The Ride
A pool of water was forming under Kani’s seat as the train pulled out of the station, heading west. She pressed her head against the glass, ignored the sight of Fantoni shoving Stacey into a black truck in the parking lot below. She stared at the horizon.
She rested her forehead on the seat in front of her and pulled her arms in close, trying to warm up. The train’s air conditioning blew from all sides, making it worse.
She caught sight of a businessman across from her, newspad in hand, watching her more than the words on the screen. She shrugged at him, and he jerked to attention, went back to reading. Uneasily.
Kani caught her breath, held it, and all in a rush, the weight of the past hour came pounding into her, and she covered her mouth just in time to stop a sob. She lowered her head down towards her knees, wrapped her arms around her head, and cried. She kept having flashes of the gun at her head, Stacey’s hand, the blood… every time she thought it had passed, that gun came back into view like lightning… a flash of terror, and then gone.
She calmed herself, stowed the panic away, and fumbled in her pocket, pulled out her phone. She hovered a finger over the nine. In the shade behind the seat on the train, help seemed so far away, but all she needed was to push that button…
She looked up. Various eyes glanced away, pretending to mind their own business. Kani wiped the tears from her eyes, leaned back in her seat, sniffled. She was fine. She was going to be fine. She gripped the phone in her hand and tried to be fine.
Above the exit was a poster, scratched on with black marker, but still clearly visible. How to pick out a pirate. The photo was nothing like her: a gravely-looking man with a scar on his face, cigarette hanging from his lips.
She read the address on the poster, keyed it into her phone. The site came up, and she tapped through to “See the signs.” A video began to play, and she popped in an earbud to hear.
“… can be anyone, anywhere. Always be on the look out for these telltale signs: excessive vitamin use. Because of their unsafe vehicles, pirates are exposed to high doses of solar radiation, which can cause serious health defects if not treated. To counter this, many criminals consume large quantities of specially-fortified vitamins to help them survive their time in space…”
Kani clasped her hands together, shaking. The pills in the water. She looked at the sun, and it felt cold.
“… An abnormal work schedule is often a warning sign. Because of the unpredictable nature of unlicensed mining, pirates will often need to leave work at strange hours, and stay out for extended periods of time. Sometimes you—”
A hand landed on Kani’s shoulder, and she flinched back into the wall, dropping her phone. An old man stood there, patchy stubble framing a rotting mouth. He put his hand out to her, brown with caked dirt and sunburnt cracks, and breathed putrid air at her.
He was speaking, but she couldn’t hear. She took the earbud out, grabbed her phone from the floor.
“Can’ya spare some, dear?” he asked.
She glanced around.
“I don’t… I don’t have any money,” she said.
“Not money, dear. Tea. Can’ya spare some tea?”
Kani smiled nervously. She shook her head.
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t have any tea, either.”
The old man sighed and sat next to her. She pushed herself as far against the wall as she could manage. He began massaging his thighs, humming softly to himself.
“Mood swings?” he said suddenly.
“Excuse me?”
“Mood swings? You have them?”
She looked around. A few other people on the train were watching them, cautious or amused, she couldn’t tell. She leaned as close to the old man as she dared.
“Sorry, what?”
“Your phone. It said ‘mood swings’. You have them?”
She looked down, stopped the video from playing, put away the phone.
“No,” she said. “No mood swings.”
“I like swings.”
“Sure,” she nodded.
“When I was a boy, I jumped off the swing, did you know? I jumped off the swing, and I landed on my face. Right here… can you see the scar?”
He pointed to just under his nose. Kani smiled at him, nodded. He tapped two teeth around an empty space on his gum line.
“Lost my first grown-up tooth that way. M’mother was livid. Absolutely livid.”
“Yeah,” Kani agreed, looking out the window again.
“Do you have a mother?”
She closed her eyes, turned her head halfway to see him, pushed some wet hair from her face.
“No,” she said. “No I don’t.”
“She was lovely,” he said. “My mother was lovely. She bought me things at my birthday.”
“I think that’s normal,” Kani said, the edge in her voice piercing through. “Listen, I think that guy up there has some tea.”
The old man’s eyes shot forward. He got to his feet.
“Tea? Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t see him! Where is he?”
Kani pointed forward, squinting.
“He went into the other car. He’s up there. He had a cup of tea. A kettle, too. He looked happy.”
The old man waved to her and rushed out of the car, laughing the whole way. Kani looked at the other passengers and shrugged. They smiled back, went back to their reading.
“Guelph express station,” said the train gently. “Please prepare to exit.”
Kani got up, checked her seat, and slipped off the train onto an abandoned platform. She looked west, through a farmer’s field, and saw nothing but corn. No shack, no ship, no danger.
She looked around herself, then walked down the stairs, over a wooden fence, and into the field. The ground was wet and muddy, but she kept her pace up, hopping every so often to see over the stalks.
Ten minutes later, she came to a clearing, and in the centre was a sizeable wooden shack like a barn, boards coming off the sides, at the end of a long stretch of crumbling asphalt that ended in a patch of rocks. On the side of the shack it said “Eli’s Airpatch,” in faded paint.
The side door was open, swinging in the wind.
As she approached, something inside the shack rattled. She paused, held the door still and leaned in.
“Hello?” she called. “Is anyone in there?”
Silence. She leaned in further, tried to see through the darkness. Bright shafts of light made it impossible.
“I’m… I’m Stacey’s friend. Is anyone there?”
Another shuffle. She stepped in and tripped over something, fell to her knees. She turned around and saw a dusty bin of chocolates, left right by the entrance. Department store chocolates, the tape still around the seal. She pushed them out of the way, then paused, and pushed them back where they were.
A huge tarp was draped over an oddly-shaped vehicle, only its giant wheels peeking out the bottom. She pulled at the tarp and it came off easily, revealing a dull, patchy metal underneath. She pushed the tarp to the side and stood back, taking it in.
It was a jet fighter, wings folded up in a triangle above it, cockpit speckled with dust and dirt. Along the side, the letters “F-422” was half-removed, painted over by playing cards and fiery patterns. Along the side of the cockpit, it said: “Incessna,” and below that, “Tundra.”
She ran her hand along the edge of the glass and found a latch. She pushed it in, and the cockpit hissed, opened gently. She glanced around herself, listening for a rattle again, but heard nothing.
She climbed the side of the ship, kneeling over the opening. A flight suit and helmet were inside, so she took them out and gladly changed out of her damp clothes. The suit was too big for her, but she rolled up the sleeves and legs, and strapped her gloves on anyway.
The front doors to the shack rolled open easily, as if they’d been greased recently. As soon as the first door was open, a small creature — almost like a cross between a hedgehog and a monkey — scurried out and into the field. Kani blinked at it, paused, then turned back towards the fighter.
It looked worse in full daylight. If it could make it off the ground, it would be a miracle. If it could survive in space…
She put on the helmet and sat herself in the cockpit, closing the lid. She fumbled the phone into a cradle in the console, and the dashboard lit up. The phone said “please dial.”
“Dial?” she said to herself. “Dial what?”
She looked around for something that looked like an address to dial, but found nothing but a small scrap of paper with a drawing of a pickle wearing a dress. She smiled at the oddness of it, turned it over, and saw the hand-written note: “M-27.”
“M-27,” she said. “Memory 27. Okay, I got ya.”
She went into the phone’s memory banks, tapped through to the memory banks, and found entry 27. Unnamed. She took a deep breath, and hit “dial.”
A few seconds later, the glass in front of her showed a text overlay, with quick words scrolling by faster than she could read. Then a peaceful logo faded overtop, proclaiming: “Centrix Interface System 4.2 — Better Than Old School™.”
The jet powered up, rolling out of the shack. Kani checked behind her, saw the wings unfolding once they were clear, and the engine started to roar.
“Please fasten safety harness,” said a pleasant voice, not unlike her computer at home. “Please fasten safety harness.”
She pulled the belts over her shoulders, clicked them into place, and only had a second to spare before the jet picked up speed and tore down the runway, straight at the pile of rocks!