High Noon on Jefferson (scifi story): Chapter Fourteen

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

Even though I was walking with my friends to my Dad's house, I was actually thinking about how I had related my walk with Dad from the house to school when my first adventure started. It seemed so strange to have been telling you about it the first time. Now, here I am, again, describing to someone chronodoxing my adventures. It feels strange and wrong and...right. And that last scares me more than the rest.

We walked from school after school on Friday. My anxiety must have been on display with glowing neon, holographic, Immie touch real display fed straight to everyone in the Merry Prankster's brain. It must have been terrible for them. Yet there they were, being my friends, staying with me and either going to confront my Dad about whether or not he was making wildly illegal repticulates - robot lizards - or how/why is and his girlfriend were able to wander around in such indecent and dangerous amounts of clothing. Because the latter suggested the former and that meant my Dad was likely a majorly mad scientist in the bad way. Not the good way.

Over the river and through the woods...

Well, no grandmother here.

And these woods were weird.

We were also not on a dirt road, but cobblestone. It was decided to follow the old Roman conventions, slightly updated, to build the roads in the less densely settled areas of Jefferson. Robots laid the stones once it was decided to put a road between two places. They dug up the route, flattened it, smoothed it and made sure it didn't disturb the environment too greatly.

As I said, too, these woods were weird.

The twarpers were out, but they were approaching the time for their hibernation, so they were not singing. When they sang, they sounded like a cross between a harp and a bird. Perhaps if you had a different, slightly more melodious frog and mixed with a bird and a harp. It's really hard to describe. In fact, because they were so close to hibernation they were getting clumsy, drowsy, and...I was waiting for one to fall in front of us. Tom was an outdoors type and even went hunting, but even he, like my other Pranksters, were pretty much townies. I was, sorta, too, but I was out on Dad's farm enough until recently to have a better feel for Jefferson.

Tom might have known of twarpers, but I was pretty sure he didn't realize how likely it was for...yep. There it happened.

A twarper fell off the tree.

It went thud in front of us. Normally, the "danger" from them was that they would mis-glide and land on a person. They hadn't learned fear of people as yet. And they didn't smell life Jefflife animals. So, must be a tree. A moving, stinky tree, but a tree. So they would land on people. And people freaked out. I imagined over time, they would have stomped enough twarpers those that avoided landing on people would reproduce and then they would be naturally avoiding landing on the walking, stinky trees. But it would take generations.

The twarper in front up us got up and walked-waddled off in its quadrapedal gait off the road. Rosa was recording it with her drone. She was so focused recording the twarper on the ground she wasn't watching if another one might fall.

And it did.

On her.

On squarely on her, but it did glance land on her and bounce off. She still freaked. She still screamed. And she still lost control of her drone that was filming the first twarper. She had not safed it in case something went wrong and it went wild at first. It dove and swooped and dashed between us. It nearly gave Tom a buzz cut! It did end up in a tree.

We all glared at Rosa and Jackie just shook her head. She dropped her pack. Then she clambered up the tree faster than a chimpanzee and came back down. The drone was in hand and from her hand handed over to the rightful, if somewhat dangerous hands of Rosa again. We did make her put it away. We didn't need instant modern art haircuts.

The twarpers continued to dribble onto the road in thuds. My Pranksters noticed I was never near one that landed and started to figure out what to look for. Then they too were safe from the twarpers. And I am sure they were a little annoyed that I didn't tell them what to do.

Give a Prankster advice and they will understand that problem. Teach them how to solve the problem and they'll find a way to haunt everyone with it . Guess which I preferred to do?

I was surprised we didn't see any Yoats. They would have tried to get us, maybe. We were fully adult sized, well, roughly, some of us. However, Yoats hated people. Then again, with the drunken, dizzy, drowsy twarpers everywhere, they might have been too busy eating and getting fat for winter. Because, well, the twarpers were getting ready to hibernate because winter was coming. I doubted Yoats were less aggressive because of winter though. We just didn't see any. Or hear their yoatling.

We finally made it too Leakey Creek and went over the Earthwood bridge. Rollin showed up, Dad's robo butler, and guided us up and over the berm once we were deeper in the property. It was as high as most of the trees, but didn't have trees growing in it and so it was obscured. We walked all the way to the main house and Dad and his girlfriend, Khiara.

And they were wearing their leathers.

And that made me more suspicious.

If they had nothing to hide about their new found ability to go outside on Jefferson without having to cover up, then why were they covering up?!

That made me think I smelled a coverup.