We pedalled softly through the predawn gloom, trying to come to terms with the events of the past two days. Leon shivered, his shirt wrapped horizontally around his bare chest as a bloody tourniquet.
“You really need to get that looked at. There could be something infectious in that wound,” I said. Leon just shrugged and fiddled with his phone in one hand, the other lightly grasping the middle of his handlebars.
“I can’t get a signal. It’s odd, there’s not even 5G,” he muttered.
We turned back onto the highway. Traffic was light at this time of day, and the few drivers paid us little heed.
I spotted a digital billboard by the side of the road. “Hey, it’s Maia,” I called out. She was displayed with a microphone in hand and a white dress, caught in mid-performance. Large green text spelled out the revolution of joy is coming to Belview.
Leon rode up alongside me, and then pointed forward, “Look, another one,” In this billboard, she was winking to the crowd, and the tagline said bask in her everlasting dawn.
“It seems silly to advertise after her show. You’d think they would have sold these spots off to the Bizclub as soon as her kidnapping hit Disculture,” I replied, as we spun onward. The town centre was just ahead, where Leon could trade some of his Pepsicoins for better medical treatment than I could cobble together.
We turned off the highway and onto the main street. The advertising hoardings glittered in the first rays of dawn. As I looked closer, though, they were all similar. The same beautiful blond figure looked down to me from all of them, her green eyes twinkling. All the shop signs, all the Pepsico announcement boards, all the promotional displays, they had all been annexed with variations on the same message. Maia is here. Join her revolution.
“I hope that her digital heart is as soft as you think,” said Leon. “Because I get the feeling that we’re going to be seeing a lot more of your girlfriend.”