6
The loss of his finger function worried Seth like never before. It was like a dullness swelling and subsiding in his chest. Like holding back a floodgate of emotions that would overcome his young mind / heart -whichever psychologists termed it.
Sitting in the shower on his relaxing stool, he tried to wash, which set his finger flapping painfully, at odd angles. Later, he cut some spongy fabric and hot glued it into a brace. At least he wasn’t rotting or bruised. He reinforced that with strips of aluminum from a soda can.
How would he pull a bowstring now? The question was an important one -a missing rung on the ladder towards mind mastery of the gun, later the e-bomb itself. He cried tears of dejection.
*Seth, you’re the only one*
The heart whisper from Saim came to him, kind as usual. The Asian Trainer hadn’t eaten in 36 hours but it didn’t show.
There isn’t any time left, Gracie. His sister nodded.
Seth hid his weakness from the others, from Marjorie, saying it was just a sprain. His girlfriend had recovered from her near-fall. There were minor scrapes on her arms and face but those were healing well.
We’re going on another vacation, she told him. To open up investments in the Polynesian Spice Isles. Not all business -just informal talks and lots of sightseeing. Mr Frederick asked me to take you along. Said it would be educational -for the cause.
*Go with her, brother* whispered Saim, palpably weaker.
On the super jumbo out of California, Seth and Marjorie held hands. She was careful not to jar his ‘still healing’ finger as she moved his hand under her blouse, and over her breast. Odd emotions overcame him, now part metal, part flesh. He looked distant, nervous, as she tried to kiss him. Like a fish out of water, gasping for breath. That special feeling he once had for her, eclipsed by his increasingly troubled mind.
The skimmer dealership in Jakarta city was owned by Marjorie’s father. Skimmers made use of the Bernoulli and Coanda effects to propel the bike-like craft using virtually no fuel. Props set into the undulating belly of the craft fed air into a tube running lengthwise through it. Thus the faster it flew, the more air was forced through. It was like an aerodynamic flywheel.
Seth longed to ride one, and with the chief engineer explaining how inexact Science made it work, bending physics into an all but perpetual machine, realized he might have hope for his funny finger.
The engineer’s name was Honda. Japanese. He was also blind, relying on a continuous network of feeds that clucked and whirred in his ear. The sound frequency and slight delay between either eardrum fed his brain with a soup of information that was visually projected via a custom tailored hallucinogenic. He could read minds, sometimes predict the near future.
Seth’s heart thumped within his chest as Honda peeled off the improvised finger guard.
There’s almost no joint left.
His heart sank, but can you help?
Maybe. If we can bypass the knuckle. Meanwhile, it’s to be filled with non-Newtonian biogel. I’ll inject it now.
Make it fit under a glove if you can, he said.
Marjorie and Seth both got skimmers from her Dad to ride on and show off to the islanders. The gel in his finger joint made it bendable again as it absorbed shock by hardening in the right directions. There were no electronics, just a curl spring by his knuckle held on by rings. He admired the Japanese engineer’s succinct design. By regulating the speed of his muscle contractions, the gel and spring worked in unison to effect movement of his index finger. He fidgeted with the tension dial, trying to get it perfect, squeezing Marjorie’s hand confidently and bathing in the glow of her usual smile.
But something had gotten into him during the time he suffered. He wanted to be alone for long stretches of the day and one morning, Marjorie found his bed empty and his skimmer missing. There was a note on the hotel dresser,
See you in Kunming. Love, Seth.
She crushed the letterhead paper to her chest and said a silent prayer for good fortune.
He’s going for it, she informed Frederick, -alone.
Off the coast of Hanoi, the speedy craft reported it was low on fuel. He ditched it by a tourist beach where it had ‘almost’ crash landed, nose buried in the flat wet sand of low tide.
That evening, as he lay in the cot of the overnight sleeper bus to HeKou on the Chinese border, he thought of Teacher and his inexact bow, the dimension-dividing blade, the e-bomb he was supposed to detonate. He flexed his fingers. He had had quite a scare. Shortly he fell into a turbulent but dreamless sleep -his mind working out its trauma like coughing up phlegm after a bout of flu.
From HeKou, a semi-arid trading post, he weaved his way through the weathered faces, the snake oil swindlers who were probably as good as they were earnest, boarding the train to Kunming city in China’s lower-western province of Yunnan.
Like Saim, he made do with little food. A bag of fried locusts and a recycled bottle, half filled with Chang coconut and sweet potato beer. When his credit ran out, he proceeded on foot to the city center, through the poorer precincts where street doors were left ajar in the hopes money might enter. Nothing being allotted for repairs. Paper cut graffiti on the high walls and granite pillars. Underwear hung from shutters, pools of condensate and wastewater he avoided, unsure which was which.
Standing among the neon of the boutique eateries and spanking new malls, he attempted to hook up with a kind soul for the night. Only his heart knew how far he had traveled from home, afield from the ‘prophecy’ made up over him, the passersby, blind to his purpose. He used it to snare a local college girl: Have you heard of the West’s latest inexact weapon?
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