By G.R. Nanda

Nickel was more than happy to give Steve and Farrul a tour of the Eagle. They followed him sheepishly and were awestruck. He showed them the control room and took them to the lower level storage “basement,” explaining where everything was located and what was inside each chamber. Steve and Farrul’s eyes widened in surprise when Nickel opened his sleeping chamber. They were shocked at the comfort that was palpable in the sight of Nickel’s mattress, his pillows and his blankets. It was a sight of white cotton and fleece. It was a sight that promised warmth to them after sleeping in the cold of their withered tents for so long. 

Nickel’s sleeping chamber was a far cry from the comforts Nickel knew when he lived in civilization many months ago, but he knew why it would seem so appealing to Steve and Farrul. In fact, they looked too attracted by the sleeping chamber, so Nickel chose to spend less time there. He hurriedly closed the door and guided them up the elevator shaft to the control room. 

As soon as they were up, they could see a windstorm raging outside the windows.

“Spent too much time,” said Nickel. 

“You know what?” he suddenly said, “let’s just stay here.” He sighed in relief. “Just for a while.” He turned to face Steve and Farrul. They were the most haggard and exhausted they’d looked to Nickel since he’d met them. However, they were probably too tired to admit that they were wearing thin. Their bodies were hunched over and drooping. Their eyelids opened and closed erratically over glazed eyeballs. “We don’t need to acht-chi ourselves back to camp. Let’s just rest. I have some food.” 

Nickel brought Steve and Farrul back down to the basement and grabbed blankets and pillows from a storage chamber. Setting the items on the ground, they slept soundlessly under the strips of fluorescent lights encircling the roof. 

Nickel dreamed of many hazy images and murky places. He saw the Statue of Liberty, grey and looming against a red sky and above a sea of sloshing dark water. He saw the large blue domed roof of Hedonim. He saw himself on an island of rock jutting out of a cavern of darkness. On the island was himself, Steve and Farrul hanging out in their camp. This slumber of his was not vivid. There was no singing sorceress to pull him into the depths of a world beyond his own mind. 

Nickel was standing in a small room illuminated by an overhanging chandelier of electric light bulbs. In front of him was a large armchair. The person sitting in it gave a hearty laugh. Nickel moved in front and could see a short middle-aged man sporting a black goatee and reading a paperback book seated in the chair. This man was Nickel’s dad. Dad smiled at Nickel, showing small white teeth. There were footsteps in an adjacent room. Sounds of clattering plates and silverware came from there too. It was his mom in the kitchen. The bulbs in the chandelier slowly dimmed. Shadows played across dad’s face. He still smiled and his eyes twinkled in the coming darkness. 

“Time to go to bed, would you say so, Nickel?” he said. 

That was the last scene Nickel remembered when he was awoken by Farrul rummaging his pillows and blankets. It was a world long gone. It wasn’t exactly what his household looked like, but he recognized the essence. Instead of feeling loss or regret, Nickel felt satisfaction and warmth. 

Farrul squinted at Nickel. He was still sleepy eyed. 

“What’s up?” said Farrul. “What are we gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” said Nickel. He rolled over and stuffed his face in his pillow. “I just woke up. I haven’t had time to think about anything.”

“What if we just lived here?” asked Farrul. 

“No!” said Nickel into his pillow. He turned his head and spoke into the open air. “The Eagle’s out of fuel I’ll run out of food soon. I haven’t restocked at a sky-sport in like a month.” He exhaled sharply. “Let’s wake up Steve.” 

“Why?” asked Farrul. 

“I don’t know what to do. He probably does.” Nickel felt a sinking in his chest. He didn’t want to get up from under his blankets. The mood of tranquility he had awoken to was now being replaced by a begrudging anticipation of the confusion he would have to work through in the waking day. His eyes opened wide as his reality sunk in. A knot twisted in his chest as he realized that if the Eagle didn’t start moving soon, he’d run out of food and die. Or would he? Nicke got up on his knees. 

“How long have we been sleeping?” he asked. 

“Pretty long,” said Farrul. 

“Have you been keeping track?” said Nickel. 

“I can tell from what I hear outside. I woke up a couple times and fell back asleep. The weather’s been on and off. I can hear how strong the winds are outside. It’ll storm and stop. Storm an’ stop. But I’ve been hearin’ a lot of storming. When the wind kicks up super loud at the beginning. That’s when I usually wake up.”

Steve mumbled softly, alerting Farrul and Nickel to his sleeping body. 

“Who says we gotta listen to him?” said Farrul. Nickel looked at Farrul with eyes scrunched in uncertainty and suspicion. His mouth opened to retort back, but he didn’t know what to say. “Look, Nickel – look at him. If we didn’t listen to him, there’s really not much he could do about it. He’s pretty old and he’s been out here longer than I have, so he’s been getting sicker than me. Like – I’m pretty bad, but he’s way worse. He’s done the acht-chi way more than I have. And that last one he did really messed him up. I haven’t seen him this exhausted.” 

Nickel shook his head. 

“No!” he said, frowning. “He did that for me! He went into that trance for me! I’m not going to leave him behind. I’m not selfish like that – like……..” He firmly closed his mouth in scowl before he could say, “you.” 

“I’ve been awake longer than you, Nickel,” said Farrul. “I just stayed in my blankets because this place is so warm. I finally have something to rely on for safety other than Steve. I was awake with him at camp when you passed out in the tent. He was crying! He was crying, Nickel! I’ve never seen  him crying before. No wonder he got emotional after you told him your dream! He’s a wreck. This time he did the acht-chi might actually do him in for good!”

“Why are you excited about that?” scoffed Nickel. His frown deepened. He was really getting angry now. 

“I’m not excited!” exclaimed Farrul. “I’m not excited about my best friend and the closest thing I’ve had to a dad almost dying – okay? I’m legitimately trying to work things out and plan. We have to be realistic about how long Steve’s gonna last and how he’d be now. I’ve known him way longer than you! He never told you about how much money he lost in Hedonim. He isn’t as wise as you think he is.” Now Farrul frowned. “Listen: nothing in my life has felt in my control! You’ve been able to control this hovercraft. Me? None of that! I’ve had to listen to Steve for everything because I had nothing better. Now I have you and the Eagle. You should teach me how to use it. I’ve never learned how to fly a hovercraft and if you taught me, I could get out in the world on my own.” 

“I could teach you, fine. But if you left on a hovercraft on your own, you’d probably end up like me for the past couple months – wandering alone without a purpose and without friends. I don’t like anything you said about leaving Steve behind in the dust. He knows more about Hedonim and the Desolate Plains that I do.” Nickel stood up and walked around the basement, moving in a circle around the elevator while avoiding the chambers. His head was buzzing with thought and agitation. He felt better grounded in the motion of his legs. “Look, if Steve wants me to do something crazy, I won’t do it. But I don’t want to be alone anymore. I need people and I do want their help and guidance! He’s not only a father to you. He could be one for me until I can return back to dad. I thought flying alone in the Eagle could set me free. But it hasn’t. I really don’t know as much as I thought I did. I need a mentor.” Farrul got up and followed him around the basement. Nickel didn’t look behind him. “Look! I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but I need help!”

“Yeah, I think I made it clear that I’ll help you,” said Farrul. 

“Not exactly,” said Nickel. He stopped walking and whirled to face Farrul. “You want to be rid of Steve. I can’t be rid of him!”

“Why not?” said Farrul. 

“I just can’t,” said Nickel. “Not after everything he’s told me. He knows the most out of all of us. He’s probably lived to make more mistakes than either of us. We could learn from them.”

“Enough about me,” grumbled Steve, startling Nickel and Farrul. He stretched on the center of the floor. “Let’s talk more about food. There’s no use in arguing over an empty stomach. Hunger makes you stupid and angry. And I’m hungry!”

“Yeah, I am too,” said Nickel. He was glad he could end his conversation with Farrul.

By G.R. Nanda

“Why do you hate me?” asked Nickel. Farrul was huddled facedown on his knees and his arms were wrapped around them. Steve was knocked out cold, laid down behind him. Farrul slowly raised his head. He had stopped shivering. His eye twitched and flakes of crystal around it fell off. 

“I don’t hate you,” said Farrul. “I’m just trying to be careful.”

“You’re being a floppy john,” said Nickel.

“Don’t swear at me,” said Farrul, frowning and speaking an octave higher. 

Nickel scoffed and shook his head. 

“Look,” Nickel started. “We’re in this together.”

“No,” began Nickel, “ – we’re not.”

“Right now we’re in this together,” said Nickel. 

“Listen. If you’ve dealt with life the way I’ve dealt with it, you’d understand. I wouldn’t take it personal if I were you.” 

“How old are you?” asked Nickel. 

“Why are you asking?” said Farrul. 

“I want to understand you – get to know you.”

“Why would it matter to you?”

“I want to know you. I’m here with you. Will be for a long time. Might as well get to know you – you know?”

“I’m 15. How old are you?”

“16.”

“Not far apart huh?”

“No,” said Nickel. A smile played at a corner of his lips. “I guess we’re not.” 

“I only meant by age,” said Farrul unsmiling. “Other than that we’re pretty glibbing far apart.”

“You said no swearing,” said Nickel. 

“We’re pretty far apart,” said Farrul. 

“In what way?” said Nickel. 

Farrul didn’t respond. 

“I was born on November 18th, 2183,” said Nickel. 

“I’m July 7th, 2184,” said Farrul. 

“Huh,” said Nickel. “So if we were going to school, we’d be in the same grade.” 

Farrul said nothing. “10th grade,” said Nickel. “We’d be sophomores.” Nickel looked down at his lap and sighed. “Well, that kind of life – the normal life isn’t an option for us now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Farrul. Silence followed. “You’re talking to me even though I said I would kill you a while ago.”

“Yeah, well I’ve had worse said to me,” said Nickel. “Plus who else is there here to talk to?” To Nickel the sound of blowing wind seemed louder after he said those words. 

“Are you trying to be relatable?” asked Farrul. “Are you trying to make me relate to you?”

“No!” said Nickel. “I mean – I don’t know.”

“I don’t know much anymore,” said Nickel. “Nothing makes sense.” 

“That’s because you’ve lived your whole life until now making sense,” said Farrul. “I haven’t. My whole life has been like this.” Farrul looked up and squinted, appearing like he was in the middle of a thought. “Maybe not my whole life. Most of it. Everything I remember. Life became desperate for me since I was probably 4. After I ran away when my mom died.” There was a guttural noise in Farrul’s throat. He stopped speaking and frowned deeply. Nickel took it that that was all Farrul could manage to say. 

“That burns,” said Nickel. 

“Yeah,” said Farrul, “it does.” 

“Really though,” he said. “Don’t take it personal.” Nickel frowned. 

“You keep saying that, then you keep telling me why you hate me and why we’re different from each other,” said Nickel. 

“Hate keeps me alive,” said Farrul. 

“You sure about that?” asked Nickel. “You don’t look too great right now, all hateful and such. You’re sick and you look demented.” 

“Everything is confusing for me too,” said Farrul, “so hate gives me sustenance. Something to hold on to. Something to understand. There’s nothing else I can understand.”

Nickel opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. 

“You know, I get that,” said Nickel, sighing. “I actually get that.” 

Suddenly, Farrul chuckled. Nickel looked at Farrul with eyes squinting in bemusement. 

“Sometimes hating is harder than I think it is,” said Farrul. His face twitched. It was now visible that he was suppressing a smile. The edges of his lips upturned and then he forced them downwards. He let out what was half of an exhale and half of a laugh. 

“Who the glibb am I kidding?’ he yelled. He burst into loud giggles. Nickel giggled too. They snorted and howled with laughter. 

“WHAT THE GLIBB?” shouted Nickel. 

“Yeah, right?” said Farrul. 

“We’re both gonna die someday anyways!” said Nickel. Both of the boys squeezed their eyes and rocked side to side as they shook in fits of laughter. “Oh………man – that’s crazy.” 

Their laughter dwindled and they chuckled softly. Soon enough, their laughter had subsided entirely. Farrul was leaning his back against the tent with his knees bent and Nickel leaned out of his sack, lying on his side with his shoulder pushing into the ground. They both smiled sheepishly. 

Their eyes drifted to Steve. His large belly slowly rose and fell. Long graying strands of hair stuck out of a thin patch of skin exposed at the bottom of his shirt. His shaggy hair hung over his eyes. He snored loudly and drool seeped out of his gaping mouth. 

“So…………. he’s the one who’s going to tell us how to get out of here?” said Nickel. “Can’t even keep the drool in of his mouth. I mean I don’t know if I can either – but that’s a whole lot of composure right there.” Nickel and Farrul fell back into guffawing. 

“He’s probably dreaming of Hedonim hookers!” said Farrul. He pointed at Steve’s pants. “Just wait till his pants start r-”

Steve growled loudly and lunged upwards at Farrul. He grabbed Farrul’s head and in one swift motion, wrapping an arm around it, tucked Farrul’s entire noggin under his armpit. 

“You’re so funny, eh?” said Steve grinning widely. Farrul was yelling unintelligibly. He was also smiling. “I know you, boy! You wish you was the one dreaming! Don’t project your adolescent fantasies onto me!” He let go of Farrul. His hair was even more disheveled and many of the pale blue flakes had fallen off his body. Steve patted Farrul on his back. Farrul was still grinning, showcasing his grey teeth. 

“Any man who lets me hassle him is a good man in my book,” said Steve. “In return, I help him out and show him what I’ve learned.” Steve eyed Nickel. “That goes for you too, sir. Keep that in mind.”

Nickel smiled awkwardly. Steve stood up. He grabbed a flask of water and took a long swig. Once he finished, he put it down and burped. 

“I better stay standing. Or else, I’ll keep passing out. There’s no use in that.” He looked at Nickel. 

“Your hovercraft might just be the only thing that could get us out of here. You want to take us?” After a pause, he said, “your choice.” 

“I do want to,” said Nickel. Thinking about the American Eagle made him remember an unpleasant truth. “But I just now remembered – the Eagle’s running low on fuel. It’s my fault. But I didn’t know I’d get stuck in a windstorm. I don’t have enough fuel to fly high enough to recharge my ion concentration in the ionosphere.” 

“That’s tough,” said Steve. “Most people who get stuck in these plains can’t leave unless they make it to Hedonim. It seems like all you have left to do is use the Eagle, however long it takes to safely make it to Hedonim.”

“Yeah,” said Nickel. He said nothing afterwards, invoking an uncomfortable silence during which he was yet again filled with wariness about helping two people he’d just met. But their shared experiences in dreamworld held him back from leaving Steve and Farrul behind. 

“I have a working knowledge of these plains,” said Steve. “I haven’t traveled on foot far from here, but I’ve seen this place from high above. There are clusters of high rock in different places. You would want to watch out for the signs that you’re getting closer to them. Getting over them would be very hard. The same thing goes for chasms. I’ve seen wrecked tunnels and turbines from above. I think there’s a group of tunnels to the west, turbines tons of miles past that and then an old transport terminal – the one that was in your dream to the north of that. I’ve seen what the power plant looked like back in the day. Once we figure where we are in relation to some of the bigger stuff here, I can see where everything ends and where Hedonim begins. Going out there is really our only hope. That sound good to you, Nickel?”

“Yeah,” Nickel muttered. He couldn’t think of any better option. 

“A windstorm will start up soon,” said Steve. “We’ll wait for it to end before going to your ship.” 

“So we missed shine-day I guess,” said Farrul sighing. “No meds for the rest of the week.” 

“But we’ve got something better,” said Steve. 

“Steve, just hours ago you were yelling at me for messing up shine-day!” said Farrul. 

“That doesn’t matter now. Not when we’ve got a big opportunity on our hands.”

They waited in an erratic atmosphere of angst inside of the tent. Soon enough, the windstorm started outside. The frame of the tent shuddered and the walls flapped loudly. The wooden chest shook up and down. Nickel got out of the sleeping sack and sat cross-legged against the wall. His body was strained, but frenetic with anticipation of the ordeals to come. 

He wouldn’t be living inside the Eagle alone anymore. It was a liberation. As the thought settled into his mind, he felt a release from the routine of the past months, but also felt overwhelmed at the prospect of a new life to come. Steve and Farrul huddled against the tent, sitting and staring ahead with eyes that showed the same feeling of anxiety and excitement. 

When the wind outside receded from a screaming howl to a whistle, Steve got up. 

“Time to go,” he said. Farrul slowly stood up. 

Get up, Nickel told himself. It didn’t work. Farrul looked at Nickel expectantly. Nickel stretched his legs and moved towards Steve and the entrance of the entrance of the tent. 

If he had a chance to live with people again, Nickel would not mess up by letting them down. In that instant, he decided that being alone was one of the worst things in the world.

Once they’d all stepped outside and Nickel had closed up the tent’s interior curtain and the tent itself, he caught sight of the Eagle. It was still looming in front of the campsite, obscured by orange and parked in the same location and position as before the storm. 

“My god, that’s a hell of a craft,” muttered Steve. “……..beautiful.” 

“You didn’t see it before?” asked Nickel. 

“After a windstorm, fog clears out for a bit,” said Steve. “Then the curtain goes back up.”

“Oh – in that case, LET’S GO!” said Nickel. He started towards his hovercraft, standing tall and unmoving less than a mile away. Nickel heard Steve and Farrul’s footsteps from behind, but swaths of air were still billowing around him, pushing him from many directions. So he slowed his pace until he was jogging. Even that was disorienting. He felt dizzy and the Eagle was now to his left, in the direction opposite to the force of most of the wind. 

Nickel stopped and surveyed the landscape. He had strayed too far. The Eagle appeared in the orange ahead of him, but to the left, only a couple meters away. 

“Nickel!” shouted Farrul. “Come back! Your ship’s here! You’re going the wrong way!” Nickel saw Farrul and Steve’s faint bodies a long way behind him to the left. He took off after them, meeting them with their arms around each other, slowly moving forward. 

“The storm’s over, but the wind isn’t done dying,” said Steve. “Stay with us.” Nickel did as he was told and together, they made it to the hull of the ship. They weren’t sure it was there until they touched its hard surface, soaking in the fog. 

“Allright, how do we get in?” asked Steve. 

“Through the side, behind,” said Nickel. “Wait – something’s off………. I think I’m missing something.” Steve and Farrul stared at Nickel while he tried to solve the mystery in silence. 

“Was it what you were wearing when you met us?” asked Steve.

 “DAMN IT!” exclaimed Nickel. “My glibbing bod-suit! That’s actually important.” 

“Do you want to go get it?” asked Steve. “We’ve only got so much time before another storm. 20 to 30 minutes.” 

Nickel silently pondered his options. 

“No,” he said. “I want to show you guys inside. Plus, I don’t know if I can leave you guys inside alone. The craft is tricky when you’re not used to it.” Nickel walked along the hull of the ship to the left. He motioned his hand for them to follow him. “Wouldn’t want you guys getting hurt, or you guys hurting the American Eagle.” 

Farrul was in awe. Entrails of orange fog swam around the large beast of a machine that Nickel was guiding him and Steve towards. It was tall. Looming. Rusted, but magnificent. The entire hull had a greyish sheen, dotted and striped with red splotches of rust. 

His breath caught in his throat. Steve planted a foot forward, leaning on Farrul, pushing him forward. He followed Steve’s movement, walking alongside the old man. They moved around the curve of the hovercraft. 

Feelings of overwhelming hatred and distrust resurfaced. What did he do to get this craft? Why should I trust him? Those feelings and thoughts were soon blotted out by awe and intimidation. We’re still going? How long is this hovercraft? He continued to follow Nickel. The movement of his limbs uninterrupted by his thoughts and emotions. 

“How-” rasped Farrul. He cleared his throat. “How long is this hovercraft?”

“Pretty long, but we’re almost there!” replied Nickel without turning around. “Just keep – oh! Watch out – for these knobs right here!” he said, tapping rectangular boxes protruding from the side of the craft. There was a dull echo. Nickel walked over the knobs. 

“Yeah,” said Farrul. He wanted to say that he would have taken the precaution without being told. However, the agency of his voice died, leaving him silent. The closer he got to the knob, the more he could see a darkness near it. It was becoming sharper, even darkening the orange fog moving through. 

When he passed the boxes, he looked up and saw wide triangular wings jutting out from the Eagle. When he moved to see its rear, he saw incredibly large circular ports embedded into it. He guessed that was where the exhaust came out from or where the engines were. 

“Alright, now follow me!” said Nickel. 

“We already are,” said Farrul. 

“No, but follow me into here,” said Nickel. He was still facing forward. He ran to a wide square-shaped hatch. It was the same rusted color as the body of the ship. Nickel jerked the circular latch at the center in one turning motion. 

There was a loud click followed by the door squealing as Nickel pulled it open against the entranceway. Orange air moved into the Eagle. 

“All right, I think I………….” started Nickel, before receding into mumbles. 

Farrul and Steve walked towards the open hatch immediately. 

“Oh, man, I can’t wait to go inside,” said Farrul. Steve nudged him forward with his weight. “Glibb man! I’ve been waiting for so many glibbing years. Been stuck out here in this shithole for so long,” Farrul whimpered. He couldn’t help himself. His mother would hate to see how things turned out for him. Crying for a hovercraft to save him. 

Why can’t she be here? thought Farrul. His arm loosened around Steve who wobbled with insecurity. Why can’t she be saved like me? He started sobbing quietly. 

“Let’s go!” he cried. He used his little energy as forcefully as possible. He walked very fast. Steve stumbled even more, trying to catch up with Farrul. 

“Wait!” said Nickel, holding out his hand. 

“No!” said Farrul. “I’ve been waiting so-”

“Listen to him!” hissed Steve. “You’ll be fine!” He thumped Farrul’s chest. 

What am I doing? thought Farrul. 

“Allright,” he said. He couldn’t let his emotions best him. Anger and aggression helped him fight back in the foster programs and labor camps he got switched around after his mother died, but the anger and aggression always hurt. Farrul was tired of hurting. “Allright, I’m sorry.” He stood still against Steve who chose to lean against the Eagle. The water that had been forming at his eyes wavered and a familiar deadbeat exhaustion swept through him, replacing his momentary anger and frustration. 

Nickel stood and looked at them with troubled eyes for a while, until he relaxed and looked at his feet, before swiftly walking through the entranceway. He slammed the door behind him and it clicked loudly. 

After a long moment of howling, but slowing wind, Nickel opened the entrance hatch and holding it open, beckoned Steve and Farrul inside. Where the orange entrails of fog neared the opening in the entrance, bright interior lights made the orange a lighter shade. 

The light cast itself as a bright halo on Nickel’s body. Nickel’s eyes were smaller, softer. He suddenly smiled, the edges of his mouth stretching in quick spurts until they were wide with warmth. 

“Come,” Nickel said softly. 

He looked like an angel beckoning Farrul into heaven. In that moment, Farrul realized that all it took was one angelic character to lay out a hand – to offer kindness in a world – in a life of cruelty and despair. This was one of the few moments in his life – this was one of the few people who touched Farrul with kindness and charity. His mother came before. Then Steve. Now Nickel. 

“Go,” whispered Steve. He planted a foot forward. Farrul had lost himself in the moment and Steve was too exhausted to walk by himself. Farrul gritted his teeth and trudged forward alongside Steve, moving closer to the light of the American Eagle until he was enveloped in it.

By G.R. Nanda

Fearing another slap to the face, Nickel narrated his dream, stammering and pausing to catch his breath. Throughout Nickel’s recollection, Steve looked on, frowning and unflinching. However, his eyes relaxed and a small smile formed on his lips when Nickel mentioned the singing woman who followed him, unseen. As Nickel continued to speak, Steve continued to frown.

He told Steve about running outside while being chased by soldiers with guns. He told him about burning alive, then falling down the cliff. Recalling the memory made him shudder with discomfort, despite it fading into the abyss of memory and dream. Finally he told him about the visions he had while falling into the large dome. 

When Nickel stopped speaking, Steve just nodded his head and sighed. No one spoke and all Nickel heard was the wind outside. 

“What was all of that?” said Nickel. “It was so vivid. The most vivid dream I’ve ever had.” 

“These are the things you see when you perform the acht-chi, the trance that we terrestrial wanderers have learned to use over time. But use it sparingly, because over time it will kill you.”

Nickel’s eyes widened in fear. 

“What did you do to me?” Nickel shouted. His chest bobbed up and down as he began to breathe heavily. Steve reached out and pressed his hand on Nickel’s sleeping sack above his chest.

“Calm down, Nickel,” Steve said. “Breathe slower. Bring your-.” Nickel shot his hand out of his sack and shoved Steve’s arm away. 

“What did you do to me?” Nickel screamed. 

“I opened you to a world you were hiding from on your hovercraft!” said Steve. “I promise-Nickel-I promise I won’t make you perform the acht-chi anytime soon! The acht-chi is the only path to dreamworld. When you inhale these orange fumes, you see outside of yourself, through the fume all across these plains.” 

“I have the dreams and so does Farrul. We all see different things in dreamworld. With enough dreamers, we have enough pieces of the puzzle.” Steve nodded his head and smiled. “I think we have all the pieces of the puzzle.”

“What do you mean?” asked Nickel. 

“I think the dreaming has finally been worth it,” said Steve. “You don’t know. I’ve been dreaming so much, it’s killing me! It’s stretching me! Wearing me thin. Weakening my nervous system — making it weaker than it’s already been made in this wasteland.” Steve’s face twisted in pained expression. He moved away from Nickel and leaned against the tent. His eyes were watery and glazed over. 

“That’s what it does to you,” he whispered. “Slowly, bit by bit, it will kill you. You feel great — powerful when you do the acht-chi. Then after the electricity leaves you, you crash. The more you do it, the more your body will degenerate.” He shook his head. “I won’t do that to you. I only need to see through your mind-see what the sorceress wants you to see. Then I can piece it all together.”

“Sorceress?” said Nickel. “What sorceress? What’s dreamworld? I don’t believe in magic! What’s going on?”

“Magic?” said Steve. “Magic is in the eye of the beholder. Is the kraken magic? No, my friend. You can walk over the canyons into the depths of the basin, beyond the Ghost City into the bottom of the dried up ocean and what’s there? What’s there, Nickel? What’s there are the cracked dried up festering skeletons of SQUIDS! The kraken is real!” 

“The lady sorceress is real,” said Farrul in a low voice. “She sings to us in our dreams. She sings to those who perform the acht-chi and shows us what’s beyond these canyons. You can’t pretend this stuff. I don’t pretend!” Farrul’s shivering and flaky face frowned and he spoke his next words in a growl. “Don’t you take us to be some lying savages or crackpots! I know that’s what us — the suffering — look like to you fancy flyboys cruisin’ around safe in your goddamn glibbing spaceships!” He spat the last words, spittle flying from his lips and landing at Nickel’s sack. 

“I don’t have a spaceship,” muttered Nickel. “If you’d told me about the acht-chi and dreamworld before, I wouldn’t have believed you. I would’ve thought of it as a-a-a hallucination, the hallucinations of the sick and dying. Or something else. I would have resorted to science. But nothing I’ve seen in dreamworld can be explained by any of the science I’ve learned so far.”

He locked eyes with Farrul. “I believe you. It’s impossible for me not to. Not after I saw those silver men and that place — that big glowing place with the skyscrapers and half-naked women. It was all so….. lucid.” Nickel closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his forehead. The dream experience was fading. But the images, the sounds- they still haunted him. Motherless men, suddenly rang the voice of the woman – the sorceress in Nickel’s head. Fighting nature’s amends. The feeling of burning was gone, but the memory of hot light and his charring skin remained. Nickel looked at Farrul and Steve. 

“Nothing feels the same,” Nickel said. “Nothing would ever be the same if I went back to my ship. Trust me, I believe you.” 

“That’s good,” said Steve. “Because we need your dream, a third dream is what we needed to make a bigger picture. Narrating it after awakening helps you hold the memory of the dream.” 

“What do you guys see in your dreams?” asked Nickel. 

“Farrul never did the acht-chi today. I did though. I saw what I usually see, plus a little more or in some different part, just as usual. I saw a dark place at the bottom of the canyon. I saw phantoms, pale blue projections of people using AR technology, fooling around at the bottom of the canyon. I saw them walking beyond me and beyond the windows in front of me. These windows were huge and sticking out of the canyon floor. After that, I always get pushed by the wind onto a highway. I’m just rolling down these dark, long and winding roads. Sometimes, I slam into cars and hovercrafts. But no one’s ever inside of them. Then, I fall into caves where I see machinery and glowing contraptions. Then, there’s always a creepy tall man with spectacles, sitting in an armchair.” 

“When I’m in dreamworld, I see a place up above,” said Farrul. “I roll down a rock face and then I crash down on the roof of a hotel. I fall in and I get stuck in a massive piano. The piano plays super loud while the lady sings all around me. But of course, I can’t see the bitch. She sings words like, ‘piano keys humming. Machine guns are drumming.’ Then the lights go out. Silver soldiers fire their guns at me and I go down the hotel. Everything falls.” He stopped speaking and frowned at Nickel. “Why should I tell you any of this?” 

“I don’t know,” muttered Nickel. “But it seems like all of our dreams take place in the same canyon around here. If it’s all real, then it’s not probably not far off from here.” 

“Yes!” said Steve. “Connecting the dots already. For some reason, the sorceress wanted a third dreamer to show us the whole picture. Farrul always talked about a glowing blue city outside of the hotel, long cables stretching into the horizon, communication towers and broken roads. I knew they were connected by the singing sorceress, but I had no clue how the places were connected. Same landmass. Rocky. Orange. But now-” He spread his arms and tilted his shaking palms towards Nickel. “Now I see. We needed you. I needed you. It was for the dream you just had. It was for that you were destined to fall from the sky with an arc to give me a vision and save me-save us from destitution!” Steve’s arms shook uncontrollably. His face twisted and tears fell out of his eyes. 

“You gotta be kidding me,” said Farrul, laughing and shaking his head. He scowled at Nickel. “We don’t come from where you come!” he growled. “We’re not privileged like you!” He coughed. “Nothing we do is to serve you. I wanna make that clear!” 

“What did I do to piss you off?” said Nickel, edging out of his sleeping sack and up the surface of the tent behind him to level his head with Farrul’s. 

“Only beat me to the ground!” said Farrul. 

“That wasn’t even that hard though!” said Nickel. “And you went after me first!”

“Listen!” spat Farrul. “I don’t owe you anything because you came out of the sky in a hovercraft, wearing a fancy body-suit. You’re no Messiah to me. If I needed to, I could kill you myself. I might be sick, but I’ve suffered in this weather long enough to learn some tricks you don’t know.” 

“SILENCE!” said Steve, flinching out of his sob into a hardened angry face, and sitting up rigidly. Nickel jerked backwards and Farrul ceased rocking. “I’ll have none of this! None of this threatening or blaming!” He scowled with glowering eyes as his right hand pointed upwards. “Nickel is no Messiah! No chosen one! And I never said so. But his arrival will save us and killing him won’t help us.” 

He whirled to his right towards a hunched over Farrul. “If you even try to harm or kill anyone here — in any way — I will make you feel pain worse than being shredded by the teeth of a glibb!” He wheezed loudly. His eyelids moved closer to each other and falling back onto the wall of the tent, he breathed deeply through an open mouth. 

Nickel felt uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure what to think of Steve’s feelings. It was clear to him that Farrul was jealous of him, but he thought that Steve might be making it worse. 

“I still don’t understand what the place in our dreams is,” said Nickel, trying to steer the dialogue away from anger. “I mean — is it all even one single place?” 

“The Desolate Plains weren’t always desolate, Nickel,” said Steve. “Long ago a power plant of some sort existed where we’re camping. It was all part of an energy suppliant infrastructure stretching all around the bottom of the dried up Atlantic ocean. Seafloor farming. Big powerful generators of electricity were here. If you traveled far enough, you might see their wreckage. It’s ugly.”

“The volatile atmosphere was harnessed. Big fast winds were located at their hotspots and used for power. Everything was big and fast and exciting. People visited from their shrinking and dried up countries to see this new technology at the bottom of the seafloor.” 

“This was a glibbing tourism destination believe it or not!” Steve said, chuckling and waving his arms around. “The winds weren’t this bad and windstorms mostly occured in pocketed areas where air density was unique enough for them to be harnessed for energy.”

“But there were accidents. Accidents with the radiation plants and their power generators. At first they were contained. Their sectors were shut down. But people were foolish. They kept the tourism going. People went on tours of the plant in hovercrafts, traveling in safe channels carved into the plains. And these plains were getting windier and really toxic.”

“You see — this large-scale power plant was powering an even bigger tourism destination, tacked away at the bottom of the canyon — the entertainment, extravaganza-theme-park-of-a-city  — the city of Hedonim! It was the new Las Vegas! No more Vegas. No more Dubai! No more Orlando! It was all Hedonim now! That’s where all the fun was. Every real-estate firm was applying for property there. Casinos, amusement parks, city squares, theaters, restaurants, strip-clubs, brothels, hotels, motels. All of that was built there. You had shows all around the city. People pouring in, people pouring out. No one stayed. Virtual reality parks galore. It was addicting. If you didn’t exercise some self-control, it could swallow you whole. You’d lose a gambling bet or waste money on those slot machines, or get too wasted, then you’re barfing on the pavement, facedown without a place to sleep while everyone’s walking past you disgusted.”

“But for most people, you dipped in and out quick enough, you’d feel a shit ton of dopamine, but little enough to keep you sane. A lot of pleasure was guaranteed in Hedonim. Especially a lot of sex.” 

“Was a young man in Hedonim once.” Steve grinned sheepishly. His eyes were glazed over. “Felt a lot of things in myself and a woman for the first time there.” 

Farrul snorted. 

“How hard is it to say that you had sex with hookers in Hedonim?” said Farrul. “Are you still ashamed of buying prostitutes?”

Steve frowned and slowly turned to Farrul. 

“You shut the glibb up right now!” said Steve. “I don’t need these little comments from you! They’re all besides the point! I’ve gotten laid before! That’s more than you can say!” He laughed loudly, wheezing when he was finished. “Isn’t that right?” he chuckled. “That’s more than you too Nickel,” he said looking at Nickel. “I don’t expect a boy born into military conduct to have lost his until marriage.”

“Now listen boys,” he said, raising his hands and looking at the two boys. “If you listen to me — do as I say, both of you,” he said pointing at them, “might have time to lose yours with a ghost in Hedonim.”

“Ok — alright,” said Nickel, feeling uncomfortable. “Tell me more about Hedonim and what else is out there in these canyons. “I thought Hedonim was a failed seafloor basin city in the Atlantic Ocean. I thought the amusement parks went bankrupt and glibbed up their whole economy until everyone left.”

“Oh, no,” said Steve. He snorted. “Back in my day, everyone could try to learn this stuff on the internet. I hadn’t realized how uninformed Americans are without it.”

“It wasn’t the amusement parks going bankrupt,” said Steve. “It was an accident here at the power plant that used to exist.”

“What?” said Nickel. 

“The overseers were reckless. They maintained a tourism environment –built it as fast and for as cheap as they could. Combustion was a usual occurrence here. They’d just move their man-made channels and hovercrafts away from the combustion for the tourists. But soon enough, that wasn’t enough. Whole place blew up. Hundreds of thousands died. But the damage didn’t stop there.” 

“Toxic radiation from the plant spreads throughout the atmosphere. The already volatile atmosphere is made worse. That’s how we got here, kid. That’s what all this orange gas is outside.”

“How are you not dead?” asked Nickel. “How am I not dead?” 

“I’ve told you,” said Steve, “It only weakens you and your immune system. Doesn’t kill you directly. But look-” Steve raised his arms. “I’m no expert. I’ve just gathered information. I’m no scientist. I’m just a cook. Everything I’m saying is what I’ve observed over time and what people smarter and more knowledgeable have told me, or I’ve heard them saying.” 

“But this gas gets down into Hedonim, makes the whole place inhospitable. Bye-bye industry! Everyone leaves as fast as they can. Lot o’ money’s lost. But guess what? The capitalists can’t leave it alone. Too much money’s been invested on it! Whaddya’ gonna do about the whole structures — whole skyscrapers that’ve been put up there?”

“You revamp the place. That’s what you do. Virtual reality’s been big in entertainment tech! You had them in Hedonim. But hold up! There’s AR! Augmented reality, projecting things and places that don’t exist onto your physical environment. Governor of Hedonim calls up Wutobang group from China and the AR division of GSN from America, two hotshot AR techie groups to turn Hedonim into one big ole AR theme park.”

“AR theme park?’ said Nickel. “But I thought the atmosphere made Hedonim toxic.”

“You see,” said Steve, “a completely new network of fiber optic cables was built for Hedonim, by a joint company called Hedonim Enterprises made out of Wutobang and GSN. The whole network of cables runs along the seafloor to the east coast of America. On the east coast, rich people hang out in state of the art AR haptic projection rigs. People rig themselves up to ARP rigs and a 3D holographic avatar of their bodies appear on the streets of Hedonim. Every inch of Hedonim was coated in optimized silicone latex to send information to computer banks through the cables and vice versa. In an ARP rig, you can see, feel and hear in Hedonim as if you were walking in Hedonim. Because it’s your avatar walking in Hedonim. Not you.”

There was silence. No one spoke. 

“Holy shit,” said Nickel, “…….so that’s what’s in my dream?” 

“Yes,” said Steve. “That’s what’s in all of our dreams. Hedonim.” 

“But how does the singing lady fit in?’ asked Nickel. 

“We don’t know,” said Steve. “But she’s been a part of the acht-chi for a long time. And the acht-chi is all that we can trust besides past knowledge.” 

“But I’ve never even seen anything about Hedonim on the Eagle’s navigation computer when I was piloting around this area,” said Nickel. 

“That’s because yours is a military craft, which means its computers only have military protocol information. I’m guessing it’s geographical mapping extends to routes taken in the Medditerranean War.”

“Yeah,” said Nickel. “I forgot.” Nickel then sat in silence, astounded by how much he didn’t know. He felt like the world was crushing him in how much of it was unknown to him.  

“The world was a lot smaller before the nuclear war,” said Steve. “For us, born after it, we have to look outside and parse through all the wreckage to really see what the world is about. Now that the internet isn’t as big as it used to be, that’s even harder than before.” 

“Our way out of here is into Hedonim. It’s the only known settlement close to us.” Steve smiled. “And we have a path into it.”

“How do you know our dreams are right?” asked Nickel. 

“He doesn’t,” said Farrul. “This is really our only choice. We’ve just been guessing the best we could.”

“We’ve been waiting for the dreams to connect,” said Steve. “We’ve been waiting for your dream, Nickel.” Farrul scowled behind Steve. 

“I knew Farrul and I were seeing Hedonim. But I had no clue where to look. Your dream shows me that it’s in a basin below this rock formation. And we have your hovercraft to look for Hedonim in.” Steve laughed. “I have no enlightened logic to explain the dreams, the acht-chi or the singing sorceress. But the sorceress wanted us to find you. She sees all and has gifted you with a sight from your dream.” Tears streamed down Steve’s face again. “I don’t know who or where the powers of fate are, but they’ve gifted us with your arrival. For that, we must be active and use what we have! We must go to Hedonim!”

Despite his surge of inspiration, Steve closed his eyes and his body slumped to the ground as he passed out.

By G.R. Nanda

Nickel stood on the rocky orange terrain of his dream amongst a gentle breeze of orange air caressing his hair. He wasn’t wearing his body-suit. Instead, he was adorning the night clothes he slept in on the Eagle: thin woolen pajamas. The sleeves of his shirt and his pants fluttered in the wind. 

His bare feet were caked in gravel, but it was soft and the particles were miniscule. Instead of stabbing him, they were small pin-pricks against his naked soles. 

“Over the canyons……….,” sang a lithe female voice from far off in the distance, loud and clear. The echoes of her voice murmured around Nickel. “Come the men with the loud guns………”

Suddenly, the wind picked up, howling and searing Nickel’s skin. 

“Coming for loved ones…..” The sound of cracks pierced the air. Quick spurts of chaos sounded, followed by whistlings and roarings. There were the sounds of crashes and booms. Nickel realized that he was listening to gunfire. 

“Over the canyons………” repeated the lady. A streak of jet black shot through the fog, whizzing past Nickel’s left ear. He saw thin black streaks across his vision shoot away from him over the landscape. 

“Lies a hell with machine guns.” There were crashes behind Nickel, louder than before. He whirled around to see bright flashes at the ground followed by rising clouds of dust. There were more cracks, louder than before just as the crashes were. Nickel ran as fast as he could and moved in as much of a varying direction as he could. He zigged and zagged. Every time he heard a black streak whizz past his right ear, he ran to the left. He moved so rapidly that he was able to dodge the firing. Every time a shot reached his vicinity, whistling and pummeling against the thick air from behind, Nickel squatted or leaned in whatever direction he felt like was away from the ammo. But as the cracks and whistling streaks got louder and quicker, Nickel began to feel helpless. There were black streaks all around him. 

Ahead of him, many explosions occurred, blowing up the earth and sending dark chunks of it into the orange fog. Nickel hunched over and ran faster through the combustion and frenzy. 

“Over the canyons,” sang the woman. A streak zoomed from behind and grazed Nickel’s left leg, skimming across the side of his calf. He shrieked and a burning wound opened itself up in his leg. His head buzzed and his eyes swarmed with tears. 

“Watch the boy, he runs…………..” Upon hearing those words, Nickel saw himself running in his mind. Running fast and without inhibition. A streak chugging through the orange while blood seeped out of his calf. 

He was moving speedily once again. The image became reality. He jerked his muscles back and forth, ignoring the pain coursing through his body, the burning sensation and throbbing in his calf and his buzzing head. 

While running, he thought of supressed memories, bobbing up in his consciousness. They confused him. Why are you popping up now? But most of all, they pained him. 

Images flashed in his mind’s eye. Jeering military students at the aerial base: a group of teenage boys in crisp green uniforms, grinning and snickering at Nickel. He remembered standing before them in a locker room in a T-shirt and shorts. He remembered yelling at them. He remembered feeling hot, feeling angry and tears brimming in his eyelids. He remembered not wanting to cry in front of them. 

Stop thinking about that! You’ve literally been shot! Just keep running!

Nickel remembered Calypso, the short girl a grade ahead of him at the regional high school. He remembered her long winding black hair. But he also remembered his rejection. He remembered the awkwardness and embarrassment. 

“SHUT THE GLIBB UP!” Nickel screamed hoarsely. “You’re going to die……….” His face contorted in a sob. He felt trapped. He was reduced to his primal instincts to run from an imminent danger, yet his mind was preoccupied with the anxieties of a much simpler, much easier past. He would have traded any of those hurtful moments as a normal schoolboy in the homeland for running from gunfire in an unknown land. Yet the memories and their emotions haunted him. In what feeling did he truly belong? The dilemna was psychological torture. 

“Da de de dum dum…….” sang the lady. Streaks of black fire sounded off behind Nickel. With all the energy he had left in him, he leaped forward as far as he could. The streaks exploded below him. Fire erupted at the ground and its flames licked his legs. He screamed in anguish as he felt the heat sear at his lower limbs. 

He crashed onto the hard uneven rocky earth. Pebbles stuck onto his skin. He felt nothing in his legs. 

I’m going to die, he thought. Yet, as those words passed over his mind, he felt the anguish dwindle, felt the pain recede. He only felt exhaustion. Lying on the ground provided some rest, even if clouds of rock and dust were billowing all around him. 

Nickel’s cheeks were poked by pebbles. He tilted his head upwards and looked at the charred and dusty frame of a transport terminal standing in the distant orange, appearing as a dark red building. It consisted of a wide and cracked ramp with a huge jagged gap leading into a pavilion. On opposite ends of the pavilion were vestibules sticking out of the walls and into the open air. The walls were warped, jagged and just broken. Some vestibules were missing their upper halves. 

Nickel turned his head and saw the wreckage of hovercrafts and cars, festering in the Desolate Plains of the Atlantic like withering metal bugs. He saw skeletons of old buildings and the long standing poles of electronic-communication receptors. He turned his head to the left and saw more of the same. 

“Desolate plains………,” murmured the omnipresent singer. The wind howled loudly, pushing smoke and fire forward. Far off, the shell of a round car rolled in over the earth, pushed by the breeze, scraping rock and creaking loudly in its movement. 

“Filled with anguish and wreckage……..” Tall figures in striking silver-plated armor appeared from behind the hovercrafts and cars. When the fog billowed in large swaths, their bright suits were reduced to a murky red. They pulled out long and skinny guns from behind their backs and aimed them at Nickel. The guns’ ends suddenly glowed a bright yellow and blinked one by one. 

“Fire!” one of them shouted. Nickel was bombarded by black streaks. 

“Motherless men……………” Nickel felt his body burning. A deadly heat swept through him until his nerves were too burnt to feel the flames eating at his entrails. “………. Fighting nature’s amends.” Nickel’s sight and his mind remained intact. 

The heat seeped further into his flesh, continuing to burn his nerves, numbing him. He was in a void of burning light and combustion. His consciousness allowed him to feel one thing in a clear and constant definition: fear. 

“…………… for the world they forgot to end.”

The light receded, leaving an enveloping curtain of black smoke. Nickel’s body slammed into the ground. He didn’t feel it. He only saw the rock of the earth open up from the smoke and slam into his face. 

He rolled over, pushed by the wind. He saw a silver soldier emerge, obscured by the fog. The soldier fired his gun at Nickel, sending a streak of black onto him. The earth exploded around him. The combustion and the sudden forceful wind sent his burning body flying through the air. 

Nickel shot through the pavilion. He saw the wrecked floor and cracked vestibules zoom past him. The winds swept him over the rocky earth and into a much darker fog. He was shooting upwards, a charred smoking and flaming body flying through a murky gas. He felt himself descend until he was pummeling downwards as air screamed in his ears. 

“Festering down low………….” came the female singer’s voice, still immanent and loud, piercing through the swirling and roaring fog. From down below, brightly colored splotches of light appeared and disappeared in the red gas. “………Lie the depths of a blue globe.” Pinpricks of yellow appeared then blinked out of his view. Bright red blinked. Green blinked. Blue blinked. Blue exploded. Small pin pricks of red, green and yellow raced along the blue until everything died out, obscured by gas. 

“……… Hosting ghosts of the present…….” The gas suddenly let up, losing its strength. Nickel knew that the windstorm was dying. The gas was lessening in thickness. 

The lights from the depths of the canyon were coming into focus. Nickel saw the receding gas unravel an entire structure of lights down below. It was wide, sprawling and circular. 

“Computer screen peasants………..” 

Nickel could see the shape of the structure below. It was a round hemisphere encircling a part of the land lying at the dark depths of the canyon. An aura of blue light emanated from the dome. 

Nickel’s body was so cold, flying through the air. The flames had been put out and now he just felt charred, cracked and steaming hot. The blur of the fog wasn’t as thick as before. He could see the domed structure clearly enough to discover that the dome was actually made up of many different structures. He saw large, curved, solid and clear plates of blue exterior sweeping around the sides of the man-made hemisphere. Swirling specks of shining red, blue, yellow and green danced around the glowing blue shell like a moving image of stars exploding across the cosmos. As Nickel descended he observed the fine intricacies of the shell. He saw that it consisted of suspended and disconnected pieces, all varying in luminescence. There were only warm spots that dotted the shell. At those spots a bright blue glowed and washed out over the exterior and receded into darker shades of blue. The moving dots of light coalesced, joining into shapes, images and patterns. 

As he moved closer to the dome, he peered into the dome, in between the smooth plates. Inside of its ghostly luminescence, he saw images: Images of beautiful slender women baring their skin in small pieces of clothing. They were red-skinned, blue-skinned, grey-skinned, brown-skinned, pale-skinned, almond-skinned, pink-skinned, purple-skinned………………

They were luminescent and phantomlike. Most of all, they were fleeting. They exploded and so did all the other images that Nickel saw. He saw large solid skyscrapers held up by walls of violet amethyst and glass that glittered and dazzled in the light. As he moved downwards, Nickel lost sight of them as they disappeared in the blue luminescence seeping from between the plated exterior of the dome. 

In the place of skyscrapers, Nickel saw mountain peaks. Their snow shimmered under a non-existent sun. Gone. 

He saw beaches. The fine grains of sand glittered under the tropical blue sky before being swept away by a frothy tide of water. Gone. Time slowed down. The air was not as forceful around him as it was before. 

He saw a castle made of craggy stone shooting upwards in crowned spires. The castle was floating over a lake where spiky balls frolicked, splashing and diving. Nickel realized they were sea urchins, bouncing off of the castle’s slimy bottom and pummeling into the water. Along the rim of the lake, pine trees slowly rustled in the wind. Gone. 

Nickel saw himself mounted on a great muscly grey stallion as it coursed over a stumpy trail in the woods without faltering or tripping on the roots. Before it could finish neighing, it was gone. The air was no longer screaming or even whistling in Nickel’s ear. A second lasted eons. 

Nickel saw a group of young females gracefully moving towards him. Seductively, moving towards him, vying for his embrace. Their skin glowed. He was close enough to them to see their collarbones, their hips, their smooth abdomens and their curling, winding, coursing, splashing, billowing, and bouncing locks of hair. Close enough to see the thin but winding cloth that concealed their nipples. 

Before Nickel could touch any of them, they were gone. 

“I promise milk and money…….” 

Nickel was mere feet away from the shell of the dome. He could see that the speeding spots of light were glowing contraptions of dancing, singing and playing blue apparitions. Laserlike beams of reflected light shot horizontally across the circular contraptions. The avatars were all huddled together. Men and women. All smiling. They were swimming amongst each other, kissing each other. Dancing with each other. Playing with each other. However, before Nickel could observe any of them in detail, they had zoomed far away from him. 

“Bow low and love. I know you are hungry……..Please-oh PLEASE come to me!”

Nickel slammed into one of the clear exterior plates of the dome. His eyes were blinded by bright light and his whole body coursed with an aching pain. 

In seconds, he woke up in the tent he collapsed in. Where there had been an aching pain in his dreamworld, there was now an ease of tension throughout his body. However, he felt exhausted. He began to focus on the minute and larger details around him. One by one, they appeared in Nickel’s mind. The ragged sleeping sack he was in. He noticed how it was peeling away at the edges. The papery walls of the tent gently fluttered. It was no longer storming outside. On the side of the tent was the wooden crate, closed. Squatting next to him were Steve and Farrul, weak and withered. Their staring eyes were red with streaks of blood and heavy bags hung under them. 

Farrul was shivering behind Steve. Flakes of crystallized ice hung on his chapped skin. 

Nickel sighed. He could recognize the world around him. He began to close his eyes. 

“No, quick!” Nickel heard Farrul shout. Steve slapped Nickel’s face, forcing his eyes open. Heat seeped into his face. “Tell us what you saw!” growled Steve. “Before you forget, what did you see in dreamworld?”

By G.R. Nanda

Nickel sauntered past the flagpole and into Steve and Farrul’s campsite. He flexed his back straight, and shrugged his right shoulder to better carry the weight of the traveling pack he held by his right arm. He had taken it off of his shoulders and was now lugging it by a handle against the right side of his body.  

The docking chain was no longer connected to him. He had walked back to the Eagle, retracted the tubed chain and removed it from the hull of the Eagle. Then he’d flown it to the camp which was marked by the long flagpole sticking out from the landscape and parked it close behind. 

Now, Nickel looked behind him. He could see the large hull of the Eagle, just as before but it was ever more obscured by the orange at his distance. 

He turned around and looking ahead, saw faint pinpricks of white sparks and grey smoke, pouring out of an even fainter black chamber resting on the ground. 

“Did you make it okay?” yelled Steve from afar. 

“Yeah!” Nickel yelled back. His voice reverberated inside of his helmet. He didn’t know if Steve could hear him. Nickel cleared his throat. “YEAH! I’M GOOD!” he screamed. His voice still seemed too muffled to him. 

“I’m talking to Nickel, right?” yelled Steve. 

“YEAH! IT’S ME!” Nickel yelled back. The sparks were becoming bigger and brighter. The orange gave away the closer Nickel walked. A dark cloud was emerging from the chamber. The closer he walked, the more defined the body of the chamber became to him. It was a dark, rusting and hulking piece of metal attached to black legs with fingers clamped down on the ground. Behind it was a large steaming pan. 

No one spoke. The hissing of the sparks became apparent to Nickel. Dark figures emerged from the background. One of them was a large silhouette of a person that appeared to be seated on a gently swaying object. 

Steve, thought Nickel. 

A big narrow sack hung from two slightly lopsided poles placed at a wide distance from each other away from the rocking man. 

Nearing the figures, he saw that it was indeed Steve who was rocking,-rocking on a rocking chair. As he looked upon the hammock, he saw the grimy thin body of Farrul. Behind Steve and Farrul were two large structures: a small building that Nickel immediately recognized as a cooling chamber and a tent consisting of flaps of cloth stained in fluorescent colors. 

Nickel stopped at the edge of the heating chamber. He could feel the heat of the sparks, however faint and small they were. Warmth emanated from the smoking center while little rectangular swaths of hot energy appeared in the air, glowing before fizzling out. 

“SSSSSSSSssssssssssss………..” Each spark was born loudly and hot before quieting and receding into oblivion. 

There was a creaking next to Nickel. It was Steve, sitting in what Nickel could now see was a wooden armchair that tipped forward on its slender legs. When it tipped backwards the chair creaked again. Steve dug his feet into the gravel of the ground stopping his chair from rocking. He frowned. 

“You’re Nickel, right?” 

Steve released his feet and the chair tipped forward, creaking again. Steve’s body moved forward, but his eyes remained fixed on Nickel. “The boy who introduced himself to me as Nickel after he said he’d help us?”

“Yeah,” said Nickel, nervously chuckling. “It’s me.” 

“The Nickel who promised he’d park the Eagle close to my flagpole? The Nickel who hadn’t seen his friends and family since leaving a military base months ago?”

“Yeah!” Nickel said. “Yeah! That’s me, Steve! Who else would I be? You didn’t ask these questions before-when I came back and knocked out Farrul!” 

Steve’s frown deepened. For a long moment, Steve and Nickel stared at each other, Steve with suspicious intent and Nickel with an agape mouth, flabbergasted. Suddenly Steve stopped rocking on his chair and relaxed his face. 

“Ok, Nickel,” he said. “I believe it’s you.”

“Why didn’t you before?” Nickel asked. 

“I was making sure you weren’t a mirage.”

“A mirage?!” Nickel exclaimed. “What?- You didn’t think that about me before.”

“When something large enters your field of vision, there’s a chance it’s your mind playing a trick on you. You’re desperate to see things when all you see is a whole lot of orange. The environment is unpredictable. The ground is almost always cold. The fog keeps these plains cold. Sometimes, warm patches appear and when there’s enough of them in a wave, light refracts in the fog and plays to your imagination.”

“If you want to make it alive here as long as I did, you’re going to have to study these plains and react correspondingly, so you don’t get swept up in the orange. That’s what I did. And I still don’t understand these plains.”

Steve slowly stood up from his chair. He sighed. 

“We have some things to show you.” he clasped his hands on Nickel’s shoulders and led him towards the cooling chamber. He pulled a lever on the door, opening it wide and releasing a rush of icy forceful air. Cavernous darkness loomed inside. 

Nickel began to step into the black space, raising a foot to meet the raised floor. Steve barred an arm across Nickel’s chest, preventing him from entering. 

Steve explained to Nickel that the chamber was to be entered only in specific attire in situations of emergency. While it held useful tools, they were only to be taken sparingly, and most of the time, Steve and Farrul did with what they had outside. Inside were tools like shears, hatchets, cooking instruments along with spongy synthetic food (most of which was set to expire in the year 2201) all basking in cleansing radiation, free from the mordant contents of the orange fog. 

The tent was the closest thing to a living quarter. Two sacks of cloth were placed on the floor, along with a wooden crate holding clothes that spilled out. 

By the end of the tour, Nickel was having a sinking feeling that he, Steve and Farrul would be better off in the Eagle. In fact, Nickel would probably be a lot better off if he was back in the Eagle by himself. 

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Steve as he stood by Nickel in front of the tent. Startled, Nickel looked at him with an upwardly cocked smile. 

“What am I thinking?” he asked, chuckling nervously. 

“You’re thinking my camp is a crap-hole and before Farrul and I die, we’re going to fester and rot here. I bet you’re also thinking that we’d be a lot better off if we were all in the Eagle.”

“I mean-” started Nickel. He chuckled again. “Look, I just want to be safe-.”

“Oh, I’m not offended,” interrupted Steve. “I don’t blame you for thinking any of what you’re thinking.” He looked into Nickel’s helmet with stern eyes. “The work will start at the ground. You’ll have to learn on the ground. It’ll root you-center you.”

“Why can’t we just go to the Eagle?” asked Nickel. 

“If you hop back on the Eagle, you’ll hop back into uncertainty.” His eyes suddenly widened, and he opened his mouth in a crazy grin, breathing heavily. “Orange uncertainty,” he said. 

“Is this some kind of trap?” asked Nickel. “I don’t want to suffer like you.”

“I want to help you guys out,” he exclaimed. 

“I-I- want to take you guys away from suffering. I can do that on my Eagle. 

“Patience!” said Steve. “You must unlearn what you have learned. Not all decisions can be made as fast as they can on a hovercraft! Stay! Stay, Nickel. I will show you the ways of the 23rd Century hermit!”    

“But why would I have to be a hermit when I have a hovercraft that I can fly around in?” said Nickel. 

“If you want to help the people of the earth, you should learn how to walk the earth!” Nickel stood still unmoving and flustered. The air around him and Steve picked up in speed, whipping past their bodies.  

“I-” Nickel started. “Okay,” he said sighing. Steve placed his hand on his shoulder, Steve began to appear muddled in orange. 

“First lesson!” shouted Steve. “How to operate when the fog kicks up! Gauge your immediate surroundings.” He pointed to the ground at his feet.  “Notice how the flurries of fog move the rock and gravel around.” Nickel looked in the direction of Steve’s arm, down at the ground. 

Through the rapidly moving curtain, Nickel observed bits and pieces of rock wavering, shuddering before skidding across the earth. 

“Do you see the rocks moving in the wind?” asked Steve. 

“Yes,” said Nickel. 

“Now, do you see the rocks moving in the wind?” asked Steve. 

“Yes,” said Nickel. 

“Now, do you see the rocks three feet away from you?” asked Steve. He let go of Nickel and moved away from him. Wobbling, he knelt down and pointed his fingers at the ground. “Do you see the rocks moving here? On the ground-.”

“Yes, I can see the rocks! Shouldn’t we be getting away from the wind?”

“Patience!” shouted Steve. “Focus!” Closing his eyes, he inhaled sharply. “Breathe…….. Breathe in the orange! BECOME THE ORANGE!”

Nickel stayed still, unsure of what to do. Instead of breathing in the orange, he breathed quicker and shallower inside his helmet. Steve eyes were trained on Nickel. Nickel stared back with helpless eyes that Steve could not see through the dark visor of Nickel’s helmet. 

Steve was breathing heavily and his back was stooped over. Nickel saw orange air flow into Steve’s mouth and nostrils. He then saw it gush out in a strong exhalation. Then Steve straightened himself and grinned maniacally. He looked right at Nickel with large bloodshot eyes. 

Steve spoke:

“Take off your helmet! Breathe……… Nickel……BREATHE THE ORANGE!”

Feeling a strong inclination towards Steve, towards his state, he reached up and tugged upwards at his helmet until it returned from its latching and came off his head. 

As soon as the icy air enveloped his face, brushing his skin and hair, Nickel gasped. His vision changed. The orange around him was brighter and harsher on his eyes. He felt disoriented, yet the ground at his feet and the sight of Steve, standing straight and with his arms raised high, welcoming the frenzy of air, steadied him, holding him still. 

His eyes hurt. Nickel felt like they were being pushed into his sockets. So he slightly closed them. For a long moment, Nickel didn’t breathe. His skin crawled with a stinging-no- a burning sensation. 

“Breathe!” said Steve. His voice awoke Nickel from his trance, a trance that was slowly pushing him into a sleepy and pained submission. Steve’s words registered themselves in Nickel’s mind, awakening the impulse towards activity, away from the painful slumber Nickel was falling into. 

Nickel’s eyes opened wider, but they were still almost closed. He gasped sharply, inhaling a long and steady stream of air. His eyes opened wider now, large and fully awake. 

The air was cold and dense in his mouth and nostrils. It felt like a mushy block being pushed down his throat. Yet when he swallowed and inhaled, he felt as if he was breathing. His lungs were working out of a self-sustained accord. He was okay. 

An electricity coursed through his body. His eyes became hyper alert. Weakness melted away. Nickel’s stiffness melted away. Orange air continued to slide into his lungs forcefully, but with an ease that allowed Nickel’s body to react without discomfort or hesitation. 

“Yes!” shouted Steve. “Yes, my boy!”

Nickel slowly walked forward towards Steve. Vertigo caught him. He stumbled. He drove a foot into the ground. He felt the electricity in his body stray towards his center, creating a nauseating sensation. He felt less secure.  

“STEADY!” shouted Steve, holding a palm stilly towards Nickel. “Center yourself.” he patted his thighs. “Follow my stance! Bend your knees like me.” He stalked towards Nickel, slowly placing a foot ahead of him, one by one, moving towards Nickel. “Move slowly- Do it!” 

Nickel did as he was told. He imitated Steve’s stature, spreading his legs out and bending his knees. 

“BREATHE………..” said Steve, “slowly.”

Nickel inhaled long and slowly. His internal electricity returned to harmony, coursing evenly through his chest, limbs and mind providing energy and power. 

The orange around him flashed brightly. Nickel gasped. Steve was brightly illuminated, made a stark yellow. The once mellow orange returned as the flash receded. Nickel exhaled slowly, puckering his flaky lips in a tight circle. 

“Yes,” said Steve. The world flashed again. Steve turned into a glowing apparition. The brightness receded. Steve was a gaunt and dark man, held together by his raised arms and the two eyes that stayed open, excited and unblinking. “Yesssssss……………..” 

Together, they moved through the camp, through the flashing world, under Steve’s instruction. Steve grabbed a sleeping sack from the tent and with Nickel holding the opposite end, they held it next to the hammock where Farrul was sleeping. They leaned on the hammock, allowing Farrul’s limp body to tumble out. 

“Pull!” ordered Steve. They both tugged at their ends of the sack. Farrul landed on the sack sprawled on his stomach, appearing lifeless. 

“Is he dead?” said Nickel. The world flashed. From his side, Nickel could see Farrul’s unmoving glazed-over eyes peeking out from his face buried in the cloth. His eyelashes were covered in frost. 

“No,” said Steve. “He’s just been out here in the storm too long. It’s what he gets. He knows the winds pick up every 23 minutes. He didn’t use a stop-watch.” He tilted his head and peered at Farrul’s face. He chuckled and pointed at Farrul’s eyes. “Looks like the sucker woke up.” 

They lugged Farrul to the tent. After lowering his body to the ground, the tent flaps were pulled aside . The netted screen was rolled away by its pole, and Farrul was pushed into the tent. By the time the tent was closed up, Farrul was still tucked into his sack. 

They did all of this slowly shuffling their legs with their knees bent. They continued to operate in a similar position. Together, they put out the already dwindling fire by batting it with the large pan nearby. They lugged the pan, rocking chair and a chest towards the chamber, while Steve reminded Nickel to keep himself centered while carrying large objects. 

When they got to the chamber, Steve opened the door, but he didn’t enter. The icy black space inside flashed a shocking white color, illuminating the glowing silhouettes of arranged tools and crates. 

Steve began to unclothe himself, pulling off his rag and revealing withered, hairy skin. In different circumstances, Nickel would have been palpably embarrassed. But his trance had him calm and preoccupied with the decided goal of safely cleaning the campsite. However, there was enough consciousness in Nickel for him to look away. 

Leaving his clothes on the ground, Steve stepped up into the chamber and grabbed a shining plastic bodysuit hanging from a rack on the left wall. The flash disappeared, leaving the chamber and Steve in darkness. 

In a while, Steve emerged from the chamber, clad in the bodysuit from head to toe. At his face was a stained plastic see-through visor. With every one of Steve’s movements, the suit squeaked loudly. 

One by one, Steve lugged the three objects: first the chest, the rocking chair and then the pan. 

Having placed the objects where they belonged inside the chamber,  Steve stood and sulked over. He no longer was tall and upright. 

“Go! Go-to the tent!” shouted Steve. “Don’t wait for me! Rest there!”

Nickel did as he was told, jogging upright and feeling his electricity pulse through him. When he reached the tent, he flung aside the flaps and net and crashed inside, next to Farrul. 

The net rolled back down a chain in the ceiling, closing off the windy world outside. Lying on his stomach, he felt his electricity sear throughout his body, stinging, buzzing through the insides of his body. 

Once the electricity had left, Nickel felt a sudden and strong throbbing in every one of his muscles. Fatigue swept over like a tidal wave drowning him in a dark slumber. 

A slumber that was dark until his subconscious switched on a light, illuminating a world he did not want to see. An orange world.

By G.R. Nanda

Nickel covered his face with his hands. Steve was yelling. Nickel could feel Farrul pounding at his body. The impacts were soft and each one kept becoming softer and slower. Nickel bent his legs and then twisted them sideways, before slamming them against Farrul’s body. 

Farrul gasped and slumped onto the ground. Nickel stood up and grabbed the flagpole, hanging on by his arm. Farrul whimpered. Steve yelled and walked over to him. He kneeled over the fallen boy. 

“What did you think was going to happen?!” he screamed into Farrul’s face. “You’re sick!”

Nickel stood watching. Further tendrils of orange slithered around the two bodies in front of him. While he was hidden from their view, Nickel let go of the pole and ran towards his ship without looking back. 

His limbs sped through the landscapes and his feet crunched louder and louder upon the rock than each step before. His docking chain bent around him the more he ran. He didn’t stop the press the chain’s opening in his pack to retract the chain’s tubing. 

He just ran. 

The chain moved heavily behind him, becoming heavier with every step. Eventually, it hit the ground and began to drag noisily behind him, against craggly bits of rock. 

Nickel was sweating. 

Why am I running?

Nickel slowed to a stop. He stood panting. He couldn’t see the Eagle. He couldn’t see a whole lot of anything. Except for the orange. It was everywhere. 

What is this world? Steve had been here a long time. Or that was just what he said. Either way, Steve must know something about this place. This place. A place needs people to call it a place. 

The Desolate Plains of the Atlantic. What are they? Nickel was tired of feeling clueless about the world. He needed answers. He wouldn’t find them in the Eagle. 

Nickel immediately turned around and jogged towards the flagpole that was so far away that it couldn’t be seen. 

It’s too dangerous! he thought. He stopped moving. The chain flayed out to his right. It snapped loudly and crashed to the ground. 

I’m stuck. Going back to the Eagle didn’t seem so enticing anymore. It offered security. But Nickel was dying for people to talk to. Real people. Not the Eagle’s A.I. voice operating systems. He felt a strong tug in his chest. It was a yearning. A yearning he’d been unaware of until now. 

Nickel wanted to talk to Steve. He wanted to talk to Farrul, even after fighting him. Nickel wanted a friend. If he went back to the Eagle, Nickel would go back to flying alone, knowing he’d missed the chance to talk to someone other than the uninterested pilots and station-overseers at the countless re-fuelling aerial ports suspended high up in the upper layers of the earth’s atmosphere. 

Is it worth the risk? His feet answered for him within a few heartbeats, before his mind could. He ran forward and watched his docking chain straighten and then recede away from his view, stretching behind him. Where are they? Nickel thought. Where’s their flagpole? He only saw orange smog wherever the rocky ground wasn’t visible. He sprinted faster, feeling the force of the orange air rippling past his body. 

When he saw the long black line of the flagpole streaking through the fog, he slowed to a stop. Suddenly Nickel’s lungs burned with a thirst for oxygen and an exhaustion swept through his body. 

He grabbed steel sliders on the straps of his flexi-pack across his shoulders and slid them down. The flexi-pack came loose, and a large weight fell down from Nickel’s back. 

He pulled the metal plate down from its opening.

He propped the case up on the ground, and bending down, he opened it wide enough for him to start rummaging through the contents. 

I brought no weapons. The realization left him frozen. What was he to do? He sighed. Nickel grabbed the handle of his cooking griddle from inside. It was a large black cylindrical structure attaching two containers at opposite ends to a noggin extending out of a sleek curved handle. It was a useful tool that Nickel would have to risk destroying. 

He placed the griddle on the ground and slid the pack’s metal plate back, closing it. He lugged the pack on his shoulders and connected the steel sliders. He picked up the griddle and took slow steps towards the pole. 

“Steve!” he yelled. “Steve!” He stared hard at the pole to orient himself amidst the free-flowing gaseous environment. He began to stare too hard. He felt cross eyed. Soon, he felt dizzy. 

“Steve!” 

“I’m back! I want to talk to you! I didn’t mean to hurt Farrul!” There was a muffled shouting from afar. “Steve! I need you to guide me! I can’t see here! Can’t see anywhere…….”  

Steve appeared as a small dark and rotund figure behind the pole. He walked towards Nickel, who now stood still with his cooking griddle poised in front of his chest. Steve moved beyond the pole. His haggard appearance became more visible. 

“Went back and got a hammer, did you?”

“It’s not a hammer,” Nickel said. “I-I-” he mumbled. “I’d like to learn-from you.” Steve met him. He smiled. 

“Well, I’d like to teach you,” he said. 

“Yeah,” said Nickel and nodded his head. “It’s just-I want to be careful with you guys because-.” He sighed in exasperation. “Will you guys get me sick?” he asked. 

“No contagion in us,” said Steve. “If you live here long enough, you get like us. That’s how it works.” 

“Where’s Farrul?” asked Nickel. 

“He’s knocked out cold.”

“Jeez!” said Nickel. He lowered his cooking griddle. “I didn’t mean to do that!”

“It was his fault, messing with you. He’s paying up now. It’s happened before. When I get mad at him, I knock him out sometimes.” He chuckled. “You don’t even try to-he’s just so weak.” He eyed Nickel and his eyebrows burrowed in his face. “I promise you- we won’t be stealing from you. Farrul definitely won’t. Not on my watch.” 

“Ok,” said Nickel. He looked straight into Steve’s withered face, straight into his dark and sunken eyes. He opened his mouth, but felt unable to speak. The things he wanted to say seemed too big-too dire for him to profess to this man he’d just met. “I need help,” he began. “I left the legal jurisdictions of the United States of America six months ago on the aerial craft I’m connected to. It was one of the last dispatches of the American Aerial Military Base during a raid by the Silvers-the Silver Linings Corp are a global monopoly giant with various economic and military assets-”

“-I know who the Silvers are,” interrupted Steve. “They’re terrorists that people are too afraid to call terrorists because they have big money. We ignore them and act like some small militia in a desert cave is the bigger danger! I’ve seen enough of the world to know that we’re kidding ourselves!” He cleared his throat and looked at Nickel. “Keep going,” he said. 

“Right……” Nickel said. The interruption left him flustered. He sighed again. “My dad worked was an intelligence analyst for the military. He knew the Silvers were coming before anyone else did. So he told me to find the American Eagle, a standard Aerial Hovercraft, and leave the base as soon as I could. I did-but as I was leaving in the sky, I saw the whole base blow up in front of my own eyes………” Nickel paused and breathed deeply. His eyes watered. “In front-.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t know what happened after that,” he said in a low wavering voice. “I don’t know what happened to the AAF, my country, my family. I don’t know what’s happening.” 

Sensing Nickel’s vulnerability, Steve reached over and patted him on his back. 

“The world’s a mess, son. Lots of messy things have happened. We all lived in comfort until that comfort was taken away.” He let go of Nickel’s back and stooped to his helmet, peering through with intentful eyes. “We’re back to playing to the caveman’s game-fending against one danger after the next-just trying to survive-and there’s nothing we can do about it except for helping our cavemen brothers and sisters out.” 

Nickel stepped back. Fear engulfed him, distracting him from his sadness. 

“I don’t know if I want to play that game.” He laughed and pointed backwards at his chain connecting him to his Eagle. “My ship does a pretty good job of protecting me.”

“You’ll rot inside of it,” said Steve. “I’ve known people who rode around in Hovercrafts, all alone, until they went mad with loneliness. I know there are people like that today. Some of them kill themselves. They zoom through the atmosphere until they burn up with the velocity and explode with their ship. Some kill others. They ram their ships into buildings and cities.” 

“It’s all been happening before you were even born,” he said. I saw it happen with my very own eyes, when I was onboard with that expedition team. I saw them burn up in the sky. We thought they were bright stars at first-supernovas maybe-the heavens dying. But then we realized, it was our own kind that was dying.” 

“You could use your ship for good,” Steve said shaking his hand. “You could help people get out of here. You could help us regroup and start a new settlement. One that would be able to sustain itself.” Steve waved his arm around and turned his head behind him. “There are countless stragglers all around these plains for scores of miles. I’ve tried leaving, but that would mean leaving our encampment here. I can’t do that. The camp is self-sustained. Plus, we’re too weak to be leaving on our own. We just don’t have the resources or the bodies.”

For the umpteenth time that day, Nickel felt like he was rooted to the spot, without an inkling of certainty for any course of action. But there was a growing inkling of compassion inside of him compelling him towards Steve. The wind picked up suddenly. Orange fog coalesced around both Nickel and Steve’s bodies. 

“I’ll help you,” he said. 

Through the thickening curtain of orange, Nickel saw a wide gap-toothed smile on Steve’s face.

By G.R. Nanda

He was rooted to the spot. Nickel pressed his feet into the ground in an effort to make himself feel as if he was doing something other than hiding still. His feet suddenly slipped across the ground. Nickel yelped as he fell over. He grunted as he fell on his stomach and his helmet smacked the flagpole. 

He gasped, afraid to move. 

Nickel clawed at the ground. He grabbed at the flagpole and tried to pull himself over his back, so he could slowly scale the pole until he was up. Instead, when he turned over, the docking chain’s entrance in his pack clicked when it pushed against the ground. 

He felt a winding force against his back dragging him to the ground. He was suddenly swivelled around and he yelped. He began to be dragged backwards next to the flagpole. His heels dug through the stones in the earth and kicked up orange dust. 

The cord was contracting and Nickel was being pulled back to the Eagle. 

Nickel howled in panic and flailed his limbs through the air. He struck the earth with hands and feet. As the flagpole slid past him, Nickel quickly hooked his legs around it. 

There was muffled shouting which was then blocked out by an increased wind whistling over the far off strangers. Air pushed at Nickel’s side. 

“Who’s there?” growled the old stranger. He coughed. He coughed. “Who’s there?”

Nickel pulled his legs in, and having reached close enough to the pole, he quickly slapped a hand around it and closed it in a tight fist. 

“Steve!” moaned the younger boy. He continued speaking, but his voice trailed away. 

Nickel grabbed the pole tighter and compressed his whole body against it. He inched his palms up the pole. 

The sound of footsteps emerged, becoming louder with every step. “Aaauahh!” came the voice of the older man, louder than before. 

A dark figure emerged out of the orange. Nickel clamped down on the flagpole with his limbs and shutting his eyes, pressed down with his limbs. He couldn’t hide. But he might as well pretend he was hiding. 

“Who are you?” wheezed the old man. His voice was flat with congestion. 

Nickel didn’t open his eyes. 

“You have nothing to take from us. We’re sick and poor.”

Nickel opened his eyes. 

A haggard and thin man with wrinkles compressed deeply into pale skin stood before him. Shaggy brown hair hung loose from his temple and from around his mouth. 

Over a puffy gray turtleneck outfit, hung a withered black cloak that seeped onto the ground. 

“Who-are you?” gasped Nickel. 

“I asked you first, boy,” said the old man. He sniffled. “Or girl.” he waved his arm out at Nickel’s body. “Can’t tell under your armor.”

“I’ve already got one sick man-child to care for. I’m not sure if I want another.”

Dep ringlets of purple hung below his sunken bloodshot eyes. Eyes that stared deeply, intently at Nickel, while hanging on a gaunt body. 

“Are you sick?” he asked. “Can you answer that?”

“No, I’m not sick,” said Nickel. 

“Are you here to steal?” asked the old man. 

“Are you?” asked Nickel. The old man laughed loudly, leaning backwards to allow his long wheezing chortles to shoot out of his diaphragm. 

“No-I mean it!” said Nickel. “How do I know you won’t steal from me or kill me and sell my organs on a black market?” The old man had began coughing and shaking violently. Once he stopped he stood still and grinned at Nickel. 

“So what is it?” he asked. “Am I your friend or your enemy?”

“I’ve got plenty of enemies. Enemies in the weather. Enemies in this god awful hellhole that the civilized world calls the Desolate Plains of the Atlantic. Sometimes Farrul when he’s being stupid.”

“But you could be a friend, just like Farrul is to me when he wants to be-and when he’s not being stupid.”

Nickel said nothing. 

“I don’t know if I can trust you,” he said.

“What do you have to lose?” asked the old man. “You have resources,” he said pointing to Nickel’s suit. “I have knowledge.  We can help each other out. Long before I was stuck here I was a cook for explorers, and travelled aboard their expedition craft. I’ve seen many things, son. And I’ve lived many years. I know what the world looked like before all of this, this- orange.” 

“Steve!” yelled the boy from far away. “What the glibb are you doing?” The old man’s head perked up at the voice. He sniffled. “STEVE!” His voice was raspy and shrill; an adolescent voice on the cusp on manhood, but not having quite reached the baritone of manliness. Quick sputters of coughing followed and shortly died. 

A tiny figure emerged in the orange depths behind the old man. It grew longer and wider. A dark face suddenly appeared in the fog. While the head disappeared, moving limbs appeared, tearing through the orange curtain. Suddenly Farrul came up to them. He was a thin boy with scraggly facial hair and a face caked with grime. A hat covered his temple and he was clad in free flowing and dirty rags. 

He bent over panting. When his eyes caught a glance of Nickel hooked to the flagpole, he jerked upwards and gawked at him. 

“Steve, who the glibb is this guy?” asked Farrul. 

“It depends,” Steve answered. “On him,” he said, looking into Nickel’s helmet. 

“What?” said Farrul scrunching up his face in exasperation. “Does he have meds?” he asked suddenly. “Doesn’t matter if he doesn’t. He’s got more than enough anyways. Grab him!”

Steve turned around to face Farrul. 

“Don’t do it, boy!” he yelled. 

Farrul growled and lunged towards Nickel.

By G.R. Nanda

A blanket of orange emerged from the atmosphere. The purple sky, its red clouds, and setting evening sun began to disappear from Nickel’s view. Orange gas flowed over the window through which he was looking out, in floating particles and coalescing clumps. Where the sun was, a ball of red could be seen amongst the screen of gas, still burning into sight. But slowly, the frenzied gas took over, thickening around Nickel’s descending American Eagle aircraft, and the fiery halo of light dimmed, decreased, and eventually went out. 

All was orange. Nickel could still see clumps and particles floating around like snowflakes. The white outline of the spatial calibration map glowed from the navigational monitor situated on the dashboard in front of Nickel. On the right side, two vertical lines illustrated the scaled depths of the atmosphere. In between them a triangular pin prick was lowering, its tip pointing downwards. Once it reached the base it stopped. But Nickel knew that the Eagle was still descending. He could hear the engine rumbling under his feet, and the triangle was still pointing downwards from its tip. Nickel realized that the map had reached its limit. Wherever the ship was going, it was a place outside of the map’s knowledge. 

He frantically swiveled around in his chair, surveying the circular control room of the Eagle. The monitor in front of his chair stretched around the walls of the Eagle. He could see that screens were flickering. The lights embedded in the domed ceiling turned on and off. There were desks in the middle of the room. Chairs behind them shuddered. The monitors hanging from the wall shook.

The force of the descent pounded against the walls, and roared. All the screens and lights turned off. Nickel turned around, grabbed the nylon seat belt from under his seat and strapped it across his lap.  The orange light of the gas outside cast itself into the room in a murky swath. 

Nickel waited. He sat solemnly and tense, waiting for the verdict. For his fate. For the longest time in forever, he’d felt in control of his life; the Eagle was his life. As long as he could pilot and maneuver the Eagle; as long as it was functioning, Nickel was on top of the world because he and his aerial craft actually were on top of the world. 

Nickel squeezed his eyes shut. A buzz of panic swarmed his head. The insides of his eyelids changed colors, responding to the shifting brightness of the gasses outside. A feeling of utter despair sank into his chest. He felt water collect at his eyes. He couldn’t cry. He was an adult; a 16 year old man; a whole grown man. A drop of tear escaped his eyelids and streamed down his cheek. It was joined by another from the next eye. He opened his eyes, letting the water flow. The dam of artificial security had fallen apart, letting a river of pampered adolescent anguish flow.   

A screen to Nickel’s far left suddenly glowed and displayed an appearing and disappearing warning sign. But in seconds it went black. Nickel pulled his head with his arms and stayed as still as he could. His eyelids were now dark. 

The bottom of the ship grated against a surface. The floor rumbled. From below came a long piercing sound that hurt his eardrums. Nickel remained crouched. The grating ceased, but it reverberated in his mind. The Eagle gave a few more sporadic clanks as it settled itself on a seemingly precipitous terrain, moving around and thudding. Nickel opened his eyes and looked up at the world beyond his glass window. Still nothing but orange gas. 

A groaning came out of the back of the ship. Nickel shut his eyes, pressed his body against his chair and clenched the handles of his chair, bracing for the next series of impacts. There was no series of impacts. The groaning died, and all Nickel could hear was the eerie howling of the windy, gaseous atmosphere. He was breathing heavily. 

He opened his eyes again seeing nothing but a mellow orange outside; an atmosphere moving faster than Nickel was used to it moving past his Eagle. Usually it was him zooming past everything. Not the other way around. 

The screens and monitors slowly came back to life one by one. First, each screen displayed a green background  before they all returned to the various analytical and navigational software that were in use before. The entire ship flickered to life, alighting and resuming all computational and technical functions as before.

Nickel felt too numb and helpless to take any course of action. He inhaled deeply. Do something. You can’t be still. Use the Eagle! You have a glibbing aerial craft! You stupid glibb! Just use it! He pulled up an energy consumption data sheet on the pilot’s desk screen in front of him. The ship had used up more than usual concentration of ionized fuel per minute in trying to resist the forceful descent in this atmosphere. 

Nickel closed his eyes in frustration. Jesus glibbing CHRIST! Keep MOVING! Nickel opened his eyes and chose a power savings option. The entire ship was now expending 15% less fuel and electricity than usual.  

Nickel got up and began pacing the ship. It helped calm his mind. He walked to and fro, with no real agenda. He had no idea what he was going to do. He hadn’t thought out what he would do in a situation like this. He was in territory beyond the digital mapping in his computer database. He didn’t have enough ionized energy to ascend high enough to ionize more in the ionosphere. To simply put it, he was completely and utterly glibbed. 

It felt like all of his fault. What if I died here? He couldn’t die. He would do something. Think of something. He couldn’t jeopardize the sustainability of the Eagle. He walked to his pilot screen. He opened up the craft storage folder, and viewed the contents of the tactical terrestrial equipment. It read:

Docking Chain

Surveyor Belt

Surveyor Antenna

Flexi-Tent 

Cooking Griddle

Flexi-Pack

That should suffice. For now at least. Nickel would be on his first terrestrial and tactical mission since leaving The United States of America on the Eagle. The first time laying feet on the earth, if the earth was even what his ship was planted on. 

He ran to the middle of the room and stood on a circular platform embedded into the floor. He stamped his right foot 2 times, his left 3 times, then finally his right 4 times. The floor rumbled. The platform descended into the darkness of the Eagle’s underbelly. 

The lower he moved, the more lights flickered on, one by one in sporadic formations lighting the circular base of the “basement.” Thin strips of orange lights wrapped around the circular walls glowed brightly. Circular igloo-like chambers were at the bottom. These were the various rooms or “closets” that allowed him to live and function in as close to a house the Eagle could be. 

The platform lurched to a stop a few feet above the bottom. Nickel jumped off and ran to the storage chamber. He turned the circular lock clockwise, opening the door. 

He grabbed his tactical equipment and lugged them outside of the chamber to the underbelly floor. He took his tent, an expandable luggage from which hung cotton flayers and locked it into the slot in his metal pack. 

He grabbed the docking chain, a compressed two-foot chain link of tubing, and attached it to a ledge in the bottom of his pack. The metal webbing attached itself into the pack’s ledge as the chained tubing receded into the circle. 

Remembering that he had never traversed the environment outside (he was used to traveling everywhere safely within his Eagle), he went back into the chamber to collect his tactical suit, a long dark nylon outfit for his body padded with metal plates colored an army green. At the top was an attached helmet. He pulled off the helmet and unzipped the torso of the suit from the neck to the pelvis area. He slipped it on and zipped himself up. He held the helmet in his hands, a green case with a long black visor in the middle. In the visor he saw the reflection of his face. He saw eyes, with dark ringlets hanging underneath. He saw the small pink dots of his acne sprouting from his brown skin. He saw the reflection of someone who wasn’t ready to walk on the earth. Yet he slid the helmet over his head, wrapped the surveyor belt around his waist, put on his pack and walked over to the platform, stomping his feet and then ascending back up to the control room. 

Lugging the weighty pack, he walked across the back of the control room and into and down steps into an alcove where there was a hatch that could be opened to the outside. He grabbed the handle with both hands and pushed down as hard as he could. It squealed with tension until it unlocked and clicked open. 

Howling air filled Nickel’s ear. From the slowly widening gap between the door and the doorway, he could hear and feel the cold force of the gaseous turmoil outside. Orange gas entered through and quickly dissipated once it crossed over into the ship.

He closed his eyes and lurched forward. His hands pushed the door and he nearly tripped over the doorway. The world was screaming around him. He opened his eyes and slammed the door shut behind him. 

He grabbed the docking chain from its ledge in his pack and slapped its end onto the side of the Eagle. The small legs of a metal claw emerged out of the end of the chain, clamping down on the rusty metal surface. 

With the tubed chains slowly extending behind him from his pack, Nickel trudged along the rough and crusty earth of this orange landscape. The chain would extend to a total of three miles. Nickel hoped he could find less windy ground within that distance. 

He walked forth, in a nonspecific direction, breathing deeply inside his helmet to remain calm. For the longest time, all he could hear was the forceful wind, his boots crunching the rocky eroded earth, and his own breath. 

The first time he heard something other than those sounds was when he could no longer see the beginnings of the docking chain or the Eagle. 

He saw a line emerge in the sky. It was a sleek solid black image hovering behind the orange. He looked upwards and moved towards it. Fear swarmed him, but curiosity compelled him. 

As he moved closer to it, he saw the bottom of its body rooted in the ground. He jogged over to it and put his hand out to it. His fingers trembled for a while. He shoved his hand onto the object and clamped down tightly with fingers. A coolness spread across his palm from the thing. It was a pole. A steel pole. The kind planted outside the American military outposts Nickel’s father used to work at.  

God………..Where am I? Nickel looked upwards. As the overhanging gas passed, he saw a tattered black flag hanging limp at the top of the pole. His heart pounded. He had to remember to breathe. 

He took slow quiet steps forward, away from the pole. They became faster. His eagerness was short-lived 

“AAAAAaaaaaahahhaaaUUHH!” Nickel’s muscles tensed and he lurched to a stop. He ran back to stand behind the flagpole (it wasn’t thick enough to hide him).  

He couldn’t see anything else except for the orange smog and the pole. Nickel held in his breath and stayed as still as possible. There was more unintelligible moaning. 

“UUUUUUUHHHH!” It was followed by a long cacophony of coughing. Nickel let his breath leave his tight lips. Sweat trickled down his temple. What is that? he thought. A human? A mutant? The coughing stopped at a final desperate wheeze. 

“Curse my life!” The voice was boyish. This mutant, or human-whatever he was, spoke English. With a North American twang. That was a commonality Nickel shared with him. A place to start. Suddenly, that made him want to trust him even less. The point of the American Eagle was to leave home, leave society and culture. “Curse you! I thought there were enough meds!” There was more coughing. It rose up in bits and sputtered in streams of sickness. 

“You already knew-” came a rougher, deeper voice broken up by coughing. “….There are only enough for a week! If you go over that, they disappear until shine-day! So don’t complain to me! You see me complaining to you? And I’ve been here years longer than you! If anyone, anyone has a right to complain, it’s my old ass that’s been here before you were glibbing born!” Nickel was bewildered, but also intrigued. He wasn’t moving forward. However, he certainly wasn’t going to risk making noise while going back to the Eagle.