An earlier cover of Harry’s Reality
We can’t trust each other, but we have to trust reality, Winston thought. Both men from different sides of reality relaxed a bit for a moment as movement below had stopped. The sun was rising—a big bright orange ball sitting on the horizon—elongating shadows and giving everything below a rosy hue. He put the night vision goggles away for now.
Suddenly, there was a knocking on the outside of the flying vehicle. Tiny black flying creatures the size of bumble bees were hitting the car’s exterior as if to get the occupants’ attention. Instinctively, Greg slowed down to get a better look.
Never having seen bees before, Winston had no idea of what was happening.
“We’ve got a problem,” Greg announced. “We’re being followed…” He looked down at a small screen he had installed on the hovercar’s dashboard to see the reality on the ground—a bank of red indicators—telling him cybert lasers were moving like spotlights in their direction.
An excerpt from “Harry’s Reality.” Note. Makr is pronounced like “maker.” He took the “e” out to be the “One and Only.” Of course, there’s more to that story. And, there’s more than just the war in the dark. This reality takes place in the sky. More later.
“Let’s get out of here!” they both shouted simultaneously.
He shoved the throttle forward and pulled back on the elevator stick. The hovercar responded with incredible acceleration, forcing its passengers hard into their seats as it reached beyond gravity.
Greg turned his head enough to see an incredulous Winston. “I modified your vehicle a bit.”
“Glad you did,” said Winston calmly, as if he was just along for the ride. Steal my ‘car will ya? “Still can’t see the lasers,” he said smugly.
“Don’t worry. They’re there and lookin’ for us. This is one time I’d trust a machine,” he said, patting his detection device on the dash.
At that moment, the dashboard monitor exploded as it was hit by a laser blast.
“Great! Just great!” So much for an early warning system, thought Winston.
Greg slammed the stick back even more and punched the accelerator throttle all the way forward to get the craft out of range, but he wasn’t fast enough. The hovercar was suddenly assaulted with ten or twelve laser blasts that were burning half-inch holes in non-critical parts of the hovercraft, with a few narrowly missing its occupants.
“Where did that come from?” whined a nervous Winston.
“There must be an entire bank of laser cannons—like artillery—hidden down there with SensaVision. How can Makr bring it to us way up here?”
“Greg, it’ll be a fine point to ponder later, but can you save our asses now?” He was shouting the last part of the sentence. Winston’s high anxiety was balanced by Greg’s extreme calm under pressure.
“Guess we should see if we broke anything.” Greg had not been this introspective since they’d met. His voice was strangely quiet and serene.
“You are scaring me, pal,” Winston said. “We get blasted from the earth some 5,000 feet or so, and you say, we might have broken something. We’re lucky to be alive.”
“Shall we thank Makr for that?” He made a cursory damage assessment. “We’re still afloat. No system damage.”
“What do you make of that?” Winston asked.
“I don’t know for sure. Cybert adaptation to our use of air tactics maybe. But it’s not complete. Depending on the models, some adapt quickly, some don’t. Weak points. If we find those…”
“What do we do now? They can find us and kill us up here…oh, shiiiit!”
“What’s wrong?
“I’m hit! Bleeding!” He was trying to wrap some of his Stealth fabric around his left leg to stop the flow of the blood, but it wasn’t working.
Greg grabbed his laser ax and changed the setting. “Here, this will cauterize the wound.”
“Hey, are you nuts? That’ll really hurt!”
“No kidding. Want to bleed to death?”
“No,” Winston admitted and submitted., “One leg wound ready for treatment.”
“Hang in there. Lowest setting. I’ll be quick.”
It was obvious from Greg’s confidence that he had done this numerous times before. Winston noticed several burn scars around Greg’s neck and wondered if they had been caused the same way.
“Ow!” he protested.”Makrrrr!” Then screamed as the laser burned the hair, seared the flesh and sealed the wound.
“Such a baby. Done.”
“Sorry. That’s it?”
Greg nodded. “You’ll have quite a scar though.”
“I didn’t mean to sound like such a wimp.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll feel more pain later. Then, you can be a wimp.”
Winston winced at the notion that he was beginning to think like his kidnapper/partner.
He looked up and glanced to his side to see the bees were back, neck and neck with them, flying at an amazing speed. “Greg, how fast are we going?”
“About 230 miles per hour. Why?”
“We still have company,” he said, nervously staring out on the right side of the hovercar’s dome.
“Tighten your seatbelt,” Greg warned.
“How can they go that fast?”
“Tighten your seatbelt!”
“Tiny engines…” Winston gave him a quizzical look. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“Just hold on!”
Greg turned the hovercar quickly to check the bees’ response time. He did this three or four times as he did before, and each time, the bees adjusted accordingly after a fraction of a second. Twice as fast. Then he knew what he had to do. He pointed the hovercar downward and plummeted toward the ground as fast as the accelerator could push it.
“This doesn’t seem safe, Greg. Greg? Greg!” With each ‘Greg,’ he screeched his increasing terror with more volume and pitch.
“Greg! What’re you doing?” Winston half cried and half pleaded. Pushed back in his seat by the g-forces, he could hardly get the words out. He watched in horror at the earth rising to meet them face-to-face. There was a reason he wanted to be in control in any situation at all, and this was it. Winston noticed the ‘bees’ on his side of the vehicle were keeping pace with the hovercar even as its pace doubled, then tripled.
Greg smiled, then said, “Trust me,” as he kept an eye on the hovercar’s altimeter…500, 400, 300. Bees still there. 200, 100. Hope Makr never thought of this scenario. Only one way to find out. At 50 feet he hit the automatic leveling switch. The hovercar performed as it was told, leveling off immediately and leaving the bees little time to adjust. There wasn’t enough time. The tiny cyberts crashed into the pavement below, shattering into thousands of minuscule pieces of metal.
“Pull over! Pull over, Jackson, now!”
Not sure what was happening with his new partner, he brought the hovercar to halt, hovering some hundred feet off the ground. Suddenly the canopy slid back and he saw Winston bent over the hovercar’s side retching, losing the contents of his stomach and spraying anything below them.
Meanwhile, in the hovercar, Greg was elated with success and pumped full of nature’s high: adrenaline. His smile changed to a grimace when the smell of Winston’s vomit gagged him and he, too, couldn’t help but be sick over his side of the vehicle as well. Logic would have made it merely the results of too much acceleration one way and the sudden return to level, leaving their stomachs on the ground.
“Now what?” Winston asked, relieved, suddenly acting as if nothing unusual has happened…when he could catch his breath.
“I hope we got some on a few Cyber,” said Greg, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
“I’d rather get something on them that’ll do more damage.”
Comrades who threw up together…
It was the first time Winston recalled ever having regurgitated—or feeling unwell. A rather unpleasant and novel experience. Disgusting actually. There was something to be said for living a sheltered existence
Not too surprisingly, Winston concluded, even after the laser burn. He’d rather experience the pain. So his nausea was nothing. It made him angry, focused, and feeling more alive than ever.
Shaw's Reality 