Pumpkin Porche

“Hey Pat, you ever want a pumpkin car?” A shock of pink and green hair preceded its owner’s face rising up over the divider. Augment goggles lifted, mischief was printed in capital letters between a smirk and two bright eyes.

“A what?” Pat didn’t seem to stir. A slight finger twitch brought the glowing face into focus in the top right corner of a viewscreen. Acknowledged and undeterred by the lack of visible response, the idea was pushed forth again.

“You know, like in Disney’s Cinderella. A pumpkin that turns into a car.” The smirk grew bolder.

“Sam, you’re a nutjob.”

“I’m serious though, how cool would that be? You could roll up to a date in a big ol’ pumpkin. They’d be all ‘where’d you get that pumpkin car?’ and you’d be like ‘I grew it in my pumpkin patch.’” Sam mimicked the action of driving as one having only ever seen the action performed on screen.

Finally prodded to moving, the jet-black figure hunched forward and closed the current project. Lifting the visor on the helmet, a nose and eyes appeared. Very judgy eyes.

“That sounds like a terrible idea. Let’s start with the fact that pumpkins don’t have wheels.”

Sam’s hand raced up in objection. “But that’s just it! I was just reading that some geneticist over in Megacity Five was able to grow fibrous, self-healing wheels from some cut vines. Just add water and presto! No more flats!”

“So, you’re going to slap some vine wheels on a pumpkin and, what, ride it around like a bicycle?” Pat ignored the fact that no one had had to deal with a flat tire in real life in about seventy years.

“Nah, dude, you’re not listening. Pumpkin. Car. Big. You know they have those pumpkins that weigh, like, tons, right? Use one of them. Snip some DNA here and there so the outside’s a bit more rigid, carve it out, add a couple axles, and bam! Pumpkin car.” At this Sam’s fingers fidgeted for a moment and swiped toward Pat, who then lowered the visor. A vector drawing of a pumpkin carriage appeared with two human figures inside it, one labeled ‘Pat’, the other, ‘Sam’. It was a quick drawing and had all the hallmarks of an enthusiastic author bursting to share an idea.

“Pulled along by rat horses?” Pat lifted the visor again, looking dead-eyed at Sam. The latter threw their head back and heaved an exaggerated sign in response.

“Old hat, Pat. A pulse-rig would be fine - just strip it off an old auto-harvester.”

Enthusiasm once again crawled into Sam’s bright face, taking a few seconds to turn a closed-mouth grin into a toothy conspiratorial smile. It was a tough smile to resist. Pat caught a smile beginning to mirror the one on Sam’s face and quickly found something on the desk to look at.

“Sam, this is never going to work.” The smile was snuffed out in its infancy.

“C’mon, think about it! Hell, we’d have pumpkin pies for days! I’d even let you borrow it if you ever got a date.”

Pat shot a knife of a look at Sam’s now full-force face. “Not cool.”

“Sorry.” The smile cooled down a bit. Sam’s eyes started to dart about as the plan took shape in their brain. “But yeah, grab the code, grow the pumpkin, grow the wheels, nick the pulse-rig, and we’ll be the coolest phreaks in The Farms.” What had started with Sam’s eyes quickly took over Sam’s arms, which, having been animated for a moment, now hung over the divider in anticipation. Pat fell back into the chair, black micro-climate cloth once again touching black leather, leaving chair, desk, and human wired together and indistinguishable at a distance, save for the shiny helmet that indicated the presence of a head. The face on that head closed its eyes and let out a sigh.

“Well, you know what, you got me. It’s not like we haven’t done stupider shit in the past. And the way you fuck up your DNA splices is always hilarious--”

“Not fair!” Sam interjected, feigning a wound.

“--we’ll probably get a purple cube pumpkin with sentient vines before you throw in the towel!” With that, Pat surveyed the neon visage peering over the divider wall. Both sets of eyes met for a quiet moment.

“So, you’re in?” The silence was broken.

“Yeah, let’s download that code.” Now Pat had the grin. In an instant the visor was again lowered and black-clad fingers began flexing in their control-gloves. Images and text splashed across Pat’s screen as the search began to find a way - legally or illegally - to acquire the correct splice pattern discovered by the geneticist. Sam, however, was frozen in place atop the divider, eyes tracking a thought that seemed to arc the full length of the room. The glow that had started the conversation was slowly obscured by the fog of uncertainty.

“Well, I just realized one problem.” Sam finally put thought to voice in a whisper.

“What’s that?”

“You think Mom and Dad will let us?”

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Written for the Farmpunk Contest. I hope it's not too outside the scope of what was desired - I just had an image of these kids racing around in a pumpkin and wanted to run with it. As an added restriction, I wanted to keep the kids gender-neutral - hopefully it works!