by V R Tapscott
Olive stopped at the front steps and dropped the ramp. I noted that she sat in the command seat and didn’t lift a finger to help me get my chair on board. Fetch and carry indeed! I huffed and puffed a little more than really necessary, to see if I could rouse any guilt feelings, but she wasn’t having it. She just sat there like an Egyptian queen, imperiously waiting.
I glared at her until she vanished the other pilot seat and I could pull my comfy wooden chair in place. I sat. I looked out the window. It was still raining. I bounced a little in the chair. “Let’s go, Olive, let’s go!” I giggled and she finally cracked a smile, then a grin.
“Ok, I’m done pickin on you. Hawaii? Aruba? Costa Rica? What’s y’ pleasure?”
I should have known better, but I made the mistake of saying, “Oh, you decide. Let’s just have fun.” I never saw the mischievous glint come into her eyes, since I was leaned back relaxing in my favorite chair, thinking about the sun.
Olive said, “As you wish.”
The little flyer took off. I laid my head back and relaxed, watching the blue sky appear. It’s funny that the sky is blue above the clouds no matter where you are or how bad the storm. Maybe that’s a metaphor for the human condition.
“So, where we going?”
“Somewhere you’ve never been before. And somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit.”
“Well, that tells me a lot. There’s a lot of places I’ve never been. And I don’t know all the places you want to visit. We should sometime, you know.”
Olive looked and me and rolled her hand, “Should what?”
“We should visit places you want to go. That’s important to me!”
She smiled. “We are today. And thanks.”
I patted her shoulder. “How long til we get there?”
“Oh, it’ll be a little bit, it’s a long ways away.”
“Can I nap?” I was surprised, it seemed Olive’s trips were faster all the time as she learned more coordinates.
“Nap would be good. I’ll wake you when we get there.”
“Okay!”
Just a couple minutes later it seemed, Olive was shaking my shoulder. “Hey sweetie, we’re here!”
I was a little groggy, but I said, “Ok. Let’s hit the beach so I can take a nap.”
Olive led the way down the ramp, this time she helped me with my chair.
We made tracks through the sand and it was an amazing beach. Perfect blue sky, sun shining bright, we could see trees up the beach some distance and way out in the ocean I could see what looked like ships or … something. Somehow it looked familiar.
I dragged my chair out and sat in it, looking at the water. “Not many people here, this must be really exclusive, Olive.”
She nodded. “It is. This is probably the most exclusive beach you’ll ever be on, Jane.”
I looked at her and frowned. “Why? Is this a fabulously expensive place you snuck us into? Are we gonna get in trouble?” I had visions of security guards marching across the sand, confiscating my chair. I giggled at that.
“What you laughin’ about, sugar?”
“Oh, I just had a vision of security guards taking my chair and having to get a lawyer to get it back!”
She laughed. “I can see why you were giggling. Well, you won’t see any security guards here. You kind of own this place.”
“I ‘kind of’ own this place?”
“Uh huh.”
“Where are we, Olive? You’re being so mysterious!”
“Well, you did tell me to surprise you.”
“Annnnnd?”
She smirked. “We’re on the ship. The big ship. Or more accurately, we’re IN the big ship.”
I looked around. “This is a ship?”
“Uh huh. Remember when the rogue AI, Vlad, found the power sources and dug them out of the mountain range in Montana?”
“Oh, I’ll never forget that.”
“Well, one of the things he got was the hydroponics system. Remember that we talked about how it had lots of power because it was always stocked and running even if there were no organic life forms on board?”
“Uh huh. But …”
She shrugged. “It’s a huge ship. If it had the full complement of people on board, it would take an incredible amount of fresh fruit, veggies, meats and so on to feed them. And they wouldn’t be satisfied with just pastes and … well, remember the “Apples and Fruit!” that you had to eat when you were damaged?”
“Mmhm, I’m trying to forget.”
“Well, this is the answer.” And she did a Vanna of the whole basic area. “There’s farms and mountains and snow and even …” She pointed at the ocean, “Fish. And fishing. This is an entire ecosystem running here. And there’s no one on board to use it. I thought you’d like to see it. And now that I’ve been here, I can get here very fast. It’s just an elevator ride away.”
“Wow. All this, and I’m the only human here?” I looked at her. “Well, ok, I’m one of the two humans here.”
She smiled a big smile and said, “Yup, just us two humans.”
I nodded and lay back in my chair and looked at the sky, the birds that weren’t quite earth birds, and the ocean.
“Thanks for bringing me here, Olive.”
She patted my knee and laid out on her towel, I rested on my chair. Pretty soon I got another towel and laid out on it.
She said, “Told you the chair didn’t belong on the beach.”
I grinned. “Okay. Maybe I’ll listen to you someday.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fat chance of that.”
I nodded. I had to agree, it was unlikely.
We relaxed the rest of the afternoon and watched the sun set that evening. What a perfect day.
Appendix
I thought it might be helpful to explain some of the “tech” used in this book.
Nano manufacture:
Basically, everything in our world is made up of atoms.
It stands to reason that the nano devices used in these books are considerably larger, but they still basically make up everything that Kit and Olive manufacture.
Essentially, a million, a billion, a trillion nanobots cloud in together and bond their bodies to make an item. Much like coral, they are a living being that’s shaped like a skinsuit, or a seatbelt.
The main difference between, say, a board and a skinsuit, is the state the ‘bots are in. If the bots are “alive” and functioning, then the item will change dependent on circumstances and environment. If the ‘bots are shut down, it will not ever move or change again.
So, a board is a fully live and functioning cloud of nanobots until it’s nailed in place. At that point, the bots all shut down and the board becomes a ... well, a board. Once that’s happened, you’ll never be able to cut it or nail it again.
Flying:
As is alluded to, Olive and Kit don’t “fly” as such. They teleport in smaller or greater increments depending on where they’re going and how far. It appears to be flying, but in reality, it’s vanishing and appearing, vanishing and appearing. In most cases, they just move a couple inches, but in the case of the elevator appearing inside a room, the elevator has teleported from wherever it started (which might have been outside the building) to where it winds up. Keeping in mind that extreme care must be taken, since you don’t want to teleport into a wall or a person. That would be very bad.
Jane’s health:
I assume that Jane will live an unusually long and healthy life. When the bandage went on when Jane was bleeding out, it also included nanobots that started running around in Jane’s body, fixing things. Keeping things up. And in general, doing all kinds of unexpected things. At that time, Olive was so far into human mode that she never took into account that putting the nanobots into Jane might cause different results than expected. If I wind up writing another Jane in this series, I imagine that will be taken up as a topic. (I added a bit into the main story to touch on this topic, but left this here anyhow.)
Ol
ive’s body:
Olive’s body is, at the point of the little tag story at the end, fully functional and as human as she can make it. Sadly enough, while fully anatomically correct and would even look like a human body on the inside if you disassembled it, it’s still not authentic human. Olive pulls her power from the food she eats, but all else is passed through and out of the body in the normal human fashion. Yes, Olive can have sex. She probably has orgasms and pleasure from it as well, although her definition of what it feels like is likely nothing like what we might feel ourselves. Olive is not lesbian, she’s more of an undeclared state. I don’t think Olive truly understands what the big deal is about.
Any other questions, please feel free to leave them on either V.R. Tapscott’s Goodreads page, or on the www.electrikink.com website.
