The Get-Even Bird
by David J. Wighton
Book #2 in the Wilizy Series
Copyright 2014, David J. Wighton
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Acknowledgments
This book is dedicated to my wife, Dale, whose support and patience made it possible.
Cover design by Jenny Anderson at WordPress.com
Message from the Author
I should introduce myself. I'm the author of this series of books that describe the people and events that were part of what is known commonly as the Wilizy legend. Most of my readers will be familiar with the Wilizy tale in general – two young teenagers trying to rescue Albertans from Zzyk, the evil gnome. However, events that happened so many years ago can be distorted by exaggerations, or truth can be lost in the passage of time. I am able to give my readers an accurate account of the lives and battle campaigns of the Wilizy family because of the unprecedented access I was given to Will and Izzy's journals. To those highly reliable sources of information, I have added other details gained from years of research through libraries and other historical collections for information they have on the Wilizy family – be they documents, videos, pictures, or artifacts.
I Got'cha, the first book in the series, covers the period from July, 2081 to October, 2081. By the end of October 2081, Will and Izzy had defeated Clem the Phlegm and were preparing to fight against Zzyk, the evil gnome himself.
This second book, The Get Even Bird, starts a few weeks after Will and Izzy had left the dissidents' camp. They had arranged to meet up with Doc and that's where the tale begins. This second book covers the period from November 2081 to April 2082.
If you have not yet read I Got'cha, you might want to do that before beginning this second book in the series. I have not included any of the background information on the IOF, the DPS, or even on Will and Izzy in this tale. That absence might make the events in this second book confusing from time to time.
Table of Contents
Chapter1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Other novels by David J. Wighton
About the Author
Chapter 1
From Will's journals: November 5, 2081.
“I’ll drive,” Izzy said from her snuggled up position against my chest in the sky-sling.
“Huh?” I replied. Not one of my brighter moments, I suppose. We were cruising through the clear blue Alberta skies on the southwest heading we had been on since leaving our camp west of Rocky Mountain House. I hadn’t been watching our progress – too busy thinking. Two weeks ago, Izzy and I would have spent most of the trip necking, but we didn’t do that any more. The sky-sling was too small for two people to relax in comfort, so we had to cuddle to squeeze in. We didn’t do much of that any more either.
“I’ll drive,” Izzy repeated in case I hadn’t heard her. She knew that I often became oblivious to everything around me when I was concentrating. I could have pretended not to know what she meant. After all, the sky-sling didn’t have the steering wheel or pedals that were used to drive the modern automobiles before oil disappeared from the world. The It’s Only Fair Society had solar powered mini-mobilizers now, but they didn’t work too well on the bumpy mud ruts that now formed the highway networks in Alberta. People generally used one-person solar-powered copters if they had to travel any distance. The sky-sling Izzy and I were relaxing in wasn’t a car; nor was it a copter. It was an invisible flying machine that obeyed whatever thoughts I sent to it. Go up, go down, go faster, go slower, and so on. The sky-sling wasn’t something a person could drive. So, I could have pretended not to know what Izzy was saying.
I could feel Izzy’s jaw against my chest – methodically chewing on the little piece of gum that she had found in her backpack. She had pronounced it old and a little bit fuzzy before popping it into her mouth. Chewing a stale, non-food substance that you’d never swallow didn’t seem sensible to me, but I wasn’t going to say anything. Izzy often did weird things. That’s why it was never boring when she was around.
Izzy waited patiently for me to think about her offer to drive. She knew that I didn’t like to make decisions quickly, even for something as straightforward as her controlling the sky-sling. I had no real reason to say No. After all, Izzy was fully trained on the sky-sling even to the point of having all of its primary functions cryptic-coded onto her own pinky-ring computer. I was still the better pilot because I had been flying the sky-sling ever since I had invented it several months ago. I also knew its capabilities better – at least from a theoretical perspective. But, Izzy was more daring than I was, and soon, she’d have the sky-sling doing things that I had never dreamed of. I was OK with that. It was just that I had wanted to collect my thoughts on this trip and I wouldn’t be able to do that with Izzy corkscrewing us upside down through the atmosphere.
We were on the way to meet Doc – Izzy’s volunteer-father. She hadn’t said it out loud, and neither had I – but we really needed to talk to Doc. Izzy and I had spent all last week discussing how we would fight the IOF’s Department of Public Safety, reveal it for what is was, and make Alberta a better place to live. I had thought that would mean the end to brain-bands controlling everyone’s behaviour and emotions. I had thought that would mean a month of battles and then the war would be over. But Izzy saw things differently. Very differently.
We didn’t have any big yelling matches, angry exchanges, or physical fights like we did before we became a team. We just had lots of intense discussions. I was sure I could defeat the DPS with some unstoppable weapons that would catch them by surprise. But, Izzy wouldn’t agree to any of my proposals and I didn’t see why she was being so difficult. I couldn’t agree to any of her proposals either – their probability of success didn’t fall within the necessary parameters. In the end, we couldn’t make a single important strategic decision. We were hoping Doc could help us out with that.
Part of our problem was that Izzy and I were only fifteen-years old. We didn’t know anything about life. Say that we finally did agree on how to fight the DPS and say that we did beat them. The It’s Only Fair Society would disappear, but what would take its place? We didn't have a clue about governments, or justice, or basic human rights, or any of the other things that Izzy said we would have to introduce so that people could live together in peace after the IOF fell. We were hoping that Doc could take care of that end of things for us.
; I had another, much more personal reason for wanting to see Doc. He knew Izzy better than anyone. He was her teacher, doctor, and volunteer-father. I was hoping that he could explain why she always ended up crying and running away from me whenever I kissed her.
# # # # # # # #
“Uh, I was hoping we could spend the trip quietly,” I said to Izzy. “I’d like to think.”
“OK,” Izzy replied and snuggled deeper against my chest, her right arm resting on my body. I was sprawled on my back in the sky-sling as though I were sitting in a recliner chair with the footrests extended. Izzy was scrunched down and was using my chest as her headrest. It would have been more comfortable for her sit up straighter, but she scrunched low into the sky-sling every time we flew now. I assumed that was so the only thing I had available to kiss was the top of her head.
She had started avoiding my kisses after we couldn't agree on a strategy to fight the Department of Public Safety. All of our discussions had taken the same form. She’d say something like: If the DPS tries to lure us into meeting them, I think we should do such and such. After explaining her strategy, she’d ask, “What do you think?”
Izzy would go off fishing while I thought about it. I have to admit that it takes me a long time to make a decision about important things. Izzy says that Alberta's mountain glaciers disappeared faster. It’s not because I’m a slow thinker – it’s just that I have a lot to consider before I can make a decision. For example, when Izzy proposed that we meet with the DPS to discuss citizens becoming free of their brain-bands, I'd think of all the possible dirty tricks that the DPS might use to capture us. For each dirty trick, I’d calculate its probability of success, plus or minus a reasonable margin of error. I’d store the results in a mental spreadsheet and go on to the next DPS dirty trick. Then, I'd calculate the probability of our own success in getting the brain-bands removed. When the entire spreadsheet was complete, I’d compare the DPS’ probability of capturing us to our probability of getting the brain-bands removed. If our probability of success didn't exceed 70%, I’d tell her that I didn’t think it would work and assume that would be the end of it.
But, Izzy didn’t accept the decision. She’d ask “Why?” Then, she’d poke holes in my results by posing What if questions. Or, she’d come up with an entirely different scenario that wasn’t part of my logic chain. I don’t know why she didn’t accept the probability scores. I mean, math is math, right? I’d offer to print out the spreadsheets for her, but she’d say something outrageous like, "Not everything should be decided by a probability analysis," and I’d have to bite my tongue to avoid a long argument. So now, we don’t discuss strategy and she always hunches down low against my chest when we travel in the sling. She says that she isn’t mad, but why else would she be scrunching down?
Thinking about her scrunching down brought me back to the present. Izzy was still chewing methodically on her gum. There was a faint aroma of peppermint, but mostly I smelled Izzy’s brown hair. Izzy was back to her IOF browns again – brown hair, brown skin, brown eyes. I liked her best when she was showing the real Izzy– her white skin, red hair and blue eyes, but that was too dangerous when we were away from camp. Thanks to the IOF geneticists, everyone in Alberta looked the same. That meant they were brown. Like me. However, Izzy’s body hadn't been manufactured by an IOF geneticist, so she didn’t look like everyone else. If people might see her, she had to be in her browns or else the DPS might catch us, force a brain-band around our skulls, and we’d become emotionless zombies. At least Izzy and I agreed about her wearing her browns whenever we were in public.
Izzy wanted to go brown yesterday, so I offered to help her with the dyes. She said that I could dye her hair and her face. I enjoyed doing this so I took a long time gently massaging the dye into her hair to ensure I got it right. Then, I started dabbing the dye on her face. I wanted to make sure that she had the same uniform tan colour everywhere, so I used the lightest possible touch. She had her eyes closed and didn’t seem to mind how I was doing it. At least, that’s what I interpreted from the smile on her face.
When I was finished, she offered to trim my hair as a way of thanking me. So, it was my turn to sit on the stump while she ran her fingers through my hair to comb out the tangles, although I didn’t think that I had any. Then, she announced that my hair didn't need a trim, so she’d shave my whiskers instead. She made up a plate of soap foam and started dabbing it onto my cheeks, on my chin, and then under my chin. She was kneeling in front of me, and I guess she was wanting to spread the soap evenly because she had her face really close to mine to see better. She pulled out her small blade and began scraping my left cheek. I must have been moving too much, because she had to put her left hand behind my head to steady it, and then she began combing my hair with her fingers again. More tangles to remove, I suppose. I wasn’t paying too much attention. Her soft gentle touch felt good and I had closed my eyes. The next thing I knew, she was putting her blade in my hand and saying that she had to dye the rest of her body now or else the colour wouldn’t match her face. I would have said that the colour would depend on how much dye was used, not when it was applied, but she wasn’t there. I heard her crying as she left. She wouldn’t cry about the possibility of her dyes not matching – that didn’t make any sense! So, it must have been something that I had done. But, I hadn’t done anything except sit on the stump! But, I had been thinking about kissing her. Crying when I kissed her was bad enough; now, she began crying when I even thought about kissing her?
# # # # # # # #
Izzy shifted slightly in the sling and I felt her touch on my left hand. “Will, altitude adjustment?” she asked.
I saw that we were approaching the mountains and thought-instructed my pinky-ring computer to increase the power in the sky-sling’s force field. The stronger force field would push against the Earth’s gravitational field and lift us higher. I’d also have to reduce the amount of air flowing into the enclosed sling – higher altitudes meant colder air outside the sling. I thought that instruction too. As soon as we were at the new altitude, I’d go back to my musings.
The sky-sling soared on as though I hadn’t thought a thing. I spoke the necessary instruction to lift us higher. My pinky-ring computer that powered the force field would respond to both thought and verbal commands. The verbal command didn’t work either. I looked down at the pinky-ring on my left hand. It had a small gob of Izzy’s gum stuck over the input port.
“Guess I’ll have to drive after all,” Izzy said innocently, and gave me her eyebrow waggle that told me she had successfully completed another Got’cha. “I think you’re really going to enjoy this.” The sky-sling came to a complete stop and hovered horizontally in the air for a second or two. Then, the sling tilted until I was looking through my feet almost straight down at the forest-covered hills. I had a two second glimpse before the forests started to recede from view. She must have put the power acceleration on max because I could feel the sling vibrate as it tried to push itself away from the Earth. At least we wouldn’t be diving headfirst this time.
The sling rose until both of us began having difficulty breathing. The sling paused in its ascent, its force field holding our bodies vertically upright in the air. Being in the sling wasn’t like being in a copter where you had the illusion of something solid around you that you could hang onto. When charged, the filaments forming the sling became invisible – not that the thin little filaments would provide any kind of support whatsoever. So, Izzy and I were hovering upright in the air with nothing visibly supporting us. We had nothing to hold onto except each other. Izzy shifted so that the length of her body was pressed against mine. I felt her arms tightening around my shoulders and I tightened my grip around her waist. The sling slowly began to tilt until our heads were pointed straight down at the distant green Earth. It was going to be a head first plunge after all.
Izzy pulled her cheek away from mine and asked “Ready?”
I could see this huge grin o
n her face and I felt my face break into one too. We locked ourselves together in a death grip. “Ready,” I said.
“Don’t forget to scream on the way down.”
# # # # # # # #
We screamed so loud on the way down that anyone within a hundred klicks could have heard us, but I knew that Izzy would not have allowed that to happen. We had developed three very important rules about operating the sky-sling and both of us were very careful about observing security.
You see, the sky-sling was our secret weapon against the DPS. When we closed the sling’s cover, we could still see out, but nobody could see in. This gave us a tremendous advantage. For example, Izzy and I had spent our first week together hiding inside the DPS building in Edmonton, reading all their files, and photographing the important ones. We still had to be careful moving around inside the DPS building because any person accidentally bumping up against our sling would feel it. Being invisible didn’t mean that we still weren’t there.
The first thing we did when we got back to our camp was brainstorm all the possible ways the sky-sling could be discovered. That led to the following three rules:
Rule #1: Never do anything with the help of the sky-sling that would lead the DPS to wonder why something strange had just happened. For example, we couldn’t just take a file folder out of a room. There had to be an obvious, logical explanation for it disappearing. Zzyk would know how I thought – partly because he and I were both Zs, and partly because he had been pretending to be my volunteer-father ever since I had been tilted out of the gestation incubator. Izzy and I, on the other hand, didn’t know much about Zzyk. Only that he was evil, ruthless, and as smart as I was. If Zzyk ever began to think that we could fly invisibly through the sky, he’d find a way to stop us. Our entire hope for defeating the DPS rested on keeping our secret weapon secret.
Rule #2: Fly very slowly whenever anyone was around. Even though the sky-sling was invisible, it was still a solid object. When we flew through the air, we created a breeze. At high speed, we also created a high-pitched whine. Theoretically, I thought we could generate speeds well above the speed of sound but I hadn’t tested the theory yet. There was always a chance that someone would hear the sonic boom.