Issue 3 - Fever Dreams E-Zine

FICTION > INTUITIONinhuman strength, but still it did not give. Helooked around, and the station’s interior wasdistorted in his wild vision.He was running out of time. He wassuffocating, having drawn in a breath of theexhausted air in the ship. He panted, but it didnot help the choking sense and it made himfeel much worse. He saw the fire extinguisherclipped on the far wall and ran for it,lightheaded. Spots were before his eyes. Hewondered vaguely, as objects such as thewalls appeared to move randomly in his fieldof vision, if the disorientation was more due totrying to hustle in zero gravity or because hecouldn’t breathe.Returning with the extinguisher he blackedout, but the momentum carried him forward.He hit the door and the knock on his headrevived him. He picked up the cylinder, staredwildly at the airlock, swung hard. At last thedoor flew open, sucking him clean out of theplunging orbital.Gasping, he turned into the wind to look, tosee how far he had to go before opening theparachute on his back. Doing so, he smackedface first into the cold North Sea.* * *Kat activated her safety harness. It wasunnecessary, but she still liked to have it. Inthe event of a high speed collision the interiorof the car would be instantly filled withevanescent safety-foam. She watched thescreen. Suddenly Unk twisted the yoke andthe car made a sharp right turn that pulledthem abruptly against the left padding of theirseats. Then Kat saw the passing groundbeneath move sideways till the snow wasreplaced by the side of the canyon. The carturned itself ninety degrees in the effort tocomply with the unusual instructions itreceived through the yoke. Then it swung backupright as they came out of the turn and theysped down the canyon and out again.“I thought it would do that.” Unk observed.“Amazing!” He flicked on the travel line andon the schema appeared a red line, with thewide curve of the approach to the canyon andthen the almost ninety degree turn they hadjust made. He zoomed in to the tight turn sothat the blue lines of the canyon walls weremore evident.“I don’t think I can take it any faster, we got asclose as possible to the side when we cameout of the turn.”“I thought that was the car.”“It is the car, but not by very much. I want it tohave something to work with. Besides, whenthe wind is like this it’s more tricky.”“I thought the car compensated for anythingthe wind did.”“Well, if you have something abrupt and strongit is going to take the car a split secondsometimes. And when it’s all concentrated ona turn like that it’s like handling two crises atonce. All the information might max thecomputer longer than we could afford—afterall, the car’s not a racing model. One secondwould be longer than we could afford.”“But you scanned the wind patterns?”“No. But we were running straight at the northwall and too far below the top of the canyonfor the wind to affect the turn.”A red warning blinked on the display.“Now they’re aware of the dangerous drivingand will recall the car, Unk! Why did you haveto do it?”He remained silent, watching the red warning.In a few seconds, it stopped.“Ha! The orbital just went offline.” Unk said.“They’ll be scrambling satellites but we’ve gotour window. Time to put on some speed.”She shook her head. “You just had to figure itout that way, didn’t you? I wonder if BruceFEVER DREAMS ISSUE 3