Chapter 3: Orphic
- (adjective) mysterious and entrancing; beyond ordinary understanding.
My favorite version of the earth is what remains in the night. People are sleeping, things are still. Our farm doesn't have to worry about getting taken away, at least until tomorrow – or maybe that's just me. On school nights, my thoughts drift away as soon as my back connects with the mattress, my brain overwhelmed and tired from lectures by different teachers. They tell us how they "think" the world is supposed to turn through multiple subjects. Truth is, though, how many people have been outside our realm to see it? Surely, they're not the ones standing in front of my class.
There are no distractions at night to keep me up, anyway. No boys like Tessa, no friends that mean more than those I hang around with at school because I'm fine with it, the whole talking thing. I'll speak to anyone; it is just getting anything back from them that is the problem. But I'm okay with it. Right? Yeah.
It is a Friday night tonight. No school will greet me with first light tomorrow, so these hours of darkness do not matter as much. Still, I wish I could make them count somehow.
Tonight's distraction is the barn. The barn itself still looks the same when I walk to my window and eye it through the moonlight. It's still upset about its job, but not as sad as the truck Dad is working on inside it – never. My dad. He's the reason. Some of our barn burst up into flames earlier. I ran down without grabbing anything and could have stepped in something because I wasn't wearing shoes, but it didn't matter. The barn doors were blowing in a bit of wind as I had approached, kicking and screaming. The fire was out when I got in, Dad was playing it off. He wanted me to go back to the house, I said no because the smoke was still fresh – he didn't say anything. Dad got upset because the realization dawned that nothing – not even the truck – will be be capable of turning into something.
I thought it was its job to be nothing.
I stayed wrapped in the barn for some minutes I never counted. He kept working; always got to finish what he starts. And then I left because boredom overtook me, but my dad already knew that. It's why he didn't say anything.
Sleep refuses to come to me now. Even after the fire was smothered and it was supposed to take our fear and doubts with it. Even after I heard the click of a door and my sister's shoes on the hardware.
Only when the front door smacks roughly into its own structure because he let it come back on its own instead of slowly guiding it like you're supposed to can I settle. I hear my father speaking with Tessa. Judging by the way their voices carry, the two of them are by the staircase. She asks him if he ate or took any break at all, which he ignores, and instead flips the conversation to her. It's late for her to come home, he claims. I glance at the digital clock perched on my bedside table. 10:17. Not that bad.
But after that, after all of the usual grown-up talk passes within them, comes the real reason Dad came back to the house. Not because he knew I wasn't sleeping. Not because Tessa arrived home.
The truck.
Because the truck might matter.
My bare toes wiggle across the shingles of the house. The surface is warm, but not too warm yet. The texture to the roof carries a scratching sensation that gnaws at me inside, but I still stay. It's morning. Dad's been up since first light, not that he slept much because he reads when he is stressed or the gears in his head start spinning too fast, blurring everything. Tessa is in the bathroom getting ready. I can hear her radio going from my open window, curtains rippling in the breeze. To Kill a Mockingbird sits on the windowsill so still I almost forget about it.
A part of me wants to read the book because it was a gift from Dad, and I should do it for him. But in all honesty, I don't read for fun. I barely even read the books we are required to in schoolc. I finish them late, skim through chapters, bull-crap the essay to receive a solid C. At least I read the important parts. That has gotta count for something. My dad is too busy to be on me about that. Tessa always has some big project to do because she's old and stuff, so she is mostly preoccupied. I do my homework here and there and have average grades. What's so bad about it?
I'm the girl who talks too much and kind of cares about school.
A hand reaches out where the pane of glass should be from my open window. I jump, though I try hard to hide it. My sister is standing in the gap of free air and holding To Kill a Mockingbird. I realize the house has since gone silent and her pop tunes are absent. Dad tells us that we were bred country lovers and though at times we look the part, neither of us are fond of the genre. Though, I don't really like pop music either.
Tessa reads through the first page, smiles, and then hands the book back to me on the roof.
"Quit being creepy and get out of my room." I tell my older sister, half-heartedly. She must have saw me out here when she walked past because my room is the first door in the hall while hers and the bathroom are further down, and she came here to chew me out about the dangers of being on the roof.
"Forgot Dad gave that to you," she says, ignoring my words. "I read it in the tenth grade."
"Is it worth readin'?"
"It's a good book, yeah – " She leans out the windowsill, pointing at the cover. "But it does have killing in the title, so I don't know. Might want to wait on that . . ."
I roll my eyes. She's just being stupid now.
Tessa goes on, "Not that it really matters, though, because you're killing yourself being out there."
I go silent. Body stills. I prepare myself for the lecture about falling but it never comes. Instead, a surfboard pops up over the horizon. It's attached to the roof of no other than Lucas' zippy, little car speeding up the rocky driveway. I guess he didn't feel like removing the surfboard from his beach trip yesterday. He applies the brakes before the vehicle is ready and it slides partially into our front yard, almost ramming into the fence.
The car door swings open, slams shut. Lucas rounds the front of his car. "Where is he?" Dad.
"I don't know." huffs my sister, slightly annoyed but I'm not quite sure why. I stand, steady myself by griping onto the gutter.
"He's probably in the barn." I inform Lucas.
Tessa exits my room as I jump back in the house through the window. The dog is barking so Lucas must be on the porch. Slipping on my Converse sneakers, I rush down the stairs to push through the screen door with my sister.
Lucas is holding something he's not supposed to, a piece of paper, and I know what it is right away. I try to snatch it from him and hide it because no one is supposed to know, no one but me. He thinks I am being childish so he refuses to release the paper, tells me to quit it. Lucas directs his attention to my older sister.
"Tess, I'm basically you and your sister's uncle. Su casa es mi casa." He holds up the paper, the EVICTION NOTICE as it shouts and yells at us how much we screwed up. "And we're going to lose the casa."
I swallow down everything I want to. I hold back from spilling all of the secrets hidden in the trash. I was – I was trying to wait until something went right before I brought them to attention.
I swallow my pride.
"Dad!" calls Tessa while we jog across the grass towards the closed barn doors. I faintly hear him yell back that he's coming. When the three of us slow to a walk in front of the barn, I listen to tools clattering on the inside. I try to not look at the paper in Lucas' grasp too hard because it makes me angry to. The notices usually never come this early in the day. They must have gotten desperate. Point being, on a good day, I would have said something about now, had a good remark towards the way Lucas drove in here.
But now I just sit in silence.
"Are you working with lasers?" Tessa questions before Dad appears, having heard all of the noise coming from within our barn. "If so, I'm not coming in."
One of the barn door's opens at that exact moment, nearly missing us. I want to almost be startled by it, but I'm not – not quite. My dad stands before everyone. His hand still remains coiled on the door handle, adding weight. His words aren't with Tessa's question, and his words aren't with why we even needed him or came down here while he was deep in that brain of his.
"You guys have never seen a truck like this before." His words, in fact, are on our truck's status and they come flowing out fast. I tilt my head to the side to begin thinking and I barely feel him usher Tessa and I through the door. I shake it off. I hear my dad tell Lucas as he gets him inside, "Lock that door,"
"It doesn't have a lock . . ."
And it never did have one, which is why I don't understand this whole situation. We have never took that type of precaution before because the barn doors are, more often than not, found open, mostly out of habit.
"Cassie – Cassie! C'mere and look at this!" Dad brings me over, maybe because he knows I might care more since I kill time in here. "Look! Look at the hole in the radiator. Look at the size of it!"
The radiator is sitting on a side-table, having since been removed from the bulky, old truck. A circular hole that goes straight through expands across the surface. It is about the size of a basketball and my dad holds his head up to it so he can peer through for emphasis. I reach out a forefinger to prod at the flaw. The edges are crumpled on each other and fall in even more with pressure. Still warm, too.
My dad points at me and I think he is going to tell me I shouldn't have touched it, but instead he is gesturing at the radiator itself and talking to Lucas, all animated, "Something blew a hole in it!"
"Yeah, so?" Lucas drags his feet lazily when he comes forward. My sister stays back.
Dad begins scaling the ladder to get up where he was working before. "It's not normal steel."
Wait. I poke my head around the radiator so I can see my father better. "It's a truck. How can it not have normal steel?"
"I don't know . . . It – it's like it has armor or something."
"What – like military?" asks Lucas.
"Yeah, yeah – " Dad walks steadily walks across a plank to get to where he has more tools, another work place. "The shrapnel in the engine, it ripped all of the connections apart." He turns to the trio of us. "And watch – and this took some Cade genius. You are going to love this."
He busies himself with something. I look at Lucas who tries to hold the big, bold letters of EVICTION NOTICE up for all to see. My dad won't notice and even if he does, he'll just blow it off because this here is supposed to be a solution. In his eyes, there is always one. And Lucas knows this, so he flicks it down. Still holding the paper, he sighs.
Dad holds up the cables we use to jumpstart our own truck sometimes when it doesn't feel like getting up in the morning. "When I hook this back to a working battery . . ."
The insides of the truck explode with light and sparks as soon as Dad attaches the plugs. I jump back some, as do the others.
But it is when the thing starts talking that I really start moving back.
"Calling all . . ." The voice trails off. Then it's back: "Calling all Autobots."
Oh – oh no –
Dad disconnects. It goes quiet.
And then he's saying, "I don't think it's a truck at all. I think we just found a Transformer."
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no . . .
My eyes get all wide, I feel it, and my mouth drops a bit. I stumble over myself and almost fall, yet I catch myself on a table. Lucas drops the notice and it sails around the room before settling on the ground. He exclaims something I don't hear because I'm sprinting to the door, smacking into the closed wood, and shoving it open in a clumsy way that is not like me.
Once outside, I make a beeline to a sheltered, open stall that would hold animals. I turn in circles while kicking at straw and sawdust covering the earth here. Tessa and Lucas talk loudly for once, so I can listen, but I don't. I feel Dad's presence closing in but it doesn't matter.
885-
No, that's not it.
855-
Yes.
855- . . . 855-
What comes after that? What comes after that?! How can I not remember –
"Dad, are you outta your mind?!" My sister's voice brings me back, for she's in this stall with me now, as is Lucas. Dad is standing by the open barn doors. Tessa strides towards him, getting down low for a second, wildly pointing to the barn as her long blonde hair goes every-which-way. She is talking in hushes, like the alien-robot-thing in there can hear us. Can it? I don't know how technical advanced they were, or are. "You need to get that thing out of here!"
Our dad holds out his arms in his defense. "You don't have to worry; I've been in there workin' all night. I'm fine."
I move in. "But what if – what if like you just activated something when you did that and made it talk? What if – "
"No, Cassie, it's not going to come alive . . ."
Lucas gets in my dad's face, scooting me back some. "You know what? That's not a truck, okay? You're right." His scraggly hair falls in his face when he stomps the ground. "It's an alien killing machine!" He falls away. "Jesus . . ."
"Dude," Dad starts, not sounding very serious, "It's DOA. It's been recalled, totaled, done."
"So, listen . . . there's a number that you call – you're supposed to call the government."
Yes, yes, I know . . . Just can't think of it.
855-
855-3 . . . Three! The next number is a three!
Oh, I got it.
855-363-
But no matter how hard I think, I am a lost cause with the final four digits.
Dammit.
Lucas goes on saying how much money we could what – win? How much money we could win if we turned the truck in, called the number if I could remember it. $25,000. That's a lot. More than what we're getting by on about now. Tessa is agreeing and then he states if we take down the thing like a wild animal then we could get $100,000. Dad says the commercial didn't say that, he saw it. Also, our truck isn't exactly running away right now. According to Lucas, Greg wouldn't lie to him. Who's Greg?
"Look," I hear Dad begin as I get back into the conversation, "if that's a Transformer there from the Battle of Chicago, I need to know how it works." Some things shouldn't be tampered with, Dad; some things should be left alone. If it really is an alien from a faraway galaxy, we're never going to know how it truly works. It's not man-made. "I'm an inventor! This could be a game changer for me! If I can apply that technology to my inventions, we'd never have to worry about money again!"
He's happy about this, but I don't know if it is worth it.
My older sister crosses her arms and nods her head, tight-lipped, "I've heard that before . . ."
I look from my dad to the open barn doors. We keep falling in deeper and deeper, and I'm not supposed to think about money because I am a kid. I am thirteen. I think about what Dad wants, but then I think about the eviction notice on the ground . . . the billboard with the forgotten phone number by the rail-trail, which you pass by to get here.
And lastly, I think about that sad, broken alien sitting in our barn.
"Twenty-five grand! It pays for my college; it pays for what we owe on the house." Tessa's friendly reminder comes when she, Lucas, and I enter the barn after Dad. He is already back up there with the truck. I have never minded his inventions before. While my sister never took quite a liking to them, I stuck around and watched. This time, however, it is different by a long shot. I am not one for authority and the whole works, but if this thing is a bad thing, because that is what I heard is left, none of us should stick around to discover the truth.
Lucas steps forward and I take in his appearance since I didn't when he first arrived. Things blew past in a rush then. He's wearing beach clothes, flip-flops. An unzipped, light jacket is thrown over his shoulders – the usual. "Besides," he says, looking up at my dad whose back is towards us, hunched over, "you used my money to buy the truck, right? So, technically, that's my truck. Don't you think?"
And, no, Lucas, no – That's not what my dad "thinks". I know it because right away, his body language changes, back stiffens – BOOM! He turns and swings under the railing; all the while the pieces holding it together shake and hit one another. His boots hit the ground with a thud. Dust rises from the barn's floor.
He stares Lucas down. "You also signed a contract regarding all research lab I.P.."
I don't remember a contract. But that was years ago when they first started, and had hope that something worth good money would come out of it. Now, everything looking at me in this barn sends me a wave of uneasiness.
"Research lab?" mutters Lucas to himself, not finishing the question, searching for the memory instead. I can still hear him because he's only to my right. "It's a barn, dude."
My dad stalks closer. He points in Lucas' face, who backs up. "You signed it and now you're competing." They keep going, their bodies moving back to the closed doors. Sunshine streams in through the cracks. "Any idea of yours is mine. Any thought you have, I own it!" His eyes are big and wide and I don't like it. "So basically, I own you."
No. That's not how this works. Not how any of this works.
And my father, Cade, he knows this.
So I approach him, fully aware of how it might not even be the time, or I am a kid, but this is me. This is how I was wired.
I step in front of Dad's field of vision, saying, "Dad, stop. That's BS."
He gives me a look and I already know what he's going to say before he says it. "Cassie – "
"I didn't cuss!" I yell. Then, realizing the volume of my voice, I lower it, "I didn't."
"Anyways," Lucas starts, catching our attention. He looks lost in thought, like he's caught up on something. "I don't think you can own someone. That was, like, a while ago . . . even in Texas."
I scrunch my face up, shaking my head, "Oh my God, Lucas!"
"What? It's the truth."
My dad puts on his apron and grabs his wielding mask, glancing at his friend in the process, "Alright. Bring the torch over and help me with the pulley arm."
Lucas groans. My shoulders sink as I sigh at him.
"I think the shrapnel took out its power core." says Dad. "Oh – and Tessa, Cassie?" He picks up a hammer. "You see this?"
CLANK! Goes the hammer against the metal of whatever that truck is. I flinch.
Tessa jumps, balling her hands into fists. "Shit . . ." she swears, but no one but me hears it over the sound of the banging.
Our dad straightens. He holds out his arms. "Would an alien killing machine let me do that?"
Probably not. But what do we really know?
"Look, I'll make the call, we'll get the money. Just first let me see if I'm right. You two want to hide in the house?" Tessa nods frantically. I shrug. I guess. "Go ahead."
Snagging one of my wrists in passing, Tessa yanks me out of our barn without giving me the chance to break away because I hate when people touch my wrists. We make it halfway across the yard, heading towards the house, before I manage to regain my arm back. I stop and my older sister does, too. She looks back at me.
"It'll get them first." I say.
She pulls me in a few more steps before I stop for good. Her head is shaking.
"I can't believe any of you . . ." is what I take from her murmurs before she sprints for the front door, knowing full well arguing is pointless and tiring. She'll pull, I'll pull back. Then I will fall to the ground of no intent of getting back up again. My sister will leave. Surely, I would follow in a few minutes as I will now, but either way, same endings . . . just different beginnings.
I hear the screen door slam and swing around to face the barn. It's in the sun for once, looking somewhat happy. I guess I do not know it at all. My fingers find the knot in the red-and-black flannel tied around my waist. Shoving my arms in the sleeves, I pull the garment onto my shoulders.
Suddenly, I start thinking that the barn wasn't finally content after all because a lot of banging, a lot of sound is bouncing out of the structure. Yelling. My dad – I think – I think Lucas is, too. My weight shifts slightly forward.
But then something tears through the gap in the barn doors, and it is coming fast, coming for me. I can't see much of the object to tell, but I am also falling and rolling out of its way before I can think at all. Landing on my back, I struggle to regain the ability o breathe as the thing soars over my head in an ear piercing ZOOM! I feel like my insides are caving in on themselves. My lungs heave. I roll to my right side and cough away the smoke that whatever just came out of the barn left behind.
My sister is screaming.
There is nothing I can do but curl into myself and watch our porch-swing, which is moving on its own, as my heartbeat slows back to normal.
The front door looks crooked from the angle I am laying, but my older sister breaks through it anyways. I get up, slowly, and I can feel my muscles twitching and limbs shaking even though I am not scared. My stomach hurts but I can breathe again.
"Dad!" Tessa screams but not the way she was inside the house, I hate that sound. I can tell how pissed she is by the way she stomps through the yard and smashes grass blades underfoot. "There's a missile in the family room!"
So that's it – what burst from the barn in color and smoke. A missile. I remember the truck and my sister does, too. And then we're running to our barn that is now awake and alive because sound keeps coming from the other side of the doors. I let my sister take the lead, but my dad catches her as soon as she stumbles inside. The words she wanted to tell him die on her lips and are replaced with a shriek.
I stop much slowly than Tessa did when she slid into our dad. I'm behind them, but I can still see the problem because it is towering over us. This problem is bigger than the barn and has to crouch some to stand, but it struggles to even stay upright. The ground beneath my feet trembles. I have never seen one up close before – this new problem of ours – just on TV screens or billboards, but they don't come close to reality. All that it is made up of are parts jumbled together without clarity. No longer is there a sad truck. Now there is a sad, angry Transformer.
I clench my teeth and a hissing whisper wraps my words up, "Dad, you – you said it wouldn't come alive!"
No one says a word.
The robot-alien-thing turns a few times, trying to gain balance. When it faces us, it is holding some kind of blown-up version of a gun or cannon – I don't know which – something I've never seen before. He points the gun in our direction; at least I think it is a him.
"I'll kill you!" it yells and the voice is male, so I know I was right, then. He shoves his weapon closer. "Stay back!"
I jump back about five steps. The soles of my sneakers scrape across the barn's floor as I inch closer to the open door. I shouldn't be scared because that's not me, I don't really scare. But I can't push down this feeling of wanting to run right out of those doors. The Transformer's form is dusty and carries chips and dents like the truck. The entire area surrounding it, workbenches and such, are smashed and sparking.
My dad tells him not to shoot. I don't know if that matters much.
Lucas is on the ground amongst flattened tables and broken tools. I only realize him when he speaks, "Call 911! Run!" And he keeps repeating that word while he scrambles to his feet and hauls to the door. Dad tries to tell him to stop. The Transformer ends it all by hitting Lucas on the head with his gun; only to him the force he uses seems like a tap. Lucas falls to the ground and then he's just looking up at the beams holding the ceiling. He's quiet. An empty shell topples from the gun and bounces around him.
"Lucas?" my dad asks, trying to be calm but I can hear the nervousness in his tone, nonetheless. He holds out a hand to his friend, the other has a grip on Tessa's arm. "Don't move, just calm down."
Lucas sits up some. He raises his hands and squints up at who knocked him down. Sweat runs down his forehead, he pants.
Every time the Transformer moves, some gear in him makes a noise. "Easy, human . . ." he warns.
Dad releases Tessa and motions for the both of us to stay put. He begins creeping closer to the thing looking down at us, its silhouette reflecting off of the light shining in. "He's not gonna hurt us . . ."
And I know I shouldn't, but I just can't stand by, "But he just – "
"Cassie."
But he just hurt Lucas . . .
As soon as my dad approaches him, he immediately takes a protective stance again, keeping his cards – his gun – close to his chest. "Weapons . . . systems . . . damaged . . ."
"A missile hit your engine," Dad explains. He also explains it to me without knowing it because the Transformer was the cause. The thing that knocked the wind out of me, broke the front door, made my older sister scream that awful scream, and is now apparently in the family room - it was from him. "And we took it out of you. You're hurt really bad." The thing groans every time it moves. His electric connections are sparking and some parts of him are barely holding it together, dangling. "Jus' tryin' to help you . . . You're in my home now. I'm an engineer. My name is Cade Yeager."
"Cade," he repeats my father's name as he wipes what I guess is his mouth. "I am in your debt. My name is Optimus Prime."
And that is when it all clicks into place because I recognize hearing that name on the TV from news broadcasters as they discussed what went down in Chicago. I remember that there were two sides of that battle, how some turned against us. Looking up, Optimus Prime has blue eyes. Not all Transformers are bad, I remember, I just thought that those who were bad were hiding. So how – ?
It's like Optimus Prime just remembered, too, who he was and all . . . because he becomes very urgent suddenly, "My Autobots – they're in danger." The strength in his knees gives out and Optimus falls to his knees. A part of his – what? – his – his head? – falls off. Green stuff oozes out after it. "I need to go . . ." He holds his head. "I need to go right now."
"How far you think you're gonna get?" my dad asks him. He informs my sister and me that it is okay to move now, and we do.
Dad asks what happened, which is what we're all wondering.
"An ambush. A trap . . . set by humans."
We did this. It was our kind.
Optimus coughs. He is kneeling over us. "I escaped and took this form."
"I thought we were on the same side," I say because I can't hold it in. "Why – why would they hurt you?"
"They were not alone."
I try to say under my breath, "Well, that's low."
He coughs again, but just once this time, "If that's what you call it, then yes, it was."
I walk forward and kneeling down, pick up the piece of his armor that fell off. It has a decent amount of weight to it and takes both arms to hold, but it is not that bad otherwise. "You shouldn't go. You look pretty bad. A tow truck had to bring you up here." My fingers grip the metal and my dad was right, it is not normal steel. I have never felt anything like it before, never on any of Dad's inventions or other cars. Optimus lowers his hand that is about half the size of me down, palm up. I place his armor there to return it to him. It leaves some dust behind and I brush it off.
"My Autobots can repair me." he informs the four of us.
"Yeah, if you can reach 'em." states Dad.
He steps forward, kicking an empty shell in the process. My dad points to where it looks to be the location of Optimus' engine, where the missile was lodged.
"What about me?"