by Travis Borne
It looked like a minivan with chicken wings—Jim’s first sarcastic off-the-wall thought anyway. Like those of the pre-2020s: families would cram themselves in; when people still went on physical vacations. But this one was quite sleek, larger and longer, with a high-tech look to it. A memory flashed. Jim thought about the newer models, those released just before the war.
Greg pressed another button and four top-hinged doors opened with a faint hiss. Amy was already encircling the glossy red craft while all stood back. Everyone admired her inquisitiveness. Greg crossed his arms and leaned back. They watched her. Like a kid with a birthday surprise, she was quickly drawn to peek inside. Then, she got in.
Jim stepped forward to do his own inspection—sure, he was interested. None of the lender maps had anything like this, nothing with real power to thrill. The aft thruster was large, he knew it would boogie.
The craft had sporty appeal, accented in matte black, outlined with thin white stripes. The squarely-rounded tube between the short wings was seamless and designed astutely. An eight-inch molding that doubled as a step followed the edges, melding with the short six-foot wings and diminishing toward a long, pointed bow. Additional smaller thrusters under the wings bulged elegantly. The inside had comfortable seating for six, three rows, no windows. The four rear passenger seats were centered between the wings where the doors were almost twice as long as the pilots’ doors.
Jim walked around the side, stepped onto the wing then ducked into the craft. He remembered a smell; it teased distant memories. Amy was already seated, eyes round. The rear seats were elevated compared to the pilot seats up front. Greg walked around to the starboard side. As he entered, the panels came to life. And after taking his seat, a steering control with two joysticks moved toward him and stopped between his legs. The instrument panel was far out in front, beyond reach, curving around the cockpit like one big horseshoe. Its surface resembled the 3D screens in the control room.
“Would you like to sit up front, Amy?” Eddie asked. He didn’t have to stay it twice. She excitedly jumped out, hopped off the wing, and leapt inside. After she sat her steering control came out and positioned itself. She touched it, obviously forgetting all else. Eddie knew that Greg made it happen, for only his set of controls would have activated otherwise. Greg tapped another button and their seats glided forward, nestling them within close reach of the glossy screen now coming to life with myriad colorful controls. It was about sixteen inches in depth and wrapped around the both of them in a convenient arc. Trance-like, Amy floated her hands above it.
“Wow, this is great!” Amy rejoiced. “Can I fly it?”
Greg grinned and leaned his head toward her in a teasing manner. He put a finger on his chin, as if pondering the idea. He couldn’t help himself and his grin burst into a smile. It told her—there was a chance. Her smile beamed like a spotlight. While she focused on the colorful controls bouncing with joy, he noticed her and his thoughts had questions. Has she forgotten why we are here in the first place, and to where we’re going?
No. This was Amy: strong, alive, able to overcome anything. She put what needed to be put in the past, in the past, didn’t dwell, and moved forward. The present controlled her and she made every minute count. Somehow, they all just felt it, all just knew it—through to the bone.
Eddie moved his head side to side slowly, smiling big while climbing onto the wing. Her happiness was contagious. It infected them as if she had quantum control over their minds, some sort of infectious power. Glancing at Jim, he said, “She’s great,” and he buckled himself in.
Sitting next to Eddie, the old Jim, for a second, gouged out his fucking eyes. Yes, given the chance he could build up some hate, and quickly. Crush in their skulls, he thought. Then steal the ship, or flying minivan with wings, or whatever the fuck it is, and fly the hell away. Away with Amy, escape, and hide, let her live and enjoy all the wonderful things life has to offer. But he remembered the pain and the bad things, her injuries, her robotic arm and the horrible stories she was able to tell him without breaking down. And he remembered why they were there, and forced those thoughts out. He had to—if he was to actually go through with what was next. So, he just nodded in response to Eddie, who didn’t notice the evil I’ll-fucking-kill-you look he’d given him. Amy’s vivacity was an attention thief, a life drug for all in her company. And, it was one of the things keeping Jim on the good side of the line.
“Everybody in. Buckle up. The doors are closing, hands and feet inside.”
“Well, can I? I know I can fly it,” she said. She was itching for a big fat yes, and couldn’t sit still. The doors came down and it became dark inside, then Greg turned to her. He paused, obviously trying to contain his smile.
“I’m sorry, Amy, but—” Greg shook his head. She frowned. “—yes, you can.” She jumped up and out of her seat, but not by muscle action. She actually floated and had to grab one of the joysticks to bring herself back down. Good thing it had a high ceiling.
It didn’t surprise Jim, but Eddie gasped.
Greg’s eyes went wide and he thought about what he’d just witnessed. This part of the map, outside the bounds of Old Town, was a high-level area, nothing any human could modify or change—but she broke the rules. No flying, no magic, no special tricks, not here—yet he had just witnessed one. He knew this section wasn’t low level, like the incomparably more simple lending maps of a basic system, it had rules, set-in-stone solid rules. But she did arrive here, he thought, somehow entering a higher-level map using only her mind, and that in itself… Greg didn’t know what to think, really, but admitted to himself he didn’t know everything. He shrugged it off as an oddity and without a choice to do otherwise, continued with his preflight checklist.
Jim watched Greg mull it over, what he’d just seen, then watched him man the controls. There wasn’t much to do, and it almost appeared as if Greg was just acting like a pilot. He pressed a few buttons on the center console. The inside of the ship is simple, so it has to be simple to fly, I could… Jim’s mind ruminated, fractious ideas popping and pulling him toward living hell …before it’s too late. Cut their fucking— But, and he pulled himself together again. Amicable thoughts punched back. The hardworking restaurateurs and their quaint taco stand, the townspeople of Jewel City. Rico, and the few friends I’m much closer to now—I must retain my lucidity, and the perspective. The decision had been made.
Amy wriggled with excitement, and the ship quietly separated itself from the ground.
A string of azure-blue light surrounded the ceiling; one of emerald green encircled the floor. Otherwise the interior was dark, windowless, sealed. The sensation of floating grew stronger and all screens lit up brightly. It was now as if—they were in a convertible! The wings could be seen, and the back of the ship, everything. The interior projections were seamless. Three dimensional, four, five, limitless—with immeasurable resolution! It was as if they were outside. Yet, it was a temperature-controlled interior not an actual convertible, totally sealed. The air conditioner blew and the end of the hot desert air was refreshing.
The ship rose swiftly, like the multi-directional high-velocity elevators of the early 2020s. It tingled senses of motion with a forward speed that could chase a diving bird—one with ten red-hot bottle rockets in its ass. After a few hundred feet the thrusters kicked in. Shhhshhhh-whooohhh! The force shot them into the sky like an ICBM freed from its weight. Amy gazed out, and up, and all around, ecstatically. Even most of the floor was translucent. She forgot about piloting it for, just a minute—there was too much to take in! And she devoured the new experience.
Jim watched her. And although a part of him was dying inside, he smiled seeing her happy. He knew she’d be begging to drive again in a minute or so.
Below, the town disappeared. It became a greenish speck in the middle of a vast desert of pale tans and blotchy whites. Jim saw the road leading to Felix’s secret, and the canyon, and the green world beyond as they veered away in the opposite dir
ection. Everything faded away until nothing manmade was distinguishable; the Earth, this map of it, he thought, was stunningly beautiful and complete in every detail.
Greg let Amy have the controls as they reached 40,000 feet. He intentionally let it free fall, creating a feeling of weightlessness. The controls changed hands. Amy followed up with a 10,000-foot dive then pulled on the joysticks. The craft skyrocketed. And she worked the controls as if a dormant habit had reactivated—a flashbulb in her mind! After all passengers’ facial skin had retracted, she took them for a nauseating loop. Everyone was surprised, even Jim. She was a master of the sky, or had previously learned—perhaps in a natural dream. That had to be it. The ship had pep, lots of it, and Amy kicked it into high gear. It wasn’t long until the others realized she would make one hell of an ace pilot. Jim, he already knew it, for she was good at anything she did. They let her zoom anywhere she wanted for a good twenty minutes.
Jim turned to Eddie, who seemed to be enjoying himself on the stomach-twisting ride. He didn’t mind, but began to wonder and asked, “Eddie, why do we need a ship to go anywhere? I mean, this is just a map, why have this, any of it? The portal or whatever it is could be in the town, or at least a short ride beyond. Why all of this?”
“Jim, I guess the answer is—why not?” Eddie replied. Both of them swayed side to side in the harness because Amy was mastering another trick maneuver. “When you have everything, why make it nothing?”
Jim thought about that, deeply, and turned to look out at the earth below. The ride reminded him of the virtual rides of his youth, in the “big city,” so bright and clean and magnificent and safe, with countless over-friendly robots walking about. He recalled how the bots even enjoyed the rides themselves while sitting in the company of their owners. He remembered it all. How infrastructure became less and less necessary as everything went virtual. The old roller coasters his father had told him about, with real wheels, and tracks—that was something he’d never experienced. This was closer to the real thing than any ride he could remember. He thought about what Eddie said again, and looked over at him. Eddie was watching Amy with a big smile, and, really enjoying the shit out of the wild-ass ride. Yes, he had a job to do. And they, whoever made all of this, yes, they could’ve just made it simple, straightforward, because everything’s been experienced before. But there continues to be breathing, thinking individuals who want to live—although living itself had been, and was continuing to be, redefined.
“It’s time, Amy,” Greg said. “It’s time to go, if you are ready.” She nodded, coming out of her euphoric trance. She could have continued for hours more, but let go of the yoke and the ship fell slightly. The elation remained with her.
Greg pulled back and took it into space. He said, “It’s going to be quite a ride. We’ll be going to light speed and beyond, into a wormhole, and we’ll end up on the other side of the universe. It won’t take long and soon we’ll be at our destination.”
Jim understood, at least as much as he could: the wormhole—wow, a wormhole, he thought—and the trip was a part of the show, which provided experiences and memories, substance. Sure, perhaps a simple portal could've been placed right outside the Old Town map, but life, what life they had to live, would be dull. But then again, like Felix and Q had said: the world has rules. Maybe, just maybe, there was more to it.
87. Wormhole
They passed the Moon, and shortly after, planet Mars, sling-shotting around both. The ship was going fast enough to make stars resemble one-inch needles of light. Jupiter came into view with its orange and red churning brilliance; a small white moon could be seen: Europa, spewing its icy geysers. The ship swung around the largest planet, accelerating much faster than it had from the previous two. Saturn and the rest weren’t to be seen. A green-to-white gauge on the front panel read 1/2 light speed. It was in the middle, glowing lime-green and rising slowly and steadily. Another yellow-to-red gauge beside it denoted the warp factor; it was bottomed out near the yellow, reading only: 2.25.
The view from inside was a mesmerizing lucidity thief. It could be described as being strapped into a rocket-powered chair, completely naked, exposed to billions of twinkling starlight eyes. At least that’s how Jim felt, like a nude nanoparticle. All and nothing could be seen in any direction he decided to look; the universe doing what it does best: grandstanding, the big showoff. It was dizzying and dazzling concurrently and he turned to look back because he felt the need for an anchor. He couldn’t tell which way was up or down and his eyeballs molested their sockets searching for direction; his neck muscles also received a workout. He couldn’t find the Sun or any trace of a solar system, nothing but stars—everywhere. One was brighter, like Venus on the horizon before sunrise; he guessed that was the Sun. But his sudden nervousness was squashed about as soon as it had emerged, and he looked straight up, put his head on the headrest, and examined the Milky Way galaxy above. The simulations of his youth had nothing on this. From then on out he decided to relax and enjoy the ride, for as long as he could. And he thought of Amy: the longer the better.
Beside him Eddie began calculations on a swing-out screen. Amy held on to her deactivated joysticks, examining every detail. Greg had both hands on the wheel.
“Almost there,” Eddie said loudly. “On my mark, 28 seconds.” Amy looked questionably to Greg and he pointed to the panel. He waved his hand in a flicking motion and the map floated to her side of the layout. The ship started to vibrate, very slightly, almost too subtle to notice. Amy said something like, WOW, as she studied the layout before her. Jim tried to make it out too, looking over her shoulder, but only saw something large, spherical, and brown.
“Where?” Jim asked. There was nothing out there, not a thing. Almost—nowhere, he thought sarcastically. They’d passed a hazy cloud fifteen seconds ago but it was nothing significant; there were no apparent destinations. The stars in the distance that looked like horizontal streaks were now a little longer, about six inches. The skid-marks they’d become was the only way to discern velocity. A few colorful areas of the galaxy stood out in the distance, purplish-red and blotchy against the pitch-dark outer space.
“We’ll be doing a big U-TURN Jim, you won’t see but a glimpse of it.”
“20 seconds.”
“Of what?” Jim asked.
“Solitarion,” Eddie said. Their seats shivered on the approach. “It’s a brown-dwarf star that orbits the Sun.”
Jim was taken aback by the idea and Eddie kept calculating seriously. He knew there had always been talk of a planet, or even a small star, but as much as scientists had tried, even with the tech of the mid 2020s, had never been able to pinpoint anything. It was merely a mathematical anomaly. And he recalled a ship, named WARP-1 that was supposed to— Hold on, this is just a map, right? Speculation? Jim thought. A show, that’s all it is. What in the world am I thinking?
Greg interrupted his thoughts, counting, “And 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, mark!”
“There it is!” Amy yelled.
Jim looked left, and it was massive. The ship began to roll and the marvel became their ceiling. A brown-dwarf star! There were brown cloudy bands, and between them lava-red strips. The colors and textures gave it great depth, as if the darker colors floated, surfing on magma. And like Jupiter it had spots, brown torrents convalesced with black, devouring the brighter glowing red streams. It was the Sun through a set of solar glasses, just as violent, but Jupiter at the same time—a Brobdingnagian handful of both mashed together. Then, like a lasso, a looping orange band was ejected from the surface. It split the brown cloudy bands, creating new streaks of agitation.
“Captivating,” Jim said to himself.
Greg manually controlled the ship, steering so its path matched a depicted course on his illuminated dash panel. Around Solitarion they left behind a streaking trail of white and teal that painted a ring around the brown dwarf. It wasn’t more than a few seconds and they were on the opposite side of it, and—a planet could be seen!
“A planet. Look, Jim!” Amy yelled again.
Jim marveled at it, and he noticed another also. The first was relatively close to the star, at least from his perspective: it was rocky, possibly ablaze in sections. The second was quite large and gleamed deep-blue, like Earth without land. It reflected the dim light of the brown giant beautifully—more brightly than expected. On the surface around its center he saw a tall white wedge-like band—a ceaseless wave of water? Tiny white strings that Jim surmised were clouds wrapped it like cotton threads and thickened near the bleach-white top and bottom. It had at least six small moons orbiting deadly close. He could see the panel, which Amy, being her considerate self, had moved to the middle. It displayed complete details of the nearby worlds and their trajectory.
Eddie removed an eye from his screen momentarily and noticed Jim’s jaw was open. A stream of drool was sliding along the side of his face toward his ear. The velocity of the ship increased. Eddie smiled.
“This is amazing!” Amy yelled a third time. She pointed. “I see planets, over there.”
“There are six planets that orbit Solitarion, with many moons about each,” Eddie replied.
“That’s Ternus, Jim. It’s teeming with life—a water world. And in case you’re wondering, that’s an endless tidal wave banding it, six thousand feet tall. Things really stay agitated near the center.” Jim was grabbing his armrests tightly as Eddie pointed over him. The ship leveled out and the planet disappeared from view.
“It—” Jim tried, but couldn’t speak.
“On my mark again, in 9, 8, 7,” Eddie said, abruptly cutting off Jim's stutter. “Hang on, you’re really gonna feel this one. We’ll be going close to the speed of light in a few. It’ll be a little bumpy but will smooth out around warp 4. And 3, 2, 1, mark!”
