The gray light of morning breathes short, inaffectionate puffs of cold tobacco smoke into the throats and dried lungs of the inanimately waiting passengers who stand the concrete chill of a traffic jam’s slothish pedestrian crunch. The industrious mint of time manufactures them yet another second, third and continuing series of blockish screenshots as bleak-colored objects pass each other on hard roads leading nowhere. Boredom frizzles between the gaps of each moment, fusing it all into a monotonous turbine whine of bland transit. Black-and-white retreats of human forms recede behind clear glass sheets again observing their own foreign journey, lost in the layout of the morning’s gray architecture. Alban stood idly as he watched the bus rattle to a squeaky stop and hiss its doors wide open to the spilling columns descending and ascending. He took a brief toke from his ash-tipped cigarette, exhaling a lazy whisp of smoke as the sub-cartoony vehicle gave a rasping buzz and closed its doors, leaving Alban standing alone in a turbulent jerk of wind.