Fixer 13, Page 2

  Chapter 2: The PUT Pad and the Dumb Giant

  The meteor storm was discovered in 2029. The best scientific estimates gave planet Earth and the rest of the solar system 182 years before the cosmic rock storm would blow in from intergalactic space, obliterating everything in its path. Each projectile was 1 to 10000 km in diameter. In essence, the coming storm consisted of a wall of space rock a trillion km across, all hurtling towards Earth. No one knew how deep that wall of destruction was. It didn’t really matter. The fact that it existed at all spelled doom for all living things and destruction of the planet itself.

  Jayne arrived at biome HUB entrance 169M at precisely 13:00 hours. She had to get used to using the 24 hr clock; after all she was no longer a nursery baby. She was on her way to becoming a tech. The HUB entrance was an archway made of concrete and steel with three massive roll-up steel doors set equidistant across the face. The right door was painted green, the left door was red and the center door was yellow. To the side of the large left and right doors were two regular doors painted the same colors—red and green. There were guards at each of these doors. Jayne breathed in deeply and held her breath, before slowly letting the air back out with a sigh. A chill ran outwards from her core, down her arms and legs, seeming to spark out her fingers and toes just as another chill swelled in her chest, running the same path. She shook her hands and snapped her fingers as if to speed up the passage of what felt like electricity surging out her fingertips. She slipped the knapsack from her shoulders, setting it down in front of her. The rest of her belongings would be sent once she settled into her new accommodations. This HUB would be her home for the next two years.

  Jayne turned slowly in a circle, allowing the sights and sounds and smells to waft over her. The cacophony of active machinery swelled and ebbed around her. The big transports clicked as they moved onto the monorail, some passing through the green door, others exiting through the red door, then clicking back off the monorail before driving away.

  A swarm of people buzzed around her, some moving purposefully while others just stood in place. Jayne removed the VID from her hip pouch and pressed her thumb over the scan core. The VID lit up. She touched the screen, double checking her location against the coordinates contained in her orders. She took one small step to the left, then checked again. The VID app beeped red. She stepped backward a bit while watching the screen. Finally, the VID app beeped green. She was in exactly the right spot.

  Jayne sighed in an effort to push the tension from her body and looked around. The number of people had continued to increase while she had been adjusting her position. More people were now standing near her, checking their VIDs and adjusting their own positions in this PUT (Pedestrian Unit Transport) area.

  Jayne sniffed, wrinkling her nose. A new person appeared and was now standing just one metre to her right. She glanced over inconspicuously and quickly looked away so as not to be noticed. A boy stood uncertainly and was clumsily trying to adjust his knapsack. He fumbled around inside the bag with hands that seemed almost too big for his arms and finally pulled out his own VID. As he checked his location, Jayne could see the red glow from the VID screen through his oversized fingers. The boy looked down, then up, then around, panic beginning to swell in his eyes, although his fear was partially hidden by a shock of dark hair that hung in front of his face. Tapping the VID screen, he looked around as if searching for someone to help him. He didn’t seem to even notice Jayne standing within arm’s reach to his left. He looked right over her head, his height seeming to prevent him from seeing someone so short. The concern on his face began to swell, his eyes repeatedly flicking back to the VID screen which continued to glow red.

  Jayne cleared her throat. She interlaced her fingers, inverted her hands and stretched them out in front of her. She felt, as well as heard, the satisfying crackle as some of her finger joints popped. The tall boy turned toward the sounds and looked down at Jayne, seeing her for the first time. Jayne smiled up at him. He breathed out and glanced back and forth from his VID to her face.

  “It’s red. It won’t go green,” he said, managing a weak smile.

  “You sure the COORs match?” Jayne asked. (COORs is slang for coordinates.)

  “Yeah!” he retorted, seeming irritated that she would even ask the question.

  “Sorry, I was just trying to help. I didn’t mean anything by it,” she replied. “Sometimes the VID sensors can be off by a few centimetres. At least that’s what I’ve noticed in the past.”

  “The past! You sound like you’re 30 not… what?” he paused, looking her up and down while he tried to come up with an accurate age, “15 or 16? What’s a kid like you doing here anyway? There is no way you could have passed the TEM exam.”

  Jayne didn’t react. She had dealt with this kind of prejudice before. She looked carefully at the boy beside her, starting with a head that rested on shoulders at least a metre above her own. His hair was dark and coarse and clumped into short and long blocks. It looked like it had been cut by a butcher using a dull knife. His eyes were so dark she could not tell where his irises stopped and his pupils began. The darkness of his eyes made it impossible for Jayne to determine how his pupils were reacting to this situation. Normally, she would use a person’s pupil response to tell if they were lying.

  Moving down his face, Jayne found a jaw that was strong with just a few wisps of whiskers. The rest of his body could be described with one short word—big. Sweeping down his body, Jayne’s eyes came to rest at his feet. They weren’t big, they were monstrous. He stood with those gargantuan feet sticking out to the side, looking like a bow-legged Bozo the clown.

  A smile crept slowly over her face at the image of the huge, overbearing boy dressed as a clown. She looked up at him with confidence and said, “Never mind how old I am. I got here fairly.”

  Rolling his eyes in dismissal, the boy turned back to the problem at hand. He needed to figure out why his VID screen stayed red, despite being in the right place on the right day. He looked up at the digital clock that inexorably counted down to the end of the world. Over the years, it had been adjusted to reflect more accurate measurements. The latest adjustment had given Earth a little more than 82 years. Right below that was the local time. That clock read 12:46.

  “Crap!” he said as he tapped his VID screen again, looking frantically around for help. There were hundreds of people in and around the PUT area, but none were close enough to talk to without shouting and he was unwilling to move, just in case that made the situation worse. Finally, panic superseded the doubt he had about the small girl and he looked down at Jayne, who grinned back up at him.

  “What are you smiling about?” he snapped. “This is a serious situation.” He looked up to the sky as if he were imploring the deities to come to his aid.

  “I think I can help,” giggled Jayne.

  “Yeah, right. You’re just a baby and you don’t get how serious this is. If this VID doesn’t go green—.”

  “—Like this,” she interrupted, waving her VID, glowing green, in front of his face.

  “Yeah, like that. If mine doesn’t go green, I will have to go back to INTER and start over. I would rather die,” he finished, sighing, “and you are so stupid you don’t get it.”

  “Oh, I get it alright. Give me your hand,” she commanded. She held out her hand to him, annoyed when he hesitated. “Give me your hand. I will make that VID of yours go green.” She glanced up at the clock which now read 12:47. “Look, you can try to solve this problem yourself within the next 13 minutes, or you can put your hand in mine and I’ll solve it in just a few seconds.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked tentatively.

  “Just give me your hand. I don’t bite…” she paused and smiled, “hard enough to draw blood anyway.”

  His eyes widened.

  “I’m just teasing,” she retorted, rolling her eyes as she reached up and grabbed his hand. “Now, follow my instructions carefully and precisely. First, look down
.”

  He looked at her strangely for a moment before she continued, “Look down at your huge feet, you silly boy.”

  He found himself following her instructions and looked warily down at his feet.

  “That’s right. Now, I want you to concentrate on moving the toes on your left foot closer to the toes on your right foot. Do you think you can manage that?” she said, suppressing a giggle as she let go of his hand.

  “What?”

  “Just move your feet together so that the heels touch and the big toes touch.”

  “You want me to take my shoes off? What good would that do?”

  “No, silly, just place your feet together, with shoes on, like mine,” she said, pointing at her own feet.

  He moved his feet together.

  “That’s right. Well done. Now check your VID.”

  He stood, with feet together, and snapped open his VID. It was glowing green. He looked at her with stunned relief and said, “How did you do that?”

  “It’s the PUT pads. You can’t have any part of your body extending more than 50 cm past the PUT center point. I figured, with the way you were standing, legs apart and feet sticking out, that you had gone past the edge. If the PUT pad were to activate, it might leave your toes behind.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You are welcome, and don’t ever call me stupid again.”

  “OK, but why did you want to hold my hand?”

  “People are more willing to listen to each other when they are connected in some way. I just figured a little hand-holding would calm you down.”

  As he blushed, they both turned and looked straight ahead. They stood in silence, tension mounting, waiting for the PUT pads to activate and take them to whatever awaited them in the HUB.