Not quite a laugh. The smugness that almost becomes one. A man in a taxi watching commuters stream out of a broken station and feeling — quietly, privately — glad it is not him. This is where the poem begins. Not in outrage. Not in sympathy. In the small, honest, slightly shameful relief of someone who chose the right vehicle on the wrong day. The aircon turned up as the thought arrives. The two simultaneous.
Three letters. Typed without feeling. Sent without meaning. lol has travelled so far from laughing out loud that it now means almost nothing — and therefore everything. It is the laugh we deploy when we do not know what else to say. When someone is stranded and we are not. When comfort is required and we have none to give. The father sends it before the surge. Before the choice. The laugh already sent before the betrayal arrives.
The only genuine laugh in the poem. Involuntary. Unperformed. Nobody watching. The taxi driver alone in his cab, one hand on the wheel, the surge pricing doing its work — and something outside the window tipping him over the edge. He wheezes. He chokes. Then it escapes. This is the laugh the title was always about. The laugh that lol was supposed to mean before it meant nothing.
What triggers the real laugh. An office worker in the sea of lit up faces, logging his steps on Strava, a pink cartoon folder held between his armpits. The absurdity of optimising a disaster. Of turning involuntary exercise into achievement. Of carrying something tender — a gift, most likely — through something terrible while simultaneously tracking the kilometres. The driver sees this and cannot stop himself. Neither can the reader.
The same three letters. Sent two hours earlier by a father who meant it lightly — before the surge, before the choice, before anything. Delayed by a network overloaded with ten thousand Grab orders placed simultaneously. Arriving now on a son's phone — door lock beeped, light switch clicked, EZ-Link card totally useless in its lanyard — as something else entirely. The laugh that becomes a wound in transit. Not because it was cruel. Because it was late.
Not a laugh at all. Two words flashed on a console screen by the same organisation that broke the trains. Income opportunity. The coldest laugh in the poem. The one that requires no mouth, no body, no feeling. The system finding the disruption profitable in the only language it speaks. The fare gates still open. The trains are not. And somewhere between those two facts — the system glancing across and seeing not a crisis but a SURGE.