by P A Wikoff
My eyes darting around, I tried to determine where it came from. My eyes followed the trail of smoke my bike had made. I used my hands to shelter my eyes from the particles blowing at them.
“I see something—over there.” I ran, or rather staggered, to the site.
I still hadn’t gotten over how high and fast I had managed to benchmark the bike. Before, I thought I might have been able to beat the record, but not to the extent at which I had. Using the rocket stop was an ingenious move, one I hadn’t anticipated doing until the moment came to me. Next time, I would do it without injury, for both me and the bike.
I was already starting to catalog all the pieces I needed to replace in order to get a higher altitude. New, larger gliders. Definitely a speedometer that doesn’t max out. Maybe stronger lift fans, stabilizer and power coils. Parachutes, two of them. One for me, and one for the bike. I wonder, could I turn the rocket stop’s turbine around? Vents might be useful to utilize the air to cool the whole system somehow…
Instantly, I lost my train of thought. There it was. The thing I had run into way up in the sky. Nestled in a corner of some scrap metal, there was some kind of animal—a wild one. It was alive and looking right at me with a pissed-off glare. Is that even possible?
It let out a long and scratchy hiss as I approached.
It had a long neck, a wide bill, and a hefty number of blue feathers. Based on its oddly shaped beak, it had to be some species of duck or goose. You needed a farm permit to have a pet like this. Then again, I’d never seen a bird with such a bluish hue. It looked slightly exotic.
Insects are one thing. They can survive any situation…and do. But an honest to goodness wild animal? Out here of all places? I looked up, slack-jawed in disbelief, wondering where it had come from.
“It must have gotten out of its cage somehow. A pulp pet, most likely. Maybe it fell out of a broken shipment crate?” I said, trying to talk myself through it. “We are close to the USDS.”
A faint shadow darted across the ground. What in the world…
Scouring the sky, I spotted more of the birds circling around overhead. “Oh man, there’re more of you.” I got down low, hopefully out of sight. Even though they were about a hundred and fifty feet in the air, I didn’t want them to get any funny ideas.
My erratic movements caused the bird thing to react loudly. It quacked and snorted. The sound was funny, in an endearing way. I couldn’t help but feel sad and responsible for grounding the thing.
The duck birds in the air responded to its call with similar sounds, and its comminatory honks got louder and more intense.
“Okay. I am sorry I hit you…or rather, you hit me. It was all a minor misunderstanding, and we’re both sorry,” I said with calming, outstretched hands. “Shh, it’s okay. I am not going to hurt or eat you.” Slowly I inched closer to it, hoping to find a tag or license number somewhere.
It seemed on edge and watched my every move, but at least it was no longer calling in the strike team. The little bird guy was breathing heavily. Breathing the toxic air.
This was the first time I’d ever seen something alive outside without a breathing mask or similar device on. All my life, I’d been told that the wild air was harmful, if not deadly. That was why all the plants turned grotesque and the feral animals had died off. But this one wasn’t dead; it was mad. Pissed, in fact, and at me, no less.
“Easy there, fella,” I said, as I quickly released the latch holding my mask in place. “If it’s good enough for you, then it’s good enough for me.”
For the first time, unfiltered, I took a good amount of the outside air into my lungs. It smelled fresh and with an array of scents from who knows where and God knows what. It made every breath I’d taken before this moment feel stale in comparison. Inside me, however, it felt…scratchy. Instantly I started to cough, hack, and wheeze. There were way too many particulates flying around. I guess I needed the filter after all.
Upon hearing my coughing fit, the bird thing stirred, exposing a spot where it was missing a handful of feathers.
Removing the mask had been a bad idea; however, I was still alive. I hadn’t died instantly. It would appear that air was breathable out here, just not great for you. Breathing shallow helped me ease out of the coughing fit.
“Are you okay?” I asked, pulling off my riding gloves.
With my newly exposed hands, I reached for the thing, slow and steady. Today was jammed packed with firsts, and it was time for me to take on one more.
Before I could pull away, it turned its billed-face and bit my finger. It was lightning fast and had a deceptively long reach.
“Fack!” It wasn’t a real word, but part of my brain wanted to curse, and another part wanted to yell at the thing in a language it knew, and so, “fack” came out. The pain had quickly subsided, and the bite hadn’t drawn any blood, even though, in the moment, I thought it had. Really, it had only startled me.
What if the Collective Processing Unit doesn’t know about life outside here? If this thing lives, maybe there is other life in the far-off reaches. These things have to eat, don’t they? There must be fish, or snails, or whatever. The possibilities are endless.
I glanced back in the direction of my wrecked bike, wishing I had some recording device to capture this momentous day.
I took a couple quiet steps backwards.
The duck thing approached me menacingly, honking and carrying on to no end.
I continued my retreat, putting up my hands in a non-threatening way.
It matched my movement, raising its wings, and it matched each of my steps with four of its little wobbly, webbed ones.
I felt a shortness of breath. It was getting harder and harder for me to breathe. Maybe the air was bad after all.
The bird hissed at me like an old cat from all those videos I’d seen. It reminded me of my theory about grown pets not having a soul or any emotions, but this one was showing signs of both. It had a ton of personality—angry and vicious, foaming at the bill, but it was there. It acted nothing like its house-pet counterparts. My vision blurred in appreciation as I admired the little bottle of rage.
It took flight and proceeded to snap at me, flapping and honking at my hair.
I lost it and began swatting and flailing my arms above my head. Not knowing how to act in this type of situation, I frantically ran back towards my bike. “Get it off!” I screamed repeatedly, as if someone, anyone, was out here listening.
All of a sudden, it stopped, or rather, I did, and toppled over gasping for air. Still cringing from the assault, I waited a beat to make sure it was really over. Out of gas, and curled in a ball, the vicious duck could have pecked me to pieces, but it didn’t.
One at a time, I opened my eyes to see that the feathered foe had indeed returned to the flock in the sky.
My vision started to close in on me like a tunnel. Everything was turning dark. Quickly, I brought the oxygen mask back to my face and breathed in deep the stale scentless air. With each breath, I wheezed but didn’t cough or hack like before. That hadn’t been a smart move on my part. Maybe that duck bird had evolved over time into being able to survive outside. Maybe it’s diseased, and that’s why it has strange-colored feathers.
I felt a sharp pain in my neck. I touched the spot and felt something wet. The thing had bitten me, and this time it had drawn blood.
What if I am infected?
Suddenly, I started to feel itchy all over. There was no way of knowing if it was the hypochondriac in me playing mind games, or if I was really coming down with some strange duck fever. Either way, I had to get out of there. Besides, I was supposed to be on a hiking trip.
“Oh, no, the hike. I can’t believe I almost forgot.” The hike was still important to me, but now there was something more pressing on my mind.
I raced over to my totaled bike and tried to get it going again. It had a tiny bit of juice left in the power cells. It kept sputtering on but quickly died when I tried to level out the idl
e to gain some lift. Out of frustration, I kicked the already dented-up frame. A heavy clank rang loudly from my steel boots as they smashed against its carbon fiber shell.
I thought about how I hadn’t delivered my parents’ precious gear, how I had removed my mask, and the whole record-setting, air acrobatics thing. “Do I have a death wish or something?”
Delivering that gear was something I had to do. No if, ands, or buts about it. I might regret missing the hike later, but this was what had to happen if I ever wanted to leave the house again and not face permanent grounding.
Chapter Four
Watch Dogs
T en to twenty feet at a time, I managed to drag, push, and scoot my precious bike towards the postal warehouse and delivery center. At each interval, what was left of the lift fans would turn on long enough for me to push the lightened load with my body. A loud and horrifying scraping sound alerted to the fact that the bike wasn’t exactly hovering, but more accurately just leaving its paint and metal on the road behind.
I tied the fingers of my leather gloves together around the handlebar grips in order to keep the engine on, allowing me to push from the back. Every couple of feet, the system would die and need a solid few minutes to rest. It was okay; I also needed to regain my strength for a bit. Saying this was slow going would be an understatement. At this rate, if I reached my house before I died of old age, I would be pleasantly surprised—especially since I wasn’t heading home, not yet.
Though the break was important, for both of us, it was a whole ordeal to get going again. After resting awhile, I had to start the ignition process all over again. Each time I started the vehicle up, more of the status lights turned red. By the time I had reached my destination, every single one was not only dangerously red, it was also flashing and beeping. The bottom fan plate was getting really banged up, and puffs of black smoke dotted my path like an old treasure map.
Every ten or so tries, I had to wait for the whole system to cool off for a good half hour before continuing the process. During these downtimes, I reflected on my downfalls and shortcomings, of which there were more than a few. It was a lonely time of reflection and self-abasement. My hover bike was ruined, completely and utterly trashed. I suddenly didn’t feel as ecstatic about both the records I had broken today. Sure, my parents would have probably bought me a new one. That is, if I could have gotten their gear home in time for the big launch. As it was, I had already cut it close.
Each time, like clockwork, the alarms would fade and so would my bad demeanor.
Work had to be done, and so I had to push aside my feelings and get on with actual pushing.
It wasn’t that far away, maybe a mile, but it felt like a million. So, you can understand that once I had reached the postal site, I was at my limit for frustration—emotionally, physically, and mentally.
I approached the kiosk and swiped my father’s keycard with about as much excitement as a wet noodle. A red error message displayed brightly above me.
“Please, no,” I said, letting my defeat show in my shoulders. It was both embarrassing and humiliating and not what I wanted to see, not after everything I had just gone through. Luckily, no one was around to see my defeat.
I blew on the card, hoping to remove any dust that might be on the strip—but mostly for good luck—and tried again.
Nope.
“Don’t do this.”
I tried it multiple times—swiping fast, then slow; jamming it in and out, slightly from this angle or that; wiping it on my coat first. It didn’t matter how I swiped; I got the same error.
“Not now. Come on." I ran over to another kiosk a couple hundred feet away and was met with the same results.
“Damn it.” Fueled by anger, I roughed up the machine slightly with my palms. What started out slow and reserved quickly turned into me hitting the thing as if it were a speed bag. I wasn’t trying to break the thing, really, I wasn’t. I just wanted to intimidate it into compliance.
Fear was always a valuable tool even with things that weren’t programed with such emotions. An intimidation trick I learned from my dad. If something doesn’t work, get a big hammer. Maybe my fists weren’t a good enough replacement, because it was no use.
After taking a long moment to gather my thoughts, I calmly and coolly examined the card carefully.
Thin gouges were scratched out of the imprint code and the chip was barely hanging on. The card was damaged. It must have been scraped up during the crash.
“Fack.” There it was again. That made-up word just fell out of me.
Can I get him to send me another one? No, it’s way too late. Plus, that would mean I would have to explain what I had been doing instead of his little errand. And the bike…I don’t want to think about it.
I decided to take a crack at the kiosk one more time—not literally. Cracking my knuckles, I let my fingers go to work.
Navigating the menus was worse than trying to find a living customer service representative online. I was dodging roundabout chains that all tried to redirect me back to the beginning of the process. I knew it wasn’t possible, but I took the computer’s tone as quite rude. It was secretly patronizing me, though I couldn’t prove it.
“Enter package number here,” the kiosk demanded.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” I mumbled to myself, showing it who was boss, then quickly complied, entering it in and completing all the following fields to the best of my ability. Then there was my dad’s authorization number. Due to the card being scratched so badly, I wasn’t sure if one of the characters was an “S” or a “5,” so I tried them both. Nope, it was a “Z.” Finally, I got a green “thumbs up” message after the authorization was sent and approved by my father’s bank.
“Thank you, Mr. Moore. Your premium package will arrive shortly.”
Fifteen minutes of impatiently waiting later, the huge crate arrived by crane. Yes, it was a robot driven, train-track riding, magnetic crane. This was way bigger than I had expected.
What did they have in there, a small house? I really think A.L.I.C.E. was setting me up to fail on this one. There was no way my bike tether could have pulled that much gear. I wasn’t even sure it would fit inside our garage, let alone the driveway.
With the gaming units like this, no wonder deliveries were on delay. I wasn’t going to give up. If this was what my parents wanted, this was what they were going to get. I just needed to figure out a way. There is always a solution, though I might not like it.
“Just gotta think for a minute.” This thing is big, real big. What were they thinking? They weren’t thinking; they were gaming and ordering and clicking their little mouse fingers. But wait, they love geeking out over specs. No, to be fair, they love to geek out on performance specs, not dimensions. Would that crane make it all the way to our house? It’s on a track, idiot.
I argued with myself for a while until a light bulb went off. While entering in the wrong authorization number for my dad, I had noticed that I managed to get access to two other accounts by simply entering in their numbers. This might be useful. A glitch, maybe?
Returning to the kiosk, I started the pick-up process over again, but this time, under authorization number, I started entering in a random number. The first one didn’t work, so I used the first half of my dad’s number while changing a couple random ending numbers. This system worked.
“It cannot be that easy. This isn’t going to work.” But I continued on, despite my doubts. I saw dozens of different accounts and orders, complete with billing information, occupation, and income, credit information, the whole lot of it. I knew I shouldn’t have had access to this sensitive type of information, but there it was, splayed out before me.
I had managed to stumble upon a loophole in the kiosk system where it allowed me to access other people’s orders without a password or order number. All I needed was a random authorization code, which I mashed with my fingers with as much tact as a monkey playing patty-cake.
After about
a half hour of entering random numbers into the system, I found exactly what I was looking for—a deluxe cruiser similar to the one my parents had, except it was equipped with the advanced cargo tether package.
“You’re what I came here for.”
A couple of menu screens later, I managed to change the shipping destination to right here and right now. The cruiser was in stock and ready to go. It was only a couple minutes away from being pulled out of storage.
I lingered over the submit button. Was I really going to do it? Was it really going to work? It seemed way too easy. At each turn, I had been merely waiting for the system to kick me out, but it hadn’t. It just let me browse through everyone’s orders like I was shaking Christmas presents to see what was inside. Not only that, I knew how much they’d paid for it and what online store they’d bought it from. I didn’t feel great about any of it, but it was a solution. I just had to man up and follow it through.
This was the moment of truth.
“I didn’t come all this way to chicken out now.” Closing my eyes and cringing slightly, I clicked the submit button.
“Thank you, Mr. Boyle, your order will be out momentarily.”
Did that really just work? Did I just steal another man’s hover car? Mr. Boyle’s car? No, I’m not going to steal it. I am going to use it, then return the package as damaged; maybe say there’s a minor scratch or something. After the return is complete and I change the delivery back to the slated time and place, no one will be the wiser. I’m borrowing, nothing more.
The problem with criminals is that they have way too much faith in hope. As I gazed upon the shiny new vehicle coming my way on the crane, I was about to become one.
Chapter Five
Grand Theft Auto
