Courne Supremacy

Nestled on a cliffside, a small town zig-zagged up the rock face and ended with a church on the plateau. In the noonday sun, the church steeple had been the first thing Alicia had seen glimmering in the horizon as she had flown over the Senbu Desert two days ago. As her plane soared over it, the desert ended and a lush valley of farmland opened up before her. She zoomed over the patchwork of farms and eventually landed at the foot of the mountainside village.

She was the first traveler in months for these people. A mother and her gaggle of children had approached her first — the youngest, a yellow haired girl with crooked teeth, gave her a charm, a small four-leaf clover she picked from a tuft of grass. An elderly couple had offered Alicia food and lodgings for her stay in return for news of the world beyond their vertical village. On the first night, Alicia was the guest of honor at the church festival. They sang hymns, danced to flute music, and feasted on the plumpest pigs and chickens Alicia had ever seen.

The next day, she explored the town on her own. Alicia weaved her way up and down the inclined streets admiring the engineering that went into the town’s architecture. Buildings looked as if they were chiseled out of the rock. These people lived with nature instead of destroying it. In her journal, Alicia opened her journal and drew the view of the farms from the cliff.

A strange whirling noise passed across Alicia’s back. She jerked her head to the side and caught the sight of a boy with a basket. He marched like a toy soldier going down the street. She studied each rigid step and scrutinized the back of his head. Did his skin look somewhat paler than everyone else’s? The boy stopped at a cart, produced a list for the shopkeeper, and stood by silently to receive his wares. After he paid, the boy raised his arm and waved it side to side before marching away.

As the boy approached the next cart, several rowdy children ran by and bumped into it. A support beam holding a rack of pumpkins snapped and the shelf collapsed.

“Watch out!” Alicia called. She tucked her journal back into her jacket and weaved her way through the throng of people shopping in the market district. She broke through the crowd, but by then most of them were gawking at the sight of the boy laying on his back with his legs making a walking motion in the air. The pumpkin that hit the boy’s head was smashed open and bleeding seeds. “Are you hurt?” she asked him. “Is there a doctor here?” She called to the crowd.

“Oy, who’s gonna pay for that pump-” The cart owner stooped down besides Alicia and the boy. “What’s with is head?”

Alicia turned from the cart owner to the child. Her eyes widened. Inside the boy’s head gears rotated and a metallic belt of bumps moved cams up and down. The whirling noise she heard earlier was louder now that it wasn’t fully encased by the boy’s skull. Around the wound laid brass gears and copper cogs.

“What’s wrong with his legs?” Alicia recognized the yellow-haired girl’s voice. When she glanced at them, the mother pushed her daughter behind her cloak. Murmurs and whispers grew amongst the bystanders.

“It’s a machine like a music box or pocket watch, but he’s broken now,” Alicia said. She bent back over the boy and removed a cloth pouch from her belt and unrolled it on the street revealing a set of slender wrenches, tiny tuners, chisels, awls, and mallets. Taking a wrench, she probed the boy’s head and with great care she slid the tool against the cams to keep them from rolling over the bumps. The boy’s legs froze in mid-air. Cries of “Heretic!” rose from the stunned audience.

A small stone hit Alicia in the small of her back. She yelped. Another stone hit her on her arm. “Stop!” She cried. She drew her luger and raised it against the crowd. Several more townsfolk had rocks in their hands ready to launch them.

“Stay your distance! Lower your weapons!” An elderly man forced his way through the crowd with his cane. Alicia recognized him as the husband of the couple that she was staying at. He approached the boy and tapped his cane against his chest. “My child,” he said turning to Alicia. “I know you mean well, but allow us to take care of this.”

“What will you do to him?” She said lowering her gun.

“It. We will destroy it. All the works of the Devil must be destroyed.”

“Where I come from scientists and philosophers believe the human body is nothing more than an intricate machine full of minute gears and wheels that allow us to live. If I’m no longer welcome here, let me take him with me!” The yellow-hair girl began to cry and latched onto her mother’s side.

“Very well,” the elderly man said after a long pause. A ruckus of cries and yells bellowed from the surrounding people. “Silence! You will obey your elders just as it says in the scriptures! Allow her to pass. I shall walk with her.” Alicia picked up the boy and all the mechanical parts laying around him she could find. She bought a tarp from a nearby cart and wrapped the boy’s body and slung it over her shoulder. Before Alicia left the market, she crouched down by the yellow-haired girl and plucked the clover from her pocket and held it out for her. The girl swiped it from her hand and crushed it in her fist. Alicia smiled anyway. “Goodbye,” she said.

The elderly man guided her back to her plane. His wife had brought her suitcase to the plane already. She frowned and bid Alicia adieu. Alicia laid the boy in the plane’s trunk and buckled him down.

When the elderly man was alone with her he said to her: “There was once a great inventor that lived in this town. He was a watchmaker. A master of the craft. He build more and more complex watches and toy dolls that drew pictures and danced to ditties. Now, he is beyond the farmlands hidden away in the forest never allowed to return here.”

“Thank you.” Alicia climbed into her cockpit and closed the canopy. She saluted the man, turned the plane around, and took off into the clear blue sky.

When I originally created the Courne Supremacy I thought that it would be all about writing. I would post short stories and my friends could come and read them. It hasn’t turned out that way. More or less, Courne Supremacy is a blog about all the projects I’m currently working on. I like a lot of different forms of expression if you haven’t noticed.

My brother and I talked over winter break about trying to do a project together. I wanted to write; he wanted to draw. I thought we might be able to do a comic strip of some sort, but really that’s a lot of work and we’re both very busy. I proposed to him the idea that I would write a short story and he could illustrate a scene from it. This is the first of those short stories and hopefully you’ll see a new one every two weeks. I was hoping for every week, but really, that might be too much. This is based off a short story I posted on here a year ago called “Alicia and the Mechanical Bird.” If you recognize the fairy tale of the “Briar Rose,” then you’ll have an idea as to the type of stories I’m shooting for. Enjoy.

“Legend speaks of the beautiful, sleeping Princess Rose. I’ve come to kiss her and lift the curse from this city,” said the Prince from Anterfield, a country to the north with a burgeoning military and few towns and villages to conquer. This Prince must have rode out to seek glory and validation, neither of which he could earn under the watchful eye of his father and the shelter of Anterfield’s high walls and crowded hierarchy of princes and lords. “What does a girl seek in a city like this?”

“How did this curse come about?” I pulled my hammer from my belt and began to board the windows up with planks from the tea counter and chair seats. I reloaded my rifle and ensured that all the rooms were locked tight. The wolves would be back soon and no doubt they were clever enough to find other ways into the tea house. This is what the Prince told me while I worked:

“Once the princess was born, the King, in his joy, held a great celebration. He invited men of fortune and grandeur and twelve of thirteen wise women of his kingdom. Each woman bestowed a gift upon the newborn. When the eleventh had graced the child, the thirteenth woman forced her way into the castle and cursed the newborn with death from a spindle needle. The twelfth woman blessed her with a chance to survive. The young princess turned fifteen and true to the prediction she pierced her finger on a needle and collapsed into a deep sleep. As did all the people of this city. For one hundred years, it has been so. Today is the day that the Princess will reawaken, that was what the local people told me.”

The story accounted for the half-eaten bodies I found in the streets. The wolves and bears had gotten to those intrepid men. Not all of them were princes but men seeking fortune and power.

Above us a window shattered. Claws scrapped against the wood floor. I counted three wolves by the sound made by each animal entering through the window. They must have found a way through one of the abandoned buildings adjacent to the tea house.

“Can you run?” I asked. The Prince’s leg was bandaged the blood soaked through the cotton gauze wrapped around it.

He clapped his hands on the counter and heaved himself up on his feet. He drew his saber. “Let them come.”

Pitter-patter. The trio of wolves sauntered about upstairs biding their time. I imagined them panting and growling at one another, speaking in their own tongue, and plotting the best way to ensnare us. One of the wolves departed from the others and trotted down the stairs. He scratched at the door and growled.

I quietly moved to the window. The wolf on the other side of the door barked and scratched the door as if it were trying to dig the wood away.

I peeked through the cracks of the boarded up windows. A blurry thing jumped at me from the other side. I screamed and fell backwards onto the floor. Chips of wood flew into the room and a snout full of yellow, sharp teeth gnashed at where I stood. Both of us stayed still and listened to the click-click of the wolf’s teeth biting at the empty air and the scratching on the door. Before I could regain my footing and fire my rifle, the Prince stabbed the beast through the boards. A whimper and thump announced its death.

The wolf at the door scurried back up the stairs to confer with his partner.

“Look at this,” said the prince. I peeped through the cracks again. The two wolves had jumped down from the second story. They circled the wall watching their fallen comrade.

The idea struck me right when I saw them. “They’ll be well fed. Let’s go.” I pulled the Prince back from the window. At first his feet didn’t budge but we were soon by the door. We listened a moment longer and soon I could hear the wolves dragging the body away.

“Let’s find your castle,” I said.

“You didn’t answer my question from before,” the Prince responded.

“I didn’t know what my answer was until you told me.”

* * * * *

The architects of this town packed the buildings tightly. Bad for the citizens — if a major fire broke out or some other disaster, they would all be consumed by it. Good for us — it made it easier to climb from one roof to the next. Plus, traveling this way made it harder for animals to hunt us.

There were still dangers to contend too. We nearly fell to our deaths when one of the rooftops we stepped on cracked and crumbled. Someone had planted an entire garden and after a hundred years of exposure to rain and sunlight dandelions and moss carpeted everything. The roots grew into the concrete and wood splintering it just enough for our weight to do it in. We tread carefully through the thicket of overgrown herbs and spice plants. The fragrance of those plants brought me back to my days living in Aeterall and leisurely spending time with friends and classmates at the local taverns and cafes. As we walked I stuffed my coat with the aromatic leaves — they would make some of my canned meals a little more flavorful.

When we had to cross the street to move in between blocks of buildings, we’d hurry down the building and made sure that the path was clear of animals. I would draw my rifle and the Prince unsheathed his saber as we crossed the street, but aside from the wolves in the teahouse the animals that we came across left us alone.

We made it to the city’s center and the castle. Ivy, vines, and moss covered the edifice of the castle’s walls. The iron and wood gates were shut.

The Prince raised his hand. “Do you hear that?”

I listened and speedily unslung my rifle. The growls of wolves meant that we had more company. I peeked through the scope and tried to pick the little monsters out from the trees, but the forest concealed them.

“We climb,” I told him. I wrapped my gloved hands around the thickest vines and hoisted myself up the side of the great stone wall. The prince, grunting in pain, followed behind me. The wolves arrived below to sniff the ground, but we were already atop the wall on the narrow catwalk.

Two guards were slumped against the wall in the tower we had climbed into. No carnivores had scavenged these men; their bodies were mostly intact. Time though had made their skin brittle. The skin of their cheeks clung to their skull and their eyes sunk in their sockets.

“What will happen when you kiss this princess?” I asked.

“She will awaken from her slumber. Unlike these poor chaps.”

“But if the same curse has effected everyone, wouldn’t they awaken as well?” I pulled a sprig of mint from my coat pocket and held it under the guard’s mummified nose. I steadied my hand and watched for any signs of breath. I hoped and prayed that his eyes stayed closed. The sprig fluttered gently. “By the King!” I whispered. “He’s still alive!” I drew my hand away as quick as I could.

“Let’s hurry. The sooner I awaken the princess the sooner this town will be saved.”

Down the spiral stairs and across the courtyard we went. The manicured lawn and pruned trees had turned wild without a gardener. A monstrous tree with water engorged roots tore up a circular fountain and absorbed all of the water.

The Prince pushed the double doors apart to the main castle entrance. Dust danced in the first rays of sunlight it had seen in a century. My nose wrinkled at a hundred years of unwashed clothing, unwashed bodies, and rotted food. Vines, weeds, and moss broke through the marble floor and reclaimed the interior as its own. We climbed the grand staircase and entered through another set of double doors in to the throne room.

Before us sat the sleeping King and Queen. The King’s beard and Queen’s hair had grown long and gray over these hundred years. I lingered with the centennials studying them as the Prince searched from pillar to pillar and room to room for his prize.

“At last!” I heard the Prince cry. I stood away from the ancient royals. The room was filled with sleeping men. Knights slumbered against the pillars of the great hall. A fat jester splayed out on the floor snoozing away. Men and women dressed in noble suits and gowns huddled by one another. I did not want to see them reawaken. “Come quickly, girl. Witness as I take this fair princess to be my own.”

I followed his voice, it came from behind the throne room and out of an open door. The room had belonged to a maidservant but now it was overrun with cobwebs. Laying in a bed of hay was a young woman with lips as red as blood, skin as white as snow, and hair as gold as flax. Her blue silk dress fluttered in the breeze coming from the open window. She kept her youth of fifteen years. The Prince was cleaning the cobwebs away from her and he gently caressed her heart-shaped face.

He leaned over her and mumbled words I couldn’t discern (a prayer I assumed). He kissed her.

The princess’ eyes opened. They were a serene and beautiful azure. All at once she appeared radiant and majestic. Her lips parted as to smile, but her hands clapped over her belly. She arched her back and gasped for air. Spiders poured from her nose, ears, and mouth. From under the haystack more of the wretched things crept away from her reanimated body. She thrashed and screamed but the volume of arachnids pouring from her mouth silenced her.

In the courtyard I heard rustling and movement. I brushed the cobwebs from the window and opened it wider. Just as I thought, the near-dead were awake. People walked and crawled about. If souls still inhabited those bodies, I felt them poorer for it.

“My eyes! My eyes!” A man lamented. He stumbled and crawled. “Why can’t I see?” Other moans and howls of distress emanated from every corner of the courtyard.

“My Princess! My love!” I turned to see the Prince helping his Queen-to-be to her feet. She vomited more of the spiders. “Help me!” A prince asking a common girl for help? “Save her!” This was his kingdom slipping through his hands. I backed out through the door, but I was greeted by a man covered in mangled hair and bugs crawling all over his face. It was the King! He had staggered down the hallway. When he saw me, his lips moved and he tried to speak but the noise came out as low moans. Once I gathered my senses again and put some distance between myself and the King, I realized what he was saying: “My daughter, my daughter.” His bony fingers clawed at the walls and tore to pieces as he fell towards the room I had departed. His Queen came lurching after. Her jaw hung slackly and she rolled against the wall whilst her head lolled about as if it had become unhinged from her neck. Behind her a parade of horror continued as far as my eyes could see.

“Do something for her!” The prince exited the room but at the sight of the monstrosities in front of him he drew his sword.

“No!” I took his arm and held him back. I turned my eyes to the King’s daughter. She choked and sputtered. Her eyes bled red. If these people were alive and crying in pain, then what about the townspeople? After a hundred years they would be defenseless against the beasts of the wild, absolutely famished, and completely dehydrated and only the King knows what kind of agony they would be in.

I pushed past the Prince and raised my rifle. The girl lumbered towards me with outstretched arms. The spiders swarmed out of her mouth and over her pristine flesh. She didn’t move from my sights. “Go back to sleep,” I whispered as I pulled the trigger. The cries stopped except for the Prince’s.

It was the only humane thing I could do.

* * * * *

I came here for fuel or food, neither of which I found. My plane was packed and ready for takeoff. I remember how pretty the city looked from the air. The buildings covered over with greenery and overtaken by trees. It excited my imagination. I believed I would find wonders that I had never seen before, and I suppose, I did.

As for the prince, I left him in the castle. He would not part from his beloved.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/162151

That’s my NaNoWriMo page and yes I wrote 50,238 words on the month of November. Despite having a 5 day break for Thanksgiving with friends in Los Angeles and all the temporal haphazards of working in the video game industry, I imaged to stay the course and write my 50k. Is it the best 50,000 words I ever wrote? I’m sure like the last 50,000, that answer is a big fat no. But what counts is that it’s given me time to write down the bits and pieces of my sci-fi story and hammer out the details. Before I can rewrite my story, I need to have one first, right? I don’t know how this fits into the other pieces I wrote or if this would stand better on its own — I definitely have the notion that it will join a larger story arch but I’m working without a deadline. I get to do things pie-in-the-sky for a long while yet, but the end result is that I would like to find a publisher after I feel out the story and really vet it in my mind and on computer screen.

I’ll post an exerpt of it later this week for your enjoyment. But! I know, better yet, since you already clicked the link you can read what I have there.

The story’s called “Common Sense” after the phamplet by Mr. Thomas Paine. Currently, my story, in its state, bears absolutely no resemblance to those words that spurred our great revolution (not even close), but one of the passages from his famous essay did incited the idea for this story:

“In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest; they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto; the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same.”

The gist of the story is that a small group of people survive a horrible accident onboard a larger starship and find themselves together on a smaller one. They have limited food, supplies, and don’t know one another and have about a month to go before they reach Mars.

So the November project is done. What does this mean? Time for Assassin’s Creed. More Super Mario Galaxy. And next months project… well, if you read my previous post. You’ll have an idea and you’ll definitely see what I’m brewin’ at home.

October has been about one thing, and one thing only: the domination of my life by video games. Half Life 2 episode 1 and 2, Portal, and the monster of them all, Halo 3. I gamed each and every day — well except the days that I had a horrible neck strain, but I swear to you, it’s not due to playing video games! I somehow slept with my neck turned awkwardly and that put me out of commission for a week. Trust me, you never want to feel that pain, not even to your face.

November promises more great games: Super Mario Galaxy and Assassin’s Creed (well…maybe that’s a good one, who knows). But I want to trade in my fanatical gaming for a new project:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Na-No-Wri-Mo…it stands for “National November Writing Month.” It’s an online writing contest. You write 50,000 words of whatever you want, and then you win! What do you win? Well…okay, there’s no prize, other than the fact that you’ve just sat down and penned your great American novel that you’ve been waiting to do since the second grade. I did this last year, and I want to try again this year. I may have even gotten a few friends interested as well. So if you’re up for writing, November seems to be a good time to start.

BTW…my id is Albino Grimby for NaNoWriMo and Xbox Live.

Finally, I’m writing something in my Blarg again. It’s been a while, and despite not posting to this blog, I am working on some of my own projects, so there’s still fodder and it’s still a-comin’. This post is brought to you by Zoundary, a nice FREE desktop blog editing/writing software that I found online. It sure as hell beats the Wordpress editor. I like Wordpress, because I like having my blog on my own domain, but the web interface to edit isn’t that great — as I’ve learned with most web interfaces. Not all of the wonders of the web 2.0 world can really replace a decent word editor that doesn’t rely on an asynchronous callback to determine when and if it gets updated — nice to use in a pinch, but since I do my blogging at home and in the wee hours of the night, this is much better. BTW, if you use other blogging software, I think Zoundary can work with it. Give it a shot!

Speaking of projects that I’m working on…I’ve been slowly getting back to writing. So the winds seem to be shifting again. A month ago it was about messing with XNA and building a raytracer. I’ve since stopped working on perfecting my raytracer, because I could simply be doing that day-in and -out forever. It’s quite an obsession once you can get it going and have the pieces working right. I’m still messing with XNA here and there, now and then, and maybe you’ll see something on that front soon enough.

In the meantime, my friend, Mike Brinker, and myself started doing some exercises out of a book called The 3 A.M. Epiphany. It’s written by Brian Kiteley and it’s a book of 200 writing exercises. So far I like it. I have a bunch of other “how to write” books that go over the basics of forming character, plot, setting, etc., but this book takes all those things into account and asks you to challenge yourself with one of its 200 prompts. Why do this? Well, my ulterior motive is to write some short stories and eventually a novel and get it published, so it helps on that end. Brinker and myself are also big fans of games like Bioshock, Half Life, and the ilk…games that have decent stories. If Ken Levine can pull Bioshock out of Atlas Shrugged’s ass and place the bar for story telling on a higher peg, then…I suppose that means there’s some hope left and it’s time to move beyond aliens, Nazis, and zombies and strive for something deeper and more interesting. Of course, games should still be fun, I wouldn’t want to sacrafice that.

This exercise is from the 3 A.M. Epiphany. It’s exercise #6, which is “The Royal We.” See if you can figure out how the narration working, and if you do, tell me. Enjoy!

“The Royal We” Exercise

We were both in the cockpit of the shuttle as it careened through Earth’s atmosphere, plunging towards the Indian Ocean at a rate that would kill both of us and tear the ship to pieces. Amanda pushed the dead pilot aside and took the flight stick and pulled back with all her trembling might. Amanda thinks that things in the real world work like things in television shows and movies.

Amanda called out, “Help me, dammit!” We couldn’t hear one another.

Jun took her time getting into the co-pilot’s chair and both of us tried to pull back on the sticks. We could hear the metal skin of the wings screeching and whining as we prodded them to turn this bird away from the water. We weren’t going to make it, but we had to try. Amanda continued to wrangle the controls in a futile attempt to make the machine acknowledge her presence. Jun left the controls alone and studied the heads-up display intently looking for something, some bit of information that would help us out of our stalled dive. We didn’t know anything about space planes — it was really just Amanda who didn’t know anything about space planes — let alone regular airplanes.

Amanda let up on the yoke, her breathing slowed, and she became much more calm. The floor rattled and shook as the bolts of the plane were coming undone. We were done for, that’s for sure. The blue of the ocean was now filling everything. Amanda closed her eyes. Jun placed her hands on the control yoke. Amanda’s lips were moving saying something that we couldn’t hear — the engine was roaring behind us. It was impossible to hear anything.

I turned the engines off. Amanda’s voice carried a prayer, a useless cry for help to a diety that won’t respond. Why didn’t we have a 100% chance to live, because one of us was busy chanting, wishing for a miracle that would never come. There are no such things as miracles, just us — we have to help one another or there is no chance we could ever survive. Jun (thank god) saw the controls for the manuvering thrusters and she turned the forward thrusters on. Amanda latched onto the flight yoke again and pulled it back with all her might. The plane lurched, the nose pointing up towards the cloudy sky — it must have been the moonson season. We were both weightless slipping out of our chairs.

Jun fired the dorsal thursters and we leveled off again and then she was able to ignite all of them. This was the miracle that Amanda was looking for with her quiet wish. The rockets broke our freefall. Amanda kept us steady despite not knowing a thing about how a plane flies. Amanda adapts and learns quickly — it’s amazing how she can put two and two together so fast. Just by looking at Amanda one wouldn’t expect that from such a young and waifish looking thing with blonde hair and dull brown eyes. We mastered the controls. It felt as if we were floating like a feather towards the blue ocean.

We crashed into the water, but the ship floated. Thank Heavens! Jun turned her eyes to Amanda and neither of us said anything. Amanda was trembling, but now that we were in control of the situation again, I could see the tension easing in her face.

Our silence was broken with crash after crash of waves and the sound of water leaking through the bulk head. Both of us left our seats. Amanda went straight for the door trying to open it. Jun snatched Amanda’s hand and pulled her away, throwing her backwards almost. She pressed herself to the door, her ear against it listening to the water pouring into the passenger compartment.

The sound of water was all encompassing. It was sloshing about outside the cockpit and hammering against the windows. Every particle of water raged and howled for our bodies. We weren’t welcome in this untamable, relentlessly violent world. We were alien and needed to be consumed, dragged into the depths of the ocean to be digested by the Earth itself. Water blocked the door between the cockpit and the rest of the plane. It too was being slowly devoured for trespassing.

Amanda sprung into action like a violent twister. Instead of whispering meaningless prayers, she flung cabinet doors open around the cockpit and yanking the contents out, rifled through them with her hands, and flinging them aside. Food packages, bags of water, extra oxygen tanks, a fire extinguisher, a hand taser, flashlights, flares, radio beacons, PDAs, a geiger counter, a small radio transmitter, and finally a flotation device.

One for us.

Just one.

We were almost tilted a full 90 degrees and were lying against the wall with the door. The water crashed and pressed against it, frothing and bubbling through the cracks. The sky was right above us. Amanda stood on the wall Jun laid against to brace the door and hold back the horde of water pounding and pressing against the other side. Amanda cried out, “There has to be another one!” Her nimble hands tossed and threw things from the cabinets in every direction, but there wasn’t one. “Think! How do we get out of here?” Amanda asked Jun. “Do something!”

The door was giving way. Even if both of us could press against that door the weight of the water would have still muscled its way through. Jun gave it up, she sat up in the growing puddle of water. Silently, Jun surveyed the mess Amanda made, found the fire extinguisher tossed aside. Jun took it and clambered up the wall of the cockpit and pulled herself onto the co-pilot’s chair. She stood on the chair’s back support cushion, her fingertips gingerly pressed to the glass windsheild. Jun’s eyes fell on Amanda. Amanda knew right away what Jun meant to do, and that Jun did not want or need the life vest. Amanda put the vest over her shoulders and tied the ends together as tight as possible, but did not inflate the vest yet. Amanda braced herself against the wall with the cockpit door — the water was now well enough to cover her amost completely if she laid down — and Amanda held onto the latch keeping the water flow at a steady infux.

Jun slammed the butt of the fire extinguisher against the windshield. A spot of crackled glass formed. Amanda shielded her eyes. Jun cracked the glass again with the extinguisher. Tendrils of breaking glass creaked and the spot of shattered but stuck glass, grew larger. Jun glanced towards Amanda to avoid getting glass in her eyes. Jun shut them and with all her strength she slammed the windshield again. The red cylinder broke through and water lapped at the edges and spilled into the cockpit from above first in a trickle then like a small waterfall. Amanda took that as her cue to open the door keeping the water at bay. They were surrounded in water — falling water, rising water.

Jun held tight to the co-pilot’s chair. The rush of water pushed Amanda upwards, and we met face to face. Jun touched Amanda’s face, almost like a caress. Jun helped Amanda through the windshield first, careful not to cut the life vest, and as she stood above the plane, Jun let go of her hand.

Amanda was free of the plane. Jun looked up at Amanda. “Hey!” Amanda called. Jun wasn’t moving, she wasn’t trying to climb out of the hole she has made. Jun just waited on the co-pilot’s chair. It seemed that Jun had even closed her eyes and let the water consume her. Jun always had a death wish, it was the look in her eyes, the quiet look of someone who had long given up on living. But, why? We are so different in this regard.

But, we are going to escape this plane together. We are going to swim this entire ocean and get back to land. Amanda dived into the water, she reached into the hole and pulled Jun through. On the ocean surface, Amanda inflated the life vest. The waves pushed us around. It was unable to swallow us, and now the energy of the waves meant to push us out of the body of water trying to remove a foreign object from its clean and brilliant self.

Amanda tried to swim but soon grew tired. It was the best decision to give Amanda the life vest.

Amanda wanted to live after all, and that meant my chance of living was that much better because of her. That meant it would be alright, because of her will. Her strength defies her body — any man looking at Amanda would accuse of her being weak, but her will supercedes her true nature. We would be alright.

We were both sure that we would be alright.