Timelines Collide

Chapter 15: A Hatter and some Thicken Frames

I hate to think that a child genius created this thing. My Lincoln would tell me stories about how Lisa solved algebra when she was five, and then put together a working chemical solution at six. Even once he said she got a Nobel peace prize. I thought he was joking. 

Though she's made our tech by helping stabilize The Covenant's plasma weapons formula and created our very own network channel for us to communicate discreetly. That's why buildings like the Solis station exist, after all. However, her greatest achievement has to be this machine, and yet, why does it seem like it has been held together by duct tape? 

Pieces start shaking loose from the hold, smoke starts filling the air around me, and two of the wings hang by their thinnest pieces. I can deal with the smoke, only at the cost of its engine scraping off bits and pieces of itself and throwing them into the dirt. Takes an hour to stop it from doing so. 

It gets even better when I look at a few notes she left showing me the inner workings of her glorious child. My eyes might as well have been reading Latin. I didn't need a few pieces of paper to tell me how to frame an engine. Luckily, this machine comes with a blow torch instead of an extinguisher. 

I began twisting the iron bolts and then torching the side panels that refuse to stay on. The blow torch must have been loud since I don't even hear the approach of her shadow, but I do hear her voice.

"Watcha doing?" She asks, her voice as innocent as I remembered it to be. 

To think she was holding back her tears the last time I saw her and now; she looks at me like I'm crazy. Similar to their Lincoln, she's almost an exact copy of my own. Even sporting her signature bright red cap and navy-blue overalls. The only thing that's different is instead of red underneath, she wears olive green.

"Lana," is all I could utter to her.

"Yep, that's my name though how did you know that?"

My brain begins to slowly drip down from its cage of a skull. For what feels like an entire moment of silence she waits pleasantly twisting her shoe into the grass, with her eyes remaining tweet full.  Should I tell her the truth only because she wouldn't understand, or should I keep up the lie? It's already hard enough to lie to my Lana, but now I got to lie to a whole new one. My teeth grind when coming to a compromise.

"Oh well, you just remind me of a girl named Lana I know, that's all." My face couldn't buy into the words, though at least she does.

"Hmm, is your Lana nice too?" she asks with an alive-struck tone.

"Ah yeah, you bet. She's quite the courageous and dirty little one if you ask me."

"That's good to hear. I wouldn't want to be associated with a Lana mean and nasty." Her cheeks start to glow and her eyes shine when they finally see what I'm doing. 

"Ooo you're welding something?" Her words become sweeter than chocolate candy. "Can I do one part please?" 

The way she begs weirdly enough reminds me of Joltxs, however, he could never master the puppy dog's eyes. 

I smile and toss her the shortest piece I can find. It's a fragment fallen from one of the sides, it's so small it can fit inside the palm of her tiny hand. I then slowly hand her the torch. She almost falls backward trying to hold it. 

Five seconds is all she needed to have that thing stick like skin to bone. To compare, it took me ten seconds for a slide. Even in this reality, her skills in welding are something to talk about.

"Wow, that's pretty impressive there Lana. You got some hands."

"Thanks", she says while twiddling her thumbs. "I've been practicing welding for a while now, though I've never seen something so gigantic. Did you make this yourself?"