Phil

  He hung up in the air as he took in his new unexpected view. The worries and concerns from mere moments ago were far gone as his eyes gazed upon mountain tops that looked like glowing gold beacons shining brightly over the boiling storm clouds below. Phil recalled the peace he felt at that moment as he slowed down and eventually came to a stop. The feeling of awe mixed with the sensation of weightlessness, and then falling. A serene moment amidst the chaos of his day. Phil thought about that moment a lot.

  His memory quickly ended as he felt the pressure from his script behind him fading into nothingness. Phil and his boy were kept aloft by momentum alone and he had to time his next activation during a slim window in their journey. Doing it too soon would send them even higher, too late and they would end up careening into the ground.

  Since that day in the mountains, Phil had practiced this script sequence many times in an attempt to master it. He was able to figure out the timing, but he frequently came out injured when he tried to travel with it. Practice was easy, once he figured out what he had even accomplished.

  He had found that when one of his scripts was dissolving, and he put a second script partially in the same physical space of the next one, the dissolving script would launch itself in the opposing direction of the second script. Even if the opposing direction meant directly into him, which taught him a valuable lesson on script alignment.

  He injured himself a lot during this time, but once he figured out the spacing and the timing, practicing became a lot easier. To practice, he would lay on his back and launch himself upward; when he got to the peak moment before falling, he would catch himself and slowly work his way back down to the ground, his energy and willpower deteriorating rapidly. It wasn’t the acceleration that injured him, it was trying to slow down that always seemed to do him harm.

  Which was soon to be his current problem as he was using a lot of energy traveling and he wasn’t sure he would be strong enough to make a safe landing. He wished he could have just ran the entire thing, but with how his son looked, he knew he wouldn’t survive if he wasn’t receiving help in a few minutes.

  Phil pushed the negative thoughts out of his mind and ignored the blur of the wild forest below him. He didn’t have time to think about failure, he refused to think about anything other than successfully getting home. What he was doing needed his full attention and any distractions would just end up harming them both.

  He refocused his attention on the moment, waiting for the right instant in his arc where he could successfully angle them in the right direction while also missing the local landscape. His angle and timing needed to be just right, or this would all be in vain.

  With all the grace one can have while cruising hundreds of feet above the ground holding their comatose son, he re-activated his script sequence. Instead of covering the length of his entire body, he was only able to create a foot wide strip down his neck and back, leaving his shoulders and edges of his body hanging over the edge.

  When the second script activated, he felt the force of the script behind him tear into his back, causing the wind blocking script he was trying to activate to become misaligned in front of him. The uneven wind pressure caused the duo to slowly spin and move off their course, getting them dangerously close to the hill that he was trying to go around.

  They whipped past the side of the hill, missing trees and rocks by inches as they zoomed past terrain and back into open air. This wasn’t the first time Phil had to recover in a scenario like this. There was a certain flock-of-birds situation that happened during one of his training sessions that had left some mental scars… and even some physical ones too.

  To conserve energy, he used his legs instead of his script to slow the spin down and he was able to get them facing the correct direction, albeit at the cost of their momentum. He could feel himself tiring from the exertion and the last mistake only happened because of how hard he was pushing himself.

  Naturally a little energy was regained over time as he flew through the air. But it was nowhere close to replenishing as fast as he was using it. With tired eyes, he checked his location, which took only moments since he knew the landmarks like the back of his hand, and thankfully they were only about a ten minutes’ walk from the base. That meant his aim had been great, but now he was up against his biggest weakness when using this script sequence. The landing.

  Thinking back to his mountain adventure he recalled how severely injured he became due to his final fall. He soon forgot about the beautiful view as a more immediate problem had presented itself. He was falling. He had tried to slow himself down by landing on his force platforms, but he had been so low on energy that he would just rip right through them.

  Thankfully his work wasn’t completely in vain as he plummeted toward the ground, the platforms still slowed him down enough to survive crashing into multiple tree branches that happened to be between him and the ground. He had activated his emergency smoke beacon and laid there in agony for hours as he waited for his fellow Rangers to rescue him.

  He could still recall the pain he felt as he was held in infirmary for hours as the doctors pulled out splinter after splinter and refused to heal his outer wounds until they were sure nothing was under his skin or still in his flesh. He would still occasionally get a lingering memory of wood being pulled out of his body piece by piece and it made him shudder.

  Snapping back to reality, Phil was thankful he would be able to continue with his original route, they barely missed the terrain and avoided becoming food for the local wildlife and their trajectory was only barely off. Using a good chunk of his remaining energy reserves, he activated the script sequence and hoped that his aim was true to bring them the rest of the way home.

  The script that was holding his back from snapping dug into his already hurting shoulders as he held on to Xavier tightly. He gritted his teeth and bore the pain as he didn’t even try to block the wind this time. He didn’t need to go as far, and he didn’t have the energy to spare if he wanted to land in one piece. When the script ended and the wind finally died down enough to where he could see, he came to realize that his aim had been true, almost too true. He wasn’t going to miss the base at all. In fact, they might end up splattered against the outer wall!

  The base was coming at them quickly, and they were moving way, way too fast. Thanks to leadership clearing out the trees around the base for security reasons, he would have a flat area to land on as long as he landed outside the base and away from the walls. As the base quickly grew bigger, Phil noticed that they were not falling as fast as he thought they should be, and they were still higher than the tower in the center of their base.

  He went over his solutions to figure out how to slow down but didn’t have a lot of options. If he tried doing the double sequence again to slow him down… He wasn’t sure what would happen and there is a good chance it would flatten himself or cut him and Xavier in half... Plus even if it might work, he was so low on energy that he could go through all that effort only to come up empty and crash into the wall or ground without slowing down at all. Not ideal.

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  Carrying Xavier meant he would need another solution, and sadly for Phil, the only solution he could come up with was going to hurt. As they hurled toward their base – which was uncomfortably close for how fast they were going – Phil curled up his legs tight to his chest and held Xavier up high on his chest, right under his chin, so he would be out of the way of his knees.

  Once in position, he created a thin platform in front of him for his legs to hit and break. It wouldn’t stop him but it would slow him down. He crashed through it like paper causing his legs a great deal of pain, he knew there would be bruising from just that one hit, but there were many more to come.

  He quickly activated another, and another, and another. He activated them in sequences of three in order to try to increase their effectiveness. After going through over thirty script platforms, he had been slowed down significantly but he could no longer feel his legs and he hoped they weren’t broken… too badly.

  The pain was worth it as he was able to slow down a decent amount, sacrificing the beauty of his legs. He was still too high in the air for a comfortable landing and they were soon flying over the base’s wall, mere feet away from its top and he could have sworn he had seen the guard in one of the towers looking at them with disbelief as they zipped by.

  He threw out a couple more very thin platforms in hopes to slow down a bit more, but his will power faltered on the last script and it was off center and at an angle. They flew into it, but instead of crashing right through it, the angle caused him and Xavier to partially ricochet off it before it broke and they started spinning out of control.

  Phil couldn’t even think as his vision blurred from the spinning and his mind was exhausted from the travel. He could only think of one thing and that was to hold on to Xavier with everything he had. He tried to shield Xavier from whatever they might hit but he knew there was no way his boy didn’t come out with some scars.

  As they spun through the air, he could hear people yelling and screaming but he was too disorientated to tell what they were saying. He clipped something hard with his hip, which slowed them down but Phil knew it had hurt him badly. Whatever they had hit may have saved their lives. Their new angle sent them through a cloth food vendor’s stall which took out a lot of their momentum as they hit the ground below, skidding along with a cloud of dust and debris following behind them.

  Phil felt the gravel below him dig into his back and legs and arms as they skidded over the ground, part of the food stall was dragging behind them, partially wrapped around Phil. The drag turned his body around as it unwound itself before slowly letting go of Phil. The tent had slowed them down greatly and the drag had pulled Phil upright and into a sitting position. Now instead of his legs taking the brunt of the damage, he was sliding on his butt as he skidded along the ground toward the wall on the inner side of the base.

  With a soft thud, Phil and Xavier hit one of the wooden wall gates and came to a stop… Phil tried to look at Xavier but his left eye wouldn’t open and he could barely open the other. With determination, he moved is arm to check on Xavier and felt immediate relief and happiness flood over him when he saw his boy’s chest rise and fall as he breathed. With his immediate concern covered, he looked at where he had landed and to his surprise he found himself looking at the bewildered face of the same guard he had checked out with when they had left on this adventure.

  “Phil?! Is.. What happened to you?!” the guard said with extreme alarm and rushed over to him from his post at the gate.

  Phil tried to talk but he couldn’t form words as he found his mouth full of blood and it spewed out onto his chest and Xavier when he opened his mouth.

  “Oh... Eww... Hey! We need healers over here!” The guard said yelling to someone outside of Phil’s view.

  “A healer? Are we under attack?” A voice that Phil didn’t recognize responded.

  “No! It’s Phil and his son! They left this morning and arrived like this. Something must have happened. Now go!” The guard yelled urgently.

  Phil was having a hard time staying conscience at this point and his world was starting to swim and become darker. The guard was trying to get him to say something but he couldn’t seem to get words to form correctly and gave up. With the last remaining strength he had, he picked up his only free arm and gave the guard the symbol his son had given him years ago to let him know he was alright. A simple thumbs up was all he could achieve before he passed out.

  Cale

  “Command not recognized. Say, ‘I need assistance,’ if you need help.” Cale heard for the hundredth time. Once he heard the voice prompt he thought that maybe he could find a hidden command or maybe unlock some secret feature. Instead, every time he repeated something the voice just said the same thing over and over again. All the while the outside view was becoming more and more chaotic.

  The previously serene view was turning into a raging storm. When he first came into this space he could easily see to the other end of the valley in front of him, but now he could barely see over a single mountain as a blizzard moved in and disrupted his view. The wind battered against the glass, making them rattle and he felt the floor under his feet shudder. He couldn’t help but be impressed with the details and the feedback the environment gave him.

  With nothing left for him to try, he decided to follow along and see what that got him. He walked over to one of the chairs facing the window and sat down. He found himself impressed again at how comfortable the chair was as it seemed to mold to his size perfectly.

  Finding no reason to stop his curiosity, he reached down and grabbed one of the steaming cups and lifted it under his nose. He was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a slight aroma to the drink that reminded him of cinnamon. He lifted it to his lips and let some of the liquid flow into his mouth in hopes it tasted as good as it smelled.

  “bffaaa pphhhpffftt! Gross!” He yelled as he spit out the drink. It had tasted foul! Like it had sat inside an old rubber tire while roasting in a furnace for a week. It was absolutely repulsive.

  “Command not recognized. Say, ‘I need assistance,’ if you need help.”

  “AAAHHHH!!!!!! Fine. Fine. Yes. Yes. I need assistance,” He yelled into the air as he continued to try and get the flavor of that awful drink out of his mouth.

  “Command recognized, initiating assistance mode. While you wait feel free to get comfortable and enjoy the view of the Helioni founder, Wilkson Xav’s personal eco-system, the only inhabitable location on the planet. You will have assistance shortly.”

  This nugget of information made Cale’s ears prop up with intrigue. He had thought it was some random simulated view but knowing it was a completely alien environment was extremely enticing to Cale. He quickly walked over to the glass and tried to get a view of the valley below, but the storm outside was still raging fiercely, blocking his view.

  Disappointed, he meandered back over to the chairs to wait for whatever qualified as assistance in this place. He didn’t have to wait long before a door materialized on the wall next to the bar and out floated a light blue metallic looking orb. On the surface of the orb, was a digital looking face with white blocky eyebrows and a complimentary circle for a mouth.

  “Woooohheeee look at that storm outside!” said the orb with the voice of a young boy with a slight metallic twang to it. As it zoomed over to the window with its eyebrows arching up high, its mouth made a large O shape. “That storm is raging wayyy out of expected parameters, so let’s get that fixed right up!”

  Cale just watched as the orb floated behind the bar and grabbed a few of the top shelf bottles using some sort of energy field that came out of its body like an arm. It brought the bottles to the bar and poured a little of each one into a small glass. It then opened a drawer in the counter that Cale had not seen and the orb added in some shiny looking fruit and what appeared to be ice.

  After combing all the ingredients, the orb hit some random spot on the counter and a blender rose up from the seemingly solid counter. After a good blending, the orb put the drink into a large glass cup with a crystal-like substance that looked like salt stuck to its rim.

  Then it took the drink and it hovered over to window, moving slowly, careful not to spill a drop. Cale watched with interest as the orb took the drink and splashed it on the window! The storm faded away as the windows turned black, but it failed to dampen the howling of the wind. When the screen became fully black, the words “Access Granted” scrolled across the screen, and Cale’s vision exploded with color.