Michael Siemsen - Exigency

Just beyond a slight curve, Minnie recognized a familiar glow: the little red LED atop a survival heater. She crouched down and activated her helmet’s floodlights. The scene gradually illuminated before her as the floods brightened. Calorie bar wrappers, an opened SSK and backpack, both raided by rodents. She brushed aside the gnawed shreds of foil on top of the SSK and found an untouched, sealed brick of eight bars. The bunnies mustn’t have smelled anything of interest. Nor did they appear interested in meds. Ish had left behind some critical items. Indicative of plans to return?

Minnie noted what she didn’t see: no MW or ammo packs, no multisensor, no tent or survival bag, no suit or helmet. Ish had taken some essentials, though without a backpack. What was she carrying it all in? Suit pockets? Maybe the EV had been supplied for two occupants like all the others.

Skimmers!

Minnie snatched up the brick of bars, medkit, and heater, and walked out of the cave. She set her booty on the ground outside the EV and stepped around to the rear. There she found the empty, zigzagging depression of a skimmer bay: former home of the vehicle Ish had apparently taken on her field trip. But right beside it, in its familiar mirrored position, Minnie beamed up at the exposed edge of the second skimmer, nestled right where it belonged, blending perfectly with the curvature of the EV.

“Well, hello, sexy,” she said, and gave the exposed edge two taps. “I’ll be back for you shortly.”

She returned to the pod’s front and peered into the open pod hatch. Apparently unconcerned with power conservation, Ish had left everything on.

Minnie felt nervous excitement tremble in her sternum as she climbed in and connected her fone to the EV’s wireless.

ALERTS: ID mismatch.

She enabled security? Wow.

Minnie grunted smugly and connected as a root level account.

ALERTS: ID disabled.

What? Bitch!

Minnie clenched her jaw, her hatred of Ish soaring to a previously uncharted realm. The system had to have been completely wiped and replaced to disable root access. And there was no way that happened down here. Minnie was at a loss. The pod could have received hundreds of new messages from the BH or elsewhere and she’d have no idea without system access.

Well, I don’t need access to steal your damned comms.

Minnie plunked down into one of the seats and bent over to access a panel. Behind the sheet, she found the laser comms unit, flipped the four mounts out of the way, and pulled the handle. The unit slid out with a satisfying shink .

She had to remove the bottom of the other seat to access the primary comms unit—about ten minutes of work—and soon found herself standing outside the pod with a cache of gear and supplies to take back to John. Thankfully, her body wouldn’t have to bear the weight all the way to their hidey hole. The real gem of her find was still parked in its bay. And she decided to strut her way back to it.

Reaching up, Minnie twisted the skimmer release knob three times counterclockwise, pressed it inward, and sighed with satisfaction as muffled machinations hummed and whirred, and the transport emerged smoothly from its home. The warning beeps were strangely soothing, grounding—the emblematic call of all the magnificent technology that defined her species. And though she hadn’t designed the thing herself, she watched with pride as the mounting arm continued outward, fully extending, while the skimmer blossomed like a smooth, white flower.

Fully deployed, the skimmer pad looked like a shiny white disk, flat on the top, and with a convex underside, like a shallow saucer. Noting she could fit her helmet in the space between the pad’s outer edge and the ground, Minnie squatted for a peek below. Like an EV, retractable stabilizer legs around the perimeter kept the unit from teetering on its rounded center.

Minnie peered up at the skimmer’s curved console, rising from one side of an otherwise wide-open platform. The power supply was fully charged, system checks had come back optimal, and a big blue “READY” shone on the screen. Minnie stood and pressed the release button on the EV. Two claws disengaged and the arm slowly retracted into the empty skimmer bay.

She stepped up onto the pad and ran her gloved fingers across the dashboard’s screens. At waist height, just beneath the screens, three extendable safety lines sat in individual chrome recesses. And below them, a row of panel walls concealed the control console’s inner workings. Above the dashboard, a short transparent windshield rose just a hand’s length higher. Probably the perfect height for Minnie, but maybe a bit low for those of “normal” stature.

Tour complete, Minnie got busy loading Ish’s treasure trove of supplies.

Moments later, with all the gear strapped to the pad or secured inside the skimmer’s in-floor storage bin, Minnie clipped the safety lines to her suit, and activated flight controls.

On Earth, skimmers had grown more common than cars and cycles for short-distance personal transport, along with other vehicles both open and enclosed, broadly referred to as threebs —an odd simplification of “Below 3000,” for their flight zone. Legally, you had to be 16 and licensed to fly a threeb. Minnie had just turned 16 when she entered mission training, and besides a short-lived joyride on a homemade rig, she’d only been able to operate a skimmer during a few obligatory exigency classes. The training center’s vehicles had all sorts of limiters and could be remotely controlled by instructors. No opportunities to “open them up,” as they say.

Minnie wrapped her fingers around the thick, cushioned handle grips, testing the steering devices’ ranges of motion. She could twist both grips like throttles, rotate the whole assembly like a steering wheel, and move it back or forth a few centimeters. There was, of course, no ID scanner on the dashboard, so Minnie simply activated flight with a tap on the screen, and twisted the altitude grip toward her. The ionic drive engaged with ghostly silence, lifting the skimmer slowly off the ground. She twisted harder, then engaged forward propulsion.

Within seconds, cool wind stung her unprotected eyes and blared in her ears. She quickly locked the altitude to free her left hand and slapped her visor shut.

Much better .

In the starlight, the skimmer whizzed noiselessly over the plain and the river and the epsequoia forest. Minnie’s head was a rush of pleasure and guilt. Her mission had been a major success—a first taste of things actually working out as planned (and more!), yet the stars above haunted her.

Tiny white dots in space.

It didn’t feel right to celebrate anything. To enjoy seemed offensive.

But she couldn’t help it. As she neared the spire and sinkhole, slowing and descending for landing less than two minutes from leaving Ish’s pod, Minnie decided she’d just have to take the pleasure with a side of shame. She’d made it up the rope, nourished her lungs with energizing fresh air, they had a skimmer now, they could leave the damned worm cave, and they had comms. She remembered she even had a dead bunny hanging at her thigh, its chickenality level yet to be established.

Perhaps, every now and then, it was okay to have a good day.

John wouldn’t wake up. Water dripped from Minnie’s suit onto his face and he didn’t even blink. At first she stifled panic, stripping away his survival bag and checking his body for new parasites, then scanned the inside of the tent. But none were present. They didn’t have to be, though, did they? The damage had already been done.