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.