by Natalie Reid
Griffin absently scratched a hardened piece of dirt off the circuit-board in his hands, and asked, “What’s China?”
She shrugged. “Dunno. That’s what the guy said. I assumed it was some place far away.”
“Why would I want to know what some guy in some place I’ve never heard of is doing?”
She sighed in annoyance. “That’s not the point, Griff! Man! I thought you were in to this kind of thing!”
She lifted up a large sheet of metal, and a series of loud crashes echoed down the tunnel.
When the sound stopped, Griffin scratched an itch on his nose and commented, “I don’t think your friend knew what he was talking about. I’m all for finding out about the past, you know that, but it sounds like he just made that up. It’s not like you could go back and—”
“No way!” Harper exclaimed loudly, staring at something on the ground by her feet.
Griffin carefully stepped over several jagged pieces of metal to see what she had discovered. His heart caught in his throat and he gulped at the sight before him. He grew even more afraid when he saw his friend’s hopeful expression.
“Griff, tell me you can fix that, man!”
She crouched down to get a better look, but Griffin remained standing, not wanting to get any closer to the Government Task Force hover-bike. There was no mistaking it for anything else. Black with silver trim, wheels were just metal circles, completely empty inside. They almost looked like they were just for show, but Griffin knew they were an integral part of the hovering mechanism.
“Harper, we should leave it,” he warned. He tried to step back, but there was too much junk in his way to safely walk backwards.
“Are you kidding me?! This thing is a legend unto itself. Can you imagine everything we could get away with if we rode around in one of these? No one would ever mess with us!” When she saw the wary expression on Griffin’s face, she got up and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “And I imagine it would go a long way in winning the attention of a certain someone.”
Griffin jerked his head to face her. “You said you wouldn’t mention her!”
She held up her hands defensively, showing two black fingerless gloves caked in tunnel dirt. “I didn’t!” she insisted. “But if you’re really gonna go for her, you’re gonna to need my help, and you’re gonna to need this bike.”
Griffin looked down at the bike, at its bent frame and rusted exterior, and shook his head. “We shouldn’t. It’s going to be more trouble than it’s worth.”
He turned around and started walking back up to the hidden hatch they had installed for easy entrance.
“Come on!” she yelled out. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Your sense of romance! Even I’d love you forever if you fixed this bike for me!”
Griffin reached up for the hatch. “There are easier ways to get a girl to notice me without having to commit a felony.” The hatch opened, and a few weak rays of autumn sunlight wandered in. “Besides, that bike’s never going to work again anyway.”
Once Griffin carefully slipped past the junk-yard parameters and made it onto the street, he stopped and looked down at his watch. He had found the design for his wrist watch in a dusty old book in the small library of the repair shop that he worked at. His mind went back briefly to what Harper had said about things being forgotten. His wrist watch was certainly one of them. On a number of times, people had caught him staring at his watch and asked just what kind of mischief he was up to. He even tried to explain how the little dials worked. How the dot on the top stood for both twelve o’clock and sixty minutes. No one ever listened long enough to understand, but Griffin was sure, one day, someone besides Harper would master the intricacies of the clock face.
The time on the clock showed two twenty-four. He had a little over an hour before he had to go to work. Still, he decided to start heading in that direction so he could wander in and out of the little shops near his work, ensuring that he wouldn’t be late when three-thirty struck.
Aero City didn’t have much of what Griffin called small-town commerce. He had never seen a small town, of course, but he understood a little of the cares that the people would have shared there, and prided himself on aspiring to some of those cares. For example, he once read in a book that a small-town woman had searched an entire day for the perfect ingredients for a pie. Likewise, Griffin had once searched an entire week for the perfect piece of curved metal to fit into an invention he was working on. He didn’t know if the lady’s pie had turned out, but it had to have been better than his invention.
So, while the shops around where he worked didn’t quite reek of the small-town air that he longed for, they were at least a little better than the sleek high-rise buildings of the business sector. Some of them resembled old-time coffee shops—strictly in the sense that they served nothing but watered down coffee and day-old bread. One of them was a clothing store that housed a few articles that didn’t have the typical “I’m a cool racker who just wants to blow a few days wages down at Mercury’s” kind of vibe. There was even a Ramen place that claimed to serve authentic Japanese noodles. Griffin didn’t know if a place called Japan existed, but the man that worked at the restaurant swore that, seven generations back, his ancestors must have lived there.
But his favorite place near his work was an Expedition Depot. This was where items that government workers picked up during their expeditions outside of Aero City dropped off their findings. It was the best place to find things from the old world, even if they were stringently inspected and regulated by the government. He could always find something he needed for an invention, or discover some strange and presently obsolete machine to marvel over.
Most of all, browsing over the items in the Expedition Depot made him feel close to his father. When his dad had been alive, he had been one of the government workers that went out on Expedition trips. Every time Griffin picked up an object in an Expedition Depot, especially an exceptionally dusty or strange looking piece, he wondered if it had been his father that had brought it there.
However, today he did not feel like looking for parts for inventions, so it was at one of the coffee shops that he decided to spend his free hour before work. The walls inside of Barry’s Coffee House were painted a strange brown, and lines had been drawn on to resemble planks of wood. It wasn’t fooling anyone, but it was at least a nice attempt.
Walking inside the shop, Griffin went up to the front counter and looked around for Barry. When he didn’t see him, he glanced to his left. There was a machine there that dispensed coffee, and on it was a note that said: Self-serve today!
“Great,” he muttered.
Barry’s coffee wasn’t even good, but the stuff from the machine was worse. One time all that came out was hot water. At least then it didn’t taste bad, but it still didn’t give him that satisfying bite of caffeine that he longed for.
When he slid in his government issued card that kept track of all his finances, a thin white cup dumped itself out from the bowels of the machine, and the mechanical beast purred as it relieved itself in his cup. When it was done, Griffin gingerly picked up the cup and sniffed it. It smelled bitter. That was promising. He took a sip. It was weak and lukewarm. He shook his head, wondering how it was that this machine could perfect all the bad qualities in coffee.
Turning away from the machine, he was about to take a seat by the window, when suddenly he turned back and stared determinedly at the wall.
She was at the door. The girl… the girl called Melissa. She was talking with another girl, pointing at the shop like they wanted to come in.
He took a quick peek around him. Yeah, he was definitely the only one in here. He heard the door open. Yeah, they were definitely coming in.
“It’s not much warmer in here,” he heard her friend say as they walked through the small shop.
His back tensed. They were coming for the counter. They would need to walk right by him. He turned rigidly away from the machine, stared down at his coffee, and s
tarted walking towards the tables.
“Excuse me?” Melissa’s small voice asked.
Griffin froze. He couldn’t convince his legs to swing himself back around to face her, but he at least turned his head to call back a shaky, “Yeah?”
“Do you work here? We’d like a cup of coffee,” she asked politely.
“Duh, he knows that,” her friend said, lightly hitting her on the arm.
From the corner of his eye, Griffin saw as Melissa tucked a strand of her auburn hair behind her ear. Her nose was red from the cold nip of the autumn air, and her shoulders were tensed slightly inward to help conserve warmth.
Mastering courage from the probably point zero, zero, one ounce of caffeine he had, he forced himself to turn around and face her.
“The coffee isn’t any good,” he admitted.
Then, before he could stop himself, he extended his cup to her, and her fingers curled around the top, accepting his offer. His eyes met hers for a moment, and he found he couldn’t let go of the cup. But he had never been this close to her! His fingers were just an inch from hers.
When Melissa lightly tugged on the cup to receive it, her face fell slightly, realizing that he wasn’t letting go of it. Her expression acted like lighting to Griffin’s system. He quickly let go of the cup, breathed out a half-audible, “Bye,” and then swung around and left for the door.
“Hey, wait a minute!” her friend called out.
Griffin thought about stopping to explain that he didn’t work there, but he couldn’t see further interaction resulting in any good scenario. So he ignored her and pushed past the door. He ran down the street and didn’t stop until he was safely inside the repair shop. Once in, his head gradually cleared of adrenaline and the half-mad disease that had taken over his brain, and he began to figure that maybe it was easier to commit a felony.
* * *
Ual stared at the bare white walls of the BLES waiting room. He was told that Jessie was in a restricted part of the building that housed some very complicated machinery, and that he was to wait here for her while she finished her tests.
Ual, like nearly every other person with numbers in Aero City, had a tablet in which to keep in contact with others, and, on very sparse occasions, to pass the time away fiddling with its various programs. But when going to see Jessie, he was always careful to leave it at home or someplace where no one could use it to see where he’d been. This left Ual staring at the white walls.
White.
Just like so many other rooms he went into. There must have been something about the color that fascinated interior decorators and government officials. It seemed to show up everywhere, as if each room in Aero City was entered into a contest as to which could appear the most blinding white. One thing was for certain…the janitorial staff was not to be envied.
When a man in a blue lab coat entered, informing him that Jessie had finally finished her tests, he was led to another room. This one was homelier, with warm brown walls, cushioned chairs, and most importantly, sitting in the center of the room in a wheel chair, Jessie Fifty-Fifty.
“Owl!” she exclaimed when she saw him, her face lighting up and her hands fidgeting as if she wanted to lift herself out of the chair.
Ual had to blink back his tears at the sound of her nickname for him. When he had heard the news that she had been shot down and would probably die, he had to wait a full nine hours until he was alone and could silently cry in the corner of his office. His position in the government called for a stiff upper lip, but when it came to Jessie, he found he was always in danger of crumbling.
Jessie wheeled herself forward a little, gently saying, “I’d hug you, but I’m afraid it’s against the doctor’s orders at the moment.”
Ual bit down on his teeth, grinding down his emotions, and pulled up a chair in front of her. “You look so good Jessie,” he said in a shaky voice that betrayed his true age.
Her face softened in a sad expression, and she reached a hand out to cover his. “I’m sorry for making you worry.”
“I’m afraid that’s not going to stop anytime soon.” He gave her a smile, and she seemed to relax at that. Then he straightened in his chair, adding, “Ward sent me, actually.”
Jessie’s back instantly tensed.
“He’s extremely interested in your progress.”
“You and everyone else it seems like,” she said, running a hand down the back of her neck.
Ual looked back to the door. It was closed, and luckily they had been left alone. There were definitely perks to being a government official. “I wish I could sit here with you and talk about happier subjects. Try and help you get better.”
“But things are getting stirred up in Aero City,” she guessed, absently nodding to herself.
“Stirred up is one way to put it.”
She tilted her head forward and lowered her voice, asking, “Can’t you just tell me what’s going on?”
He looked down at his hands. “I only have half an idea myself, and I can’t even tell you that much. The information is too dangerous to carry, especially in your head. The best thing for you to do is to keep your head down as much as possible.”
“Owl, I wasn’t made to just wait on the sidelines!”
“Sidelines,” he repeated, as if hearing the word for the first time. He touched a hand to his creased forehead. “You’re not on the sidelines, and that’s the problem. There are a lot of players in this game, Jessie—players you haven’t even got an inkling about, yet your name keeps popping up at the center of it all.”
He placed a hand on the arm of his chair and slowly got to his feet.
Before he could leave, she called out, “Which night?” When he turned around, she repeated it again. “Which night, Owl? Why is the Aero Complex so important?”
She stared up at him with a look of pleading, but he shook his head. He had to deal with that look many times over the past nine years. He saw it every time he had to explain why her mother did what she did, why she couldn’t leave the military air-ship by herself, why it was that he couldn’t tell her where her mother was being held, who her father was, or what the note he had given to her from her mother had meant. He was supposed to act as a new set of parents for her, yet all he could say to her was no.
Chapter 5
The Desolar Complex
On the seventh day after her crash, Jessie was allowed to stand up and walk around. She took a few steps about her recovery room, but somehow walking was a little hard when one scientist was staring at her as though she was solving all the world’s problems with just a few steps, and the other was trying very hard to avoid even looking in her direction. Doctor Tag smiled broadly at her as she made it to the table in the corner of the room, and nodded his head to encourage more. Tom, on the other hand, held up a hand to the side of his glasses, and Jessie suspected that he was watching something inside the lens rather than the tedious show of her first steps.
She gripped onto the table with her hands, trying to quietly catch her breath. She looked over at Tom and felt bad for subjecting him to this. Clearly Doctor Tag thought this was something much bigger than it actually was, and had the power to force his enthusiasm on his assistant.
“Go on, Jessie,” Tag encouraged when she didn’t move away from the table. “You’re doing great! Great strides for everyone are being made today!”
She nodded at him, but pointed an open palm towards Tom, saying, “You don’t have to make him watch this, do you?”
Tom’s eyes twitched for a moment in her direction before returning back to the screen on his glasses.
“If I had it my way, all of Aero City would be watching this!” Tag exclaimed. “Although, that would be illogical and far too distracting, so it’s just as well that they aren’t.”
She gave out a short laugh. Then, preparing her legs again, she left the support of the table and started walking along the perimeter of the wall. By the time she nearly circled around to where the bed was, her chest grew
weak, and her breathing began to develop that foreign feeling it had when she had first awoken from her crash.
What made it worse was actually knowing what was inside of her. A couple days ago, Tag had shown her a picture of the synthetic tissue inside her chest. It looked human, yet not quite right. It had been formed into a small pouch for a lung, growing large like a balloon with air, and then shrinking with each exhale so that it resembled a large, fleshy raisin.
The change in her heart was perhaps harder to take. Only a piece of it had been replaced, yet the small addition felt like a more intrusive invasion of her person than the lung did. The heart was arguably the most intimate, personal organ there was in the human body. It’s what keeps a person alive, keeps their blood warm, gives them that tiny pulse of vibration that every human shares in common with each other. Jessie almost felt like an imposter. The beat that pulsed in her veins got there not because of nature, but because of man. Every time she noticed it, every time it grew faster, she was reminded of how she was no longer just Jessie anymore, but a creation of science.
“How’s the ticker?” Tag asked her, nodding his head in expectation of her positive answer.
“To be blatantly honest, it feels a little weird,” she admitted, rubbing the back of her neck.
“How so?” Tom asked from his corner of the room.
She blinked her eyes for a moment, surprised that it was the younger scientist that had spoken.
“I just feel sort of…put together. Like it’s not all me in there.”
Tag made a nervous chuckling sound. “Maybe you shouldn’t put it that way when the military comes back for another check-up.”