"Bank left!" yelled Pixell, who managed to knock out our pursuer's solar drive with a well-timed shot from Les' disruptor – which worked on real-world digital systems as well as virtual ones, but in a different way. Yeah, I know I'd promised Helena that I wouldn't use disruptors. Les, however, had made no such promise.
The bastards kept coming, which meant their hover-jet had a secondary diesel drive. Sunny was desperately trying to rewire the medi-bed to restore power to it after some peanut-sized laser from a grenade had passed through its self-contained power source. We had about two minutes left before the medi-bed, and possibly Holly herself, shut down. Wanda was providing Sunny with specs she'd downloaded from the medi-bed's online instruction manual.
"Not that wire, the other wire!" shouted my crow-bot.
"I'm a genetics student, not an engineering nerd!" cried Sunny.
"Fuck this!" growled my adopted son in an unfamiliar voice. Teepee shoved me away from the window and shoves One-eyed Willy into my hands. Before I could call him a worthless semi-human low-tech pre-teen toaster, his right arm morphed into a laser cannon and toasted the cockpit of the hover-jet. Ignoring the ensuing massive explosion, he threw himself at the medi-bed, hugging it while his fingers extended themselves into its guts. The bed lit up and became fully functional in a matter of seconds.
We all took a deep, well-earned breath of sanitized air. Holly's timer read "00:22" and there appeared to be no damage to her healing procedures. Time would tell, of course.
You're probably wondering, "Crow Feather, just what in the hell happened?"
And you'd be in luck, because I'm gonna be Mr. Nice Narrator and tell you.
Overland travel around the world changed radically after the Big Ka-boom. There are lots of deadly things out to kill you – most are chemical- or radiation-based. I'm not gonna lie, but just as scientists predicted, cockroaches had a grand old time filling in the now mostly empty tiers of the food triangle.
The predator/prey diagrams also changed radically. Rats came in a close second, followed by worms, dogs, rabbits, mice, ferrets, snakes, spiders, hyenas, vultures, ravens, piranhas, sharks, horseshoe crabs, seagulls, lemurs, and kangaroos. After a millennium and a half, you wouldn't recognize them. There are some of the originals left, and zoologists are breeding them in captivity with high hopes. Frankly, I think their days are numbered.
In 1208 A.A., trains were built in Uninada, the Island Nation of EspaFranca, Europa Media and Asiatica. They were built to survive earthquakes, floods, extreme heat and cold, tsunamis, tornados and human ineptitude. What they didn't count on were the newly evolving, metal-dissolving millipedes the size of alligators.
Entomologists and ecologists finally figured them out, but it was too late. Private and corporate funding for the trains ceased. Half a century later, their empty shells began attracting artists, the homeless, the poor, survivalists, neo-hippies, dreamers, and people wanting to live 'the old way.' It also attracted the lawless, the ex-cons and the pre-apocalypse artifact hunters. By that time, the millipedes were snack food for the Roachybaras.
Just 90 minutes after we'd left Chicago, Lisa (full name: Elisabettina Longueduc) noticed that we were being followed. After a brief pow-wow, Pixell, Wanda, Les and I agreed that the likelihood of a bounty being placed on our heads (okay, my head mainly) was sky-high. I'd been seen at the Library just before its fiery destruction, MetaAppleSoft had been monitoring me, and the Dromedaries were rumored to have orifices everywhere (gross, but accurate.)
Lisa had been flying close to the ground to avoid even the most advanced radar, which has trouble seeing through the radioactive layer that lingers from the Ka-boom. When we flew higher, and our fire-powered fan club went higher, Pixell gave the order for Lisa to 'lose those losers.' The change in our driver was instantaneous.
"Sit down, buckle up, and hold onto your guts, 'cause Loony Lisa Lightspeed is on the loose! Yee-ha!"
Anything not bolted down was propelled to the back of the hover-bus as we nose-dived close to the surface, sheering away several score treetops. What Lisa had not counted on was a Starburst grenade that had to have been dropped on us as we descended. Caught up in our downwind, it exploded. Thousands of laser shards were reflected by whatever metal our vehicle was made of.
All shards, that is, except the one that pierced the medi-bed. Thanks to Teepee's cyber reflexes and speed, and in no small part his laser-cannon, the world was quiet again, and Holly would awaken with a foot pointing the right way forward. She would not have been amused had things gone otherwise.
"Hey, Les?" I shouted. He was hovering over Teepee and the medi-bed, apparently fascinated by the snaking of my son's fingers into the medical machinery. "Did you know Teepee was carrying that much firepower?"
"Nope. Trying to see through his cyborg frame is futile. This 'professor' guy that augmented him is better at cybernetic and biological interfacing than anyone I know." It was then that I had one of my hunches. With it came the quiet sound of Coyote's laughter. Before I had the opportunity to check it out, Lisa announced, "Welcome to New Cahokia, the Underground Skyway."
Before us was a wide plain, flat with several large exceptions: huge, three- and four-story hills, each about ¾ of a mile apart. The hover-bus stopped over one, which was opening down the middle, revealing a landing pad underneath. I watched as several uniformed men and women secured our vehicle. The mound then began to close, yet it allowed light to pass through its surface.
"I don' know 'bout this, boss!" commented Wanda in silent mode. "We's not in Kansas anymore!"
"You mean Illinois. Long ago, Cahokia was a Native civilization. Can you read what their patches say?" I think at her.
"Gates Of Knowledge: Windows to the Future! Well, I'll be a Commodore 64, the rumors were true. Looks like Mr. Microsoft had another secret facility. Who knew ol' Bill could be that sneaky?"
"First," Pixell proclaimed, "you and your clothes need to go through some decontamination. You'll be provided with new travel gear, VR attire and assigned lockers for any non-essential personal items. Then we'll meet in my office to discuss what's next."
"Lady, what you talkin' 'bout? Mr. Daniel Crow Feather calls the shots, and I don' 'member him puttin' you in charge!" Wanda divebombed Pixell's head, narrowly missing her nose.
Sunny straightened up to her full height, standing a head taller than the Librarian, her metal piercings glinting in the Midwestern sunlight. "I believe we're all owed an explanation." She turned to me and said, "What the hell is going on?"
I shrug my shoulders and give her my honest answer: "Beats me!"
Pixell takes us all inside a lounge near the Gates of Knowledge base entrance. "We know about your case, Danny. By now, you've figured out that there are factions in Uninada that would like to see you fail. And the Dromedaries are somehow involved. To solve this mess, you've got to travel the Virtuaverse to find the one in several thousand trillion brainwave patterns that is deteriorating every second.
Your adversaries can closely monitor all methods of transport in and out of Earth. That's where we come in. The Underground Skyway is an off-the-grid waystation between Earth, the Moon, Titan and the Virtuaverse. They'll know when you're not here, but they won't know where you've gone."
"They'll guess," adds Lisa, "but it will take them time to find you. You'll have false genetic markers planted inside you. They'll last 2 weeks before they begin to deteriorate, so that will give you some camouflage from bio-scanners."
"Hey, guys!" hoots Holly, entering the room on Teepee's arm, dancing like an old showgirl with her police academy cane. Both feet facing forward, too. "That was quite a nap. What did I miss?"
As my team - an unfamiliar term for me, 'my team' - fills her in, my eyes are on Teepee. He's looking around the hangar, which is to be expected. It's new and unfamiliar territory, and worth getting a picture of the layout in your head - just in case, you know. But there's a quality to his inspection that's different. When I hand him One-eyed Willy, he stares at it a second too long. Rather than hugging and talking to it, he lets his arm drop, letting the teddy's legs brush against the floor.
Then the moment passes, and he's scolding poor Willy for getting his feet dirty.
Check out Beyond the Bridge, an ONC 2023 entry written by Spruce_Goose (She/Her)
After a chance meeting, old friends Grace Williams and Levi Edgeworth allow the flip of a coin to decide whether they live out their childhood fantasy of discovering just what lies at the end of a stream. Just when they think they have their answer, they find themselves stuck together, in a series of tunnels where old secrets are revealed.