The Altonevers (27 page)

“
Then what?” he
asks.

“
You didn’t kill him,
because you didn't have to,” she says tapping his knee
encouragingly.

“
Oh yeah, I forgot about
all that,” he says. She shakes her head at him , giving up on
trying to even trying to reason.

“
Whatever. Can you fly this
thing?” she asks.

“
Yeah, why not,” he
says.

Up in the air

The interior is a sleek black of
something pretending to be a leather, nestled between an
overwhelming number of gauges, and too many meters and dials to
count, and a lot of graphs cover almost all the surfaces but the c
shaped windshield wrapping around the cabin.

“
Looks like a cockpit,” he
says fastening his seat belt.

“
Have you flown before?”
she asks.

“
No,” he shakes his head,
“but I have a good feeling about this. Anyway, you ready?” he says
with the confidence of not caring.

“
I thought you'd know how
to fly it,” she says, with the wind let from her sails.

“
Why would you think that?
you've been with me the whole time?”

“
Ahh,....huh. I don’t
know.”

“
Oh, oh well. You ready?”
he asks as he jams forward a silver handled lever in the center
console he thinks is a shifter. It isn't.

“
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” she says as her answer
becomes a scream that lunges back into her lungs. Her head’s pinned
to the back of her seat by the G force of accelerating a bit slower
than instantaneously past the speed of sound. In less than seconds
they're rocketing through the parking lot caves of the Shallows.
Through its shadows and sporadically placed streetlamps, scraping
with sparks and screeching scratches of the windshield through the
narrow causeways and catwalks between the brick walls of the
Narrows. Then ascending and crashing through gyrating altocumulus
undulatus bred of condensation cast from the congested causeways
when giving way to the open air. He wobbles the lever back and
forth frantically trying to slow but instead snapping their heads
and bodies up and down, side to side as the rocket spins and
tumbles soundlessly through an open space. Dizzying them until
their thoughts vanish in the depths of a tumbling vertigo as they
careen diagonally up through the air.

The seat belts strap only
their torso to the seats, letting their arms and legs flail wildly
around the cabin. Hitting dials and switches and making green and
red and yellow lights blink and flash on and off over their
helplessly afraid faces.
They begin to
spin so uncontrollably they come to feel as though they’re sitting
still in erratic seconds long intervals of zero gravity. Freeing
them from their dizziness long enough for her to get a glimpse of
the four lane main street further down then a bird’s eye view.
Cider tries his best to hold the silver lever of the center console
at its center. Steadying the ship enough for him to steer, with
more luck than skill, into a starboard slide while upside down that
slows their rough tumble into an unraveling barrel roll. Then
rocketing rapidly toward what looks like a massive blue scar of sky
that is the summit of this city.

Rising out of the continual
counterclockwise rotation of accumulating and releasing massive
pockets of air pressures. Unleashes a sonic boom as a large open
pocket a mile away gives way exploding outward as a series of wall
shaking force sweeping tons of screaming steamy air across their
windshield. The higher they get the less densely the sight
suffocating brick surrounding them becomes, and the more steam and
patches of clouds come to envelope their view. They break
completely free of the shadows and sporadic lights simmering
through the Shallows and the Narrows. Reaching the last of the
congested streets, climbing ever closer to its scar shaped
summit.
As they break from one atmosphere
into another, the windshield is white washed in sky blues. Blinding
them as the cruiser submerses through bone resonating swathes of
supersonic resonance, as a series of dense rolling seas of
asperatus clouds. Hardly able to keep his fingers on the lever let
alone reign the cruiser into his control, he jiggles it back and
forth trying to learn on the fly.

Seconds later leaving the
cloud sea far behind them. Now weaving in and out while vertically
climbing the side of a massive anvil crowned cumulonimbus toward
this places troposphere. Her silent screams through gritted teeth
change from primal cries to ecstatic howling while the rocket tears
through tufts of unrelenting turbulence. The cruiser quakes with
each dip in and out of differently pressured patches of sky for
miles more.
Emerging from the crowns of
the cumulonimbus clouds, then skipping like a stone upstream up a
monstrous sky evacuating waterfall of thick rich vapor, that roars
like lions when rumbling against their speeding cruiser. Her heart
is pacing faster than she can perceive, and racing, stampeding
until nearly bursting through her rib cage. Pulsating to her
fingertips and tongue until they and her face start tingling to
numbness. Her view fills with white speckles and flashes, on the
verge of epilepsy as gravity pulls her eyes to the back of her
brain. Meshing her mind with her sense of sight.

The higher their elevation the greater
her elation grows, until she's barely able to breathe through
ecstatic chirps of laughter. Enraptured by the throes of vertigo,
if she could kick and scream in joy she would but her limbs are
pinned to her seat. Completely engulfed in the loss of control over
her senses, and losing her sense of direction, excused entirely
from the distraction of thought. Soaring against the grip of
gravity is sucking tears from her honey colored eyes, and rapidly
flapping her cheeks to her ears. Though not stopping her excitement
emblazoned smile from embellishing her to his gazing eyes. The
sight of her is grazing his heart, as the intensifying G force
squeezes their stomachs into their turbulence reverberated
vertebrae.

The rocketing cruiser
reaches unspeakable speeds, far past the speed of making any sound
as she screams as loudly as she can in silence. Leaving a curved
pillar of pillowy exhaust streaking up as they tear through the
ceiling of the stratosphere. Boring a boulder sized hole through
the mesosphere like a worm through an apple, then sailing
meteorically higher. The cruiser passes the electric blue
exosphere, taking her last breath a minute before passing into the
ether above the light blue light rimmed auroral halo crowning the
condensed city miles below them.
The blood
is draining from their desperately afraid faces, each thriving and
alive in the fear of jetting faster than they could think, toward
the unknown. She's clasping for his white knuckled fingers
clutching the silver lever. He's watching her, and not the road
though there’s no road to see. Ascending astonishingly fast then
violently erupting from the very last cumulonimbus clouds. The
rocket and its pillar like wake are tersely tossing through even
the slightest noctilucent sheets of vapor that remain of the
atmosphere. Their bodies are tingling with pins and needles, and
mouth is dried from shouting through her G force quaked
face.

Plunging upward at tens of thousands
of feet per second. The gauges and dials are spinning and flashing
mindlessly around the two, beeping and breaking out into blaring
alarms. He struggles to shift himself closer to her, he clamors for
the adrenaline and for her, sharing, rejoicing in the thrill of
being near death and the uncertainty of living through it. Seeing a
joyous look of lunacy inside resounding resplendence in the eyes of
her expression, enraged in elation and roaring in the face of fear
like a wild lion. She barely manages to turn her head enough to see
him through the corner of her wide opened eyes, to see him
struggling as though to save his life to reach her.

The pilot masks made for
this high a flight went unnoticed by either in their haste to
escape. The rapid ascent is red lining her nervous system and
draining the red from her cheeks, she's graying out, soaring so
fast they feel as though they're being sucked into a tunnel of
sensory deprivation that’s overwhelming her mind and body. Now
narrowly streaking between towering translucent twisters that
violently dominate the ether just under the top of the auroral
halo. Reaching for a hundred thousand miles downward, as
translucent blues and purplish twisters spanning a thousand miles
across their churning crowns. The rocket comes close enough to see
the violent vertices are actually suspending the halo standing in
the sky it's formed of.
Their two souls
are extolling excitedly for the ring of radiating noctilucent blues
above and before them, engulfing the cruiser more with each foot
flown. Growing greater in size until all she can see is a violently
flowing vaporous ocean of brightening auroral blue lights
brilliantly instilling a sense of in awe. The two of them awash in
the euphoria of their escape of diving into the depths of this
places sky. Escaping from the reach of the Ribbits, and out of the
shadowy Shallows and the claustrophobic catwalks and ladders of the
Narrows.

Scathingly close to near death by
suffocation while soaring through an expansive open expanse of
spiraling skies. Feeling alive to live, again with him. All
happening over nearly a minute while flying faster than reflex can
react, then disappearing into the ocean of the blue halo before a
blink of her eye.

Time passed

Floating with the flame of a hot air
balloon over a rustic scene from a thousand feet up, of knolls and
grass and trees, where the streams are of fluctuating translucent
waves of the lightest reds and darkest blues she’d yet seen. The
trees are of the light spectrum split into the shapes of trunks and
branches and leaves. Everything she seen was casting the scenes of
television as their shadows. Each blade of bluish grass oscillates,
collectively blanketing the hills that stretch the scenes of the
shadows of trees.

Then running through pastures until
seeing pixels passing, amassing into patches of shade and the
colorful forms and figures of a much bigger picture. Vast fields of
pixel corn, whose each cob was of speckled color. They were lost in
a swath of static corn stocks beating against their bodies, and
being the only thing they could see for miles and hours more of
moving forward. Finding a freshly painted red barn in broad day,
which they later snuck into for shelter from the increasingly dour
pastures passing into a sour spell of twister country. From the
roof they seen the whole picture of passing pixel corns swaying in
gusts of wind. Mixing their pixelated kernels and melting into the
makings of her mind’s eye, much like seeing sights in the
subjectivity of clouds. Watching a while the fields conjured into
blobs of colors and shapes, rising from fuzz into moving angles and
objects, and partial bodies and faces. She sits on the roof next to
the weathervane thinking there's nothing like nature to give a
glimpse into yourself through its fractal forms. A twister threw a
tantrum miles away, devastating the corn fields into its category
three tear. Another arose, spiraling through the sky to devour the
ground, then another appeared and another each ripping swathes of
static stalks and pixel corn into the air.

How they were sleeping in hay and
petting the goats and cows. Of wanting to pet the horses, but Cider
said not to, that they’ll wake the farmers. The next day they were
chasing chickens when the elderly farmer couple was out and about
in their rusted pickup. The two scrounged their jam, skimmed the
milk of a cow Anna affectionately named Sally, though spewing the
fresh cream from her lips. For three days and nights they stay up
hanging onto the weathervane while watching to see where the sun
rose and fell. Being caught by the mustachioed farmer and his wife,
but welcomed and treated as though in a bed and breakfast. With the
best blueberry pie to ever fill their mouths, still remembers how
the berries melting over their tongues like hot fudge. Leaving a
few days later with warm goodbyes and references to the little they
know of each other and the laughter shared in their short time of
knowing one another.

Another place was pitch black but for
the structures and peoples. As if everything was constructed by the
people out of the oblivion for them to live in. The clothes and
personalities and architecture were fashioned by constructing
contrasts to what existed last. A theme that repeated through its
entire culture, illustrated by its contrasting all that was present
previous to the most recently constructed structures and social
norms. And the people, unsatisfied with this, developed fantastic
personalities that contradict the culture of their generational
predecessors. Their civilities and clothing, persona’s growing over
generations to contest and stand out against one another,
structured to contrast each other. Contrast itself was eventually
seen as a similarity, so they all began dressing and acting exactly
the same to be different. For whatever reason they had a lot of
zeppelins.

And then bike riding through a sleepy
little town lined with antiques older than the wood walls of the
shops they were kept in. Searching for his smokes and coffee and
chocolate for her on old heavy bicycles, rolling in red and white
mushrooms that melted away into viridescent volumes of azure apple
orchards. Another place where stars fell from the heavens without
growing a bit and floated to explode like tiny firecrackers just
feet from her face. Still admiring gemstones made of vapor in a
vacuum. Standing under the arches of Elephaltel, and it's society
of supreme pageantry, solar jewelry and daytime designed evening
gowns.