Mike v2.0 (A Firesetter Short Story) (4 page)

“Take a seat anywhere, Mikey,” Steve said,
following me into the belly of the plane. His voice echoed off the
walls just as a dusty, musty scent assaulted my nose.
“Kari-fa!”

“What?” I screamed, my own voice bouncing back
at me.

“Ach, Steve,” the other Mike sighed, that
faint burning smell now mixing with the dust. “You’re frightening
him. Clearly, he doesn't wish to come. He’s just a kid. What is he,
five or six years old?”

“Eight!” I snapped, suddenly filled with
righteous indignation. How dare this stranger accuse me of being a
child?

“You stay out of this,” Steve snapped, either
at Mike, or me, or both, while shoving me into a seat and slipping
a safety belt around my waist. “In fact, I don’t even know why
you’re here. Get out. Go away. I’ve got this handled and I
certainly don’t need your help. Now, if I could only remember where
I set the keys. No worries. I can alway hotwire the ignition if I
have to. You stay right there, Mikey. I’ll be right back.” My
grandfather wandered off, and it sounded as if he bumped into a few
doors and walls himself.

“We’ll never get to Rozari,” I mumbled,
convinced that we’d explode in space instead.

“Actually, we won’t,” Mike said. “But, neither
will we arrive at Rozari.” He sat down next to me, that faint scent
of fire washing over my face.

“How do you know?”

“Oh, he thinks he knows everything,” Steve
scoffed, returning with a set of keys jingling in his hand. “He
always did.”

“That’s because I always do,” Mike replied, a
hint of laughter in his voice. “Steve, the cockpit is over
there.”

“Right, right. I knew that. Thank you very
much. You’ve done your good deed for the day, so now, you can
leave.”

“I want Mike to stay,” I decided, raising my
chin and using my most royal tone. To this day, I don’t know why I
said this, other than I figured it would be worse to be left
alone.

Steve snorted, a huffing, chuffing, long
exhalation of breath. “His name is Mike? You’ve got to be kidding
me, right?”

“It’s correct,” Mike said. “More or
less.”

“Trust me, junior. He’s no friend of yours,”
my grandfather’s voice turned back to me. “Trust me, you don’t want
him around. Ever. No way, no how.”

“Yes, I do,” I declared, asserting my Royal
Privilege, while at the same time, realizing I might have just made
a friend. Here he was, right next to me, something I had never had
before, a boy like me, and from the sounds of it, of a similar age.
“We’re both Mikes. That makes us a team. I might just declare him
my Royal Squire.”

“Give me a break,” Steve sighed. “Kari-fa.
You’re already corrupting him.”

“I have done no such thing,” the other Mike
replied. “Why do you always think the worst of me?”

“Experience. Go back to hell. I’m going to
start this plane.”

Steve shuffled away, and a moment later, a
door swished shut behind him. This was followed by the sound of the
ancient engines attempting to start. Several times, Steve cranked
them, and several times they coughed and belched acrid smoke.
Finally, when I was nearly certain this bad dream was about to end,
the engines settled into a soft rumbling rhythm, only occasionally
punctuated by some squeaks.

Then, the plane began to vibrate. The landing
legs retracted, followed by the ship rising like a very fast
elevator into space.

“Is he going to kill us?” I murmured aloud, as
my breath caught in my throat and for a few moments, it felt like
my heart had ceased to beat.

“No,” Mike replied, as casually as if we were
out taking a stroll. “But not from lack of trying.”

Actually, as the spaceplane accelerated, I
felt as if my lungs were being squished in a vise, while my stomach
was crawling laboriously up my throat. I decided that if I were to
survive this, I would never ever go to space again. I would be
perfectly content to spend everyday from hence forth on the
ground.

“Yee haw!” Steve yelled from the cockpit. “I
love flying!”

“So do I,” Mike remarked. “But not in a
spaceplane.”

A short time later, I started to relax. We
were no longer traveling vertically, but instead, sailing as
swiftly and smoothly as if floating on a cloud. Space travel wasn’t
so bad, I decided. Steve was an Imperial SpaceNavy pilot, after
all. Even though that was something like seventy years ago, clearly
he hadn’t forgotten everything.

That was until a horrific clanging noise
echoed throughout the ship, which was followed by the engines going
silent.

“Kari-fa!” Steve yelled from the cockpit.
“What the fuck is happening now?”

“Kari-fa, indeed.” Mike sighed heavily, and
unbuckling his belt, he rose to his feet.

“Where are you going?” I asked, not wanting to
be left alone.

“I’m going to help him. Steve needs all the
help he can get.” Then, he chuckled as if this whole situation was
not terrifying but funny.

“What about me?”

“What about you?” Mike repeated.

“I’m scared.”

“Then, you must think of a way to
help.”

“Help?” I gasped. “I know nothing about
spaceplanes, and furthermore, I am blind. Not to mention, I am
the—”

“Yes, I know. You’re the Crown Prince. I heard
all that before. However, that doesn’t mean that you should sit
here on your ass.”

“But!”

“Ach crap!” Steve yelled again, as the
clanging sound grew louder.

“If you are useful, you will forget your
fear,” Mike said. “Once we are on our way again, I shall teach you
how to play chess. It is a good skill for a man who wishes to be a
king.”

“Chess?” I cried, thinking Mike was as crazy
as Steve. “I told you, I can’t see anything.”

“You shan’t need to. You shall learn to
memorize the board, to know each figure in your mind. This way, you
shall stay ten steps ahead of your opponent. ‘Twas a pity Steve was
never very good at that. I suppose he has other redeeming
qualities, although I haven’t yet discovered what they might
be.”

This was followed by Mike’s light footsteps as
he hurried toward the cockpit. I was left alone in the dark and
once again terrified out of my wits. I tried not to cry. I tried to
think of myself as the future king dealing with all the stress and
problems of my realm.

Surely, every day would require more fortitude
than this. Surely, this was only a tiny bump in a road that would
forever be filled with rocks. Straightening my spine, I raised my
nose, visualizing myself issuing orders and royal proclamations. My
mother always said that if my posture was that of a king, so would
be my mind.

It didn’t work. I felt like a stupid, useless,
blind little kid, who was already a complete failure at this life.
Someday I might be King Mikal, but I’d probably end up a failure at
that too, and neither baseball nor chess was going to change
that.

The cockpit door swished open again, followed
by Steve shuffling across the floor. “Are you coming?” he barked.
“Or, do you expect me to do this all myself.”

“Me?” I began to say, but was interrupted by
Mike.

“I thought I wasn’t welcome,” he replied. “You
did ask me to leave, did you not?”

“Did I?”

“Several times,” I told him. “I heard you. You
were quite adamant, in fact.”

“Well, I take that back,” Steve snapped. “Get
down below and figure out what’s gone wrong.”

“It’s the transmission. You have a leak in a
hydraulic cable.”

“No, I fixed it.”

“No, you did not. Not recently, in any case.
It is old and quite worn, and dripping in several
spots.”

“Yeah, well so am I.”

“You should have checked before you left,
Steve.”

“Kari-fa!” my grandfather swore. “Can you
repair it? Maybe, you can patch it until we get somewhere. Weld it
together. You know, with that finger thing.”

“I suppose I could,” Mike demurred. “Although,
you are also completely out of fluid. Did you happen to bring any
spare?”

“I didn’t have any,” Steve snapped
again.

“Of course not.”

“In case you didn’t notice, it’s not like in
the old days. There’s been a huge recession or depression or
whatever. Spare parts and transmission fluids just aren’t around.
It would probably take me a year of searching junk yards for a
part, and I didn’t have time. The kid needs medical
care.”

Mike made a snorting sound, as if he didn’t
believe Steve’s excuse.

“Come on, dude,” Steve begged. “Please help us
out. Just this once? That’s my grandkid over there. We’ve got to
get him fixed up. Hey! You could cure him, while you’re at
it!”

Now, Mike made a humming sound, and his weight
shifted on the floor. “Yes, I could do that as well, but then, you
would owe me. Actually, you already owe me quite a lot.”

“Uh oh.”

Mike snickered. “I would have to
collect.”

Steve gasped as if all the air had been sucked
from his lungs. “Not the kid. Come on, dude. Please tell me not the
kid.”

Mike shook his head, his hair rustling softly
as it rubbed against his shoulders. It sounded long, much longer
than mine.

“Me, then. It’s me. That’s why you’re
here.”

“Indeed. I must be paid.”

“Kari-fa.” Steve exhaled the word along with
his breath. “You’ve been waiting to do this, haven’t you? You’re
probably enjoying this.”

“Not really. You think too highly of
yourself.” A whiff of fire crackled, followed by the scent of fresh
tobacco turning to ash. Mike was smoking a cigarette.

“Give me one of those,” Steve coughed, and a
second cig was lit. I could hear him inhale deeply, before hacking
a few more times.

“That’s what did you in, you know,” Mike said,
conversationally. “Smoking. Lung cancer and all that.”

“Yeah, whatever. Come on. Let’s get
below.”

Steve and Mike headed down the hallway, where
they released a latch that opened a hatch in the floor. From there,
Mike scaled a ladder to the plane’s lower bay, followed by Steve,
who began to cough at every step.

“Wait!” I cried, fumbling to unbuckle the
safety belt. I didn’t want to stay up there all by myself. “Wait
for me, Steve! I’m coming, too.”

“What for? There’s nothing you can do here.”
His voice echoed up the ladder well, bouncing off the spaceplane’s
narrow, metal walls. “Go back and sit down, junior. Remember,
you’re ill.”

“No. I want to help.” Whether it was the fear
of being left alone, or Mike’s lesson had sunk in, I realized I
wanted, and I needed to be useful. “Please, isn’t there something I
can do?”

“Go to the galley and get some water bottles,”
Mike ordered. “Find the coffee pot and some straws. Bring them to
me.”

“Coffee?” Steve scoffed. “It’s hardly time for
breakfast. Cut the kid some slack and let him sit. He just got out
of the hospital a few minutes ago.” Now, Steve began to cough.
“Kari-fa! What have you done to me? I can hardly
breathe!”

“I didn’t do anything. I told you, you did it
all yourself.”

“I was fine until you showed up.”

“Actually, you weren’t. Go on, Mike. We have
only a little time.”

“Okay, Mike,” I replied, and quickly rose to
my feet, almost immediately tripping and falling on my
face.

“Use your other senses, Mike. There is more to
sight than what you see before your eyes.”

“How?”

No one answered as something in the engine
room began to buzz. So, I fumbled my way forward to where I guessed
the galley would be, stretching my hands out in front of me to keep
from colliding with the walls. Finding the cockpit door straight
ahead, and the forward boarding ladder just to the right. On the
left, I discovered a counter with a small fridge beneath
it.

I was proud of myself for having done this,
and also from having recalled the layout from an old picture book
my mother read to me when I was younger. It was called, Flying to
Space with Fanny, or something like that, and it featured an
elephant who was also a pilot in the once great Imperial
SpaceNavy.

“My dad, Steve, was once an Imperial SpaceNavy
pilot,” my mother would always say, which usually made me fall
over, rollicking with laughter, as I imagined my grandfather
dressed in the elephant’s silly uniform, a long trunk hanging from
what should have been his nose.

Now, as I searched blindly through the
galley’s cabinet drawers, I began to worry about Steve and his
cough. Despite our dire situation, this was the first time, we had
been together without my dad or mom around. I realized, as I put my
hands on a coffee pot, I really liked Steve, and even though he was
sort of crazy, and most of the time, embarrassing, I was also
really proud of him.