‘That can’t be,’ he thought to himself, but the more he looked at the figure approaching the house, the recognition hit him. A moment later, the doorbell rang and he let Franklin in the house.
“Franklin? What are you doing here? I never thought I’d see you again,” he said when Franklin came in, “And what did you just get out of?”
“Long story. You want to have a look at it? We can go for a spin.”
“Are you kidding? Hold on, let me log out.”
“You still playing that space game?”
“Elite...yeah. I don’t play much else.”
“You must be getting pretty good at it.”
“You could say that. Check out the setup I got.”
They entered his bedroom and Franklin admired the gaming PC with the flight stick and throttle mounted to the arms of the chair.
“Nice, how much did that cost you?”
“Not as much as you’d think. I got a friend who builds computers. Bought the parts at MicroCenter and he put it together for me. The flight stick set me back a couple hundred.”
“Would you believe I got the real thing in the back yard?”
“If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t believe it. Where’d you get it?”
“Long story. You know Walter?”
“Everybody knows Walter. Cool dude.”
“I’ve been hanging with him. Dude that gave him the powers...well...he’s not from around here. There are more of these lying around. How long are your parents gonna be gone?”
“It’s their anniversary. Dinner, movie, all the romantic stuff. They won’t be home for a while.”
“Good, shut your computer down and let’s go.”
A moment later they were both strapped in and Franklin was lifting off. He throttled up and punched it, heading straight up and within a few minutes they were out of the atmosphere.
“Holy crap, Franklin, this is a real spaceship...and you know how to fly it?”
“Yeah, it’s not that hard, really. The way you fly the ones on that game, you should have no trouble with this. You want to give it a shot?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No, take my seat. The controls are pretty similar to what you’re used to, except maybe the yaw. The bottom of the stick controls that. No rudder pedals like our planes have.”
Franklin showed Curtis the basics of the controls for the next few minutes and then strapped down in the other seat.
“Go ahead, fly around a bit, but don’t go near the moon. This thing is fast and you can get there in a few minutes, but we don’t want to go there right now.”
“You’ve been to the moon?”
“Just this morning. It didn’t turn out well.”
“What happened?”
Franklin took the next few minutes to bring Curtis up to speed.
“That’s a lot to take in. If I wasn’t sitting in a spaceship, I’d have a hard time believing half of it.”
“It’s all true, and we have no idea how much time we have.”
“Let me get this straight. You have about twenty more of these and they’re going to be the only thing that works when the space dudes attack because they can shut down our military equipment, and you need people to fly these things and try to fight off the bad guys and save the world.”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“Do you know how crazy that sounds?”
“About as crazy as an old white dude with super powers.”
“You have a point. You know what else is crazy? Why did you run off? I thought things were pretty good.”
“In short...I was stupid. Didn’t know how good I had it.”
“Where’d you stay all this time?”
“On the streets, until Walter took me in.”
“You’ve been living with Walter?”
“Since he got his powers. He’s really a cool dude. He acts all crotchety, like he doesn’t like young people, but he’s really a softie.”
“Where are you gonna find people to fly the other ones?”
“I was hoping you could help me with that. You got folks you play that game with?”
“I got guys I wing with sometimes. Some of them are pretty good.”
“How can we get ahold of those guys?”
“I don’t know where they live. We just hang out online.”
“Can you send them messages in the game?”
“I can try that, but who’s gonna believe me?”
“You might have a point, but we need to try.”
“I’ll give it a shot when I’m back home.”
“Well, I might have a better idea. You think we could track their locations while they’re online?”
“I’m not sure how. I’m no hacker.”
“There are some crazy computers back at the house. Maybe we could figure something out.”
“Yeah, but about this thing we’re flying. Seems a lot like the ones in the game. I mean, it handles like it has flight assist. It doesn’t act like a spaceship, at least not completely.”
“Christy tried to explain it to me. When you move the stick, the computer has an idea what you’re trying to do, but it limits what it lets you do. It also controls the G forces it subjects you to. It won’t let you pull a maneuver that would cause you too much harm, or it compensates for G forces. I didn’t catch everything she said, but we did things that I thought for sure would have made me pass out in an airplane.”
“Let me see what I can manage.”
Curtis put the ship through every maneuver he could imagine for the next ten minutes and then leveled off and sat there with a huge grin on his face.
“This thing is amazing,” he said, “It’s so responsive, but like you said, it almost felt like it had training wheels. Is there any way to turn that off and fly it completely free, like taking flight assist
