Vaz 4: Invaders Read online

  As she got closer she sensed that it was pivoting, then realized that the reason she could tell it was pivoting was because it had a camera lens on the central hub beneath it. The disc was turning to keep the lens pointed at her. That seems a little creepy. A little shiver ran over her and she suppressed a sudden urge to flee. Then she remembered just how much she and Eddie had wanted some thruster discs to mount on their boards a couple of years ago.

  Eddie’d gotten distant recently. He’d been spending a lot of time with Kate and that’d been breaking Reven’s heart. Unlike Reven, Kate wore skirts, shoes with heels and make up. Eddie'd been Reven’s friend for years and she just didn’t know what’d happened. But Kate didn’t seem to like Reven and so Reven hardly ever saw Eddie anymore. Seeing the disc, Reven couldn’t help but wonder whether getting access to some thrusters might give her a way to spend more time with her old friend again. And somebody here must have a way to get some of the thrusters.

  Deciding not to be freaked out, she smiled and gave the camera a wave. Stepping off her board, she walked right up to the hovering disc. However, when she got too close, it backed away from her.

  Deciding it must be a remotely piloted drone of some kind, she started looking around for the person flying it. She was quite a bit closer to the Gettnors’ house than she’d realized, but she couldn’t see anyone. With all the sheds gone and only low crops planted near the house, the only place someone could be hiding would be in or behind the house or the barn.

  Reven looked back at the disc. Its lens was still pointing at her and she realized that whoever was flying it wouldn’t necessarily need to be able to see her directly, they could see her just fine through that camera. It probably picks up audio too, she thought. “Hello?” she said.

  The disc continued floating there without any reaction to her greeting. After a minute, she tried again, “Hello? Mr. Gettnor? Ms. Gettnor?” Reven knew Ms. Gettnor pretty well because Ms. Gettnor and Reven’s mom had gotten to be good friends. However, Reven hadn’t ever met Ms. Gettnor’s husband. Her mom thought the Gettnors were pretty wonderful because they let Reven’s dad farm their land for free, but she and Ms. Gettnor seemed like they would have been chums anyway.

  After staring at her for another few seconds, the disc suddenly dropped until it was only about six inches off the ground and zipped away toward the barn, moving very fast. Shooting around the corner of the barn it disappeared.

  The missing dairy cow forgotten, Reven got back on her board. She leaned forward and the board accelerated down the path to a spot where she was able to turn left off the rutted road. She had to slow even more as her board rolled over some rough spots, but then she came to the big flat grassy area where the Gettnors’ had the construction crews dig the ground up before they moved in. With some surprise, Reven realized the ground there was really smooth. She wondered what they’d done to the ground there to make their lawn so flat and why they would’ve gone to so much trouble. She’d never even seen anyone out on what had to be almost a half an acre of turf. Well, except for her dad who regularly mowed the big expanse of grass for them.

  Reven leaned forward to speed across the big lawn, tilting her feet a little to make big, fun swoopy curves. She arrived at the barn without anybody coming out to greet her so she rolled up to the corner the disc had disappeared around and stopped. She toed her board up and leaned it against the corner. She eyed the big barn door, noticing that it seemed to fit much more tightly than any barn door she’d ever seen. It certainly had a lot snugger fit than the door on Reven’s family barn

  Reven looked around, still seeing no one. She poked her head around the corner and saw an ordinary man-sized door. Her eyebrows lifted as she saw a large doggie door in the wall next to it. A doggie door, she noted, about the right size for the disc.

  Reven pursed her lips as she wondered whether she should go to the house. If she hadn’t seen the disc go around the corner here… Ms. Gettnor was friendly and Reven would feel comfortable talking to her, but she had a feeling that Ms. Gettnor would distract her with some cookies, talk to her for a while and send her on her way without ever explaining the disc to her. Steeling her nerve, Reven knocked on the barn’s human sized door.

  Nothing happened. Reven stood chewing her lip and staring at the door for a couple of minutes. She kept thinking that the polite thing to do would be to go to the house, but not wanting to. She knocked and waited a couple more times.

  She’d just given up and turned away towards the house when the door opened behind her. A strange looking man in baggy shapeless clothing stood in the doorway. He was bald. Then Reven realized he didn’t even have eyebrows. Reven glanced at his arms and saw no hair there either. “Mr. Gettnor?” she said brightly.

  He nodded expressionlessly. It wasn’t until his eyes rose to meet hers for a fraction of a second, then dropped back down that she realized that he hadn’t been looking at her.

  Reven waited a beat for him to say something more. When he didn’t, she said, “Hi, I’m Reven Davis from next door.” When the man still didn’t say anything, she elaborated, “My dad farms your land?” After a pause, she continued, “Your wife and my mom are good friends.”

  He blinked, then after a moment said, “Hello Reven, it’s good to meet you.”

  There wasn’t much inflection to his speech and Reven had the distinct feeling that he’d only said something because he knew she expected him to. The entire interaction was making her feel weird, but she couldn’t decide whether she’d been rude by invading his privacy or he was being rude by… she wasn’t quite sure how to describe his rudeness, but it seemed like he should say a little more, or at least smile and look her in the eye. “Um, I’m really, uh, interested in thruster discs.” She paused a moment thinking that he would say something, but when he didn’t, she continued, “I assume that disc that came over and looked at me is one of yours? It’s really cool!”

  Mr. Gettnor’s expression seemed to change, though Reven wasn’t quite sure how. His face didn’t seem really to have moved much, but she suddenly felt like he’d been wondering how to get rid of her, but now was interested in what she had to say. Nonetheless, he didn’t say or ask anything.

  “I was wondering how you got a thruster disc?” Reven said, feeling like she was babbling. “My friend Eddie Scott and I used to have big plans for when they were finally available. We wanted to put discs under our boards so we could ‘surf the air.’”

  Mr. Gettnor blinked again. His blinks seemed just a little slow and Reven had the feeling that they marked a little disjunction in his thinking. After a moment, he said, “Surf the air?”

  “Yeah,” she said getting a little excited that he might be interested. “Like my board here,” she said, reaching around the corner and grabbing it from where it was leaned up against the barn. Seeing him stare at it like he’d never seen one before, she dropped it onto its wheels and stepped up onto it without making it roll. “It’s got those high-powered A7 batteries in the board and motors in the wheels.”

  Mr. Gettnor was staring at her as she stood on it. Hesitantly, he said, “Why doesn’t it fall over?”

  Reven looked down, “You mean because it’s only got one wheel in the front and one wheel in the back?”

  He nodded.

  “The board’s suspended below the level of the wheel hubs, so that makes it pretty stable. And once it’s rolling, it’s stable like a bicycle is. When it’s stationary like this, it is kind of hard to stand on it without tipping, but I’ve been riding these things for years, so I’m pretty good at it.”

  “Oh,” was all he said, but Reven had the impression that he’d suddenly and fully comprehended how it all worked.

  “I don’t see a controller. Do you tell your AI to accelerate and decelerate it?”

  “Oh, no,” Reven said. To accelerate I shift my weight forward and to decelerate or reverse, I lean my weight toward the back wheel. The board’s AI can tell where my weight is from the relative pressure on the two
wheels and it accelerates or decelerates in response to that.”

  Mr. Gettnor tilted his head slightly, then said, “How do you turn it from side to side?”

  “The wheels are mounted so they turn when the board tilts. It’s pretty hard at first, but you get the hang of it after a while. Would you like to try it?”

  Gettnor looked surprised. “No,” he said, not exactly emphatically, but Reven had the feeling that he’d just expressed himself more forcefully than he usually did. She realized he hadn’t taken his eyes off the board since she brought it around the corner. It gave her the impression he was much more interested in the device than the person he was talking to. Speaking slowly, he asked, “If you put thruster discs under the board… how were you planning to control them?”

  Reven’s eyes leapt to his face, thinking that he was probably teasing her, but he was still staring down at the board. Deciding that he must be serious, she said, “Um, I haven’t given it a lot of thought. I guess… that if you wanted it to work pretty much like the boards do now, traveling just a few inches over the ground, you could…” She looked up at him again, “I don’t really know enough about how they work. How does the disc you have fly so close to the ground?”

  His eyes still on the board, Mr. Gettnor spoke in a near monotone, “Radar button sensors. They report the current altitude to the disc’s AI and watch the ground ahead for obstructions and changes in elevation. A simple algorithm lets the disc avoid obstructions and maintain a 15 centimeter altitude.”

  Reven stared at him a moment, surprised that he would know so much about how the disc actually worked. Her eyes turned back down to her board, “Wow, the discs you have sound almost perfect. With one under the front of the board and another under the back of the board, I should be able to control it by balancing on my feet just like I do this board with wheels. It seems like leaning forward would tilt it so that it would tend to slide forward and leaning back would slow it just like my board. How much can a disc lift?”

  Mr. Gettnor still hadn’t looked up. He said, “It depends how much power you give them, but in their most efficient range, they can lift up to 110 pounds each.” He paused for a second, then continued, “But they’d need to be modified. If you just tried to use them like they’re programmed now, when you leaned forward the front disc would increase its power and the back disc would decrease its lift. The board would stay flat and you wouldn’t go anywhere.” He cocked his head, “They’d have to be reprogrammed so they allowed some tilt. If you wanted to be able to go very fast, you’d probably have to have a base altitude higher than 15 centimeters so that you could tilt the board more from front to back…” he trailed off as if still thinking.

  “Whoa, that’d be awesome! It’d be perfect if you could set your altitude to whatever you wanted, two feet, six feet, twenty feet, a hundred feet! Are they easy to program?”

  He glanced up at her momentarily, then back down at the board. “If you went above two feet or went very fast, you’d have to have a safety harness in case you fell off.”

  “I’d be careful!” She repeated her question, “Are the discs hard to program?”

  He lifted his shoulders slightly in what she thought might be a shrug, “No, programming’s easy.” His eyes shifted around as if he was looking at anything but her. Chidingly, he said, “Careful wouldn’t be good enough. You’d have to have a harness for protection.”

  Reven didn’t know what he meant by a safety harness, but decided to just ignore that statement. She’d just fly low and slow. But there was an issue that might make it impossible, “How much do they cost?” she asked.

  Mr. Gettnor gave another tiny shrug, “I don’t know. So far I don’t think they’re selling any in the size range you need.” He paused, Reven thought looking uncomfortable, then said, “I’ve got quite a few though. Would you like me to help you build a…” he glanced a little higher, though not up to her eyes, “fly-board? Or do you have another name for it?”

  Stunned, Reven shot him a look as she once again wondered if he was serious. “Um, you’d help me? How… much would that cost?”

  “Oh… I just think it’d be interesting to build one. I wouldn’t want any money.”

  “Uh, sure. Uh, how would I order the parts? When could we do it?”

  “We could design it right now…” He paused for a moment looking uncomfortable, then finished in a rush, “Or, you could come back some other time if that would be better for you.”

  Reven glanced at the sky and decided there’d still be plenty of time to find Bessie before dark. “Now would be great. What do we have to do to… design a fly-board?” In her mind, she pictured sitting down at the kitchen table in their house and making some rough pictures on sheets of paper.

  “We need to go down to my lab where we can use the design station,” he said turning and walking away from her into the barn. Apparently he expected her to follow him even though he hadn’t really invited her in.

  Thinking stranger-danger! Reven froze in the doorway. Abductions were much less common now with people wearing AIs that were constantly broadcasting their location and uploading audio-video records of what they were doing. Any creeps that did abduct someone essentially had to do it knowing they were going to be caught. It did still happen with real psychos though, and even though this guy was her neighbor, Reven was realizing she knew very little about him. And he was odd! Was that disc she’d followed just some kind of lure—like perverts used to use candy? She realized she’d already be on her way home if she wasn’t so entranced by the very thought of a fly-board. Still, going into the barn with him has to be… just crazy, doesn’t it? She leaned in the door of the barn to call after him. I’ll tell him I’d better go find Bessie. I can say I’ll come back and design the fly-board with him some other time.

  When Reven leaned in the door, she expected to see Mr. Gettnor just a few feet away, turned and wondering why she hadn’t come in behind him. Instead, she couldn’t see him at first, but then turned toward the sound of clumping footsteps and realized he was a goodly part of the way across the interior of the big building. Which is not a barn at all anymore, she suddenly realized. It might look like the same old barn on the outside, but the interior was brightly lit, had finished interior walls, and, somehow the most surprising of all, a squeaky clean concrete floor. A good deal of the interior was empty, though large pieces of equipment were positioned here and there and Reven had the impression they were precisely positioned because they looked so well organized.

  Then Reven’s eyes fell on the large round object sitting next to the barn door. That looks just like the freaking saucer that went out and rescued the people on that asteroid! She blinked a couple of times, That is the freaking saucer! She glanced at Mr. Gettnor’s retreating back. My god! He’s the Gettnor that built the saucer in his garage in Raleigh. Now he’s our neighbor?! Holy crap! How did I not know this?

  Reven picked up her board, stepped into the barn, closed the door behind her, and ran as quietly as she could to catch up with Mr. Gettnor. Speaking quietly to her AI, she said, “Connect me to Mom… Mom, I’m over visiting Mr. Gettnor in his barn. He’s going to help me modify my board. I’ll get Bessie and be back in time for the milking, don’t worry.”

  Her mother’s voice came in Reven’s ear, “You’ve met Mr. Gettnor? How?”

  “Tell you later, I don’t want to be rude.” Reven told her AI to disconnect and hoped her mother wouldn’t call her right back. Then she stopped. Mr. Gettnor had started down some stairs. Her first thought was, This barn has a basement?! Then her heart skipped a beat, What if my AI can’t get a signal down here?

  Reven quietly told her AI to put up a graph displaying the quality of the wireless signal so she’d know if she was about to get cut off, then she started down the stairs behind Mr. Gettnor. She’d had an okay signal upstairs, but the farther she went down the stairs the higher the bar rose, suggesting that there must be a signal repeater in the basement. She told the AI to let her know
if anything happened to the signal, then looked around as she entered the basement.

  Holy crap! Reven stared out across a ginormous room. The ceilings had to be at least 15 feet! She looked around, This room must be way bigger than the barn above it! In fact, her brow furrowed, this room must be why that immense lawn in front of the barn’s so flat. The lawn’s on top of this basement and there’s probably only a foot or two of dirt over a nice flat roof. Everywhere she looked, Reven saw equipment. Not the kind of farm equipment she was used to. The stuff looked like it belonged in some kind of research facility. It was all neatly arranged and spotlessly clean, giving her a subtle feeling that nobody ever actually used it. In the corner near her was a cot, a small refrigerator, a microwave, a couple of punching bags and a door that looked like it might hide a closet or a bathroom.

  Reven looked around for Mr. Gettnor and found him sitting on a rolling chair in an area of the basement almost completely surrounded by very large screens. He was speaking rapidly to an AI and, surprisingly, making occasional keystrokes on a keyboard, something she’d never seen anyone use. He glanced toward her and said, “Can you bring your board over here?” He pulled open a drawer and lifted out a tape measure which he held out to her. “It would help if you measured your board and gave me its dimensions. Would you like the fly-board to be bigger, smaller, or shaped differently?”

  Setting her board down on the floor, Reven knelt next to it with the tape measure. She looked at it, thinking. “I think… the same size, without the wheels at either end.”

  “Okay, give me those measurements. I assume it doesn’t have to be exact? If it was a few centimeters bigger or smaller in any dimension that wouldn’t be a problem?”

  “Oh, no, that’d be fine.” She applied the tape measure and started reading dimensions off to him. When she glanced up again, the biggest screen was displaying a long flat board with rounded ends and no wheels. She thought it looked graceful.