Day 20: Liftoff from desperation.
The night shift teared on all of us and despite the suspense I was able to sleep. It took me some time rolling from side to side trying it with and without blankets or music, till I actually managed to drift away.Â
In my dreams the big slim guy from the digitals followed me everywhere. We were in the pharmacy hiding from the addicts, running through the city on the look for a doctor and walking through the empty boat with everyone gone but the bionic limbs. Stepping out of the the boat I saw the whole group standing at the rail taking a big step to leap into the toxic water. In this very second everything blurred out and a foggy soup of daylight dazzled my eyes.
I pulled my blanket across my face holding it against the tall figure throwing a shadow from the now uncloaked window.Â
“You better get up quick! Get your shit together and meet me in the control room!”
My eyes were not yet adapted to the light so I wasn’t sure who he was. But the loud bang and shaking of my bed by him smashing the door activated every single cell in my body. Jumping out of the bed fetching the next piece of clothing close to me I ran out onto the corridor.
Nobody there! It was quite surreal. Behind me others from our ward looked out of the door and asked what happened. I shushed them away and ran towards the stairways.
In the control room there was Lia, the slim tall guy and some other Digitals looking at a video footage and talking to Kylie and Amina. Kylie had the shoulder mounted cam and was kneeling down over Amina. Her pale face and tired eyes revealed how much her body already suffered from the pollution. She gave her something to drink and helped her to sit up. After letting her breath from a bottle of clean oxygen she pulled the charcoal filter mask over her head. A monitor started to blink and her vital data appeared a column next to Kylies.Â
Kylies voice came over the speakers:Â
“We have to fly her out, there is no other way…”
Her voice changed. I recognised her but it wasn’t the funny happy tone I was used to. It sounded very mature, focussed and detached.
“Yes of course you fly her out, that’s what we trained you for…”
Lia shushed me away and whispered in my ear “They know she couldn’t do it and prepared everything for them to take the alternative route… but no… it’s shit… it’s real shit…”
“Ok, Kylie there are some things you have to know if you want to do that.”
A old soft reassuring voice came out of a corner of the room.Â
“We went through this, you can do it. You’ll have to bring her up the little hill, mount her to your harness, turn of the power limit and put all the power into the engine. Please make sure you turn off everything before you start. As soon as your on altitude you’ll have to turn of the engine and visio flight info. Take one of the cubes and wait until it starts to blink red and then you drop it. If you hear the whistle sound you’ll have to chop the canopy and throw your round to survive. But we think there shouldn’t be any of the big drones around…”
Lia explained me quietly that they have some crazy tool against all drones and even the Cheetahs get buzzed from it. Only the ducted fan hunters are too fast, that’s why she was talking about the whistle sound.Â
I’m happy that we could completely avoid this dark area of our fading country. Nobody thought that we’ll use those tools within the old western countries and they promised to use it only to clean the middle east from the black plague in the 20s. But as technology available is also used we have them now securing all the areas, borders and regions our government wants to keep quiet. There are huge areas without much to fear or much control and most discontinued cities are not repressed. But some areas like the buffer zone are totally crazy. Sometimes I think they have no plan and just put their leftovers to the police which overuse them in areas they are allowed to.
Watching Kylie trying to get Amina half a mile to the hill was nothing I wanted to do to myself and not being able to help, made me wanna leave.
“Where are the girls? Why are they not here! I thought they would watch Kylie all night?” I asked them. They looked at me as if I spoke an unknown language. So I went to look where they hid in the hospital. I found the girls hooked up to the sleeping aid. Nothing I support unless it’s very necessary. But missing one of them it’s understandable so we let them rest.
After checking on the whole group and giving them some kind of reassuring message about the progress of Kylie’s mission, me and Ulick went back for the control room.
The screen now showed two cameras letting us see how they got ready to start. In the background we could see over the park from a small mound. There was a long slide going down the hill and a forsaken playground. Amina seemed in much better shape and manipulated all her gear without any help. She got clean water, oxygen, mask and some heavy drugs to revitalise her body.
Hearing her voice over the radio rushed a feeling of familiarity through my body.
“Hi there. We’re ready to do that. I’ll steer and Kylie will handle the drones… I also have a coilgun from the labs so she’ll be able to use that to if the cubes don’t work…”
The big slim guy grabbed the microphone: “They will work, don’t do anything stupid, forget the coilgun you’ll never hit them and the cube will uncharge the gun.”
Now the voice managing the mission till now stood up and took away the microphone from his Digital colleague. He slapped his face and pointed him to leave the mission room without saying a word. Sitting back down the guy with long snow white hair spoke as nothing happened.
“Sorry, we got distracted here. Of course take your coilgun, but focus on the cubes. They are important. Remember blinke means activate and drop, whistle noise means chop and throw the round reserve. There is nothing more to know.”
Kylie appeared in front of Aminas camera so we could see both women on the same screen.
“Hey there friends. We’ll shut down now and see you later…”
My heart nearly exploded hearing this strange soft but scary sound of her voice. This was her way of saying a possible good bye.
“If you don’t hear from us we’ll go one by our self. Don’t look for us. We’ll go on to our common goal and meet you in some weeks.”
Ulick shook his head pointing towards the map and ran out of the room.
“Kiss my two angels and tell them not to worry as we will fly together as promised!”Â
The vital signals of Kylie went black and her image froze.
“Keep up the spirit and go on, there is nothing you can win from finding us. Just go on.”
Aminas vitals went black and step by step all information on the screens went blank. The white haired guy turned back to us looking stern but calm.
“They have a fair chance. If they can handle the glider with the additional weight they’ll make it.”
“Where to? Where will they go? They are too heavy for using thermal lift and as we know now your cubes will discharge all batteries in a big radius around them!”
Lia asked the Digitals being pretty angry.
“They head to a gravity storage… It’s absolutely possible to get there and as it’s very basic technology it should work…”
Amazing Image by Thomas Hawk
Bill Nye (one of our Heros!)Â Â about fracking and gravity energy storage
Gravity power storage company
Day 1: To the city. - Day 2: Entering the grey Zone. - Day 3: Broken bridge. - Day 4: Toxic Rain. - Day 5: Forsaken robot. - Day 6: Eating Insects. Kyleis robot. - Day 7: Neglected cities. -Day 8: Hiding in the Pharmacy - Day 9: Everybody left - hoping for satellite images - Day 10: Toxic oceans and soil - farming in deserts of concrete. - Day 11: Worthless bills on a shabby boat. - Day 12: The gap of long living. Ruled by scientist elite.  - Day 13: Fixing bionics. - Day 14: Future Inbox: “Women revolutionised Asia - the new center of the world…” - Day 15: Joining “The Digital People” - living in Virtual Reality. -Day 16: Resistant bacteria - greed and cheap meat destroyed antibiotics. - Day 17: Climate Ignorance: Flooding, Drought, Famine… the poor suffered first. - Day 18: Dead forests in the buffer zone. - Day 19: VR Training for Kylies trip through the polluted Fracking zone. - Day 20: Liftoff from desperation.
