Freddy Anderson’s Home: Book 1 (20 page)

Chapter 33
Flying My Home

W
e pulled into the construction area and were met by the sight of another twenty army personnel who were lying on the ground. I asked, “Are any of the girls hurt?”

“Yes, I think Swanson has a broken arm,” Petty Officer Potter answered.

“Not Katie!” I cried.

“Calm down, Freddy,” ordered the lieutenant.

“Okay. Please have her taken into my house, so I can attend to her injuries right away.”

The master chief, the lieutenant, and Katie and Colleen went into my house with me, and I healed Katie’s arm. It was only a slight fracture, but it was pushing on a nerve ending that also needed healing.

The lieutenant said, “Katie, pretend that your arm is still broken and that all we did was set it—at least until we’re out of here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Katie responded, and she and the master chief splinted it and bound it to her body.

I started inspecting the house to ensure that everything was in order. The army had installed two bugs, and I removed them. I signed the final papers and included a good bonus. This was a really great company, and I wanted the owners to be eager to contract with me again. The whole company was there to see how I was going to get the house out of the area. They had bets on a gigantic truck or several huge helicopters, but they never thought I would just fly it out. After the master chief had all her supplies on board, we shook hands, and everyone climbed up. I did one last scan and then took six gadgets from my bag. One was a remote control that looked like an old Atari video game with two controllers. The others were power disks. I made sure the controls were in neutral and set for “on ground,” and then I went out. Petty Officer Denise Potter followed me. I placed the power disks into the base on which they’d built the house and then climbed back up. Petty Officer Potter helped me up and then climbed in herself.

“Everyone ready?” I asked.

They were, so I showed the lieutenant the controls. “This button labeled ‘U’ is ‘up.’ The one—”

She took over. “The one labeled ‘D’ is down, ‘F’ is forward, ‘B’ is back, ‘L’ is left, and ‘R’ is right. What is ‘SK’?”

“Station keeping.”

“And the five strings of lights are power levels?”

“Power left in the disks. They are all lit right now, but if they start going down, then we may need to land so that I can replace them. I have spares.”

“This is going to be easy. How do I increase speed?”

“Hold any button down. The longer you hold it, the faster we’ll go in that direction. When you release it, we’ll continue at that speed and in the same direction for approximately one hour, or until you press another button. If you fail to do anything in an hour, then it goes to station keeping.”

“How do we see what’s around us? I don’t want to run into anything. What if there’s fog?”

“You have scanners.”

“We can use them safely?”

“Transmissions from other sources will not affect this unit. This is not an antiquated plane. This is a house, and we will be moving slowly. If the unit fails, then everything goes to station keeping. It would be hard to mess up, as long as you pay attention, but anyone can fly it. I didn’t ask you before because I didn’t want to bore you with this mundane task.”

“Even at a crawl, I would hardly call this a mundane task. Flying a house has to be a first.”

“Well, it’s all yours, Lieutenant. Good flying!”

I went into the living room and started working. Colleen came in to ask me what I wanted for lunch.

“Do you have anything with a lot of carbohydrates and fats?” I asked.

She looked shocked. “Why?”

I said rather absentmindedly, “When I do healing, like I did yesterday and today, I burn up fat. When I run out of fat, I burn carbohydrates. No fat in the body means headaches, and a decrease in carbohydrates causes muscle fatigue. I can’t concentrate when I have a headache, and I need to go to the restroom so often that it’s hard to get anything done. I need to do some work to get the last-minute changes ready for installation, so I really need to concentrate.”

“I think I know just what will help,” she said.

I gave her a most sincere thank-you smile. I could hear the lieutenant and a hundred others whoop with joy as the building lifted smoothly off the ground. I could also hear Colleen shush the other girls in the house, letting them know that I had a headache—and why. Everyone was very quiet after that. I fell asleep.

Gray said, “Good. They are placing limits on him.”

Everything went black.

Green exclaimed, “What is so good about that?”

Blue laughed. “Remember Dexes 2? All life was destroyed by plague that a Green started.”

Gray added, “Or how about Parandum. We had to destroy everything on the planet after a Green turned all things evil.”

“Point taken. I will continue.”

Chapter 34
Stepping Over the Line

C
olleen woke me up for lunch. We had some kind of pasta with a thick, sweet white sauce. I loved it and ate seconds and thirds. My body knew this is what it needed. After lunch, I hugged Colleen and helped her clean up, and then I checked on our progress. I could look through any window and see that we were moving, but I had no idea where we were.

The lieutenant took time off for lunch but was back at the controls when I entered the office.

“How are we making out, Susan?” I said in greeting. “Is everything okay?”

“The power levels haven’t changed, and the controls are working fine,” she said, though she raised an eyebrow, adding, “Even though they are a bit juvenile. We’re traveling about fifty miles an hour. We could go faster, but I don’t want to take chances.”

I ignored the “juvenile” remark. “Fifty miles an hour for a little over twenty-five hundred miles will put us in the canyon in just over two days.”

The lieutenant said, “Not quite. The path we’re taking will put us over the Pacific Ocean in about five days and then another day up to the canyon.”

“Six days to get home? You must be taking a very roundabout way, Susan.”

“I’m staying over government land as much as possible—no-fly zones, military-only fly zones, restricted zones, that kind of thing. We can’t stay out of the public’s view forever, but we can keep out of their reach nearly all the way to the ocean. I expect we’ll get some company from the different militaries at several places along the way. The navy already has two F-18s watching us at high range and directly behind us.” She showed me on the scanner.

“Want to have some fun?” I asked.

She looked at me skeptically. “Depends on what you call fun.”

I flipped up another device and powered it up, after attaching it into the flying controls. It had two buttons marked S and I.

“I hate to ask,” Susan said warily, “but what does S stand for?”

“Shields. It would drain the power fairly quickly, and we would need to change power disks soon after running them or we’d crash, but we should be able to get an hour out of it on high shields and four or five hours on low. The lights above tell you the level. One light is low and two is high.”

“And the I button?”

“Invisibility. Cool, isn’t it? Hit that button.” I reached over as if to push it, but she stopped me.

“Invisibility?”

“Sure. It puts out a shield that really isn’t very good at stopping anything but modulates in such a way as to make light, radar, and all frequency-based signals pass right around us. Therefore, we’re invisible to the unaided eye and any radar system the military has.”

“Are we invisible to your scanners?”

“Not a chance. Nothing we have is invisible to my scanners. I know, because I tried to fool them. Only someone sneaky, like the master chief, can get past them and then only when you’re not looking for it.”

She looked worried. “Freddy, you just stepped over the line.”

“What? I’m sorry I said that about the master chief, but I think she likes being sneaky.”

“Not the master chief. The president would be very much afraid if she thought that this technology could possibly get into someone’s hands before we had it.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Very big time uh-oh. If another country had this technology before we had good scanners, and we were not aware of their having invisibility so we could watch for them, then …” She paused to think. “Well, let’s just say we could be speaking a different language very soon.”

“No problem. Let’s talk the admiral into allowing us to test the bigger scanning unit on the base, that way, they can see anything using the invisibility shield.”

“What about the two types of shielding units?” she asked.

“Not a chance. I have to patent them first. I have sort of a patent on the scanner.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “
Sor
t of?
”

I put my hands on my hips and glared at her with righteous indignation. “It’s done all the time. Why do you think people can buy up patented items, and no one can copy them? I sent all the documentation into the patent office but left out some important requirements. It won’t work without some of my other technologies—things that I have not yet patented—and I told them so. They understand protecting all of my other ideas and had no problem with that. There are several things I simply did not patent, as that would give away how to make the other inventions.”

“So no one else can make them?”

“I don’t want other countries to copy my inventions and undersell me, like they do with electronics and music. I also don’t want bad copies on the market that don’t work well. It would ruin my reputation … when I finally have one.”

“Is that why I haven’t seen anyone using the antigravity disks like you do?” I must have turned red, as she started laughing. “Thought so.”

“Can you protect me from the oil cartels?” I asked.

She sat up straighter at that question. “Why?”

“Running the antigravity disks requires a lot of power. That means you need
my
power disks. If I patented the parts, including the power disks, then it would put the oil people out of business very quickly. Each disk can run a car for four years and a semi truck, fully loaded, for six months or better.”

“That’s amazing.”

“They cost about twenty cents to make, once the equipment is set up and paid for, and they’re made out of a very cheap, renewable source. I’d patent them, but I’m afraid that I’d end up disappearing or worse. I would sell the patent to them if I thought that they would use it, but I don’t think they will, at least not until they use up all the oil in the world.”

“Who else knows about this?” Susan asked.

“Just us.”

“Keep it that way for now, and let me think about it. We can protect you, but it would become very dangerous for everyone we love, so let’s try to avoid that. Do the generators at the base have the energy to run the big scanners?”

“Yes, but they won’t need to, because I can install one of the bigger scanners at the radar site and connect it into my own generators. I would never see the power drain. I have so much energy that I need to bleed it off sometimes. It’s no problem to install a couple of monitors in the base control center.”

“I think the admiral would be happy about that. How’s your headache?”

“It’s gone, thanks to Colleen.”

“Good, but you’re looking tired. Try to get some sleep before dinner. I may need you refreshed if anything happens.”

“Aye-aye, Lieutenant.” I turned to leave.

She smiled, thinking,
Now where did he learn that?
“Freddy, please have Marian come in here.”

“Interesting issue,” said Green.

Everything went black.

Blue took the bait and asked, “Why?”

Green said, “The Greens have had several ideas lately that have ended up in Greens missing. It would appear that this species has the same corruption problem.”

Blue looked sad for a second. I could tell, because his entire body went limp as a leaf, with arms to the sides, and his cheeks were drooping. “The Yellows have traced down the corruption problem and sent the Blues that started it for mind wipe.”

Green turned to Blue and said, “That was only one instance. We have asked Yellows to follow up and correct the others.” Green turned back.

Blue, looking nauseated, said, “Please continue.”