USF Progenitor & Crew: Adventures in Cosmos 01

AoT1P [#54] Connect Four

"You're a f$ckin' joke at this," said Santos to Mr. Mokes.
"F$ck off, man, I had a terrible day, today!" Mr. Mokes grumbled.
Santos asked, "Oh yeah? What happened?"
"Oh, where do I begin?" Mr. Mokes asked exasperatedly.
Santos directed, "You begin with the part where your day somehow made you garbage at this game, because guess what."
"Noooo, agaaain?" Mr. Mokes asked in complaint, throwing his head down into his arms.
"Again. Weep when you see it," Santos said.
Mr. Mokes looked up at the standing game of Connect Four and saw that Santos had crushed him with a diagonal play. He yelled loudly, "Son of a b$tch!" Then he pulled the lever underneath to release all of the pieces back into the board tucked underneath the stand's feet.
Santos was sitting there thrilled, giggling stupidly to himself. Mr. Mokes being upset amused him, and his dramatic sound of voice was the cherry on top.
Santos said, "Yeah, so, what were you saying about your sh$tty day? Because I just had to watch you lose in Connect Four seven times in a row, and that's not all that fun." Santos looked at Mr. Mokes with a grin, giggling.
Mr. Mokes pounded the table and let out a groan, sighed, then told Santos, "Well, today, I was the one having to work the drones for carriers from our freight to their loading docks, while you slept. And when I got the drones up finally, without anyone else helping me, well... they were working just fine, everything going great, no problems at all. I checked them before I flew them up and sent the instructions to them, each of them set up to go where they were supposed to go, individually. And when they got into the station, guess what the f$ck happened? They all reverted back to generic and started flying precariously on random routes... which I found out later was to the previous set location... and that meant they were trying to fly onto a space ship that wasn't there anymore! The ship had left, so they were just idling in a barren area of the hangar."
"God," Santos said. He chuckled lightly then added, "I am sorry to hear that, but you know... did--"
"Did I check what?" Mr. Mokes interrupted, knowing what Santos was going to say next. He ranted on, "The drones were set up properly, I swear to God that they were given that AI-guided instruction and security lock, so they shouldn't have done what they did... but... and here's what I think f$cking happened... I think that when they got to their destination that I set, they didn't get detected by the loading bins nor the shipment handlers, who were probably asleep on the job, and the drones set course to the last known location instead of coming right back because I accidentally set the return waypoint to 'nearest available' thinking that they would choose open loading bins in that specified dock. Not fly all the way the f$ck over to the last spot. That's the only f$cking reason I can see why that would've happened, and yet you think these things have some common sense to them at this point," Mr. Mokes explained.
"Peter, they're drones, what do you expect? That's why you gotta be more specific! SpaceX, Tesla, RandiCorp, and all these crooked foundations of technology, granted they're brilliant, aren't going to allow AI to mess everything up. That's what humans are for," Santos instructed, sliding the lever under the stand closed. He took up a red game piece and slid it into the far left side, starting Connect Four over again.
"Don't call me Peter! I am now Mr. Mokes! You have been given ample time to make that change, Santos!" Mr. Mokes said in frustration, balanced between being real and sounding fake.
Santos said, "Hey, now, Mr. Mokes, I am taking you seriously. Am I not?" He held a red game piece above the adjacent space to his first move, prompting Mr. Mokes to pick up a black game piece and knock Santos's hand out of the way.
"Hey, it's myyyy turn! Don't you dare try to place a piece when it's my turn!" Mr. Mokes declared loudly and proudly, as though an entitled king.
Santos replied sarcastically, "Ohhhh, okaaaay, Mr. Pokes Meter."
Mr. Mokes, before he set his black game piece into the stand, laughed at what Santos said. He followed up with, "Ohhhh, that's a good one, a$$hole. That reminds me of a story, actually. I've got a really greeeaat story to tell you," Mr. Mokes responded. "And it's about this meter maid and her partner and I."
"You had a threesome with the meter maids?" Santos asked, taken aback dramatically. He hastened in his speech, aggravating Mr. Mokes, "You? Peter? Mr. Mokes? A threesome? I thought you were gay!"
"God, no, her partner was a guy. Would you just relax, Santos? Christ! Let me tell you the f$cking story," Mr. Mokes said, sighing in great annoyance. He stuck his black game piece into the stand where Santos was going to place his piece, nonchalantly.
Santos trolled Mr. Mokes with a serious demeanor, "Hey, now, Mr. Mokes. I was going to go there! That's not nice of you to do that, but I'll let you get away with it this time." He smirked at Mr. Mokes then immediately slid his red game piece into the next slot over, beginning an alternating pattern.
"Anyways, before your a$$hole opened so rudely... I was telling you a story... about this meter maid," Mr. Mokes continued while drinking more rum from his glass, Santos giggling at Mr. Mokes's taunt. Mr. Mokes went on, "And she was a short, tiny woman who looked like a Filipino, but I think she said she was Hawaiian. Well, anyways, I was riding my bike that I had at the time around this area of town that I was staying at, waiting for approval to get my government assistance card."
"Uhuh," acknowledged Santos, placing another red game piece at the top of the stand without dropping it in. Mr. Mokes simply thwacked Santos's hand out of the way again, causing Santos to drop the piece. Mr. Mokes smiled and dropped his piece into the slot right above Santos's last move, making a diagonal play.
"You f$cking a$$hole, let me play my moves!" Mr. Mokes said, making Santos laugh. While Santos was dropping his piece into the next slot over, Mr. Mokes continued, "Alright, so she stopped me. While I was riding my bike, she stopped me, midride, and I barely saw her, too, thinking... I couldn't have possibly done anything wrong. And then she started cussing me out, telling me I wasn't allowed to ride my bike there, because it was a no bike zone... or whatever her excuse was. And then she tells me that she's going to call her partner, and I'm like looking at her upset, red in face, already annoyed by the fact that there was no sign, and she wasn't even conducting her own job. When she said partner, too, I thought she was calling her boyfriend on me or something. Like, why... what are you doing bothering me, lady? Right? So she calls her partner, and he shows up, you know, ready to shove me out of the way, and it ends up being this guy that knows me because he knew my son back in high school."
"Uhuh, yeah?" Santos acknowledged, shaking the stand so the pieces fell into place more. He began doing the same thing as before, lining up his piece as though to do a double move.
"So, this guy starts talking to me, asking me how things have been... and I told him I was waiting for my government assistance card, which I was to pick up from the office right there where we were standing... and then this dude tells the lady that it's okay for me to be riding my bike around as long as it's more toward the roadside and not in traffic and then she starts yelling at him. And this guy, he's a big, Hawaiian, Tongan, Samoan looking guy, right?" Mr. Mokes continued, picking up his next piece and making another move while ignoring Santos's encroachment.
Santos commented, "Oh, okay, right?" He placed another piece in rapidly and prepared again for the next move.
"And this guy is just getting yelled at by this little, Filipino lady. You know how short they are, and this guy was effing tall, huge muscles, you know! Like, he towered above me even while I was on my bike! Anyways, he was trying to calm her down and get her refocused again on doing the meters, and that was after I thought he was showing up to beat me up or something. Then, she cusses me out, cusses him out unexpectedly, and she gets into her little vehicle thingy, and she takes off down the street," Mr. Mokes said. He took a big swig of his rum, cleared his throat, then resumed the story, "And after she starts cruising on down the street at high speed, she knocks into an oncoming vehicle that took a turn around the corner then changed lanes toward her, and it literally took this lady with it all the way down to the end of the street. I mean, it was as though the guy forgot to use the brakes. I was watching and it just pushed her cart all the way there. Guess what she did?"
"She didn't spend any time before gettin' to yellin' and screamin'? She blamed you?" Santos suggested.
"She got out of the cart, told that guy in his car to wait, then walked up to me as I began riding my bike down to see if she was okay. Her partner was already walking down toward her before me, and then she literally goes up to me and tells me that I'm going to hell and there's a reason God said some people will be redeemed and that I wasn't one of them. He's trying to tell her that I'm not to blame, telling me to just take off the other way, while she keeps hammering at me to stay where I am because I already had broken the supposed law," Mr. Mokes kept on, focused at Santos.
"Wow, Jesus. Talk about a real Christian, there. That sounds ethical! This couldn't have been back in Hawaii," Santos replied sarcastically.
"Well, you know, then after that, guess what she does?" Mr. Mokes asked Santos.
Santos shook his head holding a slight frown on his face, indicating he didn't know.
Mr. Mokes answered his own question illuminating, "She gets back into the little meter maid vehicle, drives it up toward me as though trying to run me over, and then she starts writing up a ticket for me instead of handling the situation with the car. While that guy was trying to talk to her from his car, not getting out because she looked crazy, and she was... her partner was just looking on for a while, until he saw that she was writing me up and doing nothing with an insurance card for the guy in the car or anything. Guy was asking her if she was alright, she gave him a few quick nods and would go right back to cussing at me, as though it were all my fault, her partner laughing at her at this point, telling me sorry."
"Sounds one-sided there," Santos said. Santos had no doubts that Mr. Mokes knew the Filipino lady and had probably slept with her. Or, she was just having a very bad day and taking it out on Mr. Mokes.
Mr. Mokes reasoned, "Best thing I could do was wait for her to write the ticket then tell her to f$ck off, and I didn't even have to pay the ticket, thanks to her partner. She even left him there next to me, completely ignoring everything she had done. She was driving off on the sidewalk, too, and I remember hearing the scraping sound of the cart, because the wheel had busted off and she was maneuvering the thing like it was a race car. She was completely out of her mind! Her partner was laughing, and I was just at a huge loss for words!"
"That's life! Crazy!" Santos said, smiling smugly. "You pissed off the wrong one there, then, Mr. Mokes. Women!"
"Women!" Mr. Mokes said, placing his elbows on the table and holding his face up, smiling to himself at the stupidity of his own story, while gazing at the game of Connect Four in front of him. He then took a big swig of his rum and passed it to Santos, who wasn't drinking.
Santos yelled, "To women!" He saw two of their team members enter the cafeteria area looking for them and then took a swig. After he passed the glass back to Mr. Mokes, he placed another piece into the stand, trolling, to see if Mr. Mokes would notice anything amiss.
Mr. Mokes said again as though reluctant, "Women," and drank down the rest of the rum. He called out Santos on cheating, placing another piece in after he had already taken his turn.
Santos said, "Alright, let's start over, let's start over. Come on, I'm feeling it." He pulled the lever and released all the pieces again. Mr. Mokes gasped at the action, then chuckled, lowering his head into crossed arms on the table.
Santos said, "What? You could've said something!" He chuckled again, enjoying Mr. Mokes sudden openness to the low blows.
"God, Santos, you're a real criminal, you know that?" Mr. Mokes mumbled.
Santos replied, "I prefer the term: 'borrower of the unestablished rules.' But yes, please go on." The two other team members who had just walked in both laughed at what Santos said, causing Mr. Mokes to laugh muffledly. Mr. Mokes, Peter, was able to find some enjoyment with a crew who could help him laugh through his slowly minimizing, dramatized misery.