As Kylie began to taxi the Canary she remembered the... other part of a plane namely, the engine. In simple terms no engine no flight, but more importantly if you were flying and your engine gave out you would have to get it going again, or ditch the plane... which only mattered if you were high enough for your parachute to deploy properly. This is the thing that terrifies new pilots. When a car engine stops you don’t plummet to your death, but that’s exactly what will happen in a plane. If your just a pilot you have to trust your regular mechanic, or whoever worked on the plane knew what they were doing. Kylie understood then why a lot of people don’t fly themselves as she always was nervously sweating... it was just the two of them and then... just her. No one else to experience the fear with, while almost anyone could force themselves onto a passenger plane; telling them to get in one and fly it themselves was too much for most people.
A simple no is what you would get in response. Forcing yourself to trust strangers was easy when you saw a crowd of people doing the same. Flying would be scary in a similar way to a roller coaster... just close your eyes and brace yourself when you get too scared. Not the best thing to do flying solo. But then like he said would happen the fear goes away, The risk of engine failure and crashing on landing are still there but you don’t fear that happening anymore, you accept it. You focus on the fact your in something that can take you thousands of feet into the air and for through the clouds. You can move in three dimensions and look down on the world below.
With other planes fuel was another concern, run out and you have to land or worse crash land, but with the new power plants made by the Pilots Guild the main power plant is a hybrid electric battery which can be a nuclear battery if you prefer. You can use old fashioned fuel like always but also have battery power to extend the range of the plane. The planes the guild green light for production are also built to be many times more durable structurally than other kinds of aircraft. Adding in more safety features didn’t hurt either, nor did amenities you won’t find in a standard cockpit like a mini-microwave/coffee maker combo. As Kylie lined up to the runway she focused her gaze to the line drawn across it further down that marked where a carriers deck ends. This was a plane that could reach carrier takeoff speed without a catapult launcher typical of prop planes from yesteryear.
Then she gunned the throttle the engine sputtered to full power and sent the plane speeding forward. She pulled up on the stick and lifted off before crossing the line, another successful carrier launch! Kylie ascended to treetop level and did a roll before going high into the sky. Now she just had to plot her course which was a place Tenchi called Home 01, set her travel speed and fly. She had no intention of flying nonstop. This would be her first flight outside New York and then across the country. May as well sight see on the way.
Haunted houses, abandoned graveyards, and rickety warehouses were obvious destinations on the list. But so too were nature sanctuaries and legitimate touring spots. In all she’d have two weeks before she needed to actually be there so she would enjoy herself. But first an obstacle that could lessen her free time was in front of her; a rain cloud. Thunderstorms should be dealt with one of two ways preferably in a plane go over or around them you don’t want the lightning to hit you. But rain if fine as long as it stays that way you can fly through... which is easy to say flying into a rain cloud is surreal. The rain is carried more by the wind until it falls toward the earth if your at that level it hits the plane like it would anything on the ground but higher up and it could from any direction the wind sent it. Kylie braced herself for something slightly more risky: Rain flying just as her travel companion came from his place under the seat to offer his protest cats hate water after all.
Just as rain started to pelt the windshield at a 90 degree angle he hopped into her lap. “Now Pagan, rain isn’t that bad and this will keep us on time for our first stop. As if relenting to the situation as there was no turning back, the black cat chose instead to take a nap in Kylie’s lap. As she entered the cloud daylight dropped big time and all you could see was cloud. Kylie would gain more flight experience in real weather conditions, then engage auto pilot, fold down the flatscreen from the ceiling, watch tv, and listen to the rain.
Saturday July 10, 2010
Kylie was making good time as she had planned and was in final approach to her destination; Home 01. Of course she was more focused on stunt flying: loops, rolls, and every other maneuver she knew, which wasn’t much but she could get more training in while she was here. She spotted the runway and radioed the tower for permission to land. With permission given she headed down for a landing approach. She then called Tenchi as she had done last night and told him she had arrived. “I’m happy your finally here!” Tenchi squawked over the radio. “Me too Tenchi, I have things to talk to you about; after I land.
After landing and taxiing her plane to a hangar, Kylie was met by a familiar face. One she had grown to trust and be a little, maybe very competitive with. “Hi Tenchi.” Tenchi stared at Kylie noticing how much she had changed. Especially the bright canary yellow trench coat. The outfit she was wearing underneath however, was the expected dark colors she loved so much. “So Kylie did you enjoy your trip?” Kylie knew where this was going and cut him off with a simple pointed finger and said; “Don’t start with me, I’m not your lab slave.You wanted me to come here as fast as possible, but I decided to have a little fun first.”
Tenchi: “You being here sooner would have gotten this over with by now but whatever, we can start now.” ”Start what?“ Kylie interjected. “Uh well, I guess the tour of the house and I promise it will be quick this time.” Tenchi said suddenly finding it harder to speak. “Sure it will.” said Kylie, knowing Tenchi’s “summaries” about things he builds take hours if not longer. Tenchi and Kylie proceeded to get in the car waiting for them and drive off to Tenchi newest invention. When they arrived they exited the car and Tenchi showed Kylie the house he was referring to.
“Where is it?“ Said Kylie “Is it in that town over there?” “Actually that is the house known as Home 01...” Tenchi said slightly ashamed. “.............What!? It’s the size of a mountain!” Kylie exclaimed, though it was rare to surprise her enough to get a reaction like that. “Only a small one.” Tenchi shot back in a matter of fact tone. “Wha-!” Kylie caught herself and gathered her composure as she had forgotten who she was talking to. “So Tenchi, why is your house so big?”
Tenchi began to explain the situation to Kylie beginning to understand this was going to take hours at the minimum. So well when I was younger I was making robots and A.I.. And you know I couldn’t have my parents getting in the way of my progress so I might of set up a workshop in America... and the machines that I told to build it... might of kept building, and building, and building 24/7 nonstop. And this might be because they were programmed to build a site large enough to research, test, design, and build my inventions. But since there was a wireless connection to my network I might have forgotten about, the machines were constantly adding to the facility they built causing it to get bigger. They are logic based so instead of building one lab room to do experiments, they built one for every possible thing that could be tested no matter how small to follow the idea of not contaminating test results. But what this meant is the rooms of the facility kept multiplying exponentially.
Everything tested leading to prototype for example; needed its own lab rooms to test all the things from formula to final design. Then factory rooms to build the device. So by the time I reviewed the design of this facility in Japan, it was noticeably... big. I came over to the location and inspected it. So keeping it simple: I named the place Home 01, It has five wings so to speak, there is the Central wing which is a cylinder, and the other wings of the house surround it. Three of the wings North, South, and East had the laboratories. The West wing is where manufacturing and prototype testing areas were and are still located. The Central wing has all the software research, primary mainframes, and A.I. control systems for all the different machines doing work here. Not needing all the spare labs, I simply decided to remodel the place causing it to look more like a home you live in, without actually living in it.
“Where did all the materials for building this house come from?” Kylie said in a way encouraging Tenchi to continue since it was obvious from the way he was talking about Home 01 that it was important to him. That and a full entourage of robots were attending to them at this point. “The environment fortunately, I’m pretty sure this house would cost more money than anyone has. The machines simply dug sand and gathered stone when needed from above or underwater, then simply melted it down into stone blocks which were positioned to form the foundation, walls, and floors which are a whole other story in themselves. But the most important thing about the house is that certain floors are collapsible and the walls are sectioned and can move. That means you can customize the layout on normal floors by moving straight or curved wall pieces to form rooms and hallways.“
Hours had passed during this “summary” as usual Tenchi didn’t quite summarize as opposed to give a lecture. “Now are you done?” said Kylie folding her arms waiting on Tenchi to do something he had not yet” Tenchi realizing he couldn’t delay it any longer “Oh um, yes and uh, now Ms. Kylie... Would you like to come in?” “Only if this won’t take forever smart guy.” Said Kylie knowing that it couldn’t possibly be too much longer…
Tuesday July 13, 2010
It had been three days of touring and Kylie needed to stop already. She had seen floor after floor of collections of rooms styled in a certain decorative pattern with furniture to match. Some floors were entirely the same some were groups of rooms but it did get repetitive nonetheless. But Tenchi had wisely made most of the rooms like dens, living rooms, and other rooms that you could just sit around in. It was the rooms however that were so large entire replicas of houses from tv and movies were constructed inside that Kylie was most interested in. Especially Whipstaff Manor and the Addams Family House rooms. But all that had ended and the manufacturing wing was all she had been seeing but they had finally arrived at their destination that is the point Tenchi had asked her to come in the first place.
Kylie had been taken through the boats and submarines section of the Nautical division and had come to an area a little more interesting: The Aviation Division. Kylie saw more plane designs than she knew existed and she had seen a lot of them since getting into aviation. There were planes from every era: Some were popular designs others were one of a kind. They had come from the dawn of aviation when people were trying out all sorts of designs and engines. Kylie wanted to live here at this point but of course Tenchi would continue hastening his pace even, of all the times to speed up!
But Kylie could see where this was going: In this place it was VERY easy to forget what floor you were on to the point where you just stopped caring, so looking down at an opening that had come up showed the Automotive Division, or at least part of it anyway. Kylie suspected the cars were actually around ground level and they had gone up higher but the stairs leading into the place Tenchi wanted to go revealed the true scale of what the Automotive Division was going to be. “So here we are finally!” Said Tenchi feeling like he had finished a long journey, which to be honest they had. Tenchi walked over to a 67“ Mustang that looked brand new and said to Kylie, “Kylie I’d like you to meet a good friend of mine named Wheels!”
Wheels then greeted Kylie by saying, “Hello ms Kylie it’s a pleasure to meet you!” Kylie said, “It’s a very nice car Tenchi. When can I fly a plane?” Tenchi replied, “Probably when your done registering for your official test driver license.” Kylie returned, “Why do I need to drive a car to fly a plane?” Tenchi then told her he had a slight problem he started making cars based on Hot Wheels toy cars; except they were full size cars and not exactly studying the parts and terminology of the automotive industry he made parts and technologies by simply porting existing systems over to the hardware frame of cars. This meant he had to figure out cars and how they worked all over again so he could make them the way he wanted.
Obviously there were similarities with other car parts and designs, but because Tenchi shoved overpowered engines into the cars as they were the main focus to him; the cars standard bhp was in the several thousands range. The car frames themselves were built like tanks sacrificing lighter frames and downforce to increase speed and relying on the engines and durability. But when you shove an engine with 3,000 bhp into anything it tends to still go pretty fast. Tenchi divided the cars into lightweight, middleweight, and heavyweight, this made it easier so he said you could tell if the car was emphasizing speed and maneuverability over durability and defense. For an example of heavyweight he pointed to what Kylie thought was one of the trains and said that’s the Mammoth Car from Speed Racer.
Kylie shouted, “Why would you build that!”Tenchi told her he needed to test the Mach 5 he built somehow, and that was a way to make it the official car in his eyes all it had to do was beat the Mammoth Car or get a draw in a race. So before Kylie thought he was a complete idiot, he explained that once production on the HotWheels cars got rolling it only made sense to make famous vehicles from movies and tv shows. However there were challenges to certain vehicles and he would need to personally built certain parts or engines to make them work at minimum like they did in the shows they were from. Then came his top 5 as the people who lived and worked around the area referred to them as. Number one was the Mach 5: Tenchi built it like it was in the Manga starting with the Mach 1 and working his way forward to the Mach 4 which was the fastest car at the time of its making.
Then he was dumb enough to put the ERX engine into it thinking it could handle it and test drove the car only to end up crashing like Rex Racer did. The only reason he didn’t die was because of the safety system he installed that either ejected the driver or filled the cockpit with a shock absorbent foam that quickly hardened. You would either be ejected if you swerved off a cliff or something; or at ground level expelled inside the safety foam from a crash. Kylie slapped Tenchi who was anticipating it but he assured her the safety features he installed on his cars make dangerous driving ironically safe. So he had to literally engineer the Mach 5 from the ground up to hand the power of the ERX engine just like Pops Racer had to do. But if any changes Had to be made to the car he would’ve made them but the car was able to be made to look like the tv show version.
He then built the 90’s cartoon version to test the mini sub mode and ported this technology to the 70’s version. The final recent addition to the car though made gear heads stop whining, was the hubcaps which now looked like the 70’s version. The wheels were being tested and therefore different stuff had to be used until the car was ready. So the Mach 5 did everything from the Anime, 90’s cartoon, and the Manga. Tenchi then talked about car number two: FAB 1 from the Thunderbirds, he combined a ford thunderbird with a Rolls Royce in defiance after they said no to officially recognizing the car to remind them he didn’t need or care about their permission. Car number three: KITT from Nightrider, and Cars number four and five: Roadie and Wheels.
All these cars had been personally built by Tenchi and test driven by him, and there was the problem he had two cars but it was just him. And since he had become one of the best drivers in the world by testing these various cars and putting them through their paces he figured an amateur driver would give regular driver feedback. He would be the primary test driver for Roadie, and she would drive Wheels… in a simulator. Kylie told Tenchi that he basically picked her because she sucked as a driver but had familiarity with his tech. She said she wanted to really drive Wheels and that was mostly as she thought to herself to continue competing with him. But he informed her that Wheels was too much to handle for a novice driver and he didn’t need her crashing him all the time.
Kylie then informed him that she drove Wheels for real or she wouldn’t drive at all. Tenchi said if you pass simulation testing then you can attempt to get licensed to drive one of his cars in this case Wheels as the registered driver. Kylie eye rolled and said of course he would have his own license and registration process setup and told him she agreed to those terms. Tenchi told her that Roadie and Wheels would have been halted on the production schedule if he hadn’t designed certain parts and learned specific ways of building. and he was happy he waited to click on an 80’s cartoon intro vid compilation he saw on YouTube. When he did he realized later the thumbnail in the vid was from the pole position intro he ended up seeing but watching the intro would show her why he chose to build Roadie and Wheels immediately.
Then watching the first and only season would show you at minimum what they could do in real life. To make them work in real life, he designed variants on the GOV-12 engine he built for the Mach 5 based off the ERX engine so FAB 1 and KITT had GOV-10, and Roadie and Wheels had GOV-8 which was optimized for what they could do on land, sea,… and air. Kylie was now more interested in these cars since he just inferred they could fly. This led Kylie to watching the pole position show; which was required viewing, and gaining an understanding of the cars capabilities. Kylie ran to the simulator having seen cars drive on land sea and start hovering meant that as she surmised the cockpit was full of controls for hydro mode and hover mode.
Kylie practiced on the simulator religiously and found she also had to gain the respect of the other drivers who were testing and driving Tenchi’s cars. She was the rookie again on the land and in the sky.But she was determined to work hard and get better. Especially since driving isn’t as easy as it looks nor is driving over 200 mph. Kylie had to work her way up the driver rankings: first was simulator testing once she got licensed for that she finally got to drive Wheels, he had been in the simulator with her technically the whole time day after day. And they got to know each other so when Kylie stepped into the real Wheels for the first time, they just took off and started blazing down the straightaway at 300 mph! All the drifting kinda paid off but Kylie needed to start at regular driver level, then she would progress to the race car driver level, and finally stunt car driver level.
Once she got that license she would attain rote mastery of driving Tenchi’s cars based on what the other drivers had to say and then would work on bringing out Wheel’s full potential which could only be achieved in semi automatic mode. Automatic was simple; Wheels would drive himself, Manual was simple; Kylie would drive and operate all the systems herself, But semiautomatic was the most difficult. On the face of it, it seemed simple Wheels does whatever you can’t since he can drive himself if you couldn’t do a maneuver or stunt at a certain speed he simply could but that was using semiautomatic as a crutch. Kylie once again found herself having to appreciate the way Tenchi did things If you didn’t know what you were doing and drove Roadie and Wheels you would simply rely on auto and semi auto to do everything for you you wouldn’t care about manual at all. You would just want to be a show off.
But if you mastered driving in manual mode then semi automatic became teamwork; you would do stuff and they would do stuff, your focus could be directed to whatever needed attention while they handled other things. Only top drivers and those with knowledge of how Tenchi’s vehicles worked would know this. So if you weren’t a part of his operation you would make a fool of yourself without realizing it. So Kylie determined to attain this level; practiced till she would fall asleep in Wheels which she could do just wake up get food delivered by telling the robots, or human staff to just put it on a tray and hang it from the door drive through style eat it then start driving. So together with Tenchi they test drove Roadie and Wheels until they mastered driving them.They would switch and drive each other’s cars to learn the subtle differences and worked on team driving as the final test.
Tenchi had made things more fun than he realized since he based the car interface and systems around video game driving. This worked exceedingly well when Pole Position video game cars Roadie and Wheels were built the testing infrastructure was crated already driving them made it feel like you were playing a game, which made it fun, so you drove till they fell asleep. There were missions and sub missions to accomplish in the training phases and that just made it too addicting for both of them. The windshields were actually see through metal and the hud display that came up on them could change from real life to video game 8, 16, 32, 64, or 128 bit, view mode. This unexpectedly made things easier to spot since they appeared as blocky and pixelated the hud would identify thing ahead of them no matted what view mode they were in anyway but when they wanted to immerse themselves in video game land the happily did. Then came the day when Interceptor tech was ported over to Roadie and Wheels this was based off another video game called spy hunter.
The car in it could drive on land and water and had offensive weapons which Roadie and Wheels didn’t. Unless you count Roadies robot arm buzz saw which they assumed was probably for cutting trees or other obstacles in they way; not people.This required another license test first in sim then in real life which Kylie, having become an experienced driver craved. She had been driving or piloting all kinds of vehicles on land, sea, and air but Wheels had become her favorite car. Kylie was also happy knowing that choosing between her plane and Wheels wasn’t a tough choice; flying gets you to places faster and once there you can drive around. The weapon Trucks from the spy hunter game could literally drive cross country and deliver Wheels wherever she wanted.
So she got to do both wherever she went! But summer vacation was ending and she would have to go back to New York soon… which sucked but she would simply have Tenchi’s mobile support systems sent to her “secret location” where she kept her plane and have a mini setup for flying or driving around. Kylie not wanting to seem to gracious, professionally thanked Tenchi for hiring her to be a driver and let her continue to outdrive, and outfly him. Tenchi said she was welcome and really needed to check if she had a fever and was just imagining things. They parted ways again and Kylie returned to her boring bookstore and paranormal investigation jobs. On her way back home Kylie thought to herself while smiling life is strange, but Tenchi makes it a little weirder.
THE END
