Chapter 10
SUSANNA
“Okay. Your turn.” Stefan gestured at the pilot’s seat.
We’d just dropped the kids off at school and returned to the aircraft parked nearby. Even though the school was in the same town, we’d flown here. According to Stefan, there were just a few hundred households in Diria. But with each family space being the size of a park, the town sprawled for miles in every direction. The school was on the opposite end of Diria, and walking to it would’ve taken forever.
Now, Stefan wanted me to fly the aircraft back home.
“Are you crazy?” I gaped at him. “Do you want to die?”
“No, I don’t!” He laughed. “I have a lot to live for. But you’re not going to crash.”
I glared at him skeptically. “I’m not so sure about that. I’m not a pilot.”
“Neither was I. But flying these things is super easy. You said you drove a car back on Earth.”
“Yes, but—”
“Then you can fly these.” He grabbed my arm and nudged me to the pilot’s seat. “Jump in. I’ll show you.”
I hesitated.
“This was how my parents died,” I mumbled under my breath.
I hadn’t meant to blurt that out like that, but the situation was close enough to feel unsettling.
“What?” The smile slid off his face. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Susanna.” He scratched the back of his head. “Somehow it made sense in my head to just put you in the seat and let you do it.”
I glanced at the pretty aircraft. It was the same size and color as the one the captain had flown us in on our arrival day. The feathery material of its wings framing the shiny glass panels of the cockpit made the resemblance to a bird uncanny.
“Was that how you learned to fly it?” I asked. “Just sat in the seat and went for it?”
“Yep.” He nodded. “Like I said, these things fly themselves. All you have to do is just let them.”
His unwavering confidence gave me some reassurance. In my new job, I’d have to take the kids to and from school. I needed to know how to operate the aircraft if I wanted to do my job properly, even if that meant pushing myself out of my comfort zone once again.
“Well, fine,” I conceded. “But just to warn you, it looks like I, too, have something to live for now. If we crash and die, I'll be very pissed at you.” I climbed in and put the seat belt on.
Stefan got into the passenger’s seat and closed both door panels. “We won’t crash. Just make sure you don’t touch anything randomly.”
I jerked my hands up, holding them in front of me, like a surgeon who’d just had them scrubbed and prepped for a surgery.
“But how do I fly it without touching anything?”
“I told you these things practically fly themselves.” He clicked his seatbelt on.
My arms grew sore from my straining not to move them.
“What if I do touch something? Accidentally?”
“If it’s something you shouldn’t have touched, it may cause an emergency.”
I halted my breath, freezing with worry.
Stefan chuckled. “Relax. In case of an emergency, the aircraft lands on its own. We’ll be fine.”
“Lands? Where?”
“On the ground. Wherever we are.”
“Oh.” I blinked at him. “So, since we’re flying over the town full of homes with no roofs, we may end up in someone’s bed?”
“Only if their protective shields aren’t functioning,” he said, not eliminating that possibility. “Normally, the shields would come up, and we’d just sit on top of their bedroom.”
“Good to know,” I mumbled, staring at the screens of the control panel. The floating blobs of Aldraian written language made no sense to me, whatsoever.
“First, you turn this one on, here.” Stefan pushed a button.
“Text-to-speech activated,”a mechanical voice sounded from the panel.
“Then, you’ll need to select your destination.” He scrolled the screen in a spinning circle, with the system announcing, “School, town hall, office, home...”
“Home.” Stefan touched the corresponding blob.
The engines whirred to life. The light, colorful wings unfurled. With a soft lurch, the aircraft lifted off the ground.
“Whoa!” I hovered my hands over the panel. “What do I do now?”
“Nothing.” Stefan swatted my hands away. “I told you, don’t touch anything. It’s programmed to take us back home.”
“That's it?” The ground fell away from under us, the neat squares of the school's classrooms growing smaller.
“That’s it.” Stefan lay back in his seat. “You can put your hands down, now.”
I carefully lowered my hands into my lap. “The captain did something more when he flew us to Diria from the spaceport.”
Stefan shrugged. “He was showing off. Some Aldraians like to hand-fly their aircraft for the ‘real flying’ experience. I’d say why reject technological advancements that allow us to do nothing?” He grinned.
I ventured another glance down. The landscape moved under us smoothly. The system was obviously in control.
“Well, that seems easy,” I marveled.
“Told you.”
I relaxed a little, shifting back in my seat. “So, does the captain always hand-fly it?”
Stefan nodded. “More often than not. But he’s been trained as a machinery operator. I guess he likes it. I’m a teacher and have no problems with letting machines do the flying for me.”
“You’re a teacher?”
“Yes,” he replied proudly. “I taught Polish Language and Literature in grade school back home. Since there’s obviously no demand for that on Aldrai, I took the job of a nanny while Esstal, my wife, was still at work.”
That was Polish, then, that Stefan spoke. Not that it mattered. Our translators worked so seamlessly, they erased the language barrier completely.
“Is Esstal no longer working, then?” I asked.
“She is, but only from home now. With the babies growing, it’s too hard for her to make it into the office every day like she used to.”
“How many babies are you expecting?”