Greyson
It’s like I’m trying to squeeze myself into an old skin long shed, walking the familiar paths like my brain’s stuffed full of wire-wool. It’s crazy grizzy on L8, yet I’m so lonely I could choke on it. Bryn and I parted ways at the Core, Bryn hesitating as the lift opened on L5 then awkwardly nudged my shoulder with a fist bump before she left. I feel hollow, leaving her to see her parents and friends while I return to an empty lab.
It isn’t long until I’m in the Beneath, the space under L8 that’d once seemed like the bottom of the world, and isn’t that the kicker? Every time I coma-fied in the lab, dreaming of Ma, she’d been right below me, a bare hundred metres yet a galaxy away.
After the week in Undercamp I worry my perception of the lab’s gone and changed – that’s if Bones didn’t go all wiggy after I failed to deliver the wristbands. The roller door screeches as I heave it up and I peer into the dark-gloominess before the lights flick on. Thank sky, the place’s as I left it but it doesn’t look the same. A little bittier, a little less shiny, and part of me doesn’t want to be here at all.
The invention from the blueprints is stashed in a plastic bag, hanging from a ceiling hook. It spins slight-like as something, flesh-heifers I reckon, rumbles above and dust snows down, making the room real hazy. I unhook the bag and slump onto a stool, settling it onto my lap and peeling the plastic off. At a glance it isn’t in great shape.
I rotate the device. Something rattles loose inside and the top dome twists off unexpected-like. For a sec it’s a mad juggling act as I stop its fall to the ground with my foot. Wedging the bottom half between my left arm and chest, I reach to pluck the dome from where it balances and clear the desk, setting it down, watching weary-like as it rocks before the thing finally settles. The schematics are in my pocket, folded so no important data’s lost in the creases. I snap-shake it out and spread it across the desk, pinning it with a tin can full of sonic spanners and a large magnifier.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Okay, Grey,” I mutter. I imagine Zipper snorting her amusement, draping herself across my shoulders, her weight a comfort.
I miss her.
But there’s Bryn. Annoying as sky, and sometimes I want to throttle her, but she’s made me feel better, even though it’s like trying to breath with only half a lung. I re-live the moment I held her real close in celebration of surviving the glitching trip back, her body soft beneath my hands and her warmth sinking into my clothes. She seemed to be digging it, too, before she pulled away. I shake my head, focusing on the task at hand.
I look over the schematics and jiggery-poke at the prototype, pulling it apart piece by piece and slow, real painful-like, putting it together again.
My hands tremble when I apply more pressure to a stubborn nut, and then TWANG! It shoots off over my right shoulder and bounces off the wall.
“Glitch,” I spit, making sure the device is well propped before I drop to my knees, ignoring the sticky grime sinking into my trousers, scanning the ground for the wayward nut. Instead I find dust-streaked lenses, held together with rusty screws and a strap brittle-white with age. My father’s modes. Over ten years out of date, yet functioning all the same. They’re distinct as modes go, retro to the point of almost being cool.
There’s photos of my father wearing these modes.
I shove my old battered modes onto a shelf, enjoying the lack of pressure around my temples. The rubber band doesn’t snap when I stretch it, despite its age, and the lenses settle across my eyes, dark-gloom until the modes auto-link with the embedded chip in my wristband. A basic display wink-blinks up. The time’s wrong, and so’s the date: 23:50, 21st May 353. The day my father disappeared.
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