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Atomica – Issue 6

Written by castor :: [Sunday, 26 July 2015 15:05] Last updated by :: [Wednesday, 29 July 2015 10:02]

Atomica was flying.

In a plane.

Atomica had seen a lot of planes in her time of course. Daily, often hourly, flying by them, but she had a hard time remembering when was the last time – if ever – she had been in one.

She could fly faster than the fastest plane man had ever created. She could fly faster than a rocket ship or a supersonic jet. She had incredible speed and maneuverability, which meant air travel as such was … well … unnecessary.

Maybe a couple of years ago, when on a mission in a war torn country, she had gotten a briefing where she flew onto a plane and flew off – did that count? She couldn’t remember a circumstance where she had gotten in a plan, it went down a runway and then up …

She once grabbed a helicopter in midair and rested on it for a few seconds … actually, made that twice, a month apart. Huh.

She shook her head. There were reasons of course. She was going to get her ultrasound and Bill, her boyfriend, wanted to be there in person. Sweet.

Of course her de facto obstetrician was in Baltimore, which was halfway across the country and, it turned out, in a city that you could not get a direct flight to – which meant that she was going to have to do two flights in the court of and …

Her obstetrician n fact very nicely asked to come out to where she lived for the next couple of months to focus personally on her care, but not wanting to give the government that kind of info(though she had long suspected that they knew it-knew all of it ) meant that she had refused

Well … she had offered to fly out with him. This was her idea.

The first hour had some interesting facts to it: the seats. She had taken the train once on a lark with Bill and they were like this – but more and less solid. They where surprisingly comfy in the scheme of things, but it felt very odd to be confined to them for so long. Sure, she could stand and go to the bathroom, but still …

Taking off, driving the runway had been strange to watch from her window. Moving in air like this, without moving in air. It felt relaxing in a way. It didn’t require much effort to stay in the air – she had actually fallen asleep while doing it – just a little and this was different.

For about an hour of the three hour flight.

Then she felt confined.

She stroked her belly and her baby. You could definitely see it now. A large mass on her tummy that was poking out. It felt odd. Since she didn’t have all that much fat, it was still oddly angular, her body moving outward in odd directions. She had gained 15 pounds maybe, most of it baby. It felt odd. She certainly ate more and Bill was good at it, but still … if anything since the last visit she had upped her food intake.

Her new costume had come in. It covered her expanding tummy, all done in black, so people couldn’t see it and pretend it didn’t exist. It didn’t confine her.

Atomica sieved. Atomica. She was in her secret identity of Nancy Felios – pregnant graphic designer in glasses and a sweater that was bulky, but not that bulky – but she didn’t feel like Nancy. She didn’t feel like the kind of hipster inteligencia – who could laugh and smile – instead she felt annoyed in that special Atomica way when things weren’t quite going her way.

She sat next to Bill, who was napping. What did he bring to the table other than eggs and sperm? She didn’t need his money – she had enough. He did help with chores and cooking, but she could do that in less time for him to get a broom, and she precisely didn’t need cleaning. She didn’t need a condo or any of it. It was a stupid fiction to even pretend and waste upto 15 hours a day on most weeks.

She sighed and moved a finger to touch his face. It was a thought she sometimes had when she was angry at him, which she didn’t want to be … because it always ended with the word fiction. This wasn’t fiction. She was Nancy. She was a sweet girl who loved him, wanted to share a life with him and did want to share a baby as part of that. That was real and he was the main part of it.

Though, if they ever broke up, it would take her little effort for Nancy to disappear from her small social circle in Huston and be in San Fransicsco, or Cleveland, or wherever. He was her rock. He gave her so much, in terms of love, support and understanding of the complexity of her life and …

He was the reason there was a Nancy. Before it was just a place to stay, an occasional night out and …

She stroked his cheek.

She was a normal person. A normal good person. Which meant that she flew airplanes. She was a person with a kindle and a couple of books that she had wanted to read. Like Dune – which he really liked and she had been trying to read for months – and for a minute her mind was on alien worlds of water of desert of cities past horizon … when she felt the need to close it. What else did she have on her kindle?

It was an Iphone game about tossing birds at other birds. She started playing it.

When the sound went off in her ear.

At first she thought it was the slotting noise, but no It was the radio in her ear. Yes, she wore it all the time. It was important.

In this case a cave in. A mine in Turkey.

Oh no!

She looked up.

Her responsibility was to deal with it – to save lives. She could fly there in about 3 minutes. Be there in …

But how?

Now the question was: what of her secret identity? She didn’t care about that. That wasn’t worth a bobo on a babies behind, but she was in a giant metal pressurized space. She couldn’t open a window or a door that would endanger people.

She looked around. Was there a window? She paced and went to the bathroom and found it was locked and she couldn’t even …

She went to her laptop and turned it on. She looked at closer details. It was a cave in type explosion and 5 miners where missing.

She started to justify. They would either be dead now or would be alive in the hour and a half it would take her to get to Washington. It was a horrible notion – but not untrue – and breaking open a window or force open a door would endanger the crew.

Now, Nancy had done this before: she slept through alerts, would sneak in a last bit of breakfast and, yes, once had a notice while making love. This without counting the number of times she was at a fire when a larger fire happened elsewhere, or chasing after an escaping car someone was on a ledge. Things happened and she had to prioritize. She couldn’t be everywhere.

She didn’t like it. Not one bit.

As she was forced to watch for the next hour, waiting and clicking on updates of the story.

Bill woke up a few minutes latter to see her agitated.

“What’s going on?”

“Don’t want to talk about it”

Only to find about 10 minutes out of Baltimore that, by the end of it, all five of them were rescued by workers rushing into a partially filled in cave. Two had broken legs, all had breathed in gas, but they would be okay. It didn’t even make the American news that night.

That made her both incredibly relieved and somehow annoyed. Damn humanity and their needless transportation and …

Bill – who had watched her update the story the entire time without saying a word, she realized – had put a hand on her shoulder and as she looked at him smiled.

Humanity. They were good, weren’t they? That was the point.

A couple of hours latter to her first ultrasound, which was much larger machine than normal but …

It revealed what looked like a strange tadpole monster inside of her. At first she was frightened, but Dr. Nichols was very pleased with how it was developing. Bill was ecstatic, trying to wave at the little thing and she looked at it swarming around a touch in her belly …

… when she heard the noise again. The ticking noise without her ear. The slotting sound.

She stroked her belly.

“So what sex is it?”

It was defiantly there, calling to her from something somewhere. It was there. No denying it.

“A little early to tell. I could tell you a guess, but I don’t feel comfortable.” said Dr. Nichols.

Bill look disappointed. “Well, okay … I guess we’re going to have to come back another time for that … geese, I guess I am going to have to come here for the birth … that’s going to be tricky.”

“There’s a fair number of hotels in the city.” said Nichols “Maybe stay a couple of days around the time of the birth.”

“Drive her to the hospital.”

She sat silently looking at her child. The future.

“I honestly don’t know what condition she’s going to be in.”

Bill chuckled “We will figure it out. Shouldn’t be to hard. Though one question right now: I feel like going out some place special. Do you know any good local places?”

“Well, there’s Grand Avenue, which isn’t actually a street but a high end Italian restaurant …”

Nancy wasn’t listening, not really. She was just so full of dread for her and her family.

Bill smiled and leaned into kiss her absently.

“What a beautiful little child.”

Dread.

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