“Right, I need to deconstruct her first so I know how everything fits together before I use her as a base.” I patted the front of Magda, the lovely van that had served both my grandfather and myself well. I had turned the couch into a bed for Cy and Miura to rest on the previous night, while Šárka and Non shared a room. So now, it was morning. And I was laying out all the tools I figured we would need.
“Do you have any stands or will I have to do the heavy lifting?” Cy asked, wearing a pair of borrowed overalls. I hit my forehead with the butt of my hand.
“I knew I was forgetting something! Those are in the shed out back. Let me get the transport shark to move them. Thank fuck she hasn’t gone to school yet.” I ran out, shouting up into the upper floor. “Šárka! Could you help move the stands from the shed out back into the garage?”
“On it!” Was the fast response I got, barely catching the speeding shape around me. The little dork did a couple circles around me in her shadow puddle before moving on. When I returned to the garage I could already see the car being lifted up by the stands, as they rose out of Šárka’s puddle. The moment the car was lifted, she jumped out of her puddle right into giving me a hug. “See you after school mom, love ya!” She zipped out the door and I was left waiting for Cynthia to return. Which wasn’t that long a wait at all.
“Right, lets get to work. I’ll leave the hover engines or whatnot to your creation Bridget. Pass me a wrench and I’ll begin disassembling the undercarriage” I raised an eyebrow at Cynthia’s request.
“I might be a super inventor, but I still need to know how ALL the pieces of the van fit together. I need to get the engine block and the internals out first, before I can take apart the chassis to check on it and work off of that.” I handed Cynthia the wrench she requested, but I also popped the hood open to reveal the inner workings of Magda. Okay yeah Cynthia was right, she needs some TLC.
“Well in that case we have to first disconnect all the electronics, shouldn’t be hard, and then all the mechanical connections and engine mounts. Then she’ll come out easily” I nodded at Cynthia.
“Well that’ll be easy, the only electronics she’s got is the radio, and that’s just got two speakes right next to it in there. God this is gonna be such a sight. Move over Mr. Weasley, there’s a new last century flying car around.” I grabbed the equipment belt I had prepared for myself and got to work. Cynthia let out a giggle.
“I’ll disconnect the driveshaft, and then we’ll be in the air in no time” Soon enough we were both at it. I clearly wasn’t made for hauling out heavy engines out of cars, but damn. Did Cynthia get a lifting crane for an arm? She left it on the drive outside which made me somewhat concerned considering the weather.
“Cynthia please keep the important pieces in the garage I mean against all odds there IS snow outside.” She shrugged and moved it back in, as I let out a sigh of relief.
“So now what?” Cynthia’s question was understandable. And I had the right answer for her.
“I need to know how much of the chassis can be disconnected, and how much is just stuck together. Need to check the wheels and axles as well. And once I have all that information-” I knocked on the side of my head “-I’ll let this little shit do her work on how to proceed through the adapting. So come on, hop to it Cynthia, we’re completely disassembling a car.” I clapped my hands, giddy to tinker on something this big. Grandpa never let me tinker with her.
“Well the good news…” Cynthia crouched down next to the car. “Is that since this is an older vehicle I can take apart pretty much all of it. The entire body can come off of the frame pretty much. We are going to need more power than its standard engine to be able to lift it, and well...a method of lifting it into the air and controlling it would be necessary” She took a peek underneath the car. Rude! Don’t look under a girl’s skirt without asking first. “Your Gramps did a good job of keeping her rust free for the most part, its a difficult thing to do when you live in a place which gets a considerable amount of snow per year”
“And according to him we used to get a lot more snow 40 years ago. You’ve seen my blueprints. I can figure that stuff easily. As far as juice goes.” I reached for a box I had on the side, opening it and taking out one of the cubes. “I grabbed this baby from the nearby ruin. It’s got so much fucking juice in it it’s ridiculous. And I got four of them.”
“May I take a look at that Bridget?” Cynthia reached out her metal arm to me. Open palm.
“I’m not sure if grabbing it with your cyborg arm is the safest option. Even Dare has a layer of skin covering her metal bits.” I threw the cube at her, hoping she’d grab it with her fleshy arm instead. She did. And upon staring into the cube for a minute or so, her antenna sparked between each other. Holy shit woman.
“Wow, you’re not wrong about the energy packed into this thing. Theres something about it thats...odd. Its certainly not man-made” I grabbed the cube from her at that moment and put it back in the box.
“You say that, but the ruins it was in looked like Athena got an interest in Art Deco and built Athens like that. Still obviously ancient greek, but also… more. I don’t think it was aliens that did it.” I put the box back on the shelf and wrote down some notes on my laptop, in regards to the engine block and such. “Right. Let’s get to it then.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Cy asked me later that day to send Miura back to England, and Clark got her there safely. Once Šárka got back home from school, and Klára came by to help, the job got much easier. Two extra pairs of hands, plus a girl who could lug around heavy stuff in her puddle sped up the disassembly big time. The moment the car was in pieces, I had sat down at the laptop and just let the superbrain do it’s work. And the result was… incredible, and kind of ridiculous. But it was exactly what I desired. DeLorean’s flying conversion, but in a van, and instead of a nuclear reactor, powered by two of the cubes. I was surprised it was only two. The moment I had it sketched out and written out, I let my helpers take a look.
“Ladies, sister.” Klára stuck a tongue out at me for that. “Behold the hovervan. Now to just get the pieces in. And do some surgery on the pieces we already got here. It’s saturday tomorrow meaning you two” I pointed to Šárka and Klára “can be here all day to help. If you want to.” I sighed and scratched my cheek. “How’s mom doing, Klára?” I had to ask. I mean I deliberately harmed her, in her home, for wronging me.
“The hospital is keeping her for a couple of days more. I think I might be able to get her institutionalised for a month, under a pretense of getting her out of a cult mentality.” Klára shrugged. I nodded at her. Would be nice if they actually made mom less of a shitstain to be around.
“I have no words Bridget, no words. I hope it works” Cynthia’s smile brought me back from feeling bad about mom. “Imagine if you let companies use this tech, you’d revolutionise mass delivery” I could only make a raspberry at her comment.
“Cynthia you got your ass moved here by a kid that shatters reality by headbutting it to make portals. I doubt a fucking hovervan is more effective than a collective of folks like that.”
“But Bridget, how many people like Clark exist? Surely from a business perspective you’d want to have more than one delivery person for your entire company, efficiency and stuff” Cy retorted, before she started looking down. Probably something heavy hit her. I shrugged.
“Probably yeah, but I’m not going to sell this shit to companies until Jeff Bezos gets launched into orbit for his behavior. The whole lot of them, truth be told. Anyways, I’m gonna assign pages from the blueprints to each of you to work on. And then we’re gonna put Magda together.” I took the laptop upstairs to the printer, getting the blueprints on paper so as to hand them out. This was going to be fun.
And it was. January 17th, 5 pm. The car was put back together. Looking better than ever. We ended up replacing the engine for a stronger one, the wheels for much sturdier ones, the axles replaced completely, the chassis reinforced in key places. And, best of all, a new paint job. Klára got her artist friend that designed her tattoos come by to draw a More Than Computer Mouse logo on the side. I was not going to be subtle.
“You should turn it on for the first time Bridget, its your van after all” Cynthia was wiping her hands, and I had to smile and nod, as I jumped into the driver’s seat. Holy shit had the old seats gotten sat through. The new ones were unbelievably incredibly comfortable. I turned the key to hear the roar of the new engine. It sounded like music to my ears. I carefully drove it out of the garage, before I flipped open the panel hiding the flight controls. A little flip of the switch, a couple knobs turned, the wheels turn 45 degrees, then 90, and I shoot up in the van, straight up and above the house. Doing a couple circles around it in the air to make sure everything was working as intended, before making my way down, parking with a flourish.
“Hell. Fucking. Yes. FUCK the police I drive wherever I want!!!” I raised my arms triumphantly, before I jumped out and surprised Cynthia with a hug. “Oh thank you, you wonderful cyborg lady, couldn’t have done it without your help.” I saw her blushing now.
“No problem Bridget, it was the least I could do. You saved my ass” I mean how could I not. It was a pretty fine ass, would be a shame if something happened to it.
“I mean, how could I NOT save such a masterpiece. Blessed by whateverthefuck caused the emergence that behind is.” I let go of Cynthia, and stepped back to admire our handiwork. “Right, I’m gonna need your permission for appearing in the video. That’s gonna be released friday of the project. I think it’ll make the channel blow up.” I could see her looking away.
“I don’t know Bridget, I’m a wanted criminal. Would it be healthy for your channel if I’m here?” I rolled my eyes and patted her shoulder.
“Cynthia. You’re a gorgeous looking cyborg lady. Whose crimes are freeing wrongfully jailed Emerged. And leaving a dude paralysed, but he’s a cop. People are gonna ask when the next time we work together will be if you show up in the vid.” I let go of her shoulder and got in the van, to park it back in the garage before hopping out once more. “Your choice though.” I could see her take a deep breath, as she prepared to answer.
“Okay. I’ll appear in the video. They might wonder how you managed some of the more heavy lifting if I’m not in it” She smiled ever so slightly, clearly emotional torn still. I reached out and gently patted her head in between her antenna, carefully. Figured out quickly that flicking them resulted in a killer headache for her, unlike me with my ears.
“Which means I’ll need to record an end explanation bit with you now, and then we can party up the finished project I guess.” I moved my hand back, closed the garage door and started making my way back up to the workshop/office/bedroom.
The explanation was quickly shot, I saved it to edit it the following day, and got out a bottle of locally sourced wine to enjoy. It was now approaching 10 pm. We had finished the bottle, Šárka was now sleeping happily and calmly in her room, never having taken a sip of the stuff of course. Klára was however plastered on the floor, the lightweight. She had school tomorrow too, but it’s not like I could stop her when she’s 19. Cynthia somehow managed to turn on the tv. At least it was ČT24, the national news channel. Them I could handle. As the newscasters were talking, I turned my head to look outside, noticing a familiar light show.
“Bridget is that what I think it is?” Cynthia asked. I nodded.
“Fuck me running, not again.” I rubbed my face in frustration. A SECOND one?!?! Really?!?!
“Bridget! I need to go back, Miura and everyone might be in danger” Cynthia was panicking. I was already grabbing my phone to call Clark.
“Yeah, let’s get you back home.” I was hoping he wasn’t dealing with his own shit.