Just so that all you Skillet fans are not filled with wrath, I do think they are an epic band. Remember that Jacob has never heard them before.I must confess that I feel like a monster!!!... Ahem.
Book One: Rise and Fall of an Empire
Chapter Two: A Lone Cloud
“Negotiations aren’t going well.” My sister said sullenly Saturday morning a few days later. None of us really cared about the new discovery and the ensuing legal battle, though I cared a little for her sake. She read all she could about it and gave us the important parts.
“What’s the matter?” I asked before taking a sip of orange-lemonade. I was a notorious juice mixer.
“Well…” She closed her eyes to think for a moment, as she often did. “You see, it’s kind of like this: the scientists all want their home country to have exclusive rights to their discovery. Some nations think that they should have the rights because of the funding they provided, while others think that scientist’s contributions should decide who has rights.” She said, opening her eyes.
“Typical UN move.” Father grumbled.
“Why are you eating so fast? No one is going to take it from you.” Mother says, observing my hurried behavior.
“I need to meet Carl to get parts for my robotics class project from the Scrap Yard.” I proceeded to cram HexFlakes into my mouth.
“The Scrap Yard isn’t a charity. You got money?” Asked Mother, pointedly.
“Enough.”
“How you gonna get there?” Mother left nothing to chance.
“Carl’s dad agreed to take us with him when he goes to get parts for his garage.”
“You may go,” She told me as I set my plate on the robotic dishwasher’s conveyor belt, “but remember that your room won’t clean itself.”
The thing I could not possibly have explained to my parents was the necessity of this visit to the Scrap Yard. The components available at the workshop were cheap and designed to be easy to use. This was fine in the class-wide Sumo competition, but you needed something tougher in the brutal school-wide battles. The pieces here might be a little beat-up, but they had stood the test of time.
Usually the winner of the robotics tournament was someone with absurdly rich parents, but this year we belived we had a chance at winning a couple of school-wide matches. Our secret weapon was a diamond-bladed saw Carl got when his Dad replaced it with a solid synthetic diamond one. With it, our entry, dubbed Warlord, would dominate.
Or at least, it would if it had a motor. Some wheels would help, too. We also needed wires and other hardware. On the bottom of the list of necessary components were armor and spikes. (Carl’s dad had plenty of paint lying around.)
I rushed to the door amid frenzied knocking. "Dad's leaving without us if we don't meet him in about two parsecs!" Carl blurted before the door was completely open.
I dashed after him, slamming the door behind me. I called after him as he tore through the halls of the HabiComplex™, "But a parsec is a unit of roughly 3.3 light-years! It's not a measure of time! Carl! Exit is to the left!"
"Whaa?"
"Other left!"
We arrived at the car breathless. Carl's dad was already starting to pull out, and Carl practically killed himself trying to open the door. I buckled my seat belt listening to the driver's maniacal laughter.
Carl was envied throughout the school for his dad's electric car. The design resembled a space fighter from a certain video game of which sixteen sequels were made. Every inch was covered in chrome, which made it difficult to look at without sunglasses. Not one of the wheels was visible. It was easily over eight meters long, and had plenty of storage space. The vehicle was breathtaking in its accuracy. An authentic control stick replaced the steering wheel. Proton cannons jutted from the wings, firing blue rubber balls when a trigger was pulled. The jet trail of the Engines was mimicked with a smoke machine and crimson LED's. It was, arguably, the most epic vehicle licensed for public roads, and Carl's dad knew it. His fingerprint was required to open or drive it. In addition to the exceedingly loud car alarm, (Actually a track from the third installment of the game.) tear gas sprayers were fitted along the length of the fuselage. It had taken him eight years to build, and he couldn't calculate the cost.
I managed to dare Carl to a game of chess on his Holo-Pod, which was less than an inch across. Chess is still the ultimate game of strategy, even when compared with the advanced 4-D Holo-Games with soldiers smarter than you on Carl's Holo-Pod. No advantage is ever gained other than that hard thought and fought for. Of course, I may have held that opinion because of my ability to beat Carl at it and precious little else.
Eighty kilometers and six checkmates later, we arrived at the scrap yard. It was a quaint cross between a trendy mall and an outright garbage dump. A neat, modern checkout stood in front of rows of disorderly heaps of mechanical components in various stages of decay. Scrawny teenage girls attached price stickers to jet engine components which scruffy macho men lugged off to various parts of the scrap yard. Bins of plastic model aircraft parts stood next to shock absorbers from military ATV's. The place was filled with contrast and contradictions.
Carl and his dad each checked out a robocart. The contraptions had been standard in shopping centers for a number of years, yet I still found them alarming. Once you strapped on the wristband, thin as a nickel at its thickest, the wheeled vehicle followed you everywhere. This left your hands free for shopping-or in my case, needless self defense measures.
“Dude, check this out!” He said, rushing to a pile of junk under a ‘RedUceD fOR QuiCk SaLe’ sign. We found broken blenders, rusty coat racks, flat whitewall tires and a plethora of other items of similar value.
“And what will Warlord do with a coat rack?” I asked as I kicked one.
“No, look!” He said, forcibly turning my head in the direction of an electric motor from a scooter or possibly a Segway IV. Robots with weak motors were commonly known as ‘lunchmeat’ during the sumo matches, something we wished to avoid. The price tag? Ten bucks.
“Woah.” I rubbed my eyes to be sure they were not deceiving me. Whatever several-hundred vehicle it was from, it looked powerful. Lucky find.
With optimism, not pride, Carl remarked, “It’s as rusty as the titanic, but I should be able to fix it up.”
There was a problem, though. Without wheels, it was about as useful as the coat racks we found it under.
“Whaddaya lookin’ for, somethin’ like a G-42? Or how about this rare VW-53-29-85? With stuff like this, it’s better to regret buying than not buying. There’s only ‘bout a thousand-no, wait…four thousand in existence on the whole planet, or even the whole solar system! Smart folks snatch ‘em up real fast! Not that I’m sayin’ youse ain’t smart ‘r anythin’, jus’…it’s a hunneret fifty bucks, take it or leave it. Or how ‘bout this superb T-1 R-3? I ain’t seen one in such good condition in over fif-“
“Um!” I interrupted the talkative employee, “We need something…smaller.”
“Oh, like an N-63! They’re our daily special-four fer a dollar! How many d’ya need? Four? Eight? Twelve? Uh…sixteen? We got hundreds of ‘em!
“How…big are they?” Carl asked, cautiously.
“The perfect size-half a centimeter across! Perfect for street cars, race cars, ambulances,
or anything else you can imagine!”
“Do you have anything in between?” I asked as Carl began to inch away, “Like, you know, not monster truck and not Matchbox?”
“I know just the thing!” He said as he sifted through bins of wheels, “The M-39-solid-rubber-tire-abamantium-series over here! They’re four bucks a pop! How many d’ya need?”
“Two.”
“Here ya go!” He said, throwing the heavy wheels to us and leaving to assist another customer.
Hardware was never cheap at the Scrap Yard; neither was wire, though it was cheaper than what they sold at home improvement stores. Pricing for sheet metal was less certain. The Scrap Yard seemed to have a surplus, which caused prices to fall as the law of supply and demand dictates. We found all the armor we could ever need, from beat-up car hoods to murderous metal fence spikes to panels from machinery with a forgotten purpose. What fun this upcoming season would be!
Carl’s dad had only begun to haggle by the time we had finished checking out, so we knew we would have a long time to wait. We wandered about the Scrap Yard, wondering if the place was larger than we thought or if we had lost all sense of direction.
“Dude, look at this!” He said as he held up his find, “It’s some kind of antique iPod or something.”
“Are you serious?”
“Look!” He was. In his hand he held an ancient relic of entertainment technology. It had actual physical buttons and lacked any kind of holo-screen. I was sure it played MP3 files.
“I am totally getting this.” He said as he flipped it over to look at the price tag. "Five bucks. ear buds included, No charge cable." With a mischievous smile he added, "Guess I'll have to improvise."
During the ride home I played fantasy chess on a 12x12 board with Carl as he struggled to figure out the buttons of his iPod.
"Carl, your turn."
"... Casting Crowns, Fireflight..." He said, reading the list of artists.
"Carl, your turn."
"...Hawk Nelson, Matthew West..."
"Carl, your turn." I repeated, poking him.
"Oh!" He made a few gestures on the projected board with his index finger, thoroughly grilling my knight with his flame bishop. He returned to the list he was reading, "...Matthew West, Red...Skillet?"
"Whaa?" I looked up from my queen's spell menu.
"I'm serious! Look!" He turned the screen so I could see. "Who would name their band Skillet?"
I snickered. "Perhaps they were hungry?"
Carl patted his belly. He looked at his Dad's reflection in the mirror, saying, "Perhaps we are hungry?"
For a few moments, only the faint sound of Carl's iPod and the fainter sound of his dad's hand-built electric engine reached my ears.
"You got a couple a' options." I saw no hint of emotion in his reflection as he spoke, "We could wait until we get home and eat PB&J, I could pull over and you could try to capture and devour a squirrel in the woods, or..." I cast a fretful glance at Carl. "I could get a pepperoni pie at Domino's ." He didn't wait for us to respond before he pulled into the parking lot.
Afterwards, when we got back to Carl's place, we began putting the components we bought to good use. The shell of the engine we found was rusting away, but the insides seemed to be in good working order. I wrote the first lines of our robot's code, and by the time I had started over twice, it was time for me to high-tail it back to home before I was late for dinner.
Nonetheless, I was late, due in part to a lengthy explanation I gave about HabiComplex™ Navigation to a naive traveler.
When I retired to my bedroom, I thought a robber had broken in. The floor was completely bare. I checked the walls, and all my LEGO posters were still in place. Realizing they were not nearly valuable enough to be worth stealing, I checked for my flash-pod. It was there too. I considered several far-fetched explanations before the answer dawned on me.
Elisabeth. God bless her.
I want to read more! What is it about his bare room and Elisabeth? I wanna know now! Please PM me when you post it.
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