Eva's little bits

[Evangeline]

Here is where I'm going to put ideas, snippets and CV-related freewriting from here on in. Keep watching this thread. Here's a few paragraphs of ... something, anyway.

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Sunlight fell upon Harriet's face, and the third-gen A-5 Vigilante's eyes opened, then squinted. She swung her forward U/C beneath to lift herself off her side and free her right wing, being careful not to disturb the Cessna Citation X still snoring lightly next to her. Alain, Harriet's husband of three weeks and thirteen years her senior, had made his utmost effort to please his nineteen-year-old bride that previous night, and in her estimation, succeeded admirably. Therefore, Harriet figured, he was entitled to a little extra sleep. The Vigilante girl picked herself up fully now, stretching and shaking her head like a large horse before checking her onboard time - 5:45. Her workday started at 6:30. Time to move.

Harriet was quietly glad that her model line had been "obsolete" since the late 70's, though she was still eligible for National Air Guard service. One of her grandparents had been KIA in the skies over Vietnam at a very untimely age, and that was as close to actual combat as Harriet ever wanted to get. How nice to get this research job with the Aerospace Research Lab at Temple Beach University. Harriet hadn't been working here much longer than she had been married, but she already liked the place, the atmosphere and the people.

For maybe thirty seconds, Harriet debated over whether to take a few minutes in the wash stall, or go as she was, with the scents of passion lingering on her. It would make some of those snotty bizjet girls positively jealous. But, amusing as that prospect was, Harriet decided that a clean smell made a much better impression at work, and the warm water was good for sleep-stiffened necks. Ten minutes later, she emerged from the sprays and blowers feeling a bit more civilized. Alain was still snoozing away, so she left a LUV-U message for him by text and headed out of their residential hangar in the air park adjacent to campus.

As it turned out, Harriet didn't need olfactory accompaniment to arouse the green-eyed monsters on the university grounds as she arrived at the lab. A passing Embraer woman gave her an icy look as she rolled through the doors into the sprawling lab complex. The Vigilante responded to the glare with a dose of sweetness and light, smiling to her critic in a way that she knew would drive the woman nuts. What, just because you and he are in the same general class, does that mean you own him?

It was then that she stopped, about twenty feet inside, muttering "What IS that smell?" It was a biochemical mix of hormones and body-traces completely unknown to Harriet - not aircraft, not car, certainly not a truck or forklift. Her head raised and her upper lip curled briefly as she worked the scent further back into her nasal passages. Weird...

"Good morning, Harriet." The Vigilante skittered aside as a dark grey VW Golf passed her by, with a look of wry amusement at her flehmen posture. "It's not just you, there are a few new arrivals in the lab today. You'll be meeting them very shortly."

"I never smelled THAT before in my life." Harriet trailed the car into a larger chamber with an apron surrounded by work stations. Cars, forklifts, and a few smaller aircraft were filtering in. The Golf gentleman stopped by a station marked with a plaque: Dr. Joachim Baumann. He brought his terminal back to life with a swipe of the foretire across an inclined, floor-mounted touchplate and turned back to the jet girl. "Like anything else, takes getting used to. So how are you this morning?"

It wasn't simply a pleasantry on Dr. Baumann's part; the success of the Lab's projects depended on the condition and state of readiness of its "testbed" aircraft. Though from "obsolete" military lines, Harriet had exactly the sort of performance envelope that they desired - high speed at high altitude. She was also young and in excellent health.

"Couldn't be better, Doctor." Harriet dipped her nose with a modest smile. "Maintaining the regimen was a little difficult at first, but I've made the adjustment." The dietary restrictions had been the hardest, she figured. "And I find I have a lot more energy in the mornings." Dr. Baumann allowed himself another little smirk. A newlywed girl could always use more of that!

[Evangeline]

"Good." the Golf grinned and returned his gaze to the screen as his previous readouts and performance charts came up. Orson, a deep-red forklift, waved Harriet over to the prep area. "We just got the new package in and, and the new folks should be right up."

"New folks?" Harriet took another long sniff. "That's who I was scenting? They don't smell like anything from this planet."

"Well... ah... they aren't, exactly." Orson paused from unpacking the components, as something made a series of staccato sounds, striking the floor at intervals like a hammer, but in some way softer. It grew louder and closer, until its source emerged from behind a privacy screen and stood before them.

Harriet had seen them on TV, a year before. When perhaps a thousand of them turned up right in the middle of the southwestern Colorado desert in the early part of spring, dwelling in the cavernous bowels of a mountain that hadn't been there before, it tended to get one's attention. She couldn't get over the way these small, fleshy beings moved, placing one appendage in front of another on the ground. What did they call it, now?

Oh yes. Walking.

It was an adult male, judging by the larger, bulkier body, harder features and close-cropped hair. He was still fairly young, as it went with his kind. He wore a blue coverall with something white underneath, just barely showing where it opened at the neck. His eyebrows raised at the jet who rose slightly on her shocks and cocked her head in wonderment.

They responded almost in unison, with one word. "Wow..."

[Evangeline]

Harriet might have surged forward to check out this tiny creature, but Orson was faster, and the Viggie girl found herself running right up against a yellow chock on her forward U/C. The result was a conditioned response that had been trained into her from infancy: STAND STILL! As a horse has to be good for the farrier and the vet, a large Carsverse aircraft must stand quietly for mechanics and technicans.

"Let's not scare the daylights outta him, shall we?" Orson intoned subvocally, only for Harriet's ears. "Just stand easy for Matt like you would for anyone else."

The jet mumbled something in return, to the effect that chocks were for little kids who wouldn't otherwise sit still, but she accepted his logic. If the human had experienced any trepidation at her attempted approach, he was quite good at keeping it off his face, though Harriet's sharp hearing had detected a fluctuation in breath.

"Good morning, Matt." Dr. Baumann called out as he came out from behind his work station. "Yes, that's Harriet over there, please excuse her curiosity." The Viggie blushed as she realized that the VW Golf had caught more of what almost happened than she realized. She shifted her gaze back to the youth with a sheepish smile. "Sorry."

"S'OK." Matt seemed to mirror her expression. To shake both of out nod-and-smile territory, Baumann came up beside Harriet and waved a foretire from her to the newcomer. "Harriet Cohn-Dumont ... Matt Solarek."

[Evangeline]

"Watch your teeth as well." Orson gave the jet a solid tap on her forward U/C strut. Harriet refrained from rolling her eyes at the good cop/bad cop relationship that Baumann and Orson seemed to thrive on, and closed her lips as she concentrated her attention on the young man. "Pleased to meet you, Matt." Many had commented on the euphonic qualities of Harriet's voice, a quite smooth mezzo-soprano. Might as well use it...

"Uh... thanks." Matt continued to hold a nervous grin, as his thoughts went from the jet's beauty to her size and strength and how well she might know it... or not. "I just wasn't expecting to see a Vigilante here."

"Oh? What do you mean?" Harriet cocked her head again, and the tip of her pitot tube swung a bit towards the human, inducing him to step back though it cleared him by about ten feet. This brought on a slightly harder thump on the forward U/C tire from Orson. "Let's not skewer him, shall we?" Harriet lifted her nose back towards the ceiling, snorting with slight annoyance. No, that would be a Bad Thing, wouldn't it?

"Harriet's third generation from original stock." Baumann explained. "Her grandparents would have seen military service, forty years back. We needed a testbed aircraft with like qualities, and "outmode" status is irrelevant here."

Matt glanced back towards Harriet to see how she reacted to being referred to as "outmode" despite her obvious youth, and saw that she had taken on a somewhat veiled expression, fixing her eyes on the closed doors ahead of her. But for the fashionable "tribal" markings adorning her, she would be a dead ringer for the machine that his great uncle had flown off a carrier for several years during the Vietnam war. The Vigilante had originally been conceived to be a strategic bomber, but eventually wound up doing fast reconaissance work and fit that niche quite well. But what would its living, sapient Carsverse counterparts be doing in a world that no longer considered them necessary for that role? Well, Matt now had a partial answer.

<<< More later >>>

[Evangeline]

Harriet rolled an eye towards Matt - careful not to move around too much this time - and rephrased her question. "I've heard that your people had many counterparts to our own models, but just machines. Were you saying that there were some like our own model, and with the same name?"

Matt nodded slowly. "One of my relatives flew one. That was way back in the 60's, though."

"OK." Harriet shrugged. "That sounds about right. Mind you, the idea of something that looks like one of us that someone climbs inside and controls is still just a little... squicky to me."

"No problem." It was Matt's turn to show that tight, nervous grin. "Humans have similar issues with that. Check out our science fiction sometime."

"I'd have thought that parallel universes were science fiction at one time." Harriet pointed out. "Now even the daytime talk shows shrug it off as old news. Not that I actually watch that mind-rot, of course."

"No, she doesn't!" Orson smirked. "But she watches Nitropolis Nights like a fanatic." Nitropolis Nights was the top-rated prime-time drama in this incarnation of America at this time, and could be described as CSI meets Peyton Place. "So you could say she prefers fictional sleaze to the real thing."

"At least the fictional sleaze doesn't hurt anyone." Harriet countered. "As opposed to gawking in on other people's private lives like a peeping Tom."

"Ah, but they invite the attention." the forklift pointed out as he commenced what would be an exhaustive preflight check, ticking off items on the list. "And they get money and a free trip out of it. It's a national pity party for the attention whores of the world. And what they have to tell - well, you couldn't make some of that scrap up."

"I think I saw some of it." Matt made an attempt to get back into the conversation. "Didn't look much different from the Jerry Springer show - except with dents and rust."

"Trash is trash, everywhere, whether it rolls or walks." Orson jeered as he inspected a new access hatch and made sure the modfication was healing properly. He turned to Matt. "Bet your doctors wish they could just open a flap and look in on your organs like I just did with Her Excellency there."

"Now that's the kind of thing that squicks me." Matt bit his lip, and the forklift guffawed in amusement as he went to the next item.

[Evangeline]

"I can see your point." Harriet smiled sweetly towards the human. She bided her time while Orson opened up another hatch, waited a second or two, and sent a hissing blast of compressed air into his face, then enjoyed a brief outburst of curses from the forklift. "Oh, so sorrrry..." she purred with a butter-wouldn't-melt voice. "But you never know what you might put out of place when you keep hitting away at me like that."

Baumann had been watching this exchange while he monitored the data being entered from Orson's clipboard-sized PDA. Once in a while, the corner of his mouth twitched in amusement and his foretire waggled slightly as either Harriet or Orson scored a point. His eyes turned to Matt, who was observing this verbal fencing with a look that suggested he'd seen much the same before, but not with such large creatures involved. Matt was stifling something... a snicker, perhaps?

[Evangeline]

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," Baumann smiled wryly. "Extra points if you remember your high school French."

"I remember just enough." the human replied.

"Enough to get yourself slapped in gay Paree?" Orson turned, flicking his penlight in Matt's direction. "Speaking the lingo in a foreign country means going whole hawg or nothing. It's just too damn dangerous otherwise."

"So says the guy who wound up spending three days in a Spanish jail after using the wrong gender got him in a bar fight." Harriet jeered.

Matt seemed to be thinking over the implications of that statement, and his mind, apparently, was going places it didn't want to. "I'm not even going to ask about that."

"It wasn't THAT bad." Orson was slightly defensive. "But inadvertently suggesting that an off-duty cop is a transsexual can be bad for one's health."

Baumann completed his survey. "Everything here looks good. Let's drop in that package from the Westford people and get this show on the road. Matt, you can come down with us and watch the takeoff, and then we'll see how it goes from here. Then you all can get to know each other a little better." The Golf's eyes went to some components awaiting installation through the new access hatches. "Time to get busy."

*****

At 30,000 AGL, with clear skies, Harriet wasn't even breaking out a sweat. She was following a prescribed series of maneuvers designed to test the accuracy of a new supplemental avionics package developed by Westford Labs. It would have been much more pleasant, however, without the sharp-voiced combination of chase plane and drill sergeant now flying at her high five.

"15 degrees left is just that!" the old Starfighter snapped. "Not 15.5. Get it right!"

"I got it now." Harriet sighed. Croydon Nash might not have been the worst martinet she'd ever met, but he was definitely reserve champion. Between the barked-out instructions and "kids these days" diatribes, she was ready to take a hellish big chunk out of his tail planes and would have if they weren't so damned sharp at the edges. She was sure he knew it, too. Pressing her buttons seemed to be almost a religious calling for the crusty old man. She could have answered with something to the effect of the CV Starfighter's human-world counterpart being notorious for its gruesome attrition rate - "widow-maker" and "lawn dart" being some of the milder nicknames - but she just wasn't in the mood to bait him today. All she wanted was to get the morning over with.

"Climb to flight level 16 and level off on heading 235." At least Nash's voice seemed to return to a level tone.

"235 Roger." Harriet groaned inside. When Nash said "climb", he didn't mean "gradual". He meant, "Like yesterday, and put your afterburners into it!" She gave her engines the gun, simply because compliance was the easiest thing. The man did like to see her work. The ground team, she knew, would be following by radio and computer link, but it wasn't quite the same as someone else being there. That's what Nash was for. And because Baumann seemed to enjoy creative ways of torture.

"Check your altitude." the Starfighter reminded her. As if he really needed to.

Yes, Captain Redundancy, she almost answered. This was getting to be the longest morning of her life.

[Evangeline]

The ground team was clustered around several monitors in the lab; one had a readout from the instrument package, one was a camera view from Nash, and the third was especially for Matt's benefit, a simulation of an A-5 instrument panel that his grandfather would have been familiar with. The various indicator dials moved exactly in concert with whatever Harriet was doing, against a background of their radio chatter. The young man rubbed his head as he listened to Nash nailing Harriet over yet another course correction. "That old man's really hard on her."

"Nashy doesn't cut mil-types any slack, doesn't matter who they are." Orson shrugged. "He figures young outmodes have it too easy these days and need tuning up. Wait 'till you see him run her through basic maneuvers. She resents him like hell, but she's in awesome shape now and would be considered service-ready if they were still using Viggies."

"The thing with Nash," Dr. Baumann chimed in, "Is that there is no greater sin in his eyes than for a mil-type craft to go through life without performing to the best of their ability. He's basically showing her his love." He took up the radio mike. "Nash, Harriet, that's enough for the morning, begin cool-out now."

For Harriet, this just meant yet another slew of orders as the Starfighter made her go through slow spirals and rolls to bleed off speed and gradually step down from her intense workout. But the exercise had its intended effect as she was only sweating lightly upon landing, and her vitals were smoothly settling to resting rate. The ground crew passed misting wands over Harriet and her minder, with the latter getting a fly sheet and special attention to his joints on account of his age. The Viggie rested on the apron, tolerantly bearing the forklifts who used large, thick shammy pads to rub her down.

Orson started towards the outside, beckoning Matt to follow. "OK, here's where you start REALLY getting to know her better."