by Susan Moore
For Lilu. Dragons can be most useful.
FUTURE TECH AND OTHER COOL STUFF
FASTPAD: A flexible, tough, wafer-thin tablet computer, which can be rolled up. Invented by UK-based technology company Fenomenell.
GROOVERIDER: A low-slung, hydrogen-powered sports car with a distinctive grooved bonnet. Designed and manufactured by Choprider, Shanghai.
NEWSAMP: A 24/7 news service delivering ranked, hottest news stories.
OCTOZEB GOGGLES: Diamond-def, virtual-reality goggles designed and made by SPIN, Hong Kong.
OVERRIDER: A super-sized, six-wheeled all-terrain truck. Originally developed for the Chinese army by Choprider, Shanghai.
PICUP: A 3D photo-sharing chat zone, optimised for robot-uploads.
POPKO JUICE: A range of juice smoothies served in striped layers containing a secret Popko ingredient.
ROCKETBOAT: A hydrogen-powered, cigar-shaped speedboat, capable of rapid acceleration and speeds of up to 200mph.
SLAMBURGER: The ultimate Yanbian beefburger created by top Hong Kong chef Shen Slam. Shen’s signature toppings are legendary, with Slamburger winning Best Hong Kong Burger (voted for by Big Dragon News) for the last five years.
SLIDER: A skateboard-shaped, electrically powered hover board with pop-up handlebars. The Slider was invented by Beijing Bikes’ top engineer, Liu Lee, using the same principles of motion as the classic hovercraft from the twentieth century. Sales of Sliders have outstripped bicycles by four hundred per cent over the last two years.
SMARTSHEET: Wafer-thin, everlasting digital paper.
SMART T–SHIRT: An e-textile T-shirt containing soft, flexible screens on the front and back for display of movie clips, photos or text.
Chapter One
SCHOOL’S OUT
The dragon robot’s green snout popped out of the top of Nat’s blazer pocket as he scanned the racks of multicoloured Sliders with his amber eyes. There were so many yellow ones; Nat had no idea which one was hers.
“Row ninety, rack eight,” Fizz said in his squeaky, digital voice.
A loud bell rang out across the lawn from the main building. The other classes would come pouring out at any moment and it would be end-of-term mayhem.
Nat reached into her backpack, pulled out her sky-blue helmet and jammed it on to her head. She couldn’t wait to race out through the school gates. A whole month of holiday was waiting for her – no lessons, no early mornings. She could taste freedom on the warm afternoon breeze.
Lowering her tinted visor she ran down to row ninety at the far end of the shelter where her custom-made Slider sat in its rack. She touched her index finger to the back scanner. The rear lights lit up, the board lifted automatically off the rack, backed out and lowered through the air, coming to rest in hover mode at her side.
The silver handlebars whirred up out of the top of the board, locking into place. She threw her backpack over her shoulders and hopped up.
“Incoming message from Central Post Office. You have a parcel awaiting customs inspection,” said Fizz.
“Not now, Fizz,” she said, reaching into her blazer pocket to pull him out. She set him down on the handlebars. His golden talons curled around the bar and he spread his emerald wings for a quick solar charge. The scales shimmered in the afternoon sun.
Loud voices and laughter erupted from behind. Nat turned to see that the other classes were out and stampeding in her direction. She caught sight of a flash of bright-red hair among them.
“Wings in, Fizz, before Henry spots us. Zoula!”
He snapped them back in. Nat pushed the handlebars forward and the Slider glided swiftly across the lawn. She waved at the security guard and passed through Weiwood School’s tall iron gates.
“Hai, Nat,” said Wen, scooting her orange Slider up alongside.
Wen had already taken off her school blazer and slipped on a short lime-green jacket. Nat pulled back on the handlebars to slow her pace. Wen’s furry purple rabbit robot, Fu, turned her head from where she was clipped on to Wen’s handlebars. Her rabbit eyes glowed bright blue when she spied Fizz, and she let out a high-pitched squeak. Fizz answered with a loud snort.
Wen laughed. “That voice upgrade you did makes him sound more like a pig than a dragon.”
Nat shrugged her shoulders. “It was the closest I could get. No one knows what a real dragon sounds like anyway.”
“True, oh wise one, but I’m guessing a roar would be more like it.”
“We’d better get a move on. Zoula!” said Nat, pushing forward on her handlebars again.
Wen followed. Nat steered her board into a narrow designated Slider lane. They were in luck – it was empty. A rush of cool air brushed her cheeks as she picked up speed.
“Drop or Easy Rider?” she shouted, seeing the fork in the lane up ahead.
“Drop!” shouted Wen from behind.
“Hang on, Fizz!”
His talons lengthened at Nat’s command, wrapping tighter around the handlebars. Nat leaned to the left, the board following her movement, which brought them to the crest of The Peak. For a moment she had a bird’s-eye, panoramic view of Hong Kong’s jungle of skyscrapers below, the thick blue ribbon of Victoria Harbour separating the island from the even taller, thicker tangle of Kowloon’s mash-up of buildings. Cruise liners, ferries, junk boats, sloops, sea-going vessels of all shapes and sizes were carving white trails across the harbour waters.
She took the Pok Fu Lam turn. The sun-drenched vista vanished. Her Slider pitched off down a steep Slider-only lane carved through a dense forest of trees and bushes. She pushed the board’s handlebars further forward and felt it accelerate, moving down the steep track at a fast clip. She zoomed past clumps of ferns and vines. The smell of damp earth and musty leaves hit her nostrils.
“Zoinks!” she cried, rounding a corner.
A huge tree had fallen across the Slider’s path. Fizz’s snout lit up bright red. Nat pulled back on the handlebars, bringing the Slider to an abrupt hover-only mode.
“Ai yah!” cried Wen, nearly crashing straight into the back of her. “I knew we should have taken Easy Rider.”
Chapter Two
MAX-HOVER
“Maybe we can get over it,” said Nat, sizing up the fallen tree.
“No chance,” said Wen. “Our Sliders can’t hover up that high. We’ll have to turn around.”
Nat moved the dial on her handlebars all the way up to Max-Hover setting. Fizz released a long plume of white smoke from his snout as the Slider lifted high up into the air.
“You’re crazy!” shouted Wen.
Nat moved in slowly towards the tree, but the Slider only reached halfway up its side.
“Hold tight, Fizz,” she said, hitting the Vertical Storage button.
The Slider flipped upright. Fizz started snorting. Nat hung on to the handlebars, her legs dangling down in the air.
“What are you doing?” said Wen.
Nat hit Max-Hover again. The Slider reset its ground level to where it was hanging in vertical-storage mode. It flipped back to horizontal and lifted higher up, above the tree trunk. Nat pushed the handlebars forward. She glided over it with ease.
“Zoula!” she called to Wen.
“Ai yaaaaaaaah!” came the reply.
Seconds later Fu’s furry ears popped up over the trunk, followed by the top of Wen’s orange helmet. Satisfied that her friend had made it, Nat pushed forward, zipping down Pok Fu Lam again at a fast clip.
Rounding a sharp bend she saw a flashing skyscraper sign looming up ahead. The end of Fizz’s snout started to flash red and he let out the deafening, ringing sound of an old-fashioned alarm clock.
“Zoinks! Fizz, you can cut the alarm now,” she said, pulling back on the handlebars.
But h
e only stopped when the Slider speedometer hit the urban-zone limit of ten miles per hour.
Nat’s Slider popped out of the trees on to Po Shan Road. Her hand flew up off the handlebars to block the glare of sunlight, which was reflecting off one of the glass skyscrapers further down the hill. Her Slider detected her move and automatically slowed to safety speed. She took the opportunity to glance over her shoulder. The nose of Wen’s Slider was just coming out of the trees.
“Fizz, play Fu Jam,” she said, accelerating down through the busy Mid-Levels district.
A cool bass guitar riff started to boom out of the speakers in her helmet, blocking out the din of the city. Then the music suddenly cut out, to be replaced by Fizz’s deafening alarm again. She reined in the handlebars.
“You ruin all my fun,” she said, slowing back down to the speed limit.
The music came on again for only a split second before Fizz cut in once more.
“Call from Henry,” he announced.
She bit her lip as guilt momentarily swept over her.
“Take a message,” she said.
Chapter Three
THE PACKAGE
The dog started to whimper and whine. A man in a grey uniform looked up from his FastPad to see the tip of a black tail wagging frantically over the top of the mountain of incoming parcels that they had to process before the end of the day.
He walked across the concrete floor of the inspection shed. He could hear the dog’s claws furiously scrabbling against cardboard as it tried to dig something out.
“Hang on, Wokstar,” he said, reaching into his pocket for a fresh pair of inspection gloves.
This was the time of year he dreaded – Christmas and Chinese New Year, a double-whammy of gifts being sent in to Hong Kong from every part of the world. Worse still, friends and family sent some very strange presents to their loved ones on the island. Last year he and Wokstar had discovered a sealed bucket of live piranhas, and a stuffed pet rat in a box wearing an astronaut suit.
Wokstar started to bark insistently. The man’s heart began to beat faster. He pushed his way through a narrow gap in the mass of packages to find Wokstar’s nose wedged in between two boxes. “Sit!” he commanded.
Wokstar did as she was told but her long black tail still thumped against a box. The man flicked on the pencil-thin torch, which hung around his neck beside his Hong Kong customs security card. Leaning down he cast the beam into the gap.
The sorting robot must have slipped up – they never processed such small items in the Oversized Parcel Inspection Shed. He reached down with both hands and pulled.
Out popped a jar-shaped package. Wokstar started to bark wildly, leaping up, trying to grab it from his hand.
“Down!” he shouted.
She obeyed. A tremor of excitement ran through his hand as he turned the package in the bright overhead light. His boring day had just got a whole lot more interesting.
Chapter Four
QUICK CHANGE
Nat turned into Cochrane Street. Rush-hour traffic had started early. Even the Slider lane was crawling along like a thousand-year-old tortoise. Gigantic super-buildings lined either side of the street. They were so close together that the blue sky above was reduced to a long narrow strip. Deep shadowy pockets of darkness hid between neon-lit rows of street-level shops and restaurants.
Nat rode along at a crawling pace past blacked-out Grooveriders transporting Hong Kong’s elite. Less important officials sat in Overriders emblazoned with China’s red sun. Striped electric buggies containing stressed-out office workers stood bumper to bumper with rumbling delivery trucks that were fuelled by wok fat.
“Cut Fu Jam, Fizz.”
She needed to be alert for any crazy buggy drivers trying to do an illegal cut through the Slider lane. She was still sore from being knocked off by one two months ago.
As the music stopped she gritted her teeth. “Bun Jou”, the most overplayed Cantonese rock song of the year, was blaring out of a local cosmetics shop. It was playing everywhere right now, and driving her crazy.
As she passed the Lucky Cat restaurant the smell of fried fish in garlic and ginger made her taste buds tingle. She slowed her Slider…
Suddenly a holographic boy with spiky hair appeared, blocking her path. He was floating in mid-air. She pulled back to hover-stop mode. Now she was twelve she was of legal age for holographic advertising and the novelty had still not worn off. As Virtual Posters went this was a top-notch one. She could see they’d used the latest RealCutis software to design and build it since the whole poster was in true 3D, using the light and shade of the current environment outside to tone the boy’s appearance. It was pretty slick and must have cost a fortune.
“Hai, Nat, it’s sale time at Trenko! Come on in and you’ll receive a free gift with your purchase,” announced the boy, holding up a neon-lit arrow, which pointed at the massive Trenko tower opposite.
“No, thanks,” she said.
The boy waved, then vanished just as Wen whooshed up next to her.
“Ai yah! Some old lady with worse eyesight than Granny Tang pulled out right in front of me. I had to swerve to miss her and then she drove her Slider like a slug,” she said.
“Your class at Ken’s studio starts in five minutes,” said Fizz.
Fu’s eyes lit up bright purple and narrowed. Her nose twitched. She swivelled her head around.
“Get to Ken’s fast. You’ve got five,” she squeaked at Wen, thumping her back paw on the Slider handlebar.
“Why do you give me such a hard time?” grumbled Wen.
“Because you’re always late!” said Nat, laughing. “We’d better take the fast lane. Zoula!”
She turned off street level, along a ramp and on to the upper Slider lane, which ran above the Mid-Levels escalators.
Ken’s jeet kune do studio on Lun Fat Street was located on the first floor above the Vegetarian Paradise restaurant, which had an all-you-can-eat special for thirty dollars. Nat and Wen pulled up outside and stacked their Sliders in the metered parking zone. Strips of dark-brown paint were peeling off the restaurant walls, leaving a sickly yellow colour that looked like an overripe banana oozing in the hot sun. They took off their helmets and ran up the narrow stairway.
A few boys were already warming up on the exercise mats that covered the floor in Ken’s studio. A couple more were practising on the Mook Jong wooden dummies, which stood lined up against the back wall. Sun streamed in the long window, making the posters and photographs of Ken’s kung fu hero, Bruce Lee, come to life.
Ken strode across the mats to meet them. He bowed his head and folded his arms across his chest.
They bowed their heads in unison. “Sifu.”
“Kung fu kittens would do well to be on time if they want to become tigers,” he said.
“Sorry, the traffic was bad,” said Nat.
“And our little fox is where?”
Nat shrugged, trying to ignore the stab of guilt. She really should have waited for Henry.
“Go and get ready,” he said, turning back towards the class.
The girls’ changing room was tiny. Ken had created it out of the old broom cupboard when Nat had joined his dojo. She was the first girl to join; Wen was the second – and last. Such was Ken’s reputation that most girls attended Kung Fu Babes, where Madame Wu had a gentler way of teaching.
Nat unzipped her pack and removed her white kung fu suit. She put Fizz to perch on the shelf next to Fu. Side by side the two robots could not have looked more different. Fu was one of the latest “Super-Cute, Fresh and Furry” rabbit models from Soyto. Her fur was electric purple, each individual hair fully waterproof and self-cleaning. Her long silky ears were lined with soft, blue, everlasting velvet, the same colour as her eyes. She looked as if she’d just been taken out of the box. Everything about her said “cuddle me”.
Fizz sat a head shorter than Fu. Nat could cradle him in the palm of her hand. He was a one-off dragon robot, designed and built by her fa
ther. Back then he’d been ahead of his time, a piece of cutting-edge technology. Now he was ancient. He couldn’t do any of the things that the newer, mass-produced robots could do. He couldn’t walk or jump. He didn’t have the nano-tech camera lens or the megamax audio system, but he was her trusted friend with his glittering mesh of feather-light scales, microchips, nano-sensors and robotic limbs. His golden talons were so strong that he could hang upside down like a bat, and stay gripped on to a sail rope in a force ten gale (he’d had to do that a few times during typhoon season). At twelve years old, he was the exact same age to the day as Nat herself; he was definitely vintage.
“Central Post Office package update – customs inspection in progress,” he announced.
“Later, Fizz. That’s not important right now.”
Wen winced. “Ai yah! That pig voice does not work. You must be able to find something better. Why don’t you look in the Soyto library?”
Nat pulled on her kung fu slippers.
“Soyto isn’t compatible. Neither are most of the digital voice upgrades because he’s so old. You’re just going to have to get used to it. Oh no, what colour?” she said, looking back up and seeing a long black box in Wen’s hand.
The corner of Wen’s lips twitched up into a wicked smile. “Wait and see.”
She pulled out a green comb. Looking in the small mirror that she’d glued to the back of the broom cupboard door a few months before, she started to run it through her spiky black hair. Each strand began to turn a bright purple with gold flecks.
Nat’s eyes grew wide. “Only a fashionista like you would pick that,” she said, laughing.
Wen giggled. “It’s a retro nano-colour. Want to try it?”
Nat scrunched her long red hair up into a tight topknot. “No, thanks. You know I’m useless with all that stuff.”
She stepped out of the broom cupboard just as her nine-year-old cousin came bursting in through the entrance door. His face was the same colour as his red hair, and he had a long bloody scrape down his arm.