THE ROAD AHEAD

August 15th, 12,006 (actual time frame: 4:45PM, Sunday; February 17th, 2007)______________________________________________________________________

It didn't take long for me to get my brother and go. The day was going to be a long one as it is--and I didn't have the luxury to fart around and take in the scenery along the stretch.

I needed to get to Shark's Bay as quick as possible.

I burned the engines as hot as they could get--using my afterburners for most of the journey. But--in under and hour--I got there dirty and happy; but I had pushed my bike to its absolute limits and knew that--when I pulled in...?--Calis would be giving me an earful about what went down.

Later--as it turned out.

After parking my machine on the side of the workshop, I dragged my brother inside and immediately asked Calis for some Viraxain.

At first, he thought that it was me which needed it--but I quickly put his fears to rest by pointing to my brother; as the culprit in question.

I explained to him what happened and the revelation hit him like a brick. He elected to get the medicine while I was left behind with my brother. I felt an immediate wave of sympathy for him--knowing that what he's going through was something I first went through three years ago; during my training on the Viper X-1.

Eleven years old at the time, I had burned in long hours on Calis's training sim and was in desperate need of something to keep me going.

The first thing you have to realize about the world I live in is that kids like me have to grow up very fast. Moment to moment is spent learning about the world we live in on the surface. Schooling and education comes from things passed down to each family member from the previous generation--where we don't get graded on our aptitudes or how well we did in one subject or another.

We just learned.

And one of the things I learned on that day was a painful lesson in moderation. Being the growing girl that I was--I had come across a box of the same rations my brother currently inhaled in one or more sittings--and grabbed a handful of the delicious-looking bars and began tearing into them ravenously.

I was lucky that Calis had the common sense to install some life-monitoring equipment--because hours later; he had to pull me out after I had completely collapsed.

Stupid ol' me didn't realize what I had done either. I was doing a crash-course in body recaliberation and several energy dumps to force my metabolism back to normal. Only afterwards did Calis manage to acquire some energy-ration paks that were attuned to my growing metabolism.

Looking at my brother, I saw then that he didn't mean what he did. He was just simply fulfulling his role as the second oldest member of the family.

And as a man yet to be.

But I was doing the right thing--because I wanted him to be around when I grew up to be the person I was destined to be.

Calis returned with a vial and a hypo--explaining what it would do and then injecting it into my brother. He would need to stay the night.

While I...?

I was going someplace else. A place that I only dreamed about in days past--fantasized about in dreams future.

As much as I wanted my brother to accompany me to the space complex, we both knew that he couldn't go. The station's boarding system would deny him access due to the fact that it would flag him as an addict.

He would have to wait until his system was clensed and then he could come up. (Though that wouldn't happen until much later--after everything had transpired.)

So Calis offered to take him home on the hauler transport--since his own hoverbike was in storage and needing a new engine manifold. Mine was simply too powerful for him to handle on his own; without the necessarily instruction and supervision.

I was about to take off when he halted me--telling me that I would need a pass card to gain access. It was the same one he had used so many years before; to hunt for the errant shard belonging to the Source of Chaos. (Though from what he regaled to me years down the road--he could never find it. It was simply 'out of sight, out of mind'; as he had put it.)

But the thing had a three-hour limit and I would need all the speed I could get getting to Weasel's Ridge Maze, and not Crater Lake. (Like I always did in the past at Transit Terminal #114.)

And it only worked for that specific terminal.

Calis shooed me off and I told him that I would be back.

Little did I know what lay in store.

Isis