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So I was sitting there, thinking about all the Cool Stuff I wanted to do in Fenspace, and not really having a very easy time of it because a lot if it is
already done or too grand a scale or half a dozen other things. I wanted to start off light.
And somehow, this came out.
I'm not sure if I'll continue this -- I'm not sure if it CAN be continued, really, because (not to be all method here) what's his motivation?
-- but if nothing else it's a toe-dipping in the pool and a character/vehicle that can be an extra somewhere. I've got a vehicle write-up in the
works, as well. This is kinda an exploration of an idea I had for a particular quirk re: engine systems, with a healthy dash of 'what if?' thrown in.
So. Thoughts, everyone? I can take it, I'm a big boy. ![[Image: smile.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/smile.gif)
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Late at night, in the mountains, on a twisty two-lane ill-maintained highway, is not the best time to haul ass and reconsider one's priorities in life.
Actually, the top thought on my mind, as I down-shifted around the bend and gave my underpowered Ford Focus all the gas it would handle, wasn't the
typical "How did I get into this?" or the cliche "Oh my god, I'm going to die!", but rather, "Holy crap, this is at least five
times as exciting as it looks on TV!"
Behind me on the highway roared I-lost-count-how-many Arizona State Patrol cars, lights flashing, sirens howling, the whole nine yards. Any minute now I
expected a second chopper overhead if the police were watching the news tonight and a roadblock somewhere up in front.
"You'd think I *shot* someone," I muttered to myself, taking the second half of the shallow S-bend with much more speed than was recommended
by the SPEED LIMIT 55 sign leaning crooked at the side of the road. The tires chirped and sang briefly, but held, and I slammed the upshift home as I came
out. The wimply little four-banger under the hood was screaming its fool head off, not that I could blame it; despite what the ads imply, or the speedometer
seems to promise, getting a Focus up past 100 is no mean feat. Why *does* the speedometer go to 140? The car'd crap itself well before then...
... if you're using pure hardtech, that is. Lucky me, good ol' Lenny -- Lenny's my car, so named because I noticed that his turn signal blinked
in *perfect* rhythym with the song Freebird -- had just come from a four-day soak in a 'wavium bath. Unfortunately, I hadn't had any time at all to
test the systems, see what did what, that sort of thing... and aside from the nice little fact that my engine hadn't already exploded, I wasn't
noticing much of a change. Did it grip the road a little better, or was that just the brand-new Yokohama's I'd sprung for? Was the exhaust note a bit
deeper, or was that just my imagination? Lots of little details, none of which were helping me in my current predicament any, to wit: I was a wanted man. All
because I wanted to go to space. Those hard-nosed bastards!
Problem was (is?) that getting to space without Handwavium? It's *expensive*. Money and I were well acquainted with each other, but had been on the
outs more often than not; good ol' George wasn't going to solve this one for me by himself, and I didn't have enough of his friends around to make
up the lack. But hey, Handwavium made Wierd Science look like a documentary, even if you only believed half the stories. If I couldn't buy a ride on a
rocket, maybe I could build my own. For whatever reason, I wanted to do it on my own. Somehow it seemed like cheating to just ask around and hitch a ride, as
I'm sure many others had.
Getting the goo should have been the hard part. But I had an 'in', of sorts. A good buddy of mine owed me a very large favor after a night spent
in jail; I'd managed to cover for him with his C.O., which kept him from, at best, a stern talking-to, and at worst, a firing squad. So when a batch of
the stuff was found brewing in some poor geek's basement by the cops (it wasn't the only thing brewing, from what I hear -- you'd think he'd
have known better), they turned it over to the Air Force, all neat and tidy. And Gary managed to spoon a bit into his thermos and sneak it out the gate to
me.
Turning my POS four-door crapmobile into a starcar should have been *cake*, after that. Right?
SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES
A Fenspace Tale
by Sofaspud
I didn't go into this blind. First thing I did was soak up as much info as I could from the 'net -- no mean feat, considering the current
administration's rabid fear of Handwavium in any form. Then I applied a Common Sense filter on what I'd found, throwing out the obvious falsehoods and
exaggerations -- even to my I-want-to-believe mind, some of the stuff was just too over the top -- and came up with The List.
Item 1: I needed a vehicle. Fortunately, cars seemed to be suitable, and there was this rustbucket sitting in my driveway...
Item 2: I needed Stuff: spacesuit-like stuff, sensor-type stuff, air-and-water-tank-type stuff, all that jazz. What I couldn't beg or buy I'd have
to build. Luckily for me, a lifetime spent chasing one hobby after another left me with a garage full of Stuff.
Item 3: I needed Handwavium and a suitable way to apply it to my car. That was the tricky part.
Actually, getting enough 'wavium to do the job wasn't the hard part. The spoonful Gary snagged for me wouldn't go very far. So I fed it. I
tried ramen (of which I had enough to sink the Lusitania, it seemed), but that didn't work so well. I went through other things -- I'd heard somewhere
it liked organic stuff, and sure enough, it did nothing with the gravel I threw in there -- and finally got it to start growing by feeding it, of all things,
the ancient bag of puppy chow that had been sitting in the garage since who-knows-when. I don't even know why I had it -- I must have dog-sat or something
at one point -- because I didn't have a dog. I've got nothing against dogs, I always wanted one, but my schedule had made it impractical. But hey, if
the goo wanted puppy chow, I'd get it puppy chow. Economy-sized bags from Wal-Mart -- nothing but the best for MY 'wavium.
While the goo was growing -- which took a few weeks and some SERIOUS kibble, lemme tell you -- I quit work and converted my meager savings to things I
thought might be valuable Out There. This was going to be an all-or-nothing roll of the dice. If it didn't work... well, I'd probably have had no
choice but to turn myself in and hope the jail cell was comfortable if I wanted to stay off the streets.
Using a battered Chilton's manual and a whole boat-load of burnt fingers, I wired in every gadget I could think of that I could lay hands on. A CB
radio and police-band scanner. My WiFi router. A cheap GPS unit. A laughable attempt at an air system -- a scuba tank and regulator mated to a
vacuum-cleaner-as-filter-unit. My old laptop, loaded down with every bit of useful software I could think of and with a epoxy'd connection to the tape
deck for tunes. You name it. By the time I was done, the dash resembled the aborted miscegenation of a Radio Shack store and a used car dealership.
"Dude, that is one FUUUGLY car," as my neighbor Tony put it, when I borrowed his back to help unload stuff.
When all was said and done, I set up a portable pool in my garage, driving the car into the middle before raising the sides. And then I dumped all the goo
into it, and spent the next four days in hip waders, a gas mask, and rubber gloves, scooping up buckets of the stuff and pouring it on Lenny, just like basting
a ham -- with more than a few hours spent inside slopping it all over THOSE parts, too, and sitting on a lawn chair hand-scrubbing engine components, and so
on. By day four the 'wave level had dropped to the point of near-uselessness, so I pumped what was left back out and into an ice chest for safekeeping,
hosed down the car a bit and sucked up *that* with a wet-vac (now that I think about it... what did the 'wavium do to the vacuum?), and in general cleaned
things up. Aside from being restored to factory condition (it appeared), not much seemed to have changed. Where were the thrusters? Flight controls?
Anti-gravity hubcaps? I mean, I expected *something*, y'know?
So, anyway. How'd all that lead to a merry chase through the hills? Well... you remember Gary? The guy who got me the goo in the first place? He
apparently had an attack of ethic-itis and reported me for illegal Handwavium use. I assume he claimed I stole it or something, I dunno. First I knew of it
was cops busting down my front door without so much as a by-your-leave. It could've been Tony, too, but I don't think he was bright enough to realize
what was going on. Regardless, SOMEone ratted me out.
So I ran. Yeah, I know -- can't outrun Motorola and all that. But I was in the garage anyway, examining the laptop (which seemed to be spending most
of its processor cycles on the "Dogz" screensaver after the goo bath; I was contemplating a reinstall). When a large man with a gun burst in, it
seemed the most appropriate thing in the world to slam the door, start the engine, and floor it.
I had prided myself on my near-perfect driving record and amateur racing awards. Now I could take pride in violating a slew of laws AND every driving
ordinance in the book in record time and at higher speeds than on the track. I drove on lawns. I drove on sidewalks. I drove in reverse down Main Street. I
drove -- briefly -- on an indoor basketball court (thankfully, it had double doors on both ends with no center post!). In short, I drove the cops nuts.
And all the while I was trying every thing I could think of -- "Fly! Flight systems: on! Dynathrusters are go! C'mon, you bastard, FLY!"
It didn't appear as though the 'wave had DONE anything, besides beef up the car a bit. There weren't any cool glowy bits, no freaky lightshow, no
billowing flames from the exhaust, nada. Sure, Lenny stuck to the road like glue, but that was the *problem*: I was after the skies.
I crested a hill and saw the lights of a town peeking through a gap in the mountains ahead. What appeared to be the Annual Highway Patrol Bake Sale and Lynch
Mob was clogging the road, judging by the red and blue parade of lights coming my way. Best guess, I had maybe two minutes before I crashed into their party.
I knew 'wavium had a rep for making things stronger, faster, tougher... but somehow I didn't think plowing head-on into a couple dozen highway patrol
cars would end in anything but tears.
I was pondering how I'd look in prison orange when I spotted a junction. It looked like a fire road -- it was graded, but not paved. It was also the
only way off the highway that I could see, unless I wanted to test my off-road skills on five-foot banks of loose dirt. Lenny was many things, but he
wasn't four-wheel-drive; I slammed a downshift to third, spun the wheel, and muttered a prayer as the tires screeched and the headlights revealed a cow
grate and enough loose gravel to make me wish I'd asked Santa for Superglue-coated tires.
Amazingly, Lenny held the line without much fishtailing. I rattled over the cow grate and down the road, sending a plume of dust billowing behind and
making rocks skip like hail off Lenny's undercarraige. In the rearview mirror I could see the first two cruisers following me, though they were much more
sane about making the turn. Then they were lost in the dust, except for the dull flicker of their lights and of course the howling cacophony of the sirens
that I'd been hearing for the past forty-odd minutes.
Right, then. It was time to lose the cops, or pack it in and go to jail. I put my foot down all the way, taking it past any reasonable speed and all the
way into oh-god-I'm-gonna-die. Lenny seemed to top out at about 130 on the dirt road, which was more than fast enough for me. I was bouncing around like
a bingo ball in the tumbler and seriously considering which direction to aim if my dinner made a bid for freedom. I didn't dare take a hand off the wheel
long enough to roll down the window, so it was a debate between my own lap and the instrument cluster.
There was a dip, which I didn't have time to avoid; the headlights revealed nothing but the other side for a moment, making my heart spasm just a bit,
then we hit the bottom (and Lenny hit his bottom; it was a sharp reversal and he dragged on the ground) and started back up. I had *just* enough time to
register the old and faded "DEAD END" sign at the top of the dip as it flashed past. Then?
Oh, THIS is what Evil Knievel must have felt like, I thought, as the wheels left the ground. The other side of the dip... wasn't. I mean, it was a
canyon, at the bottom of which I thought I could just barely begin to make out a muddy trickle of water in the scant moonlight.
That's about when my brain went on vacation and my body went on autopilot. I was along for the ride, but wasn't behind the wheel, if you get my
drift. The first thing one does when faced with a long drop into certain splattering is tense up. Oh, boy, did I tense up. I tensed up so well that the only
sound coming out of my mouth wasn't audible to human ears, I bet; I know I was screaming, but I couldn't hear it. My hands were firmly clenched on the
wheel, my feet were stapled to the floor. The engine screamed as the load was taken off and the wheels could spin free; the speedometer zoomed to the end of
its arc so hard the pin should have bent. Lenny seemed to hang in midair, turning with agonizing slowness as the greater weight of the engine overbalanced the
car and pitched us straight down. The headlights cut through the dark and revealed a rocky excuse for a canyon floor, with an artistic daubing of sluggish
water for effect.
Then the engine coughed and the tires chirped and caught. Suddenly we were accelerating faster than thirty-two feet per second per second; I screamed again
-- "YYYAAAAAAAAHHHH!!" -- and instinctively pulled back on the wheel, which of course didn't move.
But Lenny did.
It felt like bottoming out of a steep hill -- hell, it behaved like a hill, to the point that Lenny even bounced a bit on his suspension -- and the nose
pitched up and away from the by-now-very-close creek below. The engine chugged and began to stutter; I watched myself downshift, just like you did when
climbing a hill on the ground, and Lenny happily complied, accelerating smoothly up the invisible slope we were climbing and away from the dark ground
below.
Apparently concluding that I would live, my intellect chose this point to return to my body, and I spent the next few minutes in a strange blend of
exhiliration -- hot damn, I was fucking FLYING! -- and twitching, shuddering adrenaline shock -- hot damn, I'd nearly become a Jackson Pollock
painting!
I was still a bit out of it, to say the least. My only sane thought was along the lines of "I shouldn't be driving like this", at which point
I pulled over to the side of the road and braked to a halt. I was *that* close to turning off the engine when something went *click* and I realized that
shutting Lenny off would probably be a Very. Bad. Idea. He didn't seem to mind idling at 300 feet, though, so I left the engine on and put him in
neutral, then spent a few minutes getting my breathing back under control, wiping off sweat, checking for soiled undershorts, that sort of thing. Y'know,
the usual.
I was just getting back to normal when a brilliant shaft of light speared Lenny like a bug and nearly made me fail the underwear check. Belatedly I
realized that hanging around up here, with the lights on and all, was akin to waving a big sign saying "PLEASE ARREST AND/OR SHOOT ME"; sure enough,
the light appeared to be coming from a helicopter, though I couldn't tell if it was a newsbird or the cops -- or the military, for that matter; we
weren't all that far from Davis Monthan AFB, among other places. The chopper swung alongside, keeping that dazzling beam pinned on Lenny, and the rotor
wash did nothing more than make him rock a little from side to side. The the loudspeaker cut in:
"Attention! You in the, uh, flying car! Land immediately! You are under arrest!"
Hoping like hell that Lenny had come out bulletproof, I ignored the chopper for the moment and hunted around on the instrument panel. For some reason
I'd thought I'd be 'cool' and had wired the controls for the various extra bits I'd added into a Knight Rider-style light-up push-button
grid. My stenciling skills weren't up to spec, though; it took me a couple minutes to find the button labeled "SCNR". I pushed it and
immediately winced, turning down the volume on the radio as it erupted into a babble of voices. I waited until it cycled to one that seemed to be between the
helicopter and somebody on the ground, then dialed that in to the C.B., lifted the mic, and crossed my fingers.
Hey, I may not know a lot, but I do know that C.B.'s don't operate on police freqs, okay? I was hoping the stories I'd heard about Handwavium
were true.
Apparently, they were. The C.B. -- a cheap digital Radio Shack model -- accepted the frequency without complaint. I held the push and said, in my best Hey
Mah Ah'm A Trucker voice,
"Nah, I don't think so. I just outran what, twenty? Thirty? of your best... I ain't going down there to give you boys another
chance."
There was an amazing amount of silence for a few moments. Then a new voice cut in:
"Unidentified aircraft, this is Lt. Jameson, USAF. You are in violation of United States airspace. Identify yourself and accept escort to ground or
be fired upon. Be warned that we have you locked. You have thirty seconds to respond."
Well, crap. I craned my neck looking around, but let's face it: the human eye is just not meant for identifying aircraft at night. I considered
engaging in debate with the Air Force pilot -- the cops had dropped a few slots on my Important Things list when the military showed up -- but decided it
probably wasn't worth it. I'd heard the stories. They might not actually fire on me, but then again... I'd rather be moving if they did.
And now that Lenny was up here, there was no way in hell I was just going back down.
"Okay, Lenny... you ready for Round Two?" I said to myself as I flexed my fingers and got ready to move. He didn't respond, of course --
though I imagined an eager note to his engine growl, and smiled to myself.
Then I floored it. The tires screeched and skidded as I peeled out on thin air, and only truly caught as I shifted into second. By third the speedo was
pegged at 140 -- and we were still accelerating uphill at about a forty-degree angle, judging by the seat of my pants. The radio squawked -- Lt. Jameson again
-- but I ignored it and kept the hammer down.
Lenny topped out at just over really-really-fast -- the air howling past his frame was so loud I was starting to worry about bits falling off, or for that
matter, hitting a pigeon or something equally stupid. I hunted around for the dangling altimeter -- I'd scavenged the wristwatch type from a skydiver
friend of mine -- and held it up; I was only a couple thousand feet up at this point. The Air Force jets, wherever they were, were hassling me by radio but so
far hadn't upped the ante as far as I could tell, and the police chopper was way behind and struggling to keep up. I pulled back again and held it until I
felt the tires begin to slip, then pushed back down a bit; we ended up heading for space at about a 70-degree angle, which meant (I did some rough calculations
in my head) I'd pass beyond breathable air in, yikes, really soon. I hit the cruise control button and made sure the windows were all rolled up, then went
hunting for the scuba regulator.
Which was nowhere to be found.
Ah, hell, I'd left it on the bench in the garage. Along with the wetsuit, facemask, and other assorted spacesuit-type Stuff. Sonofa....
Well, there was no help for it. I prayed to the gods of Handwavium -- whoever or whatever they were -- that Lenny was up to the task, and hit the button on
the air conditioner panel that made it recycle cabin air instead of sucking air in from outside. While I was at it I shut off the scanner, but left the C.B.
on -- I didn't care what the cops were saying, and I figured Mr. Air Force would have to give some warning before he fired.
Do you know how pretty it is when you break through clouds on a moonlit night, and they spread out below you like a blanket covering the world?
Soon enough, I'd passed beyond (at least) 30,000 feet, and no ominous hissings or creaking or crackings or groanings were reaching my ears. The air
seemed fine, too. The jets -- two of them, at least -- were having a hard time keeping up with me. Rather, they were having a hard time slowing down with me;
they'd settled on a sort of follow the leader game, with me as the leader and the two of them taking turns coming up behind, blowing past, and looping
around again. Jameson's threats had taken a plaintive note by this point and I was starting to feel a bit sorry for the guy; I just bet you he was going
to get chewed out but good when he landed -- "And you couldn't even stop a FLYING CAR?!?" -- but he was obviously either reluctant to fire or not
allowed to. Thank god. I didn't want to know what a missile would do to Lenny (or me!).
Lessee here, at *least* 200 miles per hour, 50 miles to space -- though I wanted to go farther, of course, but just getting free of Earth's atmosphere
was a wonderful start -- meant... dammit, I should have paid better attention in school. I punched up a calculator on the laptop and plugged in the
numbers.
Well hey, lookit that. A nice relaxing 15 minute drive, or thereabouts.
While I was occupied with that I realized I was violating even MORE laws, because I hadn't even bothered to check to see if I was flying through
commercial air lanes or anything like that. Details, it's always in the details.... Seeing as how there was no way for me to check at this point, I
simply hoped I'd be out of the way and tried not to think about imitating a bug on the windshield of, say, a 747.
Mind you, I'd notice it about as much as the bug -- "Huh? What the-*splat*" -- but there was nothing to be gained from dwelling on it.
Somewhere around 50,000 feet (best guess based on guesstimated speed and time, the altimeter having pegged out at fifteen -- yet another thing I hadn't
thought through fully), Jameson and his wingman broke off, with a final message about not returning to US air space. I was tempted to reply with something
witty, but let the chance pass by on account of not being able to come up with anything witty while I was busy staring at the amazingly clear sky and the stars
winking at me ahead.
After a while I noticed that, while Lenny's engine growl was steady and just as loud as ever, the sound of air screaming by had lessened. It was
growing quieter by the minute, and behind me the Earth was starting to take on a round shape instead of being the only thing visible. I checked the time: just
over 12 minutes from when I'd told the 'copter crew to kiss my ass (figuratively speaking).
At about the eighty-mile mark (and why didn't I think to use the trip odometer? Duh!), Lenny's engine started coughing and sputtering again. I
downshifted -- it seemed the thing to do, based on the engine behavior -- and the tires grabbed again and we accelerated. I didn't know how fast I was
going, but I knew, by the way I was pressed into the seat, that it was a good deal faster than before.
Up ahead, the Moon... and Fenspace.
I'd made it.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
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