Purple Monster

At her look up the Sky Bike sat looking a little battered but quiet frankly bueatiful, it was missing a lot of the poly-synth beads which where going to be quiet expensive to replace but then they weren’t essential to the thing – it could fly though needed a few tweaks to make it efficient and then alot of tweaking to make it a comfy ride.

But this was half the fun, she slipped into some pastel pink stained coveralls and placed her light reactive goggles on – she would have to use the mazar torch to do some of the work and she did want some eyesight left afterwards!

She had the portable lab ready with its electron microscopicapy facilities some of the bike were smart materials ie the wings and any work on them had to be done in a vacuum chamber with nano-tools inside a low end scanner. The materials were so finiley designed that normal optical microscopes that relied on wavelengths of light just couldn’t see at a fine enough level.

SOme of the gases used by the machines where nasty and had to be under high pressures and cold temperatures but it was alot safer than Mig welding had been in the previous centery so she had bodged the machines to get the max out of them taking them well beyound their saftey parameters. She had however done the calculations herself and knew full well that she was still within some pretty good margins as far as saftey was concerned and she had uped the effiecence of the machine by 200 odd percent. She was good, mechanical stuff just came easy too her. Too easy sometimes.

she had often found herself in situations where she had to pretend not to see a solution or slowely coherce others into making the discover. People got funny about you always having the answer. It was strange but thats the way it was especially in the more modern sooped up cultures. However in the past too much knowledge could have you looking at ostracism as in no food or place to live on an entire island and no boat either or people trying to drown you for being a witch. The last two centries three really had been tame in comparason. People just tended to get a bit snotty with you and the worst that happened was that they would stop you getting the grant you needed to continue a line of research.

The smart materials could form some pretty neat aerofoils and would change themselves depending on the manouver of the bike or if on a direct path with no time limit it would glide on thermals the same as the old and now extinct birds of prey had. She had loved those birds and held a hope that they would be on the short list soon for the genetic synths. The planets biodiversity had plummeted during the last century to a point where fear of nitrate fixing bacteria being killed off begain a real threat.

No macro organism on the planet could ‘fix’ nitrogen so that it was usable by animals and plants and it was only symbiotic bacteria in things like bean plants that could do it but with the bio crash they were almost wiped out. And without those tiny organisms no animal could live.

It had been a scary few decades the Punk was sure she needed nitrogen as much as the next person.

She was looking forward to getting the this bird into the sky!

‘What you gonna call it?’ Snake asked from his place at the work bench – he was patiently threading the beads that where left onto a diamond filament 1/2 a millimeter in diameter.

‘Thunder Falcon,’ she said automatically.

‘Thunder Falcon?’ he asked her turning from his work, ‘What’d a Falcon?’

She sighed, ‘A type of bird but not like the sparrows you see or the seagulls. It’s hard to explain you’ll need to look it up I think – you won’t believe me if I expain it to you.’ He nodded.

‘So why that name?’ he inquired.

‘It was the name of another bike I had,’ he nodded looking slightly confused – she wasn’t apparently old enough to have had a vechile previously but it had been a push bike a green BMX well over a hundred years ago now. They had been stunt biked without spokes so the wheels could take the damage it was before the bucky tubes had become so prevolent. She’d rescued some kid – like 10 years old she was being thrown into a rapid flowing turgid river by kids roughly the same age. That few years extra and the dress had led her to stop the kids actions.

The ten year old had been stubbon and greatful and shy. Burning eyes, she’d called the bike Thunder Falcon because it sounded like a spaceships name and she’d wanted to be an astronuat.

She’d hung around to look after the kid for a while and then it had escaped to a boring adult life with things like family and commitments. Though the girl never lost those intense eyes. She wished she hadn’t remembered the girl. But why she wasn’t sure.

The metal fenders that made the bike so retro needed to be beaten back into shape – Snake pointed out that with the orbital mining going on metal pricess where not exactly high so she could have had new ones just made from scratch. No infact they were rock bottom especially as extraction technics where getting more effiecinet all the time. But it was not the same as fixing it and it was the fixing she was keen on – sure she wanted to coast the bike through the clouds too. This was definatly part of the buzz process though.

Engines, computers, ploughs all these mechanisms had fascinated her – it was like she under stood how they all worked before she even got to have a proper look at them. The number of things she had designed over the years, the amount of things that had sparked whole new areas of interest and research. Sometimes she wondered where human sciecne, technology and medicine would be if she hadn’t been bumbling her way through history.

Once the panels where delt with and the smart material wings there was the breaking and manovering systems. This was unfortunalty softwear based and softwear covered by some pretty strong and crippling patents. But there was always away around them if you knew how to look and what to look for. With a synth beer in hand she used the cord keyboard to programme the material. It was seriously complecated and she frowned into the projecto-screen. She had to wrap processes inside of one another in a way that they could all still mesh together like clogs in a clock. It was high level and made her zone out for a while, she hummed tunelessly why she did it.

Tinkering and bashing things and swearing and shouting at Snake and laughing as well seemed to take up most of the day finially late afternoon they finished, she was starving and pondering what to have fore lunch when Snake suggested they go to his rooms. She smiled slightly at this – no one had cooking facilities in their rooms staff as well as holidayers had to eat in the restrants and cafes. But when food was avalible she wanted at least three meals in a day – their were too many times when there had been no food at all for her to shirk meals. This was another differnce she had observed between her and other humans – many of those who had been starved never really got eating properlly back, they would forget meals and had to be gently reminded to eat. Either that or they spent all their time chowing down.

‘I need lunch!’ she said trying to sound playful and not like she was regecting his advance.

‘Oh ok,’ he said sound very small.

‘You coming with me?’ she asked trying not to be impatient with him, he brightened slightly ‘yeah sure.’ he said.

They walked out of the lock up and the Punks neck and scalp began to prickle. She hesitated slightly as she looked it up then looked sideways at Snake he was frowning into the corridor. ‘Who was there?’ she asked quietly out of the side of her mouth. His head jerked to her ‘I thought I saw that Goth-ette from the club. Maybe I’m going made but I swear she’s following…’ he broke off scanning the now empty corridor once more.

She suddered, and felt queasy she didn’t like this. ‘You know Bodge said that Insipid Records where around asking him about our act and the band?’ He looked sort of relieved if some how paler. She nodded, that could be an explanation, to be fair they were normally alot more subtler and the goth-chick had been very obvious really.

She realised she was hunching in on her self – she stratened herslef up and rolled her shoulders to try and ease her tension.

Snake took her hand and patted it distractedly, ‘I know you must have been in some sort of trouble in the past but you’ve got a contract with the Corp now no ones going to come all this way to hunt you down and even if they have the Security System willl pick them up – honest.’ He wasn’t looking at her he was still scanning the empty hall. She lent against him slightly – all the times she had been on her own, all the times she had been in charge, it was alsways nice to curl into someone else and feel protected.

They got to a mid level coffee house for Pannis she had shrimp and water melon and a vat of coffee. ‘How did you know?’ she asked – of course she wasn’t in trouble with the authorities as such well not for the last few years anyway. Electronic ID and genetics had caused her a few problems with her long lived ness but nothing she hadn’t been able to work around. One of her main issues had been staying out of labs as the subject it was one of the reasons she had hid in a lad for so long.

‘I owe the Corp,’ he said flatly not meeting her eyes, he fiddled with the napkin with its greasy looking sheen that showed it to be reusable. ‘They bought me out of Juvi’ He fidgetted and went quiet.

Juvi, a concept resirected by the collapsing mega states, a prison hard and harsh to put minors who had offened but it had become the place to send the unwanted, the street kids and orphans. Though if he was bought out and for alot then he must have done something real bad.

‘What did you do?’ she asked out of curiosity, blazing eyes looked into her.

‘I killed… someone’ He’d looked away again she felt a stabbing chill, this was something she had sensed in him, from his body movements from the first time she’d seen him.

‘Who?’ she asked unable to leave a festering wound alone.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he moaned and she took his hand, shekissed his fingers – it was the only thing she could think of doing. If he knew how many people she had killed? How many people she had ordered dead would he still be sitting there with her?

She trembled slightly with emotion but swollowed it. ‘You come from one of the collapsed states don’t you?’ he asked. She shrugged, she came from no where really and everywhere. She had tried explaining to people in the past – she’d rapidly given that up – she valued her skin far to much. And even someone you think loves you can turn and have you driven from a village.

She had also learnt that there was alot of merrit to be had with letting people assume things about her. When your past isn’t really what everyone knows should be your past then its like there is no past, a blankness. She felt very lonely.

They left the lunch room hand in hand, Snake was shanking slightly, she let him lead her to his room.

Posted: Thursday, November 12th, 2009 @ 10:24 am
Categories: Uncategorized.
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