Getting home proved to be a giant pain in my ass. Right after I had left Calis's workshop, the storm proved to be much worse than I first thought. Of course, when you're a surface dweller like I am, you expect the worse.
There are no second chances with the life I live. You either adapt or you die. It's as simple as that.
Visibility for myself was next to zero. Even the bike's forward and rear-mounted lights could not help dispel the colossal fury of the storm. I sped on alone--and on instinct--hoping that I could remember where I lived in the Golan Desert.
By the time I got home, the storm was at its peak and I could see (and hear) nothing but a black darkness, roiling clouds, thunder, lightning, and high winds. I wasn't sure if we were sucked into the middle of the thing by now, or just a victim of circumstance.
Unfortunately for me, my hovercycle cut out just a few hundred feet from the house. I hopped off soon after and discovered that the intake vents were filled with sand.
I cursed at my own misfortune--even as the storm continued to rally against my best efforts to get home. This was definitely going to set me back a bit. But there was nothing that I could do.
I had to get home and the only way I saw it, was to trek the last few hundred feet by foot--pulling this lumbering hog of mine to the outshed. Of course, it was nothing more than a classic game of tug of war--between me and the storm--but I managed to win out at the cost of myself and all of my energy.
By the time I got the hovercycle inside the outshed, I was pooped! Never before had I to fight the elements just for the sake of one's own innocent sanity. But I did. Only because my machine wasn't just for my own personal entertainment, but my only source of transportation.
I also did this because I had no choice. I wasn't about to come back when the storm was over and find my ride buried in a twenty foot sand drift again. (I had experienced this many times over the last several years. The last time--9 months ago--was at the behest of my mother; whom insisted that I could retrieve it later after the storm had passed. I found it--through Calis's own generosity. He had a mind to have a locator beacon installed inside the machine's engine housing before hand. I used a device of my own devising to find it--though I had to endure my younger brother's ribbing after digging it out. I solved the problem of getting it cleaned easily enough by forcing Trell to clean out all the sand caked inside my bike's blocked engine manifold. I don't normally torture him, but in that case, that little worm of mine deserved it nonetheless. My mother of course gave me some piece of her mind, but I told her that my brother had to learn a little respect for his older sister!)
After securing the outshed, I proceeded towards the house--thinking that I was going to get inside before anything else happened.
How wrong I was!
I had completely forgotten about the conductive nature of a human body lathered in static electricity after riding naked and exposed out in the storm like this one. Not only that, I had completely forgotten to ask Calis for anti-static flak jacket to cover myself in before I left the workshop.
(I sighed.)
Damn...!
Too late for that now--I supposed then.
A giant bolt of lightning nearly struck me in front of the house--just six feet from the top of the stairwell. The sudden explosion of light, power, and thunder knocked me off my feet and I landed hard on my back.
I remember the storm howling around me--as I lay there in a daze. The sand particles swirling around and washing over me like crazy. I don't recall much after that. The force had knocked me partially unconscious. It took me some time to come to and gather my wits about me.
But when I rose to my feet, I was extruciatingly sore and in a bit of pain as well. My ears had an odd ringing to it, and I couldn't discern anything else but that sound, and the distant roar of the storm.
Whatever happened, I was lucky enough to be alive. Strikes like that had a bad habit of killing people in the Barren Wastelands, and I would've been just another figure--had both luck and fate not stepped in to shield me from Death's grip.
I managed to climb the stairs more easily this time, but my body still ached from earlier. I'm sure my mother would think it was the storm's doing--if she ever asked me why I was hurting so--but she would never believe me if I told her the truth.
And if she did, she would accept it as part of life. There was nothing that could be done. Surface dwellers are a much hardier bunch than our sky dancer counterparts. We've lived the life of the destitute, the unwanted, and sometimes, the forgotten. But we didn't just roll over and die when the going got tough. We adapted, we lived, and we flourished.
Much like our ancestors did when they first came down from Stratos City some 5000 years ago--after the complex was constructed.
I opened the door to our modest home and got inside--but the storm wasn't finished with me. Not by a long shot. It still had its quirks and mischievous pranks to play on an unsuspecting girl like me: It blew the door open and then turned it around and smacked me in the butt when I least expected it!
I yelped in pain--where it had hit me--and my mother asked me then what was going on. I told her it was just my pride being injured and nothing more. She then asked me if I got the part I went out for and I told her that I did.
But every part of me was filled with sand. My boots, my socks...
You would think that having desert attire would spare me the worst of the onslaught by the storm, but...?
Naive, I suppose--that, or putting too much faith in my own invulnerability. (heh)
I stripped off my boots, socks, and shook out my pant legs, before tossing my socks onto the back of the sofa. I put my boots--where the others were in the entry way, cleaned up the mess I made--and joined my mother in the living room.
I asked her where my brother was, and she told me that he was in his room--still messing with the broken down communications array.
Privately, I was amazed that my brother could do such things at his age (12), but he was never really into auto-frame racing like I was. Trell was a master tinkerer. It all got started when he was seven years old; when Calis introduced him to a failed power modulator stripped from a 30-year-old Crescent J-18 auto-frame.
Of course--from what I can recall from way back when--the old man was naturally frustrated with the thing, and so he told my brother he could mess with it. (Assuming that it was lost cause and there was nothing that he could do.)
Being ten at the time, Calis introduced me to what would later become my Viper X-1. The machine was a shell of its former self--literally--and its chassis had been suspended above my head; as he worked on the under carriage.
He said that this was a design that him and my father had been working on prior to his unfortunate jailing--but the project had been killed on the account that my father had kept most of the design plans secret and under wraps.
It was only a trip starside that Calis was able to get the okay from my father and begin construction of the massive auto-frame. But he said that it would be a couple of years before it was ready.
I remember asking Calis if I could pilot it--since I had a fierce (and secret) love of auto-frame racing by that time. Ever since my father was taken from me, I vowed to follow in his footsteps (but not my mom's), and wanted to know everything there was about what he did in his spare time.
It was only through Calis's relenting assurances, that I began to understand what it was my father had been--long before I was born. Fifteen years in fact.
My father was a legendary auto-frame pilot, and he had commanded that Crescent J-18 which my brother was working on--in part.
Calis had reservations about my request. He didn't want to think he was going to force me to pilot his newest creation (or my father's--it was hard to tell), and I was sure he was thinking that my mother wouldn't allow it either.
He told me he would think about it. But he also told me that pilots are normally trained at a much older age than I was now. Having one so young was virtually unheard of. Fortunately for the two of us, there were no laws or rules regarding the absolute age limit one could participate and enter in.
I myself had seen plenty of kids toy around defunct and broken auto-frames--and a few times, hear them begging their parents to pilot a neighbor's working one. Just for shits and giggles. But these were kids much younger than me! I can recall the days playing on my father's old dilapidated Hydra sand racer--while listening to my brother go on about how much he loved that thing.
So I asked when I could start my training--and Calis made no promises on that yet. He said that I would have to undergo a strict regimen and a kind of combat conditioning--which is common with all pilots. It was done so that they could withstand the amount of stress and wear that is always there when they jump into their machines and took off like a bat out of hell.
I had to be patient.
After talking with Calis, I went back to the other room adjoining the hanger bay, and discovered that my brother was immersed in the guts of the power modulator. He had systematically taken it apart and laid each piece side by side, and was busy tinkering with the insides of the more critical components inherent in these bulky pieces. (No one ever said that each part to an auto-frame was ever graceful or fluid. Just what you see on the outside...)
I remember Calis's surprised expression and his utter bafflement when I called back to him--telling the old man that my brother had broken it! (lol) When he arrived, he took in the scene and just shook his head in amazement. He had never thought to doing such a complete strip down with this particular component. He told me on that day, he was just considering having the workshop's computer do a diagnostic on the piece and then try to do a remote repair job.
But never like this!
My brother--of course--looked at us both with a "What?"-kind've expression. But neither of us punished him for doing what he did. Nor did my mom--when she found out about the whole episode. It was a while longer before that discovery eventually blossomed into my brother's fondness for broken down shit and other electronics. A specialty which sometimes came in quite handy during some of the more trying times in all our lives.
Which brings me back to the present.
I told my mom that I had been hung up coming back from Shark's Bay--but I never told her what happened to me. She had more than dinner to worry about--and my own safety was only secondary to that.
Maye asked me to go get him for dinner and I postulated as to why? What's the point? He eats everything off the table as it is.
Naturally, my mom always puts her foot down. And when it comes down, that means the argument is over. I lose. End of story.
She points out that my brother is a growing boy and he needs to eat. Just like I do. But I don't make a pig of myself like he does. I've seen him eat so much at one time--I wondered if he was bestowed with a second stomach or something when he was born!
Looking at my mother, I can almost see an older version of myself standing pat in 20 years or so--holding a bowl with a laddle, and making the sauce for dinner--wearing nothing but long brown pants, a shirt, a wrap-around white apron, small sandals on my feet, with blue eyes, and deep auburn-red hair tied off in a pony-tail. (Mine was a fiery red--nothing like my mother's. But I don't think that will last long. With time, I'll be like her.)
But Maye broke my concentration and personal reflection on that day, and told me to go get my brother. I made no promises I would be successful, but my mom was adamant. What she said translated in my mind to: "Twist his arm if you have to--but I want you both at the dinner table."
I was resigned to the fact that I wasn't yet old enough to freely make my own decisions in life--and I was still going to be a little girl in my mom's eyes--long after I had grown up.
So I went to fetch my brother--as an obedient daughter should.
Isis
