Seneca Rebel

chapter 2

A matte black SpaceFlex Passenger Flight Vehicle sat on the tarmac. What I wouldn't do for one of those. Ellen Malone stood up and smiled. "That's us."

"Awesome!" I thought, and followed Ellen off of the BoomJet without saying a word. I was dizzy and my legs buckled.

"Are you okay?"

"Amazing." I stood up straight. I didn't want her to see me weak, but that had been some intense G-Force. Ellen was fine, like she'd done this a million times. She straightened a crease in her blazer.

For the past three years the world had been crumbling all around me, but now it seemed someone was championing me. Ellen Malone. Although the jury was still out on her motivation, and the idea of reform school made me wince, I felt elevated here.

Next thing you know I was back in the air– this time, in a flighter amongst the affluent folk of metropolitan Washington, D.C. The airways just above the highways and roads had become transport paths for flighters after the federal government had approved the bill a few years back. Of course, it was made completely unaffordable to ninety-nine percent of the population, and since I didn't have a license and my mom had no idea I was a millionaire, the only time I had experienced flighting was when I'd hot-hacked a flighter with my best friend, Julie.

That had been one seriously ill-fated joyride on a sweltering day back in May. We'd cruised over the 10 Freeway, and I veered off to pull some tricks between a stretch of decrepit, old Mediterranean-style stucco buildings in overpopulated, underprivileged hoods, where no other flighters ever went. We were doing about fifty, level with the roofs. People saw us and were cheering out their windows. Julie was egging me on like crazy. We always instigated each other to push the limits. I dropped us towards the road, just above the first story of the buildings, and then gunned it straight towards one of them. "Waaahoo!" I shouted. No fear. Julie screamed, braced herself in her seat, and just as we almost smashed into the first floor, I pulled back and we jetted straight up the side and into the sky, where we were met by the flighter cops. Busted in a stolen flighter just two weeks before my sixteenth birthday. I did two weeks in juvie, three months of community service and my license was revoked until I turn twenty.

The upside was that while my classmates were inside being lectured on flighter technology, I was outside experiencing it firsthand. I still don't get what's so wrong with that. In any case, my mom did. She was pissed beyond belief. It was just another event in a long series of me getting in trouble. It was so worth it. My school counselor and administrators were convinced I was acting up because I had lost my dad. I maintain that it was because everyone around me was so boring, that I needed to be proactive and inventive in order to have any fun.
But this unpredictable excursion with Ellen Malone, this I would classify as fun. From the moment we touched down in Virginia, I had the feeling that life would never be the same. I'd never been east of The Rockies, let alone to the other side of the country. This was a whole new horizon. For starters, the landscape was a stark contrast to what I was used to. Los Angeles' glory days were long gone. My parents would tell me stories of a top-notch tourist destination that had slipped into an abyss of overpopulation and filth. Broken roads overridden with traffic around the clock. Baywatch waves covered in dudes and babes would be considered folklore if there weren't countless images to prove their existence. From Malibu to Hermosa, the ocean water was just too polluted to swim in now.

Unlike every single metropolis across the globe, the air was clean here in Virginia, the roads paved to perfection. Smooth and black. And as we cruised above the endless river of traffic that carved its way through the tall sea of deep green trees, I saw something we most definitely did not have in LA. An elevated, four-lane roadway built in translucent concrete. Ellen saw that I was fixated on it. "The Smart Road. It runs above Route 66 into downtown Washington, D.C., as well as down Highway 81 to Blacksburg, Virginia, where the technology was first researched, blueprinted and constructed for many years before stretching thousands of miles across the country," she explained. "Some of the session leaders you'll be meeting were recruited out of the institutions that developed this sustainable transportation system. If we get a little closer, you'll see the law enforcement vehicles, traffic and weather collection devices, medical units and commercial freight trucks traveling on it in automated, unmanned vehicles."