Barrier

Chapter 1: Emmy

'Don't worry so much, Emmy. I waved goodbye to my parents. They're fine with it,’ Charlotte said, shaking out her hair. She held a bulging rucksack in each hand.

I stopped packing clothes into my bag and looked up at her. ‘You told them?’ This was meant to be a secret.

Charlotte shoved my arm playfully, in strangely high spirits. ‘Of course not, silly. I just said I was going to stay at Lina’s and that I might be longer than usual, since it’s the holidays and all.’

I rolled my eyes. Typical Charlotte. ‘And what are you going to do when they go to Lina’s and you’re not there?’

She wouldn’t look me in the eye. ‘Oh, I’m sure they have other things to do. They won’t mind.’

I sighed. ‘I don’t understand your parents sometimes.’

‘Neither do I, really.’ She laughed. ‘But I get along fine, so what’s not to like?’

I almost said something in return, but held it back. ‘Alright. What are we doing? If it’s so essential that I come, what -’

I stopped mid-sentence, remembering that I had my own reasons to be here. ‘Where are we going?’

She dug a note out of her pocket, quickly turning her back so I couldn’t see what was on it. I tried to snatch it off her, but she was gripping it tightly, still blocking my view. After a few moments of silence, she shoved it back into her pocket and turned to face me once more, pointing in the general direction of the mountains.

‘That way. I can’t show you it yet, so I guess you’ll find out when we get there. Bear with me. Do you have the stuff I asked you to bring?’

‘Of course I do. But why so much of it? A lot of this seems unnecessary.’

She clammed up suddenly. ‘I just know. Don’t go asking me how. Please.’

‘I’ll find out eventually, you know,’ I said.

She continued checking her Magno’s screen. ‘Obviously. Ready to go?’

We left once the hottest part of the afternoon had passed, stopping at Charlotte’s for supplies after a brief check to make sure her parents were out.

Almost anything valuable in my house was kept under lock and key in the basement on Mum’s side. We occasionally saw flickering lights coming from in there, but knew better than to ask. So I didn’t bother going in except to leave a note, trying to suppress the guilt that flared up when I passed Noah’s room.

The weather was beautiful, the sun sending faded rays of light down at us. Perfect for travelling. We were going by Magno – which wasn’t a problem for Charlotte, but definitely complicated things for me.

Much as I hated to admit it, I was daunted by the Magnobikes - Magno anything, really. They were run with such precise equilibrium that they were always seconds away from disintegrating violently and throwing me through a wall somewhere if the systems failed. Only the systems never failed. Still, I’m not a big fan of dying horribly.

I should’ve been able to do it without this stupid fear.

 Noah and Liam started driving their Magnos in the less busy airstreams at the age of four, with a touchpad that allowed them to guide the controls without actually doing any heavy work their four-year-old muscles couldn’t manage.

I passed the test at three, but my fear of falling held me back. There’s a trick to driving them, and I just couldn’t get the hang of staying up.  The licenses were passed out according to aptitude. So my family started as children, while others had to wait until middle adulthood. I passed the theory test with flying colours - the pattern identifying component suited me down to the ground.

The practice was my downfall. There was just something wrong about the Magno I was given for the exams. When I was younger, I didn’t know what held me back. My Magno just repelled me when I tried to steer it using the touchpad. I tried and tried to access a services line, sure that they could fix whatever was wrong. But every time Mum stopped me. I didn’t find out why that was for a long time.

The Magno I’d been given in what must have been most predictable surprise ‘you-passed-your-test!’ present in the world seemed to be a prototype of the first-generation Magno Lotus. I don’t know why I was given that one, when Mum could’ve accessed any product she wanted, but I was.

At least we had the Magnos, though. The only alternatives were the mass transports and walking. Nobody would be stupid enough to take a Hover around any track longer than a hundred metres.

So we had Charlotte’s shiny silver Magno Plus with its huge touch screen, and my dusty green Lotus Classic. I firmly told myself that at least it was possible to control the Lotus with a rudimentary steering wheel in the unlikely event that the touch screen failed. And, of course, I had my own way of using it.

I’d discovered it years ago, the little knob that let me alter my Magno and steer it manually, outside the allowed streams. I kept it a secret. If anyone had known I was using it without the guider screen… I didn’t want to think about the consequences.

I waited until Charlotte wasn’t looking and flicked the switch on the side of my Magno. She’d notice if I took the screen off completely, so I just deactivated it, hoping for the umpteenth time that it wouldn’t set off alarm bells.

We kick-started the Magnos at dusk and drove them at a steady altitude of about thirty metres, staying close to the curve of the Barrier until it became too dark for even our strong headlights to light the way.

 I insisted on stopping there despite Charlotte’s protests. No matter how regulated the streams were, I wasn’t taking any risks. We were making progress, I told her, when she nervously glanced down at her pocket.

Time for some sleep. I hadn’t slept properly for close to three days with the anxiety, so it was a relief to drift slowly to a safe spot on the ground, out of sight of the casual passerby, and seal up both sides of the Magno into a capsule with just enough room to comfortably sleep in.

That was another advantage of my Lotus - it could fold up lotus-flower style to function as an emergency place to sleep. A few metres away, under the rocky outcropping we’d chosen, I saw Charlotte struggling to close hers up. It would work, of course, but it was considerably more cramped than mine. Enhanced speed and streamlining come at a price. My kind of Magno inspired the modern airstream system; her generation was made for it.

I pulled my expandable bed set out of the bag I’d packed. I’d tried to run away from home a couple of times before, but never like this. A thrill went through me and I turned on my side and tried to sleep, lips still curved into a smile.

Free.