed the smell — banging drums and some shouting. Tribal stuff.

The warmth of the place spilled out, calling to him inside. He’d felt his skin go bumpy and shaky and his nipples had become firm from the cold.

Inside were more of the odd non-uniformed tribe, drinking from little cups of black liquid.

He saw signs that read ‘coffee’, ‘beans’ and a lot of words ending in ‘o’. To his right, he noticed a man in leather shorts drinking from a tiny cup. To his left, a woman with her spawn on her knee drinking from a frothy white lactation thing. The mother, that is.

Moomamu walked up to the man behind the counter. He had olive brown skin and a fine line of hair above his lip.
 

“What can I get you?” he said. His accent was from a different part of Earth. Moomamu recognised it from his time as a Thinker. A plastic badge was pinned to the man’s chest. It read ‘Lucas’.

Moomamu touched his nipples. Still firm from the cold.

“Have you got anything hot?” he said and smiled at the man.

“Erm … yes.” He looked up and down at Moomamu. “Interesting outfit by the way. Very brave.”

“Okay, I will take one of your hot beverages.”

Moomamu noticed Lucas looking at his shoulder, at the tattoo. He’d forgotten about it.

“Okay, tea? Coffee? Macchiato? Cappuccino?” He pointed to the sign above his head.

Moomamu didn’t want Lucas to think that he didn’t understand. He laughed like Lucas had told him a joke and said “I’ll take a cappuccino.”
 

Lucas turned around and began working away on some metal machinery that screamed into the small metal bucket of cow’s milk and drooled deep dark caffeine into a cup.

“Take a seat,” he said. “I’ll bring it over to you.”

Moomamu tried to make sense of the music coming through the sound boxes in the corners of the room. It was a blend of tribal drumming and synthesised melodies, overlaid with vocal harmonies and a man shouting the words “Keep me coming back” over and over. Moomamu could tell by the man’s voice that he’d never procreated. He didn’t know why he knew. Maybe it was something in his voice. It had an air of unfulfillment in it.

Moomamu sat down on a bench next to the woman with her spawn. He thought it was strange to see her drinking cow’s milk when she had two ripe bosoms of her own.
 

“You know you could just …”

The woman looked at Moomamu. He was about to go into the details of lactating mammary glands when Lucas arrived with his beverage.

He placed it in front of him and waited expectantly.
 

“What?” Moomamu said. “You want your currency now?”

“No, no,” Lucas said, smiling.

Moomamu sensed that Lucas was unhappy with him, but he wasn’t sure why. It was something to do with the facial movements. On the surface he was happy. His teeth were showing, his lips were curled at the edges, and his cheeks were flush. But in the micro-expressions — a slight dip in his brow — Moomamu could see his dissatisfaction.
 

He did his best to mirror Lucas’s face before he turned to his cappuccino and Lucas walked back to the counter.

“You should’ve said thanks,” the woman said. “It’s customary to say thanks in England.”

Moomamu looked over to her and her little egg-headed larva.
 

“Thanks,” he said, making his face do the smile configuration, but if she could read his micro-expressions she might see something a little different. She’d have seen that Moomamu didn’t like her. In fact he wanted her to leave. Then he could use her baby as currency for more food and beverages.

“That’s okay, duck,” she said with a chuckle before going back to her drink.

Moomamu smelled through the frothy bubbles and got a whiff of the caffeine. His nostrils flared and a shiver of warmth ran down his spine.

“Oh,” he said. “This is good.”

He sniffed some more and then licked the top of the froth. It was sweet and creamy and it made his taste buds dance. He giggled.

The woman looked at him again.

“Just leave me be, human woman, I’m enjoying my hot caffeine drink.”

She tutted and said it was called a ‘cappuccino dear’ and turned back to her spawn.

Moomamu dipped his face a little more into the drink and sighed. He noticed other people in the café looking at him and felt himself become embarrassed and hot.

He picked the drink up and poured some of it into his mouth. The caffeine hit his tongue, and wow. It burned a little at first, which caught him off guard.

He then pursed his lips and blew into it. The blowing motion came naturally to him, like he’d been doing it forever. In fact he’d done everything — walking, running, shouting, and now blowing, with ease, like he’d been doing it for years. How did he even know the language so well? Was it the body he was in? If it belonged to someone before him, it must have some residual thought patterns bouncing around in there.

Or, perhaps being human was easy, or Moomamu was great. Difficult to tell for sure.

But then he blew too hard into the cappuccino and the froth flew upwards and hit his face.

He found himself laughing again, but then quietened when he saw the others looking at him.

The flavour was so rich and deep and his body warmed throughout. He’d never experienced such a strange delight before. Various sensations playing on several of his new human senses.

He tipped the receptacle upside down and shook whatever remained into his awaiting open mouth.

“Another one,” he shouted to Lucas behind the counter.

He looked at Moomamu with his brow furrowed, but he nodded and said “Okay”.

A few minutes later and Moomamu’s second cappuccino arrived and was better than the first. A perfect white foam top hiding the black within.

“You know,” Lucas said, “I like your style.”

Moomamu didn’t know what he was talking about, so he nodded.
 

Lucas folded his arms and looked at Moomamu’s beard, his tattoo, his pants.

“I can tell you don’t know anything about coffee, but here in Shoreditch it’s more about the attitude than the knowledge. We can teach you how to do the difficult stuff. How would you feel about working here? In the Grind?”

“The Grind? I thought it was called the Shoreditch Grind?”

“It is, but I shortened it.”

“Okay, well, you better get a new sign then.”

Moomamu held out his pile of currency from the park. He didn’t know how much any of it was.

“How much currency will you trade me for my slavery?”

Lucas looked at the metal circlets and single paper currency with his eyebrow raised.

“I can pay you a little more than that,” he said.

“Okay, human caffeine man. You should know that I don’t plan on being here for long. I will soon go back to my home with the stars. You see, I am meant for big things, much bigger than you could even imagine. I am somewhat of a god to you.”

“Yeah, sure,” Lucas said. “Fine. Just like all my other employees.”

Carol Francis

“So it was only really in the last five minutes, in the last day of the year, that the predecessors of humans stretched their backs, and looked up a little more, and started calling themselves homo sapiens,” she said into the phone.

Indie was lying on the tiled kitchen floor next to Carol. She was nibbling on her paw.
 

On the other end of the phone she wasn’t even sure if June was still listening. She could hear her breathing, but she hadn’t said a word in over an hour. She could’ve been sleeping for all Carol knew.

On the shelf above her there was a rosette that Indie had won earlier in the year. Fastest flyball run. It was next to a photo of herself, her husband Jim, and their two children. That was from a few years back.

“And then, if you think about that, human life as we know it only really existed in the last five minutes of the year, so think about your own life, your own measly eighty years or so, and you realise you’re not even a minute of this planet’s time. You don’t even get that much, combined with the fact that there’re seven billion humans on the planet and you have to think that we don’t really matter at all, June.”

June made a “mmmmn” sound. It wasn’t even a word, but it told Carol that she was boring.

“I’m sorry June,” she said.

“What? Why are you sorry?” June said.

“I totally forgot what you were asking me to attend,” Carol admitted.

“Training,” June said, seemingly waking herself back up. “I need you to come to agility training on Wednesday because we desperately need to get ready for competition. It’s a big one, super important, and we need all hands on deck to make it work.”

Carol took a deep breath.
 

Indie’s tail wagged with tired enthusiasm.

“Have you not been listening to a word I’ve been saying?”