Perhaps scan Gabbyella first
At Francesca’s words, Xavier, wielding a mallet and a chisel and ready to strike the crystal sheath around Gabbyella’s body, paused. Methyl had frozen Gabby in an attitude of abject defensiveness, slightly crouched, her shoulders up around her ears, eyes shut tight against the light Methyl’s slaps had brought down. Enough silica lay about the hangar in its various guises that Gabby was imprisoned. But Francesca had a different idea.
“Why scan her,” Xavier said over his shoulder to Francesca parked in the body shop bay. “I need to get to her dongle to talk to her. There’s no over the air coming from her, but that might be the rock our friend brought to us blocking the signal.”
Methyl had retreated to Francesca’s side. She was sitting on a drop cloth and leaning against a stack of tires.
Gabbyella is not only inside
“Upper shoulder blades, basically where your dongle is, Rich, which is a total cosmic coincidence, or maybe not. Here goes.”
Xavier heaved back the mallet.
Xavier, no. Spinel inclusions. I can see them from here. Gabby’s silica was used, too. The quartz crystals are formed in a network along with hers. Intertwined now. So, don’t smash it up, or you’ll smash her up, too. Maybe
Xavier let the hammer and chisel drop with a bang to the hangar deck. He leaned in and looked closely at the crystals around Gabby for a few moments.
“Foreign water,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Alien water.”
“We all understand that. Or water made here about 500 million years ago.”
“Francesca’s right. There’s something visibly different inside this quartz around Gabby. You can’t go down into the hole now. I have to get you out of here.”
“Use your backup of her—”
“That’s just data. The mind is inside her. And it needs a body.”
“And I won’t need a body.”
“Apparently not. You said you weren’t going to get jealous. You didn’t care, you said. Take me out of here, you said.”
I looked at Francesca and Methyl. The girl stared at me. Xavier continued his roll.
“Take me out. I only half believe that I half believe that baby’s mine. What else is there here for me? Don’t take me out of Dayton piece by piece. Take out all the pieces and send me into interstellar space. That’s what you said. And then you said that you’re not afraid. And you weren’t drinking.”
I broke eye contact with Methyl and managed to look into Xavier’s eyes.
“I’m not afraid to go without Gabby. Give Francesca the data. Send her with me. A two-person crew, instead of some sneaky Xavier Enterprises bot hitching a ride. That’s better, yeah?”
“Gabby saved your asses when your car got lost,” Xavier said.
“Bad maps,” I said. “It wasn’t about getting to know her mind, like you said. It was about discovering that Gabby started making mistakes as far back as the Hacienda. The moment she scanned me there, she started to lose it. She sent us over the destroyed bridge with corrupted maps. Francesca kept us alive.”
Xavier turned to Gabbyella, frozen in a cage-that-was-also-her.
“The star map took her mind. It was reading the star map, basically,” Xavier said. “It was well above anyone’s head.”
“That girl, Methyl, she did this to Gabby over a map? What was the, why didn’t you turn her away from working on the map so she could keep her head?”
“It was the last thing she had to read. I really, I just wanted to know where you were going,” Xavier said. He bent at the waist, put his hands on his knees, and in a moment was huffing air again.
*
We’ve got another backup on the Ten and that’s gonna cost you about fifteen minutes if you’re headed east near exit nineteen, extensive wreck cleanup operation still going on there, so avoid that area if you can. The surgery was thorough, leaving me in a webbing cradle inside a kind of transparent, partially filled tank. I lay inside an IV, essentially. Limbless, blanked out, whether eyeless or from the anesthesia, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t speak or hear. I saw through Francesca’s cameras as she rolled into a diving bell with me, in my chamber. We’d said our goodbyes, in our way, Methyl and I had, I think. It had been rushed, after Gabby’s semi-demise and the rotation of the project to Francesca, and I remember little of the days just before I lost more than half of my body weight in body. She could not be consoled about the star map read, I remember, because without it, I was simply disappearing with Francesca until Xavier could stand Gabby back up through the crystals and get the thing read.
If it weren’t for the skrip. I dreamed of the hole, heard radio announcers doing play-by-play baseball games with a hole through the earth in the outfield. Sometimes, the ball fell in, never to be seen again. The crowd would fall silent.
As Francesca lowered me into a twilight consciousness for the descent, I watched through her video feed Xavier, Methyl, and his team lined up at the edge of the hole. Bots of sizes from tractors to rats ran in circles around the area, prepping the rails we’d ride down and the life support systems for the bell, which Xavier assured us was in the plans and would protect us from the pressure and the heat at the bottom. The theory went, once we reached the nadir, we’d receive another bolt that would meld us, create the ship and then we’d pick up the water. Then, the bell would be hoisted by the bots to the surface. Round trip time, three days.
As the bell rotated over the hole, Methyl gave me a wave that turned into a kind of salute. She held something in between her fingers of her saluting hand. The diving bell turned away from the group, and it struck me that the thing in her hand looked like a lighter. The window shields rolled closed and my eyelids did the same, and I slept.
*
Kurt Kentson, WYUV, good evening. Word this hour of an exclusive update on the situation with The Francesca, something perhaps related to the launch tine. Let’s go to Samantha.
A truly momentous day indeed, Kurt. I’m standing inside Dayton Elementary School where students and teachers are watching, along with the entire world, a spot on the Canadian border, Xavier Enterprise Headquarters, where for the last several weeks a fierce skirmish between corporate security bots has been waging over a person who by now is world famous, and is also an alum of this school, Richard Dennison. Richard and his car, Francesca, have literally been transformed by Xavier Enterprises into a starship they say is capable of leaving the Solar System many times over.
Samantha, they’re going to leave and come back again and again?
That’s under wraps for now. The mission as we know is still top secret. But I was able to steal a few seconds with Xavier Gregor just an hour ago, and he did relate to me that the mission is to travel further than we can see—to the edge of the known universe. Now, what we know about Richard Dennison is that he’s excited to go, he’s happy to be with his beloved car, and although room is of a premium when you’re traveling near the speed of light, I’m told Richard has about six cubic inches of cargo space available to him.
Yes, there’s been quite a number of online contests to see what’s taking a ride to the edge of the known universe with them, and, is this right, you have an exclusive for us on that.
Well, Kurt, I do have one. Just a few moments ago I got word that Richard rejected every suggestion sent online.
Every single one?
All of them, Kurt. He asked instead for a helper to get something from his home, something from his desk. It was all he wanted. A postcard and an old balloon.
A what?
And I have someone special here who can help explain all that… Come on over here, Ms. Haley? Ms. Haley?
Okay.
Now, I understand you’ve been teaching at Dayton Elementary for thirty-seven years. Do you remember having Richard in your class years ago?
No.
Now, what can you tell us about what Ricard picked to take with him?
Helium balloon postcard. We send ‘em up, see how far they go. Guess he found one.
Ha, ha, yes, he found one that your fifth-grade class launched to the New Mexico skies over five years ago. And now it’s going to the end of the universe, in theory. What do you think about that, Ms. Haley?
I think the PTA better find me some more damn yarn and pushpins, if that’s what’s going on here.
Ha, ha, there you go, Kurt.
Ha, ha, there you go, Samantha. Earth needs yarn. All right, very good. Keep us informed about that launch.
*
“We have no fucking clue when you’re lifting off.”
Francesca and I—we, together as one—hovered five meters off the tarmac outside the hole in the sunlight and moonlight for a week, waiting, talking, occasionally watching the world watch us.
We were a ten-meter-tall moth-shaped thing, poised with wings out, white and brittle-looking, sprouting antennae. We were the locust my dad accused me of one day becoming, just arriving a billion years earlier than expected.
Fran had gradually woken me to a state of paralysis and numbness. I was much as I had been before we descended: viewing the world as VR through her eyes, and through considerably more angles now that we were a ship. Press photographers surrounded us at times, and three film crews were constantly present among the throng of Xavier Enterprises workers without much of a clue as to what to do.
And there was Methyl. She’d set up a single-person saddle-back tent outside the security perimeter and was living there, watching us through scopes and trying my phone, which of course couldn’t reach us anymore but didn’t stop her from trying. We were mute, an insectoid monolith for the world to puzzle over. Even the warbots had ceased their fighting in the presence of something otherworldly.
Show me the cargo, I told Francesca. I needed to see it.
Francesca fed me the camera on the tiny space, the deflated yellow balloon and postcard from Ms. Haley’s class, and Methyl’s most prized possession, her View Master. People lived here. Click, people lived here. Click, you could have been pen pals with a kid who lived here.
*
Cloudless night over Dayton, with an overnight low near sixty-two Fahrenheit. Going to spin a few oldies before the news but first, congratulations to the Dayton Junior Soccer League Raccoons on a fine finish to a fine season. Nice work, guys and girls, see you next year.
When I woke one night, we were higher up than I’d ever been, having climbed in my sleep so gently as to not disturb my… what, body’s sense of equilibrium? Did I have that part? I saw the light-shaped North American continent, a glowing web of colors connecting nodes of pure light.
“Francesca?”
We are rising, it seems
You’re not—
I’m not controlling the ship, Rich
Stars appeared from the darkness outside the windows, and the curvature of the Earth completed itself until we were distant enough to swallow it. I believe I maintained consciousness because there wasn’t a body pumping blood in any panicked direction.
Both of you speak English
The voice was not human and not Francesca’s.
“Fran?” I was a boy again.
We speak English
Two is very rare
Rare for what
Drone
What is our destination?
There was no answer.
“Jesus, Francesca, what are you talking to?”
Non ne ho idea
“We’re in a drone?”
Maybe
No more English
Beautiful moonlight tonight as well as her twin, her shy backside hiding in the shadows, going by now at twelve, well, what time is it now that we’re not spinning down there. But we’re still spinning them up here. Kicking off another set, this one’s dedicated to all you dreamers.