The False Horizon | The Power of Industry

Mobius: Eyes Above the Clouds- Chapter 4

The twilight crept upon us fast, but seemed to linger longer than I had experienced before. The real horizon below was cut off and replaced by the organic one- what could be called ‘the uncanny valley’, as Richards explained while Joseph and Babir began to finish up pulling out the rest of the camping supplies. “Those dolls that rich girls carry about?” The doctor had begun. “The ones with the big eyes that move about just slightly on springs inside of their heads? They are meant to look more… human, if you will. Too human, I had to say, after seein’ one dragged in at the whim of a little girl that came into my practice.”

“Too human?” Chase said with a suspicious laugh. “How’dya figure?”

Richards wagged his finger in response. “Like I said, the uncanny valley, a thing I picked up from a colleague. Look here,” he continued while drawing an imaginary graph in the air. “Something gets more ‘n more real looking until… at a point, I guess, you peer at it knowing it is in fact a doll, but with all the bits of a human. Too strange, all in all.”

I began to scribble down the words and description upon my pad. Alice turned up from warming her hands beneath her underarms. “And so that precipice over yonder, looking like our own, being not in fact our own, is what makes it… uncanny, then?”

Richards sucked in the cold air through his nostrils. “You’ve got it.”

A metallic racket came from the ramp on the backside of the flying craft. We popped up our heads in unison to see a canvas bag sitting to the side of one of the crates, having fallen from its previous resting point. Chase jumped to his feet, exclaiming, “my cookin’ supplies.”

Alongside the rest of the crated-up supplies, Mary had come around to examine the same clamor. She met eyes with her husband as he approached. “No harm no foul. Though, we best be staring to cook, shan’t we, my dear?”

Chase knelt down to the sack of equipment, examining the contents. “If we can get the burner ta’ light, up ‘ere in all this wind.” He huffed.

I forced myself back up to check on the remaining supplies. Joseph had just taken the final crate down from Babir deep inside the cabin to transport it down to the surface. The now empty interior was spacious as I remembered.

Continue reading “The False Horizon | The Power of Industry”

The Hands that Lift | The Wind that Blows

Mobius: Eyes above the Clouds- Chapter 3

The first few crates began to come down from the craft in the following half hour or so. A few of the others had gone off to survey around the position, to see where upon Mobius we had landed. I was pushing one crate down and across the lip of the rear hatch when I spotted Alice returning to our little growing encampment, some petite object in hand.

Daniels approached her to examine the item. I abandoned the job of moving the crate and pulled out my pad from my back pocket, hoping to take down the first proper observation of the journey. The captain glared at me sideways as I approached, pencil in hand.

In Alice’s palm laid a round structure of fluff and plant material. “Found it at a… ridge, I guess you could call it.” She noted. At the base was a pale white bird feather and bits of black and white scat.

“A nest?” Daniels plucked the plume up, turning it over in his fingers. I stood on my tiptoes to better get a view for my sketch. He then looked to the sky, likely for signs of other avian life.

“No inhabitants.” Alice shrugged.

“Interesting nonetheless.” Daniels flicked the feather back down into the nest. “Chase will be disappointed you haven’t brought him back any eggs, though.”

I felt a large presence behind me. I glanced back to see Joseph glancing over my shoulder at the find. “A birdie? You had to go an’ take its home?”

“Empty, Lomeli.” Daniels let out a fabricated laugh and turned to reach up and pat him on the shoulder. “Well, well, we’re almost unloaded. Sami, why don’t you two go around some as well? Just don’t get turned around.”

I nodded at Daniels, then turned my attention back up to Joseph. He already had his hand to his forehead to scan about, despite the sun being well below the… what I guess would be called the horizon, organic as it was. “Do you see any birds, Sam?”

I pursed my dry lips, looking out in the direction Alice had come from, as well as all around. “None, it seems. Maybe we’re a bit high up around this time.”

“Let’s look an see where Miss Alice came from.”

“Okay, then Joseph.” I took a few steps forward, looking at the mostly uniform outer skin of the creature below. Through all the work, the fact that we were still atop a gigantic airborne creature had slipped my mind, as unlikely as such a thing seems. The skin was reminiscent of what I would imagine an Elephants to be, albeit with a much darker tone. Being exposed to the sun most days, I would fathom to guess that the color was a result of weathering. I recalled that from below, despite the shadow it generated, it was slightly lighter, an ash gray one might say.

Looking back to the aircraft to regain my bearings, I realized that, despite the seemingly flat expanse, there was a sort of uneven curvature to the surface of the creature. Ahead, I was able to spot the shadow cast by what could have been the ridge Alice had described.

“Look there, Joseph.” I pointed out.

“Something you saw?” He perked up, looking in the direction of my finger.

“Just a landmark, it seems. Maybe if we get close enough to the edge, we can see over and down to the surface below.”

Joseph continued to tread after me. “Not safe,” he said, straightening his back as if to gain a better viewpoint.

The land was marked with a calloused hump, possibly with bone beneath, which dipped down into a shady crutch in the surface, partially covered in shadow. I hunched forward and placed my boot atop the hump to look for any signs of the nest or any other remnants of animal life.

Underneath my feet, a felt a sudden shifting, followed by the wind around me picking up, tearing through my hair. The ground seemed to pull me sideways, threatening to take me off my feet. Before I could land face-first into the divot, a rough hand grabbed at the hem of fur around my collar, fingers back along my neck. “Not a safe place, Sam.” Joseph assured, tugging me back up.

Continue reading “The Hands that Lift | The Wind that Blows”

Call Past Rain

I’m still here!  Camp NaNoWriMo is coming up in a few days.  Since I haven’t sat down and written for a while, I’m rusty, so this calls for a warm-up!  Title is from a song that I used for inspiration.

The rain continued to fall.  It was the third day in a row.  The petrichor had long since disappeared, the earthy fragrance displaced by a growing odor of mildew creeping up from my baseboards.  Again, that smell also began to fade as my self-inflicted solitary confinement kept me cooped up inside, so as to drive me dull and deaf to the lingeringness of it.

I glanced out the window to the dim exterior just once in happenstance as the mailman passed by, wading through the puddles in his thick transparent, ankle-length raincoat.  I considered checking what had come, but convinced myself that whatever was contained there within would just get wet the second I attempted to retrieve it.

That night when that what could be inferred to be the sun sneaked out of the sky and collapsed the inky darkness upon the city, the rain stopped.  I was retired to bed when the pitter-patter stopped.  The pillow cover beneath my head rustled uncomfortably.  I could hear my breath and the sticky undulations of my mouth and throat in my ears.  The house creaked.  It creaked just the same as it always did, but this time with the lack of white noise I had become accustomed to.

Then there was the voice.  I rolled over, shoving one ear into the pillow while the other laid upward to the cold air.  I pulled the comforter up over my shoulder.  The spines of the down feathers inside pricked and clicked as they relaxed in their new positions.  The voice came again, clear now in my left ear.  It wasn’t the voice of the mostly absentee neighbors I had heard a few times before.

A car drove by outside.  Its tires ran through a puddle, making a sound like one would make on a slide at a water park.  I heard the voice again.  It was familiar this time, but not one that I had heard in a long time- possibly since I had moved to this new town.  I sat up and listened for it again, running my fingers through my bangs.

The sour odor of the mildew returned to my nostrils for a brief moment.  I rolled to the side and placed my feet atop the carpet.  It was slightly moist, or possibly just cold with a touch of humidity.  The gutters outside creaked and dropped a few drops that had been hanging in low spots.

I heard my name being spoken from the voice now.  It arrived from the front of my house.  I crept to my door and pushed aside the curtains on the front window, before attempting to peer through the thick condensation on the panes.  Through the glass was the glint of a few distant house lights across the street, not at a distance from which a voice would carry.  I sighed and unlocked the door, opening it.

My front walk was still damp, but free of puddles.  I picked up my keys from the table beside the door.  I had suffered the fate of getting locked out too many times before remembering that the door could be opened from the inside even if locked.

My bare feet found the cold concrete just as the door shut behind me.  I looked either way down the barren street to gaze upon the damp, sleepy drive dotted with flickering, milky streetlights.   I listened again for the voice.  I heard, instead, my keys jingling in my hands.  Somehow, it was at that moment, that I decided to finally take the ten more steps to my mailbox.

The bills and junk mail were stacked three days high, layers of moisture marking each daily deposit of the tacky paper like sedimentary rock.  I flipped through the enveloped and sleek ads, arriving at one of the bottom-most letters- addressed from my home town, my parent’s place.

Dear Son, it read.  It was written in my mom’s implacable cursive.  She always preferred to write when she could, especially since she didn’t use any sort of social media.

I couldn’t get a hold of you,  it continued, but I have to tell you that your father doesn’t have much longer.  Please… I hope this gets to you on time so that you may be here for him.

The rain suddenly began once again.  Despite my best attempt to shield it from above, drops of water fell upon it nonetheless.

 

Blasphemy | A Solid Hold

Mobius: Eyes Above the Clouds Chapter 2

I remember when my father first went public with this endeavor to take to the sky… to take on Mobius. It was during the World’s Fair that year… two ago it was now. He was up there on the stage he had bought out with Lorraine, showing off the current flying machine. It was the 4th rendition of it- after the original flown on that landmark flight. It was vastly different, at least from what I had seen. So vastly different that it did not work yet. Just a frame and body of aluminum up there for show, still incomplete after having run out of time to get it ready. No engine or anything to make it work properly. But a sight it was nonetheless. I remember looking from back behind the curtains, out at the crowd gathering.

Lorraine didn’t seem like much of a showman- not that anyone would have been able to pick apart his accent even if he were. Luckily my father was there to talk him up. My father told of the small team, working under Lorraine, payed for by his money, working on the fantastical craft that was to take to the sky for a yet unknown reason. It was at that point that my father then brought Daniels to the forefront. He wasn’t our captain yet, just a Mr. Wess Daniels. Yes, that Wess Daniels. The very man who had, at the time, just returned from mapping out many of the nooks and crannies of the Grand Canyon on a several month long voyage down the Colorado. Judging by the crowd’s reaction, I wondered if they suddenly cared more about him than the flying craft.

After the rabble finally died down, my father took Daniels’ shoulder and offered up his plan to those listening: to take a craft and crew, lead by the brave explorer at his side, up into the sky to make contact with Mobius. Some booed, or looked around to make sure they had heard the words correctly. Others wandered off, shaking their heads either out of disbelief or offense.

The true outrage reared its head the day later, in particular when the big city newspaper released an article. The obviously high-strung writer had plastered ‘Fool, Blasphemer, wishes to take to the sky’ on the front page, showing the fine black and white picture of my father and Daniels exaggerating to the crowd. The article within criticized him for seeking out what obviously was not ours as humanity, and furthermore, a thing sacred and significant to all those who had gazed upon it. While taking in brunch, my father read it aloud to us, replying that neither Mobius nor the sky belonged to any one person.

The criticism to come in the following days generated worry as to if it were possible to upset the creature in the sky- for lack of a better word, make it angry or upset. “What might happen? What would Mobius do if it were angry?” Were one’s words. While my father found himself content in repeating that nobody knew the answer to said questions, a vocal few would not back down. I remember when the protesters outside of our gate at the end of our long driveway grew to more than just a select few. It wasn’t long before he could no longer leave the house, not for fear for himself, but of being able to protect us- my mother, myself and the servants- from any collateral damage by the rabble. It was at that time when he assigned me to be the liaison for the project as it continued to grow despite everything else.Continue reading “Blasphemy | A Solid Hold”

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