There was a man on the bus this morning carrying a nuclear weapon. But let me start at the beginning.
It’s raining this morning. That’s okay. I stand at the bus stop, waiting for a bus – there’re a bunch of routes that go past my place, and pretty much any of them will get me to work.
The first bus comes along. It’s obviously a long way from full, and the driver obviously sees me, because he waves to me and makes obscure gestures as he … drives straight past. He does not stop. Perhaps I don’t look important enough.
Another bus approaches. This one stops, and I get on. There are plenty of seats. I sit down, tuck my briefcase under my seat … and then I notice that the man in the seat opposite me is carring a thermonuclear weapon.
He must be. He’s sitting in the aisle seat, with his bag in the space beside him, so that nobody else can sit down. What else could he be carrying that’s so important that it needs a seat of its own?
It’s not even a particularly large bag, so I assume his weapon is fairly small. That’s guys for you.
It does surprise me that he’s got a nuke, though, becaue this is New Zealand and we’re fairly rabidly anti-nuclear here. Perhaps I should notify somebody, so that they can come and take him away, and preferably throw him out of the country.
(And now I realise the truth about that first bus. It must have been a munitions carrier.)
Come to think of it, I seem to have seen quite a lot of people carrying nuclear weapons on buses lately. Maybe they’re afraid of Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Australia, or something.
We complete the bus ride in silence. He seems very casual, not at all perturbed by the weapon of mass destruction he’s sitting beside. I try not to catch his eye.
We get off the bus at the same stop. He uses the front door. I make sure I use the rear.
