REAL WORLD: PART THREE Homeward Bound ... - Whoa is (Not)

“Marty! Get the gun!” Neo shouted.
Marty stood stunned for several moments, when Verne dumped the Neutrino Quartz 3000 Laser Blaster in
his hands.
“SHOOT IT!”
Realising the presence of the gun, Marty stared down at the futuristic weapon and wondered vaguely where
the trigger was. It looked like that greenish thingy over there, so he decided that it probably was. Aiming the
gun uncertainly at the incoming machine, he squeezed the greenish thingy.
A stream of crackling blue lanced out and hit the sentinel as the kickback slammed Marty against the cabin
wall. The sentinel attempted to rip a piece of the train off, when a wave of glowing purple swept through it
and its sensors blinked off. Dead, it paused for a moment in midair… and then it fell down into the mass of
APU’s and squashed several unfortunate bacteria. 7
“Thanks,” Neo said. Then he yelled at Ted to stop kicking because it was making the train shake.
Ted continued kicking nonetheless. It’s the natural, human instinctive thing to do when you’re dangling out
of a flying time machine surrounded by sentinels.
Lying almost flat on the floor clutching the doorframe with his free hand, it occurred to Neo that he wasn’t
exactly in the best of positions to pull someone up.
Crouched next to Neo, Marty was blasting away with the Neutrino Quartz 3000 Laser Blaster at nearby
sentinels, wincing at the powerful recoils. He wondered why future technology hadn’t been able to reduce
them.
“Ted, I said STOP KICKING!” Neo repeated.
“I can’t…” came the panicked response. Ted shot a glance at the vertiginous drop to the ground below, and
he paled.
“Look, you got to trust me on this, okay” Neo said. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on, and it
would help a lot if you stop moving so much…”
The sentinel that had been going around in circles had somehow or other managed to make its way out of
the tunnel and was now doing a rather cool version of the Macarena. In its frenzied dancing, it slammed into
the train again. Dazedly, it made its way off to find a partner to do the tango with.
“Dad!” Verne shouted over the noise. “Can you possibly try not to hit every single one of them”
Emmett muttered darkly under his breath, his eyes searching for a clear path ahead. He glanced back to
see the activity behind and next to him, and his eyes widened. This had not been such a good idea after
all…
Behind him, Neo tried to shift into a more comfortable position.
“Ted, listen to me. When I say go, I’ll pull you up, and you try to grab the bottom step here with your other
hand, okay” Neo paused, wondering if he had heard. “Ted Are you listening to me”
The teen’s frightened eyes came up to meet his, and Neo felt a chill run down his spine. They’d never had
such intense direct eye contact before… not like this…
This is not normal, he thought feverishly. This is not, not, not normal…
Neo blinked several times and tried to ignore it. He swallowed.
“Okay,” Neo said. “Go!”
7 My brother wrote this paragraph, but the bacteria bit was mine.