Seymour - "In a space-taxi" part 1

<This starts the story I started writing for NaNoWriMo!>
Who: Ambassador Seymour Niples
Where: In a space-taxi
When: A short time ago
Seymour made a deliberate cough in protest at the taxi driver's
cigarette. Then he made several more coughs, each increasing in their
volume until the taxi driver got the hint and put the cigarette out.
Seymour was an Ambassador, he was used to the best things that the
galaxy had to offer. He liked fine wines from across the cosmos, and
ate from restaurants that served the most exotic and tasty meals in
the universe. Seymour removed a silk handkerchief from his impeccably
clean dinner suit, and used it to fan away the smoke.
The universe was very large, and heavily populated. It had many
methods of travelling between planets, and not all of them were as
glamorous as an intergalactic starship. The cheapest option was
public transport, which meant travelling with a large number of other
offworld travellers. Seymour cringed at the thought of being crammed
into a small space with a hundred aliens, each with potentially a
different form of alien bacteria or disease that he might get sneezed
upon.
Or the second cheapest was by a space taxi. Seymour looked around and
surveyed the vehicle he was in. It had fake leather wipe-clean seats,
which were a little sticky. Seymour was doing his best not to sit on
them by spreading his copy of the "Galactic Times" over the seat
before he sat down. The floor was littered with bits of food, and
drinks cans that rolled around spilling their last few drops every
time the driver made a quick turn to avoid a meteor, or fellow
spacecraft that he somehow hadn't managed to see in the vast void of
space in front of them until the very last minute.
It was one of these sudden turns that almost made Seymour slide off
his newspaper-covered seat. "Do you mind!" He said angrily. "I'm
trying to desperately not touch anything in this filthy vehicle you
call a taxi, and you're making it extremely hard for me to do so."
"Sorry pal!" Called the taxi driver from the front. "But there was
this large comet in the way. I had to do a quick turn to avoid it."
"That comet has been the only thing in front of us for twenty
minutes, I'm sure you had plenty of time to see it coming." Seymour
said, just quietly enough for it to be drowned out by the noise of
the taxi's straining antimatter engine.
This wasn't Seymour's first choice of transport of course. He would
have loved a Luxury Hyper-Limousine, or just a fully automated Stasis
Shuttle, where he could have just fallen into a deep sleep and been
woken up on his arrival. Although any method of transport would have
been acceptable as long as he didn't have to talk to any member of
the public. A robot would have done, at least robots don't try to
engage you in small talk. They just get the job done. Although there
was that time when they tried to kill him, which had put Seymour off
robots for a bit. But the reason he was taking this filthy space-taxi
was that the transport he'd ordered seemed to have fallen into a
black hole, and he didn't have another expenses form to order
another. Also, the space port he'd been waiting at was festering with
members of the general public which he despised, and he didn't want
to wait there any moment longer. He'd looked for any method of
transport off that planet and begrudgedly got in this filthy, rickety
taxi. At the time he thought it might be a bit of an adventure
to "slum it" and travel like a normal person, he even considered
writing a book on it.
Unfortunately the driver of this space-taxi was not a robot, ans was
trying to engage him in conversation. Seymour had ignored the
driver's two previous attempts, by pretending to be interested in
something out of the window, and then pretending to read the
ingredients on a packet of cheese and onion crisps. This time the
crisp packet was out of reach, and there was nothing out of the
window apart from the dull blackness of space.
"So what do you do pal?" Asked the driver, partly turning around.
Seymour made eye contact, and then immediately wished he hadn't. Now
the driver knew for definite that he'd heard him.
"I'm an Ambassador." Seymour said. Normally Seymour would love
talking about himself, but in his current surroundings he wasn't much
in the mood for anything apart from getting to his destination as
fast as possible.
"Oh yeah pal, what does that mean then?"
What does that mean? What the hell did the driver mean by that? Did
he really not know what an Ambassador did? Seymour scoffed rudely.
"It means that I'm very important." He said, and gazed out of the
window. He thought this would put a stop to the driver's
conversation, but he carried on. He seemed genuinely interested.
"Oh right, wow pal. That's great for you. So do you go to like, posh
dinner parties and that then?"
Seymour rolled his eyes. "I have met the greatest leaders or the most
important planets in the galaxy. I have shared fine bottles of wine
with kings and queens of other solar systems, and I have discussed in
great detail with Presidents, Prime Ministers and Emperors of more
than a hundred other worlds."
"Oh that must be nice for you pal." Said the driver. "You must be a
pretty important guy."
Seymour liked to think so, but this was quite exaggerated.
"I think you're the second most important person I've had in this
cab." The driver said.
Seymour was gazing out of the window wishing he was on any one of the
planets they were passing, rather then being involved in this
conversation, until what the driver said registered in his mind.
"Only the second?" Seymour sounded appalled.
"Oh yeah pal."
Seymour looked around, and couldn't imagine many people choosing to
travel in this moving filth pit.
"May I ask whom?"
"It was Tiffany. Y'know Tiffany Oombits?"
Seymour had to think about it before an image of her came into his
mind. "You mean-"
"Yeah, Tiffany Oombits, the supermodel with the three breasts. Man
she is hot. You should have seen her pal."
Seymour rolled his eyes. Every other male in the galaxy seemed to
have a thing for Ms Oombits. She had a third breast which originally
made people think she was some exotic alien planet, until it was
revealed that it was a surgical implant to draw attention, and she
was actually from Rotherham in Yorkshire. But even after that, she
retained her fans who just thought it made her 'easier to relate to'.
She regularly appeared on magazine covers, and adverts for space-age
galactic lingerie. Sometimes Seymour felt like he was the only sane
person in the galaxy. How dare this taxi driver assume she was more
important than him?
"Yeah she sat right there where you are sitting now pal."
Seymour looked around the cramped space in the back. "As opposed to
where?" He said, but the driver ignored him and continued.
"She was with her boyfriend. Or one of many." He chuckled. "They were
being all romantic, kissing and cuddling, and they pulled that blind
down for some privacy." Seymour's eyes bunged as he waited for the
driver's next sentence. "I haven't had the heart to wash the seat
since."
Seymour leaped up off the seat in disgust. "Are we nearly there yet
please?"
The driver checked his navigation computer and shook his head. "Still
a long while off yet pal."
Seymour spread out more newspapers and sat on the edge of the seat
with his arms wrapped around his knees.
<To be continued>