ᅟ
Chapter 23: Welcome to the Team
The pups on the ground held onto the net as their inertia tried to push them to the front of the speeding vehicle. Marshall looked up just in time to see a black shape blitz past the dust-obscured windshield. "Oh my gosh! I just saw Gizmo fall off the train!" the Dalmatian exclaimed worriedly. Everyone gasped.
"Gizmo, are you okay?" Rocky fairly shouted into his pup tag.
The Lab's voice came over their coms, "Yeah, yeah, I'll be fine."
"But we just saw you fall off the train!" Chase replied.
"My shoes caught the canopy, I'll be fine," Gizmo reassured them as he held onto the back of the train with his front two paws. Then his heart jumped as one of the shoes slid.
Tracker swiveled his ears at the noise, "It doesn't sound like you're doing okay back there."
"Okay, take that back. The electromagnets are starting to slip, but I should still be fine," he corrected himself. Though he said he would be okay, the fear prevalent in his voice revealed he thought otherwise.
"How do we get him?" Everest questioned.
"I can't use my suction boots to get to him," Chase noted.
"And even if you could, they probably wouldn't be strong enough," Rocky pointed out.
"Why isn't he just using his force field?" Marshall wondered aloud.
"Maybe he can't use it because he's wearing my pup pack," Zuma responded worriedly.
Skye spoke up, "I have to fly out and get him."
Chase gasped, "No, that's way too dangerous!"
"He's right," Rubble confirmed, "The wind's too fast; your wings won't keep up!"
"Well then," the pilot replied, "I'll just have to use my… Ruff! Supersonic jets!" The cockapoo's backpack split in half laterally. A pair of wings shot out of the back and swiveled to lock into place on the sides as two rectangular thrusters emerged from under a panel, completing the deployment.
"Wait whaaaaat?!" Rocky gasped as Skye ran over to the partially blocked door.
"This pup's gotta fly!" she cried as she prepared to jump through the opening.
Chase stopped her, "Are you sure about this? Maybe we can open a window and grapple him in."
Skye turned back, "There's no time. Don't worry, I'll be back. See ya!" And with that she leaped out the door with a wide grin on her muzzle.
"Be safe…" Chase whispered.
"Um, was that always her Air Patroller flight pack?" Marshall asked the room.
Rocky shook his head, "Definitely not. It must have been something new I missed. I never had the chance to look at all of the blueprints, so there might be a lot more about these packs we don't know about."
"Ruff! Hoverboard!" Rubble shouted out. He waited. Nothing happened. The only sound was the wind rushing by the train at two-hundred mph as the vehicle zoomed down the track, gradually slowing down. Everyone was staring at Rubble. "What? I figured I'd try!" the bulldog laughed.
Skye perfectly executed her jump, angling the wings so they fit through the gap in the wall. The wind yanked at her pack as it caught the wings, sending her flying behind the locomotive car. For half a second she worried she might not be able to get out of her tumbling and briefly recalled the wisdom in not jumping out of moving vehicles, but she managed to catch herself before hitting the ground. The Bullet was already starting to disappear into the darkness, but Skye knew she could catch up. She knew she had to catch up. She fired her jets, blasting headfirst into the turbulent wake of the locomotive. She slowed down as she caught up, pulling in beside Gizmo.
"Need help?" the flying pup asked her hanging companion.
Gizmo's eyes widened, a shocked expression on his face. He hadn't expected anyone to come get him, and definitely didn't expect someone to come fly to him. He wasn't aware anyone could have the experience necessary to stay steady behind a speeding train as it gradually slowed down. Skye's level of expertise was something he had never seen before. He couldn't have; he had been alone his whole life. He blinked, refocusing his thoughts on her question. "I said I'd be-" he began before his paws slipped again. "Okay, yes. Help me get my back paws on the train," he relented. Skye tilted up and to the left, placing her directly above the younger pup. Placing her front paws on Zuma's pup pack, she angled her thrusters down, pushing Gizmo the rest of the way onto the train.
"Thanks…" he said as the pilot repositioned herself beside him.
"No problem!" Skye shouted back over the wind. "Anything else I can help with?"
Gizmo thought for a moment. "In a bit the train will drop below two-hundred-eighty kph; enough to disengage the emergency brakes. If you go above the pilot and exert a force on the nose, we could maintain acceleration."
"Above the pilot? Accelerate? But I thought we wanted to slow down!"
"I- what? Yes we do. Just go and push on the front of the train."
"Now that I understand!" Skye soared around the Bullet to the front. With a wave through the window, the cockapoo flipped around and began pushing on the front of the train, turning her thrusters on full-blast. Her paws grew sore as the strain of stopping the locomotive wore her stamina down, but she held steady. After a couple minutes, the train slowed to a crawl. Skye flopped onto the front of the train, exhausted. The paw she had hurt in the crash was throbbing, but she didn't mind. She had stopped the train.
Gizmo jumped off the back of the train and walked over to the doorway. Chase and Rubble had just finished moving the console panel out of the way, and some of the others were getting out
"Thanks for the net, Chase. I never would have stayed on my paws without it."
"No problem, Marshall."
"Gizmo, are you okay?"
"Yeah. I told you I would be fine, didn't I?"
"Watch out when you jump out, the train is still moving a bit."
"Great reaction time, Everest. If it weren't for you I'd have been a goner."
"And if it weren't for that net I'd be a goner with you."
"Zuma, do you want the rescue pack back?"
"Yeah, thanks dude!"
"Where's Skye? Is she okay?"
Gizmo pointed to the front of the train, "She went to stop the train. Not sure how she is though…" As his voice trailed off, the black canine started walking towards the front of the locomotive. Chase followed, but first turned back to Marshall.
"Marshall, can you come? Just in case?"
The firefighter swiveled his head, "Yeah, sure."
Both of the pups followed Gizmo to the front of the locomotive, where they found Skye still lying on the front of it. Chase ran over to her as soon as he caught sight.
"Skye, are you okay? What happened? Are you hurt?" the German shepherd asked in a torrent of questions.
"I'm fine, I'm just tired. I'm glad you guys are okay," Skye answered, still out of breath. Then she reconsidered, "My paw is sore though."
Marshall gasped, "You hurt your paw again? I told you not to put any strain on it!"
Skye rolled her eyes, "Marshall, you scanned my paw yourself and saw it wasn't sprained, strained, or broken. Just sore. And you still wanted to put it in a cast."
Gizmo tilted his head to the side in confusion, "He did? Why?"
"Um, I might have a tendency to go a bit overboard," the medic replied.
"How much overboard?"
Skye laughed, "Before he scanned me he also wanted to have me wear the cone of shame."
Gizmo blinked, processing this absurd information. Eventually he nodded, "Yeah, I'd say that's overboard all right."
Marshall got out his scanner and checked Skye again, "Yeah, you look fine. Is there anything else that hurts?"
"No, I'll be fine. I just need a breather. Thanks guys."
"No problem!" Marshall replied as he headed back to rejoin the others.
Gizmo walked closer to Skye, jumping up onto the train with his magnetic shoes. He deactivated his helmet and laid down in front of her, resting his head on his front paws. "You know you didn't have to come and get me, right?"
Skye lifted her head to look at him, "Of course I had to come get you. We knew you needed help. And I think you did too, even if you're not willing to admit it."
Gizmo looked away, not meeting her gaze directly. "No, I know I needed help… I just knew that any attempt you guys made to try to save me would probably kill one of you. What you did was really dangerous. Jumping out of the train, getting caught in turbulence, maintaining flight in the wake of the train… You could have easily died."
The pilot smiled at him, "Any one of us would have done the same thing. We have each other's backs, and now we have yours. That's what being part of a team means."
Gizmo remained silent for a time. Living alone, everything had always been done as a team of one. It felt strange to know someone else was looking out for him, but at the same time, it was a calming thought, even though he knew they wouldn't be facing any more life-threatening challenges. "Well, thanks," he smiled back, meeting her gaze once again before hopping off the front, making his way back to the group.
As he walked back, the black dog could hear everyone talking, but couldn't quite make out what they were talking about. He considered activating his helmet and using the volume amplifier to listen in, but expected he'd find out soon enough. As he approached the circle, he found something he definitely didn't expect. Everyone turned to look at him.
"You had our pup packs on the first floor of FIR which means you were working on them," Rocky began. "Were you adding our flight packs?"
"Yes," Gizmo responded, relieved. He was glad it was a technical question and not a personal one. "I started doing that recently. I've only finished Skye's. As for the rest of them, I promise I'll finish after you leave. Which reminds me, you're going to need to leave the rescue packs here."
"Awww!"
"Makes sense…"
"Oh well."
"At least we get to use them until then."
"I can't wait for Ryder to upgrade ours!"
Everest sighed inwardly while the others talked. She knew one day wouldn't convince him to come with them, but hearing him talk about staying behind was discouraging nonetheless.
Chase rejoined the group, followed closely behind by Skye. "So how are we getting back to Tomorrowland now?" he asked.
"Sí, what are we going to do?" Tracker reiterated.
Gizmo glanced at Chase in confusion. "Tomorrowland?" Then realization dawned on his face. "Oh, you mean the city. It's not actually called Tomorrowland. That's just a nickname of sorts. It was also the first thing that popped into my head. It's really named Fulgerion. Some nicknames the actual residents called it were Atlantis, Pompei, Oceania, Arcadia… Most of them were jokes. Well, except for that last one. It's sad how ironic it is now…" Gizmo trailed off.
"So how do we get back to Fulgerion?" Zuma questioned.
"I could fly back, but it wouldn't do you guys much good," Skye thought aloud. "There isn't some sort of train car I could bring back, is there?"
"No," Gizmo told her. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to fix the train. That was ridiculous; I'm never letting that happen again. It should only take about ten minutes to get it working again, and then I'll fix it up the rest of the way when we get back to the station. If you want you can walk back, but according to my calculations, we're on the complete other side of the island, and I don't want to walk twenty kilometers."
"How did you calculate that?" Rocky inquired with intrigue.
"Well, the circle we were riding is forty-five kilometers long. We passed the stations so I was able to get my bearings that way, so I set that as t equals zero. Since I know the acceleration of the train, the drag coefficient for both aerodynamic forms, and the time we were riding for after passing specific stations, along with the frictional force the lift brakes exert and the time they were activated at, I can estimate where we were at when the lift brakes stopped being in effect. From there I reset t to zero, so I also had v-naught since that happens at two-eighty. I also knew t-final and v-final, obviously, so assuming no jerk other than what exists from drag, it's a simple matter of solving for acceleration with the v-final equals v-naught plus delta-t-a, then using that to solve for distance using the integral of that equation."
The majority of the pups present stared at him blank-faced. "How on earth are you able to make physics 101 sound as complex as quantum mechanics?" Rocky muttered.
"Forget that!" Rubble interjected. "How were you able to do all those calculations in your head?"
"Did you do all that in your head?" Tracker inquired.
"Um… yes…?" Gizmo nervously replied. "Except for the measurements of time. I wanted more sig-figs."
Many of the pups gawked at him with open mouths. Eventually Zuma spoke, "Woah. Are you a robot, dude?"
Gizmo laughed, "What? No!" Then he grew serious. "At least I don't think so…" Then he grew worried. "Although maybe I could be… There are some really lifelike animatronics, even with fake blood. Oh gosh. And we have caloric generators, and- and mechanized metabolizers. And I know they had convincing AI back in 1952, so who knows how advanced it could have gotten by 2015?" By now Gizmo was starting to panic.
Marshall stepped in, "Here, I'll just scan you. If you have bones you're good."
The Lab shook his head, "No that won't work. We also have light-bending metamaterials that could fool a scanner." Everyone started offering suggestions.
"What if we felt for your bones?"
"Could be faked."
"Ever gotten sick?"
"Could be some sort of rng program."
"Break a bone?"
"I'd rather not."
"Operation?"
"Definitely not."
"Magnets?"
"Could be nonferrous."
"Degaussing?"
"Doesn't work on SSDs and that's horrific to think about if it did."
"Death?"
Everyone instantly stopped, turning to stare at Marshall.
"Yes, that would work, but no. That's even more horrific to think about."
"Sorry, I thought we were just throwing all ideas on the table..."
Everest had an idea, "Well, if we can't find things that machines can't do that you can, then maybe we can find things that you can't do that a robot could."
"Great idea!" Tracker exclaimed. "Repita esto. Tres tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal."
Gizmo tried repeating after the Potcake, "Trays tistres trig- augh." he stopped, "Sorry, I can understand Spanish but I can't speak it for the life of me."
"Hey, there's something!" Skye cheered.
"And I just thought of something else!" Marshall followed up, "Hold up your paw." Gizmo lifted a paw. "No, your right paw. Look. I doubt a robot could get a scar. Even if it could heal itself, it probably wouldn't get a scar from it."
Gizmo smiled, clearly somewhat relieved. "Oh, yeah. Thanks guys. Guess we won't have to kill me after all!"
Everyone laughed, glad for the break in tension. Chase refocused them on task. "Alright, well if we're going to get back soon, we should get to work on the train."
"Agreed," Rocky concurred, "Let's get to work."
No cliffhanger this time! Unless you count the possibility of Gizmo being a robot as a cliffhanger. Lol. That was something fun I've been wanting to include for a while. With the end of this chapter and the runaway Bullet Train, there's not going to be much action for a while, sadly, so sorry for people looking forward to that.
Unfortunately I've fallen behind a good deal in the writing process; I spent a good deal of the week helping a friend with something and doing homework, so I think I've gotten about two sentences written within the past five days. (Random thought, but I honestly don't know why I put a lot of the stuff I put here for you guys to read. It's kind of like me just saying any of my thoughts I think you'd be remotely interested in hearing.)
On a more important note, I've been trying to get into a routine for releasing chapters on a weekly basis. So far I've done absolutely horrible at consistency, but have decided to go ahead and try going with Thursday mornings. Let me know what day would be best for you or if that's good.
