High Noon on Jefferson: Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six:

The next morning, Jackie, Tom and I sat around the cottage. It was an uncomfortable silence. We wanted to talk about something. Anything. Even tink something, but...it wasn't...working. It wasn't we were not friends. It wasn't we were not still Merry Pranksters. It was just the missing two bits, Rosa and Veena, really upset us. The Merry Pranksters did not depend on our completed pentagram of mischievousness to exist; however , the dynamic's cart seemed overturned and our apples were spilled everywhere.

Like I had ever seen that many apples in a single place. The joys of living on an alien planet. Then again, how many apple carts are there on Earth these days?

We decided to pack everything up and then go for a hunt and kill mission for the jefflife eating robots. We packed up everything and then...our enthusiasm flagged. Tom wasn't even quippy at all. That's a truly bad sign. Jackie was her tall, strong, beautiful stoic self. Yet, even with her, there was little excitement or desire to go out into the Jefferson wild to hunt the bots.

And I? I was wilted. Two of my bestest friends were not with us and there may have been a permanent breach. I had slept badly. Rest in a place someone is not used to is not easy, at least when that person is troubled. And I was troubled.

Dad popped over and asked us to brunch. We went over. The food was good: Dad omelets, mini Dad omelets: he could make giant breakfasts I couldn't even finish, but he seemed to get we might not want to eat a single meal for the full day. The omelets were egg, cheese, a Jefflife plant people could actually eat that had taste reminiscent of tomatillos with an indescribable twist we called deniuce, and a lettuce. I think he actually used half an egg each. Then there were crepes with farmer's cheese from Dad's cows. We could flavor those how we liked.

Breakfast was quiet. Dad and Khiara sensed we were not happy. They had their own problem, too, and teen drama was not something they wished to pick at. We thanked them and went back to the cottage.

We sat and stared at each other for a couple minutes back at the cottage after our silent walk back. We very quickly reached consensus we ought to head back to town. Sitting around here was not going to be fun and we didn't have our normal troublemaking enthusiasm to go out hunting for our latest bit of adventure.

We grabbed our backpacks and walked over to the main house to tell Dad we were leaving. They must have figured out we were going to leave, because Khiara had made us to-go snack/lunches. It was very kind of her and she even packed us drinks. For someone just over a decade older than I was, she was surprisingly motherly. I suppose people are not simple: they can be brilliant researchers and experimentalists, yet amazing chefs and motherly or fatherly, and...apparently love pranks.

It was a longish walk and it was warm, spring and all. We stopped and tinked. There was a nice spot along the road I had stopped at a few times. It was soft and quiet and just far enough off the road the road could not be seen nor heard. Just as all roads should be.

We sat down and Tom, being a prime example of a teenage boy, opened his snack to eat it. I mean, really? We just ate like an hour before! He opened his bag and...it sprayed him in the face. It seems Khiara had noticed Tom liked to dramatically smell everything in an almost comic and overly exaggerated way. So, when he opened the bag, stuck his schnoz down close and inhaled, BAM! A Khiara's version of a milhojas launched straight into his face. It wasn't big, more like a mini cupcake size and seemed to be topless. Bam. whipped cream and custard in the nostrils!

We had thought Khiara was being extra careful and included a recyclable printed container just for the meal so the milhojas wouldn't get shmushed. Nope. She'd hidden a trick mechanism in there.

Tom looked at us with a comical expression of mock indignation. Custard and whip cream dripped from nose thickly and slowly and comically. He feigned outrage, but his image was one that was totally hilarious.

Jackie and I lost it.

We laughed so hard we almost couldn't breathe. When we finally stopped, Tom pouted and tried licking his own nose.

We lost it again.

Tom cleaned himself up and then Jackie and I offered to let him smell our snacks. Tom politely declined. We laughed more. Then we nervously opened our bags and held them at a distance as we reached in to pull out our own snacks. Nothing happened. In fact, there were two milhojas in my bag and a note:

"Smashing into Tom's face, optional."

Jackie and I grinned and I faked a motion to mash it into Tom's face, but instead handed it to him nicely. He HAHAHA'ed.
Sadly, the milhojas didn't explode or do anything much to our disappointment and Tom's relief.

Using my booster, I snapped a picture of Tom before he cleaned up and sent it to Khiara. She sent a emote of a laugh and thumbs up.

We munched and laughed. It's funny how something at the right time, even if its small , can lift one's spirits. Khiara clearly understood our teen rollercoaster and had wanted to help. She got us enough to know what to do. And it worked.

Despite my misgivings, I was actually starting to like Khiara.

Maybe stepmoms aren't so bad.

Just maybe.

A little.

It'll be our secret.

ok?

We packed up our mess - do not harm to the ecology, remember? means no littering! - and hefted our packs up on our backs. And we started to walk back to the road. When we reached it, we heard something. A buzzing. That was...weird.

There are flying things that buzz on Jefferson. Sometimes. However, it was rare. Very rare. Mostly only during the seventh year cycles in the Jeffersonian ecology. When somethings swarm. Swarms are not common on Jefferson. Bugs like earth bees are unheard of here except where people brought them. Eusociality like bees and termites and ants and naked mole rats hadn't evolved here. Not that naked mole rats buzzed, but you get my meaning. I hope.

Yet...and yet...we heard buzzing. And it was getting louder.

Much louder.

We ran for the road and then looking around.

It was a swarm. A fairly loud one. And it spotted us. Or so it seemed! Because right after, that, it came straight for us.

Tom pulled out his needler and started banging away with banger needles. They seemed to take out single...whatever they were, but it was like emptying a beach with a spoon. Jackie and I started to pull out our own when Tom yelled at us to pulled something from his pack. As we pulled whatever it was out, he flipped something on his needler.

He hesitated. He actually glanced at us. Which would have been wildly weird even if we didn't have a swarm of something coming at us.

Then he pulled the trigger on his needler: it fired off like a machine gun in a movie. In a second or two, it emptied the clip for the needler and Tom popped the release and slapped another one in. He opened up again. The swarm had paused in its descent when he tore through it the first time. It recoiled at his second assault.

We looked at him aghast. Even though he was doing something to stop whatever the swarm was, he had modified his needler in a wildly illegal way. If he got caught! We gawked and he yelled at us to unfold what he had had in his pack. We were almost scared about what it was: it could have been a bigger automatic weapon. Something neither Jackie nor I wanted to touch.

It was not though. It seems Tom couldn't sleep last night either. He'd gone over to Dad's shop, with Dad's permission! and made something when he couldn't get shuteye. It appeared to be a netfiring gun of some sort. Apparently, Tom was not so enthusiastic about chasing down repticulates like we had been.

Tom fired off another volley at the swarm and then he was out. The swarm bolted in a tight group as straight as an arrow for Tom. Jackie raised the netgun and fired. The net rushed out and grabbed the swarm. It would have been a failure except Tom had made sure the net was wildly sticky and finely meshed.

The swarm of whatever they were was captured.

And they fell to the ground, onto the road, with a huge thump.

There the sticky package writhed on the ground.

We waited a minute. We didn't know if whatever was inside the sticky net was going to get out. After a couple minutes, ones that seemed like an eternity, we approached. Jackie actually bent in to look. I suppose she didn't want to be upstaged by Tom's quick thinking: the group jester shouldn't outdo the paladin!

The net still writhed and squirmed, but less.

Why made sense.

Yet it was terrifying: the swarm was made of ro-bees. Robot bees.

And they had been hunting us.

Whomever was controlling the robats and repticulates clearly wanted us out of the way.

Perhaps he or she wanted to scare us off. Perhaps they wanted to do something more extreme.

Clearly, this person didn't know us.

Because that was the exact opposite of what they ought to have done.