by Zen DiPietro
Plus, she was pretty sure she already knew what the quest meant. More or less.
Unzipping a small hip pocket in her new pants—she loved these pants—she extracted the cotter pin key.
Pausing next to her cash register, which had once been enough for her, she realized she needed not only living quarters but a workspace. Because she had some serious work to do.
On the other hand…if this quest went the way she thought it would, she’d soon have more workspace than she currently knew what to do with.
Maybe Sujan would have some opinions. When the time came.
She continued to the control room of her store, where she’d been keeping all of her personal things. From a tall, black-and-white striped hatbox, she retrieved a fist-sized device.
In spite of frowning over it often, trying to apply all of her newly-won knowledge of engineering and technie craft, she hadn’t discerned its purpose.
But Nan had given her the key. Literally.
Sally shifted the device, exposing the bottom, which had a tiny hole. She’d thought it must be some sort of reset activation, but now she knew better.
She inserted the cotter pin key, sliding it effortlessly into place.
Then she waited, her right hand cradling the device.
It warmed in her palm, and she felt a motor start cycling. Its rhythm hummed against her skin, satisfyingly regular.
The frequency of the motor increased until it emitted a steady hum, sounding wonderfully alive. A yellow light lit.
Then it cycled down. The hum slowed to an occasional whir. The light remained on.
Sally waited, but that was it.
Nan had called it, “The edge of a secret, the starting point of power.”
Sally knew where she needed to go next.
It wasn’t a convenient time for a shift, but Sally didn’t have any influence over such matters. When Pivot shifted, everyone had to comply. Unfortunately, this move was going to be particularly inconvenient for her.
A bit boring, too. Darthrok had gone off on a hunting expedition, and he expected to be gone for a couple of days. Essley also needed to go abroad, in search of some medicinal plants. That left Sally without her friends, unable to solve the puzzle of the factory, and without an apprentice to help out with the store.
She studied with Sujan most days, but lately he only tolerated her for a couple hours each day. That was okay since she’d gotten to the point where she could grasp more complex tasks and could only do so much learning per day. She’d tried forcing more new knowledge into her brain, but it just didn’t stick. Knowing her limits, she now worked within them more effectively.
It left her a little bored, though.
She still liked helping customers, but she needed more than that. A lot more.
As she leaned against the counter, waiting for another customer to arrive, she thought about what she could do to fill the time.
She left the sales room and went to the control center. She’d been putting her personal possessions in there, stacking them in the corner or hanging them from hooks on the wall. Maybe she could do something with this space. She only needed a small amount of room to access the store’s navigation systems. Half of the cockpit could easily be converted into some personal quarters.
Too bad James couldn’t do it. He’d make something amazing, for sure. Raoul’s Nice Digs store ought to have great things. She just wouldn’t have James’ flair in putting them together. No matter. She’d do it in her own, particular style.
She’d need a wardrobe with doors, she decided, and some shelves. Maybe a dressing table. She didn’t need a bed, since she rarely slept, but maybe a piece of convertible furniture that could be a place to sit or lie down.
Hm. Yes. It would work. She’d make this space her own.
Returning to the sales room, she waited for a customer to arrive. Slow day. Well, she didn’t have to be bored. She’d take matters into her own hands and do something constructive.
Locking the door behind her, she set out to do some shopping.
“I’m unimpressed with this shift,” Sally said to no one at all. As with most shifts, business was slow after Pivot moved to a new location. In this case, it had moved particularly far, and as far as Sally could tell, there was nothing at all within many, many miles.
She was in the middle of nowhere, but that wasn’t the problem. Her unhappiness came from being more than two hundred miles further away from the factory.
“Un. Im. Pressed,” she repeated, enunciating each syllable like a legit pro talking-type-person. She looked upward and shook her fist at whatever powers controlled Pivot’s shifts.
Actually…it was nice, being able to express her dissatisfaction. Before she woke up, she’d never done that. So she shook her fist again and tried her darnedest to come up with a good curse upon the powers-that-be.
“What the plonk, you doot-doot smidges.”
She quite liked that, actually. It made her feel better. She committed the phrase to memory, for future reference.
She felt better already. So what if she was hundreds of miles from her destination, and her friends were busy with other things, and her mentor was a crusty fussbucket? She had herself, and that was all she needed.
The fact that things hadn’t worked out as she’d planned was just an opportunity for an adventure she’d never imagined.
Awesome!
Hmm. What to put in her backpack? Would she need a change of clothes? It didn’t seem an unreasonable thing to plan for, so she carefully rolled up an outfit into a tidy burrito and tucked it into her pack.
Oh, man. She suddenly felt hungry for a burrito. She’d tried one recently, and had become an instant fan. Maybe she’d have the chance to try more new foods on this trip.
What else should she pack? She didn’t need much to keep her comfortable. A brush for her hair, probably. Money. She grasped her Mechanical Theory book and tucked it into the back of the pack, then added Supply Chain Management Essentials in case she got bored of Mechanical Theory. Should she pack Practical Electricity too?
Nah. That would make her pack heavier than it needed to be. She’d stick with just the two books to fill her travel time.
Looking around at her meager belongings, she saw nothing else that seemed necessary. Just for her comfort, she packed a variety of basic tools, taking care to avoid anything too heavy.
With a shrug and a sigh, she picked up the pack and went out to the store room. There, she emptied the cash register into her pack.
There. She was as prepared as she could be for her first solo adventure. She slid her arms through the straps and settled her pack comfortably on her back.
She hesitated. Was she ready for this? To handle the world without Darthrok and Essley along to translate for her if she got confused about how things worked?
And could she leave the store for a day or more, until Essley could get to it? She’d never been away from it for so long. What if customers got upset or were inconvenienced?
Sally let out a slow breath and straightened her spine. She could do this. Essley and Darthrok were dear to her, but she no longer needed to rely on them to follow her heart and find her own adventures.
She was all she needed. There was nothing that Everternia could spring on her that she couldn’t handle.
She was enough. She’d never realized that before, but now she felt confident in herself and her ability to deal with things as they came along.
Resolutely, she strode out of her store and locked the door behind her.
Train stations were amazing.
Why hadn’t she done this before? There was an intersection of activity and motion and information that became one big blur of buzzing possibility.
Sally had never seen a place with so many people or so much activity.
This was adventure! Excitement! There was even some random trash on the floor!
What a place!
She doubted her fellow travelers appreciated the wonder of it all e
ven half as much as she did.
Poor people.
Sally followed the flow of traffic leading into the grand building, then slowed her pace to give herself a chance to figure out what to do next. She saw signs with labels like “Departures” and “Arrivals” and “Tickets,” which all seemed wonderfully self-explanatory.
She appreciated logical transparency. It sure made life a lot easier.
With a casual but steady stride, she made her way toward the ticket booth. She’d have walked faster, but there was so much to take in and she didn’t want to miss anything.
A sweeping, buttressed ceiling rose high overhead, and it was decorated in light-reactive paint. A scene of wildlife flowed into a night sky, which flowed into a painting of some dude with a big, frizzy mustache and beard. The large paintings, which curved along with the dimension of the ceiling, were interesting enough, but light rigs mounted to the ceiling shifted at regular intervals, creating different versions of the same painting.
Under red light, the wildlife scene became one of flames and smoke. Under purple light, the sky image turned into an aurora borealis. When blue light shined on the bearded guy, he somehow lost all the brushy facial hair and suddenly looked very handsome.
So cool.
When she arrived at the ticket window, Sally was ready. She’d practiced the words ahead of time to be sure she’d be able to say them properly.
The moment of truth arrived. “One round-trip ticket to Bracket, please.”
Nailed it!
“Coach, upgraded, or a private room?” The automaton gazed at her blankly.
She hadn’t prepared for this question. She looked around, making sure no one was close enough to overhear, and leaned in to ask in a low voice, “What’s the difference?”
“About fifty gold, from one upgrade to the next.”
That wasn’t what she’d meant. She’d have to just choose something. A private room sounded uninteresting because she probably wouldn’t be able to see much. So did she want coach or upgraded?
Coach was probably what most people chose, and since she was riding the train for the first time, she might as well start at the beginning. She mentally practiced the word a few times before carefully saying, “Coach, please.”
“Ten gold.”
Sally handed the coins over and received a key card in exchange. She waited to see if she needed to do anything else to finalize the transaction.
“Did you need something else?” the automaton asked.
“Um, no. Thank you.” She hurried away.
Platform G. Sally paused to examine a map of the train station, which illustrated the layout of the various areas. Very logical. Nice.
Since she only had five minutes to board, Sally hurried on to Platform G, not taking the time to notice all the other people hurrying by her. She kept a firm hold on her objective so she didn’t get distracted by all the adventurers and CMs streaming by.
Normally, she might get very distracted by all that.
Sally was still easily distractible, she found as she hurried along without leaping from foot to foot so that she could reasonably claim that she wasn’t running, but walking, in compliance with the posted, stern warnings.
Totally following the rules. Yep.
As she rounded a corner that revealed the platform itself, Sally saw something irresistible. Never mind the excitement of the terminal itself, and all the implications of goings and arrivings, and all the adventures that implied. That was great, but…
Churros. And candy floss. And something called samosas.
Sally couldn’t resist the siren call of sugar, and found herself drifting toward the tiny stand and its incredible aromas like a helpless little moth drawn toward a bright, shining flame.
The smell! Like cinnamon and sugar and angelic fruits had done a dance of joy that resulted it universal harmony. Surely no one could resist such a thing.
Before she knew up from down, Sally had purchased enough candy floss and churros to fortify a small village. She also bought some of the cute, fat little triangles called samosas. They didn’t smell sweet, but had a wonderful aroma of their own.
At least, it seemed that way to her when she boarded the train with her hands full, bags of candy floss tucked into her armpits, and everything else clutched to her chest.
Had she made a mistake? Had she gone too far?
No way!
Sally found her seat easily since the seating system was as logical as the station’s layout had been.
Upon wedging her behind into its assigned narrow perch, she immediately sensed that things had gone awry.
She might have chosen wrong when she selected “coach.” It had sounded so nice. Like there’d be someone to cheer her on. But this…no. This felt more like a size-eight foot being shoved into a size-seven shoe.
And Sally was the foot.
“Dude,” said the thug seated across from her, disconcertingly facing her and making more eye contact than she felt comfortable with. He was far larger than she, but he somehow seemed at ease in his too-small seat. He gestured to her extreme burden of candy floss and churros. “Them’s some snacks.”
He gave her a thumbs-up, and she decided that her initial impression might have been wrong. She might not have to pound him into the dirt at some point in the near future.
Maybe this steam train ride could still be cool, if she tried. Surely there was some fun in it somewhere, if she looked hard enough.
“Last call for west world line, stops at Grommet, Hinge, Lazy Susan, and Bracket. Last call!”
Sally waited, clutching her snacks awkwardly and trying not to pay too much attention to the eager thug across from her, just because he seemed like he wanted to get her attention.
After a couple of minutes, Sally felt, rather than heard, the swell of applied steam energy.
“Doors secured. Commencing forthwith!”
Forthwith? Who said that? Sally looked around, but saw no one who appeared to be the speaker.
Thug Dude across from her tilted his head to the side, glancing at the seat next to her. “Bet you can put your snacks there. Empty seat. Relax.”
Cautiously, Sally looked around then carefully piled her paper-wrapped churros and bundles of candy floss into the unoccupied seat next to her.
Except for one bunch of pink and blue candy floss, because yum. She kept it in her lap alongside the paperboard box of samosas.
She set her backpack in the next seat, too, for the moment. If someone came to sit in that seat, she’d put it in the overhead bin, but she didn’t want to do that until she was sure she had whatever she needed from it. She just wasn’t sure yet what she’d need.
She pulled off a piece of the sweet candy fluff and pushed it into her mouth, letting the sugar melt away to nothing on her tongue. Structurally speaking, candy floss was kind of a miracle. It seemed to occupy multiple states of matter simultaneously.
Thug Dude sat, watching her.
A couple of soft bumps and a minor sense of acceleration indicated that the journey had begun. She paused, waiting for something interesting to happen. Trains went much faster than buses, so she hoped to be able to feel the movement even more. So far, though…nothing.
She leaned out into the aisle, looking for straps for standing passengers to hold, but there were none. There were no standing passengers, either, actually.
“What are you looking for?” Thug Dude asked.
“Straps,” she said.
“What, like on the bus? Nah, not here. It’s a good hour before we get to the first stop, and most people are going further than that. Everyone gets a seat on the train, even though they’re small back here in coach. Guessing this is your first trip?”
She didn’t like admitting that she was so unworldly, but she nodded.
“The good news,” he said, “is that it’s not going to feel like much. You’ll just be sitting here. But the bad news is that, well, you’ll just be sitting here. It gets boring fast. If you’re on one of
the later stops, it’s a lot of empty time to fill.”
Bracket was the last stop. After all the delays at other stations, it would take about four hours to get to Bracket.
Four very boring hours, apparently.
She should have bought more snacks.
The thug was watching her curiously and she realized she hadn’t said anything, which was a bit rude. She picked up a paper-wrapped order of churros and held it out to him. Then she opened the box of samosas and held it out to him.
“Let’s do our best,” she said.
He took the treat and smiled, his previously insolent expression transforming him. He became good-looking, with a light of warmth in his eyes. She also saw a hint of mischief.
“I’m Sally,” she added.
“Rex,” he said. He took a big bite of cinnamon-coated dough and chewed. He gave her a nod of thanks. With his other hand, he took a samosa.
Sally bit into one of the puffy triangles and blew out a quick breath to cool the hot filling. How could it still be so hot? But it was. It was steaming. After a few huffed breaths, she chewed the samosa. Mmm. Yummy! Definitely different than anything she’d tried so far.
The ate their treats in silence, and Sally wondered how she’d fill so much time. Most travelers probably slept, but that wouldn’t work for her. Pulling Practical Electricity from her backpack, she set it on her lap and reached for some churros.
“Whoa.” Rex leaned forward to get a better look at the book. “That looks like some heavy reading.”
Sally bounced her knees, making the book move up and down. “Not really. Paper doesn’t weigh much.”
He laughed and sat back, getting comfortable in his seat. “You’re funny. I like that. You don’t meet too many funny technies.”
“You don’t?” This was news to her.
“Nah. They tend to be super serious. No offense.”
She shrugged. “Thugs aren’t that funny, either, most of the time.”
He grinned. “Fair enough.”
A silence fell, and Sally felt awkward, so she picked up a bag of candy floss and held it out to him.