LITERATURE LIBRARY - FRONTIER 4 NOVEL EXCERPT

FRONTIER 4

A novel excerpt by C. A. Passinault

Based the original story Time Warped by C. A. Passinault

© Copyright 1989, 2009 Passinault.Com . All rights reserved.

Based on the story Time Warped, © Copyright 1989 C. A. Passinault.

This is the latest draft 5 excerpt of chapter one published in 2008. All content here is tentative, and may be different from the final published novel. Draft 6 is expected to be the published version, and it is currently being written. Plot points, plot twists, some expositional details, and spoilers have been edited out of this excerpt.
On a side note, the first novel in the Frontier 4 saga is pure exposition as far as setting up the character of the principle protagonist. Because the Frontier 4 series is science fiction/ fact, and primarily deals with time travel, all other novels in the series will use what was established in this first novel as the foundation, but otherwise will not be related; this first novel will be the only thing that they have in common. Since the series will branch out into possible realities, rather than advance a main plot with a sequential, linear story, the situations and outcomes will be fresh and unpredictable. For example, the main protagonist could die in novel three, yet novel four is a different reality based on novel one, making a new story which is not related to novel three.
Because Frontier 4 has a universe which took over twenty years to develop, expect many literary projects, derivative projects, and spinoff projects based in that universe.
Frontier 4 will be published as both a full novel, and as a graphic novel. Both projects will serve as full stand-alone creative properties, but contain content which is not present in the other. This means that the reader would have a more comprehensive, enhanced experience by reading both. The novel takes the usual time that it would take to read a 600 page novel to read. The graphic novel is lighter on text and heavy on illustration, however, and can be read in a day.

CHAPTER ONE
Friday, September 4, 2020.
9: 54 AM EST
"North American flight five seventy-two now boarding at gate A-96....."
The smooth, crisp voice echoed the announcement again. The chatter of people droned inside the huge glass and steel structure, the morning sunlight casting long shadows. Streams of affluent passengers flowed throughout its lengthy corridors. The figures were dwarfed by the building, and they filed past security checkpoints, in and out of the restaurants and shops that lined the interior, and to massive waiting areas where they could wait for their flights.
She barely flinched at the address. Her blue eyes were transfixed on the image of a video that floated in the air a few feet in front of her. Music from the video drowned out the distracting shuffling and chatter of the crowded area, and her feet tapped as she absorbed its frantic energy. A few well dressed businessmen passing by couldn't help but take in the sight of her, either, as she drank in the video. She was dressed in a trendy, one piece outfit. The jumpsuit-like garment had a deep red sheen to the fabric, and had a conforming rubber-like appearance. Leather-like, purple belts seperated the lines of the apparel at the waist, the neck, the forearms, and at the shins where the top of her boots were. Her hair was down to her shoulders, blonde ripples with a blue hue from hair dye. She was tall and leggy, a guaranteed distraction for any man. Most who seemed to notice her were aging married men, and attention that she once enjoyed became more of a burden.
Her name was Melissa Parker. The announcement repeated itself. Melissa snapped out of her trance, snatching up a small satchel at her side.
"Damn, I'm going to miss my flight!"
The young woman walked quickly down the corridor, her pace increasing until she was just short of a jog. Her fit frame took it well, and she smiled as she caught a glimpse of herself in the glass that arched over her. All of those years of exercise had paid off. She looked good, felt good, and would make it to the gate without breaking much of a sweat. Sweating in these clothes, she mused, was impossible. The carbon fibers in the fabric kept her cool and clean, staying fresh up to twenty times longer than old-fashioned cotton clothing. It was impossible to stain, too, and any blemishes simply wiped away. Just what a girl needed.
A tired gate agent gave her a scornful glance. The agent looked down at a tablet. He frowned. "You're late, maam. The plane has already boarded........"
Melissa tried to appease him with a friendly smile. The man gave no reaction.
"I know that I'm late, and I'm sorry."
He paused. "That's fine maam. I can hold the plane, it has not yet left the terminal; but I'll have to assess a late fee......."
Melissa sighed. "A late fee?!?"
The man extended a pad, and motioned for Melissa to place her thumb onto it. She mashed it on. He looked over a holographic image of text floating on the pad.
"Ok, Ms Parker, your first class fare of one thousand dollars will be assessed a fee of two hundred dollars because of the tardy, bringing the total to......"
Melissa smirked. "Give me a break! You're going to charge me two hundred dollars for being five minutes late?"
"Yes Ms Parker, I am. There are over one hundred other passengers that will be inconvenienced due to this delay. It's now 10:06 AM. This flight is scheduled to depart at 10:00 AM. You will be charged. Enjoy your flight."
"I want to speak to your supervisor!"
The man didn't flinch at the demand.
"She is unavailable, and by the time she will get here, you will miss your flight and still have to pay the late fee. I advise that you start paying more attention to the time."
"Well, I am always very punctual!"
"I am only giving you advice, Ms Parker. If you were on time, you would not have to pay the price."
The man looked down at his console and resumed his work.
Melissa scowled at him, and started to walk down the ramp to the plane connected at the other end. On time. Time always seemed to be on her mind lately, and the irony of his words only served to annoy her. "Enjoy your day!" she miffed.
"Believe me, Ms Parker, I will..." he replied , acknowledging her sarcasm.
Melissa shuffled down the gateway corridor, managing a quick glance outside through the flexiglass panes as she neared a left bend in the tunnel. The huge black shape loomed just outside, a magnificant aircraft which resembled a sleek slipper from her vantage point. It sat on the tarmac outside of the terminal, heat from the mid morning Florida sun shimmering off of its inky hull. Two men on the ground beneath the walkway worked in orchestrated activities, disconnecting a fuel line from a connection buried up inside an aft wheel well. A stream of vapor streamed from the orifice, causing one of the men to stop abruptly and motion frantically to someone out of her line of sight. The vapor dissipated, and Melissa sighed nervously. "Liquid hydrogen. Thank God that they don't smoke.........". Her nervousness gave way to annoyance with the realization that she really wasn't the reason for the late takeoff, and the gate agent still charged her for it. She could be in that plane already with all of the passengers, none the wiser, and it would have made no difference at all with the time that they left because of a slow ground crew.
She entered the plane, moving down the spacious aisle. Finding her assigned seat, she paused to stow her case in an overhead compartment.
"You can have the window seat if you'd like........."
The soft voice stood out from the quietness of the plane's interior. Melissa looked down to the source of the voice. A petite, pretty girl gazed up at her, shifting in the window seat as she pulled out a wrinkle in her turquoise dress. A brown strand of hair fell over the girl's eye, and she brushed it aside. "Would you like to sit here?"
Melissa smiled. "Sure, but why on earth are you giving up a choice seat?"
The girl occupied the center seat as Melissa took hers by the window. The girl's skin was flushed. Her eyes darted, first from Melissa, then to the oval shaped window.
"Earth- that's a good word, you answered yourself....."
She tried to smile at her joke. The smile failed miserably.
Melissa took up her cue and grinned, nodding out the window. "Does the view make you nervous, or are you just afraid to fly?"
"I don't have a problem with flying. I fly commuter all the time. I just like my horizons flat."
Melissa giggled, causing the girl to look away toward the aisle. "I see. Like most things in life, a little curvature is much nicer to look at than something that is flat. Forget that, though, as the main advantage here is speed. Commuter flights don't fly, they crawl. A normal commuter does around six hundred miles per hour. My car can do better than that. An SST does about twenty four hundred. That's walking. We're in a runner. This baby's a winner in my book. I'm going to California for lunch, not a vacation. Forty five minutes there, forty five back, and I'll be home in time to attend the sorority rage tonight. Relax, the technology packed into this aerospaceplane is brilliant. It's safe. You'll be ok."
The girl tried to smile again. "I wish I was as non-chalet as you are. If something were to happen, they'll be picking up what's left of us from coast to coast........."
"But it won't......." Melissa sighed, glancing out the window, "Trust me. It is perfectly natural to fear the unknown. This really is your first time, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is."
Melissa shifted in her seat toward her, extending her hand, " My name is Melissa, Melissa the great. What is yours?"
"Melissa who? Oh, it-It's Brandy." She replied, " And I take it that this isn't your first flight in one of these."
Melissa smiled. Brandy got her jokes. There was hope for this one.
Melissa adjusted herself in her seat, enjoying the smooth, snug way that is wrapped around her. She looked out the window.
The Spaceplane moved back away from the airside, pushed by a squat, stocky six wheeled truck. Small, puffy white cumulus clouds had taken residence in the blue sky, appearing much like dabs of cotton intruding upon an artists virgin canvas. Melissa mused that her observations were always too colorful, too artistic, too creative. She had always tried to figure out just how those talents would figure in to the lifestyle and career that she had chosen. Science, not art, was her passion. Anything that did not fit had to be put aside. Those were cumulus clouds overhead, not puffs of cotton, and she was determined to keep that point of view.
Melissa sighed. She reflected upon Brandy's fear of going to the edge of of the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds. Fear of the unknown was also on her mind a lot lately, and she could actually relate to Brandy's anxiety. This was Brandy's first time doing this. Melissa was also nervous about a first, but her first would be significant on a historical scale in many ways.
A quick motion cut into the corner of her eye. Long, tapered wings flowed slowly, smoothly, swooping out fifteen feet outside of her window. It was just a sassy seagull, searching for his breakfast. Suddenly, the white bird maneuvered abruptly, frantically flapping away from something. Melissa quickly noticed what it was. A gray, beachball-size pod flew around the craft, holographing the exterior for it's preflight checkout. The gull evaded the orb and spiraled downward toward it's target; an unfinished sandwich dropped by a member of the ground crew. Melissa smirked. As far as she had observed, those ground crew people weren't that professional. Maybe Brandy had a good reason to lack confidence in the capabilities of the airlines.
"Yeah Brandy, it's definitely not my first flight in one of these. I remember my first flight, though. I was nervous. My family and I took a flight to a vacation resort in low earth orbit. We took off east for an orbital vector, and thirty minutes later the plane was coasting three hundred miles up. " Melissa chuckled, " The first time that I experienced weightlessness, I didn't quite make it to the spacesick mask. The other passengers weren't too thrilled about wearing my lunch when we arrived at the Spaceport."
Brandy winced. "we're not going to be weightless, are we?"
"Not really....we're not going into orbit, just to California. You'll feel light-headed on approach to Los Angeles International, though; it's kind of like being on a roller coaster after the peak."
"I think I'll keep my mask within my reach, just in case. How do these airplanes fly into space? Don't they need air to fly?"
"They're spaceplanes, and you're right, there is no air in space, just trace gases and dust. Normally, these planes travel at altitudes where there is just enough air to fly like a plane. It is only when they leave the atmosphere where they travel ballistically, exactly like a rocket or a satellite, and they do leave the atmosphere when they are going into orbit, which is not the case today. Aerospaceplanes cruise at a speed almost fast enough to make orbit, around seventeen thousand miles per hour, which is twenty-five times the speed of sound. The plane has a special coating on it's skin which allows it to withstand the extreme temperatures that flying at those speeds will produce, at around two hundred and fifty thousand feet. Actually, I think it's rated down to one-hundred thousand, but I don't think that the scramjet engines are powerful enough to keep the speed that high at that altitude, as the air is too dense. Anyway, getting into orbit when you're in a plane that can do Mach twenty five is not really that difficult. For starters, the earth rotates at eleven-hundred miles per hour. We'd go east to take advantage of the Earth's rotation, get up to speed, shut down the scramjets, coast up out of the upper atmosphere, then use the spaceplane's maneuvering rockets to insert us into orbit."
Melissa noticed that Brandy appeared puzzled. Brandy grinned.
"I think I get what you're saying. Where did you learn so much?"
Melissa exhaled. Sometimes she was too scientific.
A flight attendant toward the front of the plane went through a safety presentation as the craft taxied to the end of the runway under it's own power; the six-wheel vehicle retreating back to the airside terminal. Its air/ turbo ramjet engines, used for taking off and landing, whined with a high pitched wail as the plane rolled slowly down the taxiway. The whine of the engines went unheard in the interior due to the plane's extensive active anti-noise systems, and to the passengers it might as well have been silent electric motors pushing them. The trip out to the runway was smooth and quiet.
Melissa fidgeted uncomfortably as her web harness engaged, securing her to the shallowly reclined seat. Sometimes, she mused, these automatic harnesses were too tight for comfort. She could imagine the sadistic engineers in Japan laughing about it when they created it. A man seated nearby didn't seem to be amused, either. He put up a struggle, and finally relaxed when he realized that he couldn't fight it. Melissa shook her head. Some things in life could make you crazy.
She turned her head toward Brandy. " So, why are you flying to L.A.?"
Brandy looked extremely nervous now. "Well, you know, it's the usual reason..... My parents are divorced. My mother lives in Tampa and my father lives in L.A. . I'm going to spend Thanksgiving with him and my new stepmother. I'm coming back for christmas. What's your story?"
"I'm meeting my father for lunch........or maybe I should call it brunch; L.A. time is three hours behind ours. Anyway, after brunch I'm flying back. My best friend and I have to go to one of her sorority parties tonight. It seems like Trinity always has some party going on lately. I could just skip out on this one and stay the day in L.A."
"Must be nice, commuting like this for lunch. Is your mother with him?"
Melissa frowned, her eyes misting. She looked away, out the window again.
"My mother passed away. It's almost been a year now."
"Melissa, I'm sorry."
The spaceplane reached the end of the strip. It pulled out onto the runway. A man's voice rolled out over the plane's address system.
"Ladies and Gentleman, we are about to depart Tampa International Airport for our short flight to Los Angeles International Airport. We will be arriving within the hour. During the flight, we ask that you please refrain from smoking tobacco or marijuana products.
Complementary beverages will be made available shortly after takeoff. Once again, thank you for flying North American flight five seventy-two. Have a nice flight."
Melissa stared blankly upward. She looked at a blinking light on an overhead storage compartment. The light blinked monotonously until the light blurred and diffused. All that she could see was light and dark. She sniffed.
September 18, 2019 was a day that she would never forget. Her mother, a research scientist named Sonya Parker, woke her up. She told her that she'd be gone for a day, and that a critical experiment on space station Icarus required her immediate attention. Melissa recalled being mad at her mother for something trivial, something silly. Sonya kissed her daughter goodby, hopped into her aerocar, and took a flight to Icarus on an aerospaceplane flight from Tampa International.
Melissa's father and Trinity broke the news to her that night.
Melissa blinked back tears. In retrospect, her life changed forever on that day. In many ways, for the worst.
"This is the part I hate........"
Melissa drifted back to her new friend.
"I'm sorry.... What was that?"
Brandy sighed. The expression on her face gave an answer.
"I would think the landing would be the part that you'd hate. After all, most crashes happen then, that is, IF a crash were to happen........."
Brandy scowled back.
Melissa smiled. This flight might be worth the extra two hundred, after all.
The plane began it's takeoff roll. Plums of blue flame thundered in its wake as it gathered speed. Melissa glanced out the window. The Florida landscape crawled by, then quickly gathered speed until its rush bordered on a blur of color.
The passengers were pressed back hard in their seats. The seats automatically reclined back to alleviate the pressure.
"I think I'm going to throw up......"
Brandy appeared to be approaching panic.
"Already?"
"Where was that mask you were talking about?"
Melissa tried to motion upward, toward an overhead compartment. The acceleration of the spaceplane made her motion forced.
"Oh, thanks. Please, Melissa, talk to me. Tell me what's going on.......... I need to know what's going on."
Melissa glanced out of the window again. Perhaps this flight would be longer than she had anticipated. Wearing a thick perfume of vomit when she met her father was a thought that she did not want to entertain. She would have to be very observant of her friend to prevent that from happening.
The aerospaceplane nosed upward, needling into the crisp, blue sky. The concrete landscape of the airport fell away behind it. Stocky landing gear retracted.
"The takeoff.... It's so steep.... so fast......." Brandy gasped.
Melissa watched the landscape recede until the details became obscured. She squinted at a speck flying on the horizon, which the only thing recognizable. An aerocar.... a late model sportscar. A cloud washed it away.
"My ears hurt."
Melissa giggled. "Yawn. We're ascending a bit more quickly than you're probably used to."
"What?"
"Yawn!"
Brandy complied.
"Better?"
"Yes, t_thank you. Where are we now?"
"Still clearing airport airspace. We just passed twenty thousand feet."
The spaceplane banked slowly, changing course from a southern heading over toward the west. A powerful sonic boom erupted behind it, sounding off with a triple thud off of the Gulf of Mexico waters below; reaching ground level far behind the plane. The craft continued to ascend, accelerate.
"Brandy, check this out. This is something I think you'll get a kick out of...."
Melissa waved her hand over a module of the back of the headrest in front of her. A transparent holographic image greeted her, floating over it.
"These" Melissa pointed, "Are soft keys. Take your finger and press.... this one....."
"Press? There's nothing there...... Just a hologram."
"That's why it's called a soft key. Just do it...."
Brandy complied, jabbing a bony finger through the image. A display blazed to life, floating in space above the initial softkey image. It contained a graphic of the aerospaceplane. Streams of information scrolled along the left border.
"You can get a lot of information from this. By pressing points on the planes body, for example, the nose here, you can select individual points of views from the exterior holo cams. If you press the globe graphic on the upper right hand corner of the screen, you can see our exact position, in three dimensions, in relation to the earth. Check it out....."
Another image appeared adjacent to the menu image. A real time sphere of the earth rotated, zooming down until it approached their area. A tiny, high-resolution graphic image of the spaceplane showcased their location, visibly well above the earth.
"Wow, we're moving out........."
"Let's see..... We're at forty-thousand feet, at a speed of roughly three times the speed of sound. If you look at this, you'll see that our primary powerplants, the air/ turbo ramjets, are being used now. The turbines, which are like blades on a spinning shaft, have just now been bypassed. At these speeds, they slow down the air instead of pulling it into the engines. The ramjets will carry us up to around five time the speed of sound, where they'll shut down, and the scramjets take over."
"There's that word again. What's a scramjet?"
"A scramjet is a hypersonic ram jet of sorts. It's designed to operate between five to twenty-five times the speed of sound. It's almost unreal. Without scramjet technology, a lot of things that we take for granted would not be possible. This plane, for example, would be an SST at best. We wouldn't have cities in orbit, bases on the moon, probably not even an outpost on mars. Life would be... dull, I would think."
Melissa looked away from the images briefly, absorbing the view from the window. The sky grew darker, from blue to purple. Stars winked to life, and the horizon took on a pronounced curvature.
"Brandy," She exhaled," If you could see this, you'd never want to fly commuter again. I'll never get tired of this view............."
She shifted position in her seat, pressing into the tail of the spaceplane image. Another image emerged, showing the view behind them. The morning sun descended toward the curve of the earth below, setting in the eastern sky. They were outracing the sun, traveling much faster than the rotation of the earth.
Brandy smiled. "Oh my god....... It's beautiful."
"You haven't seen the best of it, yet....."
The aerospaceplane continued its steep climb. The scramjet array on it's aft belly took over, pushing it into the realm of the upper atmosphere. The plane's inky hull transformed into a light show unmatched in the heavens.
The skin of the craft began to glow. Dull red, cherry red, orange, then yellow. The leading edges of the tail, wings, and the nose blazed white hot, a dramatic contrast to the near-black sky. It became an accelerating, rising man-made shooting star, dashing its way west.
Melissa noticed that the sky was now full of stars, far more than would be visible on even the darkest nights. She glimpsed the display. They were now at an altitude of two hundred thousand feet, traveling at nineteen time the speed of sound.
"We'll be leveling out in a few minutes. We'll then have fifteen minutes of level flight before we begin our decent to L.A., which will start over Nevada."
Brandy seemed more relaxed now.
"Maybe you'll get used to this one day?"
"Don't count on it." Brandy responded.
Melissa laughed.
The plane began to level out. Two-hundred forty thousand feet, twenty four times the speed of sound. The pressing force of acceleration that pinned the passengers back in their seats faded. Melissa fidgeted, having gotten used to the G-force. An announcement droned overhead.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain. We are now at cruising altitude. Limited movement around the cabin will be permitted, but, please, don't go far from your seats, as we will be starting our descent in twelve minutes."
Brandy frowned.
"I think I'm going to be sick..... again. I'm dizzy......."
"Well, don't.... please. I need to have an appetite when we land."
"Will going down be like going up?"
"You know how hard we were pressed in our seats going up?"
"Yes?"
"These automatic harnesses are about to be put to the test. You wouldn't be able to stay in your seat if it weren't for them."
"Great........."
A flight Attendant moved along the aisle, serving refreshments. Melissa asked for a strawberry wine cooler, noticing that Brandy's complexion had a bit of green to it as she took the cold cylinder from the woman.
She opened the drink. Sipped it. Tasted the sinful beverage. The buzz went straight to her head.
"You want something, Brandy? I'll buy."
"N-no thanks......."
Melissa smiled at the attendant.
"Thank you. That will be all, Maam."
The attendant looked down at Brandy.
"Is your friend ok? Here, Miss, take this...... It will settle your stomach."
Brandy shifted toward the woman, eyeing the pill suspiciously.
"What is it?"
The attendant smiled warmly.
"Dramamine. It's for motion sickness."
Brandy took the medicine and closed her eyes.
"I feel so silly. I don't want to get sick."
The attendant laughed.
"Don't feel bad. People get nauseous all the time on these flights."
The attendant began to move away. She looked at Melissa.
"Let me know if you or your friend need anything."
She smiled at Brandy.
"I hope that you feel better, Miss."
The attendant continued down the aisle with her tray, and Melissa turned toward the holodisplay. She pressed through a series of soft keys, bringing up a national newscast.
A torso image of the anchorwoman appeared, calling off a list of the days top stories.
Melissa yawned, half-wishing that the plane had a game chamber so she could jack into a good game somewhere. Perhaps Europe, maybe Belgium. The best games lately seemed to come from Belgium.
The news was nothing new. A riot in Japan. Another space station disaster. A war in the middle east. The Israeli empire put down a riot in their Syrian territory. An election in a lunar city. Another one in an orbiting city. An earthquake watch for California. Melissa smiled. California always seemed to have an earthquake watch or warning lately. And, she realized, she was going there. Lovely.
The passengers returned to their seats, and the plane began it's rapid approach to Los Angeles International. Everyone lurched forward as the craft decelerated, losing speed as it descended. Melissa strained as the harness felt as if it was cutting into her. Hopefully, the landing wouldn't be too uncomfortable. The black sky receded to purple and then bright blue. Melissa noticed that there was a solid blanket of boiling white clouds below. Flashes of lighting rippled through the crevices of the clouds. The plane descended into the cloud bank, and the blue sky shifted bright white before deteriorating to an ugly gray. Visibility out the window was down to nothing, and the air outside seemed to be filled with thick smoke. The Scramjets shut down at five times the speed of sound, and the turbojet turbines cut back in at three. Melissa frowned.
The weather here wasn't like Tampa's. It was a nasty, rainy day. The jet shuddered as it passed through nine thousand feet, on an approach vector, encountering severe turbulence.
It was more than enough to make most of the passengers, Melissa included, nervous.
The spaceplane began its final approach, its landing gear locking into place as it dropped out of the muddy sky. Water vapor flashed to steam as it came into contact with the intruder, leaving thick contrails behind the plane which looked like smoke. A concusive sonic boom heralded its arrival from the edge of space. Large flaps on the trailing edges of the wings came down, increasing lift as the plane approached stall speed.
The aerospaceplane lined up with a runway and settled down to it, raising its nose as the rear landing gear touched down. It's wheels raised a mist of water vapor from the wet runway, and the nose of the craft slowly came down, the wheels from the nose gear making contact, as well.
The plane shuddered as the flight crew applied reverse thrust to brake it's momentum. The plane quickly slowed.
Melissa squeezed Brandy's hand, who smiled weakly.
"See, we made it."
Brandy glanced out the window. She blinked.
"I'd like to go back to Tampa, now."
"The weather should clear up in a few hours. Perhaps."
The plane rolled over to a taxiway. Melissa mused that the time on the runway seemed to approach the total flight time from coast to coast, and found the irony notable. Minutes later, it pulled up to a terminal, assisted by a similar six wheeled vehicle to the one in Tampa.
It started to rain. Raindrops flashed to puffy clouds of steam as they hit the red hot skin of the craft, and ground crews swarmed around the plane to attach coolant lines. The rain posed a danger to the aerospaceplane, they knew. It could damage the carbon epoxy coated hull if the temperature could not be brought down.
Melissa made small talk with Brandy as they shuffled down the aisle toward the front of the plane. Brandy felt sick again.
"Don't worry, Brandy. You'll feel better soon."
Brandy looked at her. A weak smile creased her lips. "Thank you for helping me through this. I hope you and your dad have a good lunch. Lunch......."
Brandy's face flushed green. Melissa giggled as they passed the flight crew en route to the exit walkway. "Try not to hurl on the Captain".

Los Angeles International Airport; Los Angeles, California. 8:01 AM PST

"Dad!!!!!!!!!!!"
Melissa craned around the bobbing sea of people filling the corridor, trying to see a distant figure that looked like her father. She thought that she had seen him. Gazing about, she went with the crowd, which was dispersing as they entered a massive building.
There was a tap on her shoulder. She whirled around.
"It's about time you got here, Melissa. I was beginning to think that you went back to bed and didn't catch your flight."
It was her father, Chris Parker. Melissa smiled up at the tall man. He was wearing a three piece suit, and sported short brown hair with a splash of gray. She embraced him. "Sorry, dad, the plane took off ten minutes late. You know how those airlines can be."
"Shall we go? I have a car waiting for us outside."
She took his arm, and they strolled out the doors to a long covered sidewalk. Rain poured in sheets of white, and waterfalls roared along the low points of the overhang. Melissa breathed in the cool mist. The mist intensified to drizzles of water vapor as a blast of wind washed over them. A twenty foot-long Limousine, sculpted like a flattened cylinder, descended curbside. It whirred to a hover, air blasting a steady spray of dirty water over Melissa's feet. "Really, dad....... couldn't you have arranged for ground transportation? I just washed these boots!"
Chris laughed. A side door hissed open, and he steadied himself against the floating airframe as he helped his daughter inside. "You can wipe those off when we get inside."
Melissa settled into the soft seat as Chris sat in front of her, facing her aft. The door sealed shut, and the limo began to move. It ascended away from the curb, settling at an altitude of ten feet above the ground as it negotiated the traffic which clogged the busy airport.
"So dad, what's up?"
"Not a whole lot at the moment. I have that seminar tonight in San Francisco. I thought it would be nice if we could spend the morning together. I'd like some quality time with you."
"That's nice. I'd like that." She sighed, glancing out the window. A pod-like aerocycle roared by, slicing through the pouring rain with its tapered nose. She could make out the rider laying on the machines back, beneath it's contoured canopy. She smiled.
Her friend's bike was faster. She was sure of it.
"So, how's the project coming along?"
Melissa snapped back to her father.
"Sorry. What was that?"
"The project........"
"Oh, fine. I did some work on it a few days ago. The prototype will be ready for testing by the time you get back on Monday."
"Did you run the prep tests?"
"I ran some simulations. I think that we may of finally succeeded."
"Don't get overconfident." His eyebrow raised, a concerned tone to his voice.
"Well, dad, it may not be a problem. There are some things that we just won't know for sure until we encounter them, but the major problems are behind us."
Chris sat back in the seat. He smiled.
"We'll have to work around any problems that come up. Did you flight test the vehicle with a full load?"
"Yeah, I did. I took it on a run over Tampa Bay two days ago with a load of dummy rods." Melissa put her forehead into her hand, bracing her elbow against the window, "It's a good thing that we upgraded the engines and increased the fuel capacity. She flies well, but not as well as my Phantom, and they are the same base model. The equipment is heavy. I did some simulations in the lab, too, to give us some information of what to expect when the real testing starts."
"Did the simulations tell you what the spatial differential would be once time was compressed?"
"Inconclusive." Melissa sighed, "We have no data to work off of. I'd say that the vehicle would move a few miles from its starting point when it arrived at the target, which is why we crammed all of that heavy stuff into an aerocar to begin with. By the way, where are we going?"
Chris smiled again.
"The best restaurant in the L.A. district."
"Which is?"
"Cloud nine."
Melissa looked up. "Wow. I've heard of that place! Isn't it that the place that looks like a huge flying saucer? The one that hovers over the ocean?"
"Yes, that's the one."
She smiled. "Now I know why you snagged an aero limo. Ground transportation can't get there."
Melissa giggled. That was one way to keep the undesirables away. If you can't afford an aerocar or a plane, you can't get there.
"Bingo. You know, Melissa, it's been a while since we've really spent time together. We haven't done anything family-wise since...."
"Yeah, I know. Since mom died."
The limousine negotiated its way through the packed air lanes, hundreds of feet over the terra. Melissa looked down, evading the eerie silence that had moved into the already dead interior. Ground and hover cars were packed on the freeways below. The traffic above wasn't any better. Is she had her car right now, she'd rip right through this mess.
"You know dad, I could have driven here. Flight time in my Phantom is only three hours."
"You've always liked to be in the drivers seat, haven't you?" Chris chuckled, "Would you rather we give the driver a parachute and show him the door?"
They laughed. Melissa was surprised by the joke. Then again, leave it to her father to elude depression with humor.
"No, he'd probably get run over when he landed on the freeway. Providing he didn't get hit as he passed through the air lanes. It's packed out there!"
"I'm sorry, sweetheart. Next time I'll give you more warning, and I won't call you at the last minute."
"All those people around us, drudging off to work. God, the nine to five-life must suck!"
"It's not that bad. Remember, that used to be me. Just before you were born, I was in between grants, and had to take a job with a Bank. Say what you want, dear, but there is a charm to a simple life. Honest work is nothing to scowl at."
Melissa shook her head. "I'm not scowling at them, daddy, I'm just trying to figure it out. Why would someone settle for monotony? Why don't people do more with their lives?"
"Circumstances beyond their control. Dreams and goals sidetracked. Choices that they make. Take your pick. A person is the sum of their experience, and sometimes their choices lock them into a life where they have no choice but to live it out. Beleive it or not, there are a lot of people out there who do a lot with their lives and are living exactly the way that they have always wanted to. There are other, toom who accept their lot in life and learn to appreciate it."
"What separates us from them?" Melissa asked.
Chris chuckled. "As bright as you are, you have a lot to learn. The answer is absolutely nothing. Just because our life style and how we conduct our lives is different does not make us better. We're all the same."
Melissa smirked. "No we're not."
He smiled back. "If you took away all of our money, which would limit your lifestyle, would you be any different?"
"That's not a fair question."
"Well, would you?"
She watched a hovercar slide into the back of a bus. The car's shell shattered, compacting the front. The driver got out, waving his fist at the stalled bus. The driver looked like a child's small action figure in a suit from her vantage point, the rain causing her to squint in order to compose details.
"Well, believe what you want, dad. I just don't get how people can accept to live their lives as sheep. Isn't life about proacting, rather than reacting? Maybe they are afraid to live. Sometimes I feel as if I exist in this slow world comprised of people with double-digit IQ's, and I get tired of putting up with the shortcomings of the general population. That's all."
"Melissa, I used to feel the same way that you do. I learned to accept people for what they are and what they do, and outgrew those feelings. We each have our gifts in which we can contribute to society, regardless of how smart we are or how smart that we think we are. Having genius-level IQ's does make us different, but in no way does it make us better than anyone. I can relate to how you felt when you were growing up. No one bothered to accept you for who you were, and you were alone a lot. You know how it feels to be rejected. Sure, people can be narrow-minded and judgemental. Does this make you any better, however, when you do th same to others? You should apply those painful experiences and make sure that you don't make other feel that way. I would have thought that you would have learned what I've always tried to teach you. I see that you have some things to figure out. It will happen, eventually."
Melissa looked her father in the eye. She grinned. "I have, dad. I have."
Chris smiled warmly at his daughter. "Maybe this project will help you sort those questions out. We are going to have the opportunity to find out the answers to philosophical questions that people have been asking for thousands of years."
Melissa laughed.
"Dad, let's see it like it is. We're going to make the history books like no one ever has."
"Ironic statement, dear. I like it."
They ascended away from the air stream of vehicles, and the landscape gave way to the boiling, angry gray waves of the Pacific ocean. An eerie mist floated just above the waves as far as could be seen. She glanced over her fathers shoulder, making out the silhouette of a saucer on the horizon through the tinted flexiglass partition.
An enormous green and gray disc shaped structure hovered proudly over the sea three hundred feet below. It was suspended by the force of powerful electromagnetic fields generated from a sub station on the ocean floor, and it rotated clockwise once every fifteen minutes to provide an ever changing view for the diners. Thin, wispy clouds slipped around it in gusts of wind. The limo was dwarfed by the building; a mere speck approaching an elliptical giant.
The vehicle adjusted its approach to the windblown pitch of the structure, and entered a landing bay. It touched down, and it's turbofan powerplants powered down. The driver emerged from the cockpit, and walked around to help the Parkers out. He was dapper, and well-dressed in a uniform. Polished shoes squeaked off in perfect stride. He took Melissa by the hand, leading her out of the passenger compartment, then addressed the elder Parker.
"I'll be right here, sir, when you are ready to depart".
"Very well, thank you." Chris replied as his daughter took his arm, and they headed for the doorway on the opposite end of the bay.
Melissa smiled. A table by the window, dressed down with fine crystal and a bouquet of blue orchids. A brief glimpse of sunlight sparkled off of a glass, spreading a rainbow of life over the silk tablecloth. They were seated by a waiter, and the sunlight left the table.
"You know, this is a pretty cool day so far. Thank you for inviting me out here today." she beamed.
"Anytime, dear."
She smiled.
"May I take your order, Doctor Parker?"
The waiter stood alongside the table, pad in hand. Images of prepared food floated above the pad, one at a time. Specials of the day.
"I'll have poached eggs and orange juice." he replied, "and she'll......"
Melissa grimaced, biting her lip. "Dad, I'm three hours ahead of you guys. May I have a lunch menu, please?"
Melissa ordered the calamari as an entree, and chicken and rice as the main course; washed down with a fine white wine. The waiter left.
"Are you sure that we are ready to go and do the first feild test?" Chris inquired.
Melissa hesitated. "It's ready for testing now. I had the cryochambers pressing deuterium rods yesterday. It'll take an hour to load all twelve in the magazine. The driver rings are aligned, the proton injectors are primed, and the magnetic bottles are working. What do you have planned for the test? You do realize that we can't do this around a populated area. If those bottles fail, it could be an international disaster, because it would not be easy to explain."
"We have two magnetic bottles over the fusion chamber, with a backup on standby. The bottles for the torus' are fed directly from the main power supply, which means that the more protons in the particle accelerator stream, the stronger it becomes."
"What if we overload the electromagnetic coils with that power? I could only imagine what protons slung out at close to one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second can do to the vehicle systems and the surrounding environment, let alone the human body. "
"The coils are rated for twice the maximum yield. At any rate, there are dual backups there as well."
"Dad, we've designed this well, but there are a lot of unknowns. I'm well versed with theory, as are you, but there are real risks here. For example, what we have as a power supply is more vibrant than a nuclear reactor."
Chris smiled, "continue."
Melissa pulled up her chair. She used her hand to illustrated her point.
"In the old days, nuclear power was obtained by huge, heavy, clumsy reactors that were lined with lead. They used minute amounts of U-235, and the fission was regulated by carbon rods to avoid critical mass, and an explosion. The reaction gave off heat, which in turn turned water into the steam that feed turbine-equipped generators. Those generators, in turn, produced power. What we have, on the other hand, is a chamber no bigger than my arm designed to contain the total output of a two hundred and fifty kiloton thermonuclear explosion.
Not long term, slow power, mind you, but the total yield in a detonation contained in a C60 cylinder reinforced by those magnetic bottles."
"Melissa, the fusion-bolt chamber was first tested in the New Mexican desert two years ago. The only problem that the prototype had was an unexpected interaction between the primary and secondary bottles that caused a powerful electromagnetic pulse. The chamber, its laser head, and the bottles have been tested, improved, and approved since then. It'll survive.... I don't know, three to four hundred fusion reactions before it needs to be replaced. There's nothing to worry about."
She shook her head.
"Three to four hundred contained thermonuclear explosions in the quarter-megaton range? Have you ever saw one working when you weren't in a re-enforced blockhouse ten miles away?"
"No."
"Then worry. This thing will be less than five feet behind you when it does its thing. If our fusion-bolt chamber were to malfunction, it could take out a large city before we knew anything had happened."
"Melissa, would you care to reiterate our marvelous machine for me? Humor me."
She rolled her eyes. Grinned.
"A modified Phantom 212 Turbo Aerocar; equipped with three computers, a sensor palette, dual holoweb arrays, and a robotic assistant....... Not to mention a larger fuel tank to support the higher engine output in order to compensate for the weight, of course. You do know that my 212 will outperform it."
"You already mentioned that. Your car doesn't have five hundred pounds of additions, either. What of the temporal systems?"
"Let's see..... Dual wake field particle accelerator torus's, a fusion bolt chamber with a backup module, a twelve round deuterium magazine, and the most accurate atomic clock in the world."
"Estimated performance?"
"Um.... Range of 250 years forward, 125 back, and a capacity of a dozen temporal jumps."
Melissa shifted in her chair.
"We can still only hypothesize to what will happen once that second torus kicks in and allow us to accelerate the temporal field beyond light speed. That "C" wall thing scares me. Tardon mechanics are safe. Tachyon mechanics are the ones that cause those nightmare paradoxes."
"We always knew that going to the future was easy, while going into the past was the tricky thing to do. Are you going to have time to prep the machine tonight?" He asked.
"I'll work on it first thing in the morning." She promised, "I have that party to attend tonight, though. I hate parties. So, we do it Monday?"
"If this conference ends on time. It's too bad that the military won't let me do a presentation on time travel."
Melissa laughed, "They have no clue, eh? If they did allow you, the other scientists would tell you to make something else up."
"It does still seem like science fiction, you think?"
"Yeah! It's hard to believe that we're about to really do it. Does General Adams know how close we are?"
"No, he doesn't." Chris replied, "and we need to keep it that way."
"I'm glad that they are not on to us." Melissa said, raising an eyebrow at the statement.
"General Adams wants a weapon. They've shoveled half a billion dollars into this, and we wouldn't have had the funding to do this without them. I was only into this for the science. If I had thought that the technology could be used for a weapon, I'd have never done this."
"What if they use it to change historical events or obtain technology from the future?"
"We couldn't begin to imagine the implications. One thing at a time. If it works, they cannot get a hold of it."
Melissa glanced out the window. Sunlight began to break through the thinning clouds.
"Well. We've come this far. We might as well see this through."
Chris looked at his daughter. Young. Beautiful. A genius. It seemed like only yesterday that she was getting underfoot in the lab while other girls her age were into dolls and playing house. When the other kids were playing doctor, she was playing scientist. What a scientist she was, too. So many questions. Answers that he'd sometimes have to look up. She was different from most people, much as he was when he was a child. She abided by her own rulebook, and won the respect and the friendship of the people who counted as she grew into..... dare he admit it...... a beautiful woman. A woman much like her mother.
He had started the project on an official level in 2012, when she was ten years old. The time travel technology moved from computer workstations into prototype form by the time that she was fifteen, and she stumbled into the project by accident. He remembered it well; he was stuck on a few problems, and she had broken into his lab out of curiosity, and fixed the problems after reviewing the data. She had a mind much like his, but had a sufficiently different perspective on things as to complement his work. If it weren't for her, he knew that he would not be as far along as he, or rather, they were. Officially, General Adams only had knowledge of a static prototype in his main laboratory in Tampa. The military did not know about the modified aerocar with working time travel technology sitting in his large, well-equipped home lab. They didn't need to know.
When General Adams found out about Melissa's involvement with the project, he was furious. A child involved with a top secret project? Inexcusable. There was one conversation in particular that he recalled.
He was home, conversing with the General on an encrypted holoconference. From the expression on General Adams chiseled face floating on the display, he knew what was going to be said before the fact.
"This is a matter of national security, Doctor Parker! I don't think that you had any business putting your daughter on this project."
"Sir" He said, pacing in front of the viewer, hand locked on wrist behind his back, "Her involvement was accidental. She broke into the lab and learned what I was working on."
"YOU should have encrypted your files, and kept the equipment at the main lab!" The General boomed. "I'll have your ass for this. I don't care how important you are to the success of this project!"
He crossed his arms. "Need I remind you, SIR, that these are my theories, and without me there would be no project! I do understand the need for national security, but I also realize that my daughter is invaluable to the success of this project. Don't threaten me, and let me do my job. What are you going to do? Arrest her and purge the knowledge from her?"
"It crossed my mind." Adams sneered.
"WHAT?!?!?" He retorted, "If you touch her, I will destroy the prototype and all of the data!"
"You... you wouldn't dare.........." Adams hissed.
"I would. My family is more important to me than any of this. I suggest that you back off, and leave this matter alone......."
The General re-composed himself. The redness faded from his face.
"Now, Doctor, I have children too, and I can understand how you feel. What will happen if this gets out to her peers at high school? Do you realize how serious this technology is? If it works, it could change everything!"
"If it works, John, IF it works." He resumed his pacing, "All that we have at this point are a lot of unproven theories and fragments of technology that your boys barely have a grasp on. I implore you to leave my family alone, let me do my job, and to turn a blind eye to my daughters assistance. After all, you people were the ones that came to me and offered to fund this. I intend to make it work, and I need all the resources that I can obtain to make it work. With my daughter, it is like having two of me on the project."
Adams paused for a moment. "Very well, Chris, but if this gets out, it's your ass."
"If this gets out........" he almost chuckled, "No one will believe it. My daughter realizes this, and won't do anything that will make her look crazy in school with her peers. She'll keep quiet."
"She had better."
Chris shuddered at how dark that conversation was. It was three years before. Since then, theories became fact, and he and the General were more civilized with each other. They were almost to the point of becoming loose friends, and the national security issue had subsided when the military realized just how remarkable Melissa was. It wasn't until last year, when his wife died, that there were problems. His wife. Her mother. All that they had was each other, now that she was gone. She was so much like her mother. Her mother would be proud of the woman that she was becoming.
"What is it, dad? Why are you looking at me like that?"
Chris smiled at her.
"I couldn't help but notice how much you remind me of your mother."
Her eyes misted. She glanced away, blinking back tears, then locked her eyes on him. She placed her hand on his hand.
"I miss her too, dad."
Melissa looked down at an ashtray on the middle of the table. She noticed a reflection in the tray, and realized that she could see her mother looking back. She withdrew her hand. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't. So far, she had resisted the urge to cry over the loss of her mother. She thought of a time not so long ago. A happy time. A happy thought to support the emotional dam that she had built to hold the tears back.
It was the night of the big Acid Rain concert, a few days before her mother died. Acid Rain, her favorite band. Trinity, her best friend. Her mother. Her father. What an awesome day it was. Only, it didn't end so well.
Her parents were going out to see a play. Trinity was over, and the girls and the parents hung out before parting ways. Dinner was good. Her mom cooked some Italian course, and served cheesecake for desert. After dinner, the elder Parkers left, and Melissa showed her friend the secret plan for the concert. Trinity laughed when she saw the hand-held holorecorder. Melissa told her about some friends that couldn't make it to the sold-out concert, and she had promised to record it for them.
So, they did it.
The only problem was that they got caught.
Melissa's parents were furious when they had to go downtown to post the bail. It was Melissa's only infraction with the law, and it was scary enough for her, but to have her parents mad at her was almost too much to take. So, she did what any girl her age did; she rebelled. They got in a big fight.
She and her mother were still fighting the day that she died.
Never again. Never again would she do something stupid. Melissa hammered that promise within her head.
A plate full of steaming food was placed before her. It was time to eat.
The meal was nice. She and her father made small talk, both avoiding any more talk of her mother. The wounds were still too fresh. This was going to be a happy time.
At least they had each other.
The sun had finally come out. The clouds evaporated over the course of the meal, and the Pacific became the infinite, majestic, perfect masterpiece that it was famous for. The water was calm, blue, and serene.
It was too late for Melissa, though. She was no longer in the mood to appreciate what a beautiful day it had become.
The trip back to the airport was quiet. Both Melissa and her father retreated into their own thoughts. It was only when they kissed goodbye at the terminal that their conversation took on real life.
"Have fun at your party tonight, dear. College party?"
Melissa smiled.
"You know it, dad. It's an Alpha Omega Delta party."
"How are they doing?"
"Fine, as far as I know. Everyone always tells me that it's odd that I am not in a sorority. It's just not my thing."
"Then why do you go?"
"It's Trinity's thing. She's a member, and she drags me to all of the parties. Tonight the guys from the Alpha Beta Delta fraternity will be there, and they'll ask lots of questions about you, I'm sure."
They laugh.
"Art isn't your thing, eh?"
They parted, and Melissa couldn't help but feel sad as she made her way to the plane. She couldn't understand why she and her father could never really open up. Why did she get the feeling that he was always holding back with her?
She boarded the spaceplane and took her seat. This time, an overweight man in a suit was planted against the window, taking up two seats and blocking out most of the view. He was clutching a old suitcase and seemed to leer at her and any other girl within view. The man was sweating profusely, and emitted a strange odor that reminded Melissa of an old couch.
The plane was packed, and Melissa knew that there was no chance of scoring another seat on this flight.
Great.
"Hi there. How has your day been?"
The man had a soft, inquiring voice that gave her the creeps. Melissa could feel his eyes linger over her body, which made her a bit uncomfortable considering her clothing was skin tight and left very little to the imagination.
"Fine." Melissa replied, avoiding volunteering information that could lead to open ended questions.
The sweat on his brow looked like cooking oil. It collected in the creases of his face and ran down his cheek.
"Are you a model?"
Melissa shrugged.
"Do I look like an idiot to you? I'm not a model."
The man seemed nervous.
"I-I'm sorry. It's just that you seem too pretty not to be. My name is Rick. What's yours?"
"Melissa." She replied.
He extended his hand. She shook it. It felt like cold fish.
It was going to be a long flight back.

Friday, September 4, 2020. Tampa International Airport, 4:10 PM EST

She was still thinking of her father when the spaceplane touched down in Tampa. She was so absorbed in her feelings over her father she didn't even mind the guy seated next to her trying to hit on her the entire flight. Then again, maybe she thought that he was trying to hit on her, as he was actually quite pleasant to talk to, and didn't seem so creepy anymore.
Rick slipped her a business card as she got up to leave the plane. A glance at the card told her that he was a corporate attorney. Rick grasped her hand.
"I had the breast- I mean, best time talking to you, Melissa. Call me anytime that you want to talk. I really like talking to you."
Melissa blushed. He was obviously looking at her breasts.
"It was nice meeting you Rick."
Maybe he was hitting on her. Melissa didn't want to think about it. She managed to lose him in the crowd as they entered the terminal. Melissa made her way to the landside area, and exited on her way to short-term parking. As she walked outside, she frowned. It was raining here in Tampa, too. What was this, rain across America?
The rain began to stop halfway to the parking area, which didn't matter, as Melissa got wet. Melissa realized that she would have to hurry if she wanted to avoid rush hour traffic, and still had to get home and get changed to make the sorority party, which started at eight.
She approached her car, which sat like a low-slung sculpture in the lot. Since it was an aerocar, it had no wheels, and the airframe of the Phantom 212 was what engineers originally called a lifting body design. Melissa loved her Phantom. It had three flight modes, a flight ceiling of fifty thousand feet, a top speed of six hundred and forty miles per hour by the book, and carried enough fuel to power it for up to ten hours with the turbofan engines. Like most aerocars designed after 2017, the Phantom had a dual power plant powered by liquid hydrogen. For economy flight, it had four turbofan engines, each powerful enough to safely land in the event that the others failed in flight. The turbofans were very quiet, and purred as the sound of the air moving through the ducts overpowered them. It also had three powerful, and very loud, turbojets for high performance, which operated after the turbofans were bypassed in flight for maximum performance. Using the turbojet systems, the car had enough fuel to last for four hours at a cruise speed of five hundred miles per hour. With the turbofans, the car could handle eight hours at a two hundred mile per hour cruise speed. The aerocar was capable of vertical take off and landings, and its three flight modes included hover transit, aero transport, and aircraft. In hover mode, with the turbofans, the car had maximum fuel economy and traveled like a regular hover car on a twelve to thirty-six inch cushion of air. In aerocar mode, the car used vertical thrust to regulate altitude in assigned twenty foot vertical air lanes, often over existing roads. The aero mode was often a blend of the hover and aircraft modes, with lift from the airframe helping fuel economy when the vehicle had forward airspeed. Indeed, when hovering in aero mode, the worst fuel consumption occurred regardless of the powerplant utilized. For flights above the airlane network, the Phantom had a aircraft mode. In this mode, vertical thrust was eliminated, achieving maximum fuel economy as the craft flew like an airplane and lift was supplied by the body of the car in forward flight. The aircraft mode gave the pilot full control over all flight axises, which were pitch, yaw, and roll. That was the mode that Melissa liked best, as she could really increase her altitude more quickly by pitching the nose of the car up and climbing. The computer would let her roll and bank in that mode, too, instead of the restricted lateral movements of the other flight modes.
Due to environmental regulations, most aerocars were limited in the software of the fly by wire control system to high-subsonic flight. Aerosportscars like Melisa's Phantom 212 were capable of brief supersonic flight, however, and Melissa had hers modified to do it. Melissa once had her car up to eight hundred miles per hour, but she did it over the Gulf of Mexico so the sonic boom would not do any harm. There was another issue with going supersonic, too. The Phantom went through too much fuel doing it. Kids in the 21st century who had access to aero-type vehicles sometimes had too much fun, and a practice termed "booming", where kids would try to create the best sonic booms by breaking the sound barrier close to the ground, was costing insurance companies a lot of money. One of Melissa's friends routinely used his Kowiska Machrunner aerocycle to torpedo over residential communities late at night like a manned cruise missile, waking people up with his brand of explosive thunder, and sometimes breaking windows. Melissa viewed such practices like booming as childish, vandalous, and antisocial.
Melissa traced her eyes over the sleek, cherry red airframe, and knew it was no coincidence that her clothing seemed to match the color.
"Poshie, open up" she chimed as she leaned up against the side of the vehicle. The driver’s-side door opened upward with a loud hiss, like a wing, as the pressurized interior met the outside atmosphere. She moved into the vehicle as soon as the door gave her room, and settled into the soft seat. The rounded dash in front of her came to life, as several holographic displays contoured over the surface. A large rectangular holographic window image floated just in front of the reclined windshield and her face. This was her heads up display, and contained flight-critical information. A larger holographic image covered the entire windshield beneath the heads up display image, and it overlaid enhanced visual information over what she saw through the windshield. Each physical window in the vehicle had this holographic enhancer, and it even extended all the way around into blind spots so their was a 360 degree uninterrupted view around her. Besides compensating for environmental conditions such as low visibility, this had a very important purpose in an aerocar, which traveled in "air lanes" which were not physically there and were impossible to mark off; the navigational computer in the vehicle would take GPS information and use that to precisely track its position relative to assigned airlanes in a database. The computer would them project those airlanes as an image for the driver to see, and could even navigate them automatically if needed.
The door came down and closed, sealing her from the outside environment as the cabin interior pressurized.
"Welcome back, Melissa" a female voice greeted.
"Glad to be back, Poshie" Melissa replied, "Start up and let's go!"
The quiet turbofan engines came to life with a blast of dust and debris circling the craft, and the frame of the aerocar floated upward. Melissa grasped a side stick to her right and guided the aerocar out of the lot, and onto a side road.
"FAA regulations prohibit other flight modes until we leave airport property and Tampa International Airport airspace." The car reminded, "We must remain in hover mode or risk a fine."
"Why is it that you always remind me of that every time we come here, Poshie?" Melissa scolded.
"Because you have received two traffic violations for breaking airport airspace before, Melissa. You know that you must link into the air traffic control system and follow flight controller instructions to be officially considered an aircraft and use this airspace. You will not do that, so while you are disconnected from their network, you are not authorized to use this airspace."
"Well, there will come a time where I can do whatever I want, and I will be out of the local jurisdiction."
"That is not possible." The computer interjected.
"Have you seen your sister car? In the past, the locals won't have a clue who I am, and won't be able to give me a citation with their primitive technology. To see the look on their faces......"
"Your sarcasm is in poor taste, Melissa. To imply that you would break the law with the assurance that you cannot get caught and cannot be held accountable does not change the fact that it would still be wrong."
"Relax, Poschie. I'm kidding." Melissa laughed.
"No, you are not.", The car observed.
"It's just that there are too many rules here. Whatever happened to freedom?"
"Rules are needed to maintain a safe society."
"I know that." Melissa chimed, "It's just that there's no longer any room for anything else but rules nowadays."
"I would rather stay safe." The car scolded, "If you were to break airspace here, you would endanger the lives of the people in the planes as well as ourselves. I have no wish to be destroyed, and no wish to see you or anyone else harmed."
"You're no fun, Poshie. Say, could I reprogram you to be an evil bitch car with a deathwish? We could be renegade outlaws together and go on a rampage, booming and causing havoc!"
The car did not respond. Melissa laughed. "That's why I love you! You know that I'm just messing with you, right?"
"I am not laughing." The car whined.
Melissa guided the vehicle off of the side street and onto a main road that led to the Interstate. There was heavy traffic here, and the road was packed with other vehicles. Mostly ground cars, and half of those were electrics. Some people could not afford hover and aero vehicles, and had to stick to basics. The majority were still earthbound, but traffic jams and heavy traffic in the air were becoming common, too. Melissa's best friend, Trinity, had to get a Honon E-Centuron electric ground car for her first car, and now drove a hydrogen-powered Phoenix Slipstream ground car. Melissa never had to have a ground car, and disliked anything that could get a flat tire. She always had an aerocar, and was even flight certified in manual flight mode and could fly without computer assistance.
Melissa pulled back hard on the stick, and panels on the sides and on the top of the Porsche extended to both channel thrust forward and create a lot of aerodynamic resistance to slow the vehicle down as fast as if it were in contact with the pavement. An electric ground car was stopped in front of her, and slowly started to go again.
"God! Where do these people learn how to drive! Poshie, how much longer before we can rise above the neanderthals? We're losing time with the ground traffic!"
"Another mile."
"What was that? Now? OK!"
Melissa smiled and switched the vehicle from hover mode to aero mode. She powered up the loud, and powerful, turbojet engines, causing some looks of concern and annoyance from the drivers around her. The electric car in front of her was stopping again. Melissa pulled back hard on her left side stick for vertical movement and eased the right side stick forward to accelerate toward the electric, which was now stopped. Blue flames left black, smoking trails on the pavement as the aerocar ascended through the three vertical airlanes designated over the road below. A hand shot out, with a middle finger extended, from the electric, now sixty feet below and behind her, and the driver waved a fist.
"Whatever." Melissa hissed, "You're down there where you belong."
The traffic was non-existent at first, but in moments Melissa merged into an airlane projected on the holographic display in front of her as the airlane officially began and other aerocars came up from the heavy traffic below, too. The other cars kept their distance, and they didn't even have to think about slowing down as they cruised along at 130 MPH.
"Melissa, our fuel is low. I suggest that we go back to turbofans."
"Suck it up, Poshie. We're not crawling up here. We'll get run down, and we'll have to go down where the speed limit is lower."
"Nearest fueling station is two miles ahead and to the right. ETA one minute."
The Phantom veered out of the assigned airlane, switching back to turbofans as it descended toward a gas station. The car purred as it maneuvered and lowered itself toward a landing zone. It landed right next to a pump. The Phantom’s engines shut down as a probe-like robotic arm emerged from the pump and interfaced with a port on the right side of the car. A yellow hologram projected from the pump, and it read : "WARNING: LIQUID HYDROGEN". White vapor hissed from the port around the probe and quickly dissipated.
Melissa put her thumb on a pad below her car's dash, authorizing payment for the fuel. Within a few minutes, the probe retracted, and Melissa lifted off. Clearing the gas station, she powered up the turbojets again, and reentered the airlane.
"Poshie, call Trinity Nelson's car terminal."
"Trinity's car is at her house, according to the registered transponder GPS report. Calling her home terminal."

TO BE CONTINUED