By David C. Daoust
Harper grew up a tomboy, flying through the skies on illegally modified vehicles just like all the First Wave youngsters. Like the rest, her family migrated from Royal Alliance City-Stations. Harper was not born yet, so she didn’t know, firsthand, what they’d left behind, though her mother would go on and on about her past. What it was like to rush through the Narrows, to get where you needed to be, and stay put. Any community action, only led to being belittled by the corrupt regimes whose strict laws only seemed to make things worse.
She lived in what was basically a parked crawler. Compared to the rest of the Crawlers on Twin Crown, it was pretty much empty. Most of its crew had dispersed throughout Grady, leaving only Harper, her sisters, their mother, and a few old tenants still living within the apartments throughout the massive machine.
The Crawler itself towered over the most popular playhouse in town, a theatre that, of course, was owned by her mother. Her mother, Farrah, found that she could make a better living within Grady’s gates, than without. Farrah was an experienced actress, director, even fancied herself a playwright. It was not a surprise to anyone that she wound up where the people were.
Harper felt they could not have moved at a better time. The boys started to treat her different, which regularly spoiled her fun. She had just about enough of it. So, parking it in Grady was, at the very least, something new.
Her mother was gone at the moment, currently neck deep in the crisis, contending with all the homeless Gradians. The United Moons was nothing new to her family; they had reached out long ago to the other moons. The Playhouse put them in a position to communicate with other colonies. Mostly through other troupes, that wanted to use their house to put on a show. Mr. Denali, the UM rep that had given his speech in the blackout, was actually staying with them for the past several weeks.
Ratchet and Grandpa Haul showed up at her ramp, looking to borrow their old forklift. Apparently Vincent got shut down in an inopportune place. Harper knew she had to help Vincent. She could not risk that old bot body getting confiscated. Considering all the radical changes after Grady’s fall, in her mind, it could go either way. Best to get him to safety before people started looking too close.
Harper didn’t mind Ratchet; he was still young enough to be fun. Not like his brother, Charles. Charles was one of those that spent more time either ‘impressing’ her, or, and this was much worse, ‘letting her win’. Screw that. She could fly circles around them to begin with. Which meant it was all about their attitude change. Twerps.
There was more than one grim look, from passing Gradians, that the playhouse was one of few structures, throughout the rubble, that went unscathed in the Drone Attack. Given that it was widely believed that the First Wave was behind said attack… they weren’t terribly popular. No one was terribly popular anymore. It was a giant mess. Everyone was on edge. Grady’s attitude, their ability to forgive, to keep the peace, their strong faith, had a lot more to do with the progress, than any speech given on high. Or the following overthrow.
Just about every Sand Crawler on Twin Crown was now plowing through the rubble to reach the Starport, All to take in refugees within their home. Harper knew her crawler was going to fill up again pretty quick. And that tension between Grady and First Wave wasn’t going to go away.
Harper took the steps two at a time, her boots ringing out as she hurried over the metal grates that made up the higher catwalks of the crawlers hold. She slipped through the cold metal underbelly, and into the much warmer area, of the living quarters. Entering her room, she pulled open a closet, digging through old toys and dolls, dolls that she didn’t really play with anymore, yet still could not bring herself to get rid of, she came across what she was looking for with an, ‘ah-ha’.
It was a silly little bunny. A doll, one of her favorites growing up, but also the only thing she owned that could take a data-sphere.
“I love you,” the limp doll suddenly spoke.
“Oh, I love you too,” Harper answered without thinking, she flipped it about in her hands, trying to find the right seam. ‘I love you’ was pretty much the only thing the bunny ever said. It was an incredibly low caliber data-sphere.
“I love you more,” the bunny answered.
“I know,” Harper said dryly as she opened it up, effectively shutting it down. The cheap data-sphere popped out. Rolling it in her other hand, she popped the new one in. The one Grandpa Haul had pulled out of Vincent’s form.
She closed it up, and turned it towards her, expectantly.
“Hello?”
“What’s wrong…?” the little girls voice came from within… what sounded at first like someone waking up, suddenly escalated into full blown panic, “I can’t move! What happened? What’s wrong?”
Harper was not sure what to do. The doll was pretty much just a voice box with a small lens in one of its eyes, never designed for movement. Harper thought it would be a good way to find out more information, without having to worry about the strange Bot suddenly running havoc through the hold, with the Mining-bot form.
“Why can’t I move?!” it asked. “I can barely see… oh make it stop, make it stop!”
Harper popped the sphere back out. She didn’t mean to torture the poor thing. She popped the old sphere back in and tossed the bunny back where she got it.
“I love you…” the bunny said again as Harper abandoned it in the closet, which was now an overflowing mess of old clothing and toys. She’d already left the room in search of a new plan.
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