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Authors: Michael Bailey
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that’s dumb. Why would he come to this world if he couldn’t breathe? Hmm. Maybe it wasn’t a voluntary visit. He did crash land, after all.
Questions for another time, Hauser, you’re here on business. I descend gently rather than go into freefall so I can try to pinpoint my launch pad. I find the woods again (I think) but I can’t tell where the others might be. I try something on a whim.
Sara! I “shout” with my mind. Can you hear me?
Loud and clear , Sara “says,” causing me to flinch. It’s the weirdest experience, hearing her without hearing her (and that’s saying something, considering my yardstick for weirdness is in a much different place than it was several weeks ago).
I can’t find you guys.
Hold on.
I hold on. For a couple of minutes I hold on, then there’s a pop, a whistle, a hiss, and a streak of bright red light soars up from the forest: a signal flare, complete with easy-to-follow contrail. Good call, Matt.
“That was awesome!” he beams as I touch down.
“That was loud!” Missy says. Her face is screwed up in pain and her hands are mashed over her ears.
“I did it? I went supersonic?” I say, the thought thrilling me beyond words.
“Yeah, like, the second you took off,” Stuart says, and I notice a sparse carpet of fresh leaves on the ground. I must have jarred them loose when I hit supersonic speed, which apparently was right away.
Wow. It’s hard not to be impressed with myself.
Nothing quite measures up after that. We test how bright I can glow (answer: insanely bright), and Matt tosses clay skeet shooting targets for me to zap out of the air, which tells me I need to work on my aim something fierce. Out of fifty throws, I hit six targets. Oh, and I sheared off the top third of a perfectly good tree with one of my missed shots. Fail.
A couple hours after we entered the woods we make our way back out. I’m starving by the time we reach Silk Sails, which is this really big, fancy-looking Chinese place with a cool koi pond in the front, complete with fountains, a small waterfall, and a scale model of a Chinese junk in the middle of the pond.
(Oh. Junk Food. I get it now.)
The host on duty calls the others by name and leads them to a room in the back, which has a bar, some booths and scattered tables, and a small stage.
“What’s this?”
“This is where Junk Food hosts Friday night karaoke, the greatest contribution to American culture Missy’s people ever made,” Matt says, and I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“I’m not taking the blame for karaoke,” Missy says.
“Half the blame?”
“Shut up.”
The waitress comes, and she too knows everyone at the table. She’s cute and she plays along with Stuart as he flirts with her outrageously. He’s so overthe-top there’s no way she could take him seriously, but it defuses what could otherwise be a creepy situation. I mean, Stuart is probably half this woman’s age. I know cougars are kind of an in thing nowadays, but ew .
“Scoff if you will,” he says to me, catching the look on my face, “but you watch, I’m going to get extra dumplings.”
“Hey, quiet,” Matt says. We follow his gaze to the TV over the bar. The sound is off but the closed-captioning tells us that earlier today, some bigwig from ARC announced the company was shutting down its artificial intelligence branch until further notice. Internal investigation, reassigning employees, plans to make good on the damage, blah blah blah—the rest doesn’t matter. This development effectively ends the investigation we never got off the ground.
I’m surprised at my disappointment. I thought all our talk about busting into ARC and solving the mystery and saving the day was, well, just talk, but I guess I got wrapped up in the idea.
“Well, crap,” Matt says.
“So much for that,” Stuart says, and the final nail in our grand plan is hammered into place.
By the way, yes, they made me sing. Matt broke the ice and did an
Questions for another time, Hauser, you’re here on business. I descend gently rather than go into freefall so I can try to pinpoint my launch pad. I find the woods again (I think) but I can’t tell where the others might be. I try something on a whim.
Sara! I “shout” with my mind. Can you hear me?
Loud and clear , Sara “says,” causing me to flinch. It’s the weirdest experience, hearing her without hearing her (and that’s saying something, considering my yardstick for weirdness is in a much different place than it was several weeks ago).
I can’t find you guys.
Hold on.
I hold on. For a couple of minutes I hold on, then there’s a pop, a whistle, a hiss, and a streak of bright red light soars up from the forest: a signal flare, complete with easy-to-follow contrail. Good call, Matt.
“That was awesome!” he beams as I touch down.
“That was loud!” Missy says. Her face is screwed up in pain and her hands are mashed over her ears.
“I did it? I went supersonic?” I say, the thought thrilling me beyond words.
“Yeah, like, the second you took off,” Stuart says, and I notice a sparse carpet of fresh leaves on the ground. I must have jarred them loose when I hit supersonic speed, which apparently was right away.
Wow. It’s hard not to be impressed with myself.
Nothing quite measures up after that. We test how bright I can glow (answer: insanely bright), and Matt tosses clay skeet shooting targets for me to zap out of the air, which tells me I need to work on my aim something fierce. Out of fifty throws, I hit six targets. Oh, and I sheared off the top third of a perfectly good tree with one of my missed shots. Fail.
A couple hours after we entered the woods we make our way back out. I’m starving by the time we reach Silk Sails, which is this really big, fancy-looking Chinese place with a cool koi pond in the front, complete with fountains, a small waterfall, and a scale model of a Chinese junk in the middle of the pond.
(Oh. Junk Food. I get it now.)
The host on duty calls the others by name and leads them to a room in the back, which has a bar, some booths and scattered tables, and a small stage.
“What’s this?”
“This is where Junk Food hosts Friday night karaoke, the greatest contribution to American culture Missy’s people ever made,” Matt says, and I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“I’m not taking the blame for karaoke,” Missy says.
“Half the blame?”
“Shut up.”
The waitress comes, and she too knows everyone at the table. She’s cute and she plays along with Stuart as he flirts with her outrageously. He’s so overthe-top there’s no way she could take him seriously, but it defuses what could otherwise be a creepy situation. I mean, Stuart is probably half this woman’s age. I know cougars are kind of an in thing nowadays, but ew .
“Scoff if you will,” he says to me, catching the look on my face, “but you watch, I’m going to get extra dumplings.”
“Hey, quiet,” Matt says. We follow his gaze to the TV over the bar. The sound is off but the closed-captioning tells us that earlier today, some bigwig from ARC announced the company was shutting down its artificial intelligence branch until further notice. Internal investigation, reassigning employees, plans to make good on the damage, blah blah blah—the rest doesn’t matter. This development effectively ends the investigation we never got off the ground.
I’m surprised at my disappointment. I thought all our talk about busting into ARC and solving the mystery and saving the day was, well, just talk, but I guess I got wrapped up in the idea.
“Well, crap,” Matt says.
“So much for that,” Stuart says, and the final nail in our grand plan is hammered into place.
By the way, yes, they made me sing. Matt broke the ice and did an
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