The issue with battery-powered long-distance air travel is that you have to lug weight of those batteries with you for the entire trip.
The whole problem would be considerably more tractable if airliners could do as rockets do---jettison exhausted fuel storage as they go, especially since maximum power requirement is at takeoff. We've done the math and it absolutely works, we use our support drones to catch and reuse the jettisoned batteries.
Well, most of the time. Sorry about your cow; we'll get you a new one.
The owner of the facility was famous. Well, Meta famous if you know what i mean. Famous for being a famous rich asshole, dedicating his twilight years to outliving all the other famous rich assholes.
Collectively the six trillionaire oligarchs who had built their burrows—each on their agreed post-apocalypse continental domains—had all hired the same experts to design those enclaves. Location: deep in the ancient stable rock of a continental craton. Supplies: Food, water and medicines to last a century, until farming could resume. Knowledge: a full archive of the Internet. Technology: every conceivable machine and the parts and tools to maintain them. Serfs: entirely separate accommodation for necessary technical staff, and hibernation for many more. Security: no, not the armed-thugs-with-shock-collars you’re thinking of; spider drones are what’s in favour with apocalypse consultants this decade.
When the Event came it blindsided even the Six. While everyone was watching the climate fall apart, the brown dwarf grazing the Oort cloud went unnoticed, obscured by the glare of the Starlink Belt. A million comets had their orbits stirred up by the visitor. It only took one, impacting in the south atlantic ocean, to tip the biosphere into chaos predicted to last three to five decades.
The balloon was up, the Six and their families executed the well rehearsed Plan Scram, and settled into their cosy bunkers to wait out the Dark Times. Serfs (sorry, “employees” in this decade) likewise. Human security personnel (unknowingly already inoculated with a delayed death sentence once their mechanoid replacements were online) set about battening down the hatches and bringing up the Evironment (2.0).
“Hey Sarge, this droid won’t boot!”
“Yeah this one too. What does ‘502 License server unreachable’ mean?”
The maiden and her cat strode boldly into the castle.
"I'm here to court the prince."
This was met with laughter, and she was thrown into the dungeons; her cat chased away.
Her loyal companion visited every night, first bringing her pen and ink, then food, and then somehow a gown and slippers. Then more food, and some soap.
After a week, the prince rushed down, "I want to know you better, your letters have been so compelling!"
The world is unequivocally a better place since we stopped burning coal for domestic heating. However I’ve always been a little sad that Kids These Days (™) don’t get to experience soot sprites.
Then just yesterday I walked into the garage, flicked on the light, and I got that familiar scramble in the corner of my eye. They’ve evolved! My inverter has Solar Sprites!
#PennedPossibilities 324 — SC POV: If you could relive one day of your life without changing anything that happened, which day would you choose? Tootfic: Reframing the Experience
[When my SC says armor, it's really a weightless magical exoskeleton that melds with her body. It looks like blackened bones, because it is. —R.S.]
Oh, there's plenty of days I'd relive unchanged. Like the day I fledged, when I first flew on my own. Or the day learned the thrill of hauling things through the sky. Both good events in a rather dull and awful childhood that turned to cinders when my parents disapproved of the way I wanted to live my life. Said I aimed for the dirt not the sky. Maybe they weren't so dumb—I ended up badly, flying messages for a crime boss over a dozen years. But, then, there was that day last week...
I've told you a few times how I ended up with the armor and a new job training as a pretorian, you know, having faced down the greatest thaumaturge who ever lived, having nearly killed her. Impressed her.
I thought.
Well, my drill instructor was training me that dawn. I wore the armor. The thaumaturge dove at me, full speed. She's a monster flier, taller, more massive, immortal. I jumped into the sky. Fled.
She followed.
Though the armor let me fly like a sparrow, change direction in a heartbeat, and take a thumping only slightly changing my course, it had been her armor once. She kept appearing before me, striking at my face or heart, sending me into spins toward the ground, stalling me out, almost panicking me into flying into trees or buildings. For all her mass and the inertia that implies, I barely avoided her, half the time with her cackling at my barrel rolls or dives that sent down feathers flying. She had muscle; I tired despite the armor until I thought my heart would burst from my chest, at which point a flyby pitched me into the ground.
I skid across the running track on my belly right up to my instructor. I don't know how I didn't break a wing or my neck. Ok, I do: The Armor.
She landed beside me with a loud thump. She wasn't even winded! She told him, "She lacks stamina. Train her harder."
She leaned down until her face was in my face. I smelled maple syrup on her breath. She said, "You need to use the magic in the armor. There's a class at first bell in the Ivory building, room B7. Shower and be there ON TIME."
I have wings.
I don't do magic.
I showered though, once my legs stopped shaking. I slunk into the class still half-frightened out of my wits. My new friend was there, the curse breaker, a former prizefighter, the one I'd fought beside against Her, that ended up with me getting the armor. It was some sort of advanced special Ed class for mages. I suddenly felt totally inadequate and I cried. Me. At the age of 27, I cried telling her my story, pointing to my purpling bruises, complaining that had She gotten in a good strike She would have caved in my rib cage.
My friend was having none of it. She said, "You're a day angel who just went ten minutes fighting Her. Somehow, you're still alive."
I hadn't thought about it that way. I later learned the word, "Reframing."
The instructor came in with a truckload of tomes and grimoires. She had prepared him for me. He gave me a magic primer. I knew it was a primer because it had PICTURES of youngsters playing. Despite the stares of the other students, I read the book.
Half hour later, I got the armor to glow dull red, like iron out of a forge. Truly. Awesome. Didn't know what it did except look intimidating, but still...
Awesome.
I felt my heart grow large in my chest, and it struck me. Someone (okay, the ruler of the nation) wanted me for who I was and who I could become, and because I was capable. She wanted me to aim for the sky. My new friend supported me and pushed me forward. I liked this, who I was, what I was finding I could be, could become.
And.
Oddly.
I realized, for what it was worth, my parents would approve. (And flap them if they didn't!)
The cheque said “AMOUNT: two dollars and forty cents BEING FOR: classified ad”, rounded block letters in green ink amid the printed prompts. My mother never wrote cursive. “Thanks Mum“ I said, “I’ll pay you back from my paper round money on Saturday”
“No need” she said, “I’m going out; if you have the ad ready I’ll post it for you.”
I folded the cheque and the form I’d clipped from the newspaper. It had been tricky writing on the newsprint with a pen “HOME COMPUTER Amstrad CPC6128 with monitor, printer and external 5.25 inch drive. Original software plus over 30 games. $425. Ph 551806”.
After Mum left I went to my room and booted up my new PC, with its Extra Beige system unit and Different Beige monitor. I patted my 6128’s screen sitting on the floor under my desk. “Sorry old girl, no room to keep you but I’ll find you a nice home”.
Before I even got Kings Quest loaded the doorbell rang.
The visitor was a woman with amazing purple hair, and cat ears. “Hi, she said, I’m Kit, here about the Amstrad”
“But…it’s not even posted yet. And I only listed a phone number!”
“Never mind that”, she smiled, bouncing on her toes “do you still have it?”
I nodded, too flabbergasted to speak
“Four twenty five, right?” she said, thrusting an envelope at me, “here’s five hundred, keep the change. Now, what I want-“
“Wait, what are these things”. I’d opened the envelope to find five slippery rectangles of plastic bearing “100” in large letters, coloured variously green and yellow with a transparent region in the middle. “These aren’t-“
“Oh shazbot!” my visitor said, snatching the envelope back. “Bee Arr Bee”. Then she vanished, with an electric ZZZZAAPP sound.
ZZZAAAPP. She was back, holding out a sheaf of five grey paper rectangles, the recently introduced but rarely seen $100 notes, thick linen paper with subtle colours - easy to photocopy and colour in with textas, I’d seen on TV. I held the note up to the sky to see the metal thread and watermark. “Are these real?”
“Trust me,” she said, “they were hard to find but totally legit.”
“Okay, uh do you want to see the computer running?”. I felt like I was running to catch up with this interaction.
“No need” she grinned. “I’m giving it to you. Box it up and stash it in Mum’s roof. You’ll be glad to have it when you’re older.”
“Wh…what?”
“Do they speak english in what?” she muttered half to herself?
“what?”
“Exactly! Right on script”. She poked me in the chest. “You’ll be alright kid. Forget about the ‘strad for a couple of decades, OK?”
She ran hand through her brilliant purple hair, vibrating like she was having the best time ever. “Oh yeah, you’ll need these”. She tugged at her cat ears and i realized they were a headband. She handed me the band with its two ears. “One last thing“—a suddenly serious look—“listentoyourdreams. You’ll know when it’s time. See ya!”
The mushroom ring was drawn in chalk, so I'd thought nothing of it...
As the fae realm drew me in, I tried to remember - was it just local fairy food that I needed to avoid? Was the lunch in my bag safe since I'd brought it with me?
"It worked! It's a human!" exclaimed an excited pixie.
"They-them, please," I blurted instinctively.
"They're a human! Humans exist!"
"Ugh, you won the bet, now let's send them back..." grumped an elf.
“Excuse me”, the waitress noted in passing, “you’re on fire”.
She wasn’t being complimentary to my appearance; my encounter suit was leaking oxygen again. I hate fluorine planets.
I swatted at the flame and stepped up to the bar. “Cylinder of pure H₂O please” I asked the barkeep. “and, uh, have you seen Captain Zhang tonight? I arranged to meet her here and…” I waved away another flame and applied a quick-seal patch to the crack in my armor “…I’d rather not wait too long; no offense but your bar’s atmosphere is not really my thing”
The witches secretly watched from the shadow of the moon.
In the marsh below, the king wheezed as he jogged past the Old Stump for the third time, wearing boots, breeches and muddy leaves. He waved a scepter in his left hand, and clutched a barely sedated badger in his right.
"Last month the Leaves foretold that his next child would be a son. Why did you tell him this was the only way--?"
"Because he was rude; I'm making him work for it!"
The knight struggled out of his armor then strode toward the dragon, "I need to be crushed immediately."
The dragon shifted his massive body, waiting for the knight to lay flat in his nest of furs and fabrics. Then he gently rolled some of his mass onto the knight's, worriedly asking, "Rough day?"
"Rough week," sighed the knight.
"It's Monday!"
There was no response, the knight had already dozed off under his favorite weighted-blanket.
#WordWeavers 2405.20 — How did you settle on your antagonist's appearance?
Antagonists almost always are regular people with different agendas than the MC's. Rarely, they have a skewed sense of right and wrong or how reality works, which could describe a few MCs. In any case, I very much wish to prevent latching on to a stereotype as it will paint a divergent picture of what I want to represent and, far worse, comes with a subtext that I have no control over. Like the MC POV, I keep appearances vague so the reader can use their imagination, only less so because antagonists are seen and features important to the story must be eluded to. The MC will also make uncensored comments in her internal dialogue, aka 1st person narration.
In one case, the antagonist got her own side story as the POV. Note in the following #excerpt from Fledge, she has woken up with bodily changes (and amnesia). She self-labels herself as a chimera, a monster that's a combination of creatures but in her case parts of other people. She never states facial features, needs never say anything about hair color, or what we relate to as race. She does mention an in-story kind of human. However, the following feature is important to her "appearance" as it relates to the question, as well as the plot. She's squatting on a tree limb two dozen stories high...
He [her rescuer] pointed at the useless things on my back. "You remembered enough to shield your fall [...] using them. You're learning."
Below my normal right shoulder blade, a red-feathered monstrosity twitched. Adjusting my hips carefully, I glared left to see iridescent blue and purple feathers and down lit by the setting sun, better suited for a pigeon's breast. The day angel wing poked out, balancing, splaying breeze-rustled feathers to instinctively steady me. My blue "add-on" was larger than the red. Both went thwack to my back, acting as if they'd noticed I'd noticed my alien, unasked for, new limbs playing—behind my back—and hid. I had to steady myself with a hand.
“Emerald 457 Scaley this is Tower. You are clear to approach paddock 22 east”
Air traffic control used to be a fairly unexciting, though important job. After I retired and joined ATC Sans Frontières, I learned just how precarious air travel has made the life of dragons. Dragonkind was driven almost to extinction before ASF provided radio collars and traffic guidance.
“457 please also be advised of helicopter muster operations to your north. Our records show this flock is BSE negative. Good hunting”
Here in the Precrime Division we solve crimes before they happen. There’s a rumour that we use psychics, and it serves us well to let it spread uncorrected. Just between you and me, we mostly monitor search engines for queries like “statute of limitations” and “countries without extradition treaty”.
It’s a /little/ bit harder than reverse-parallel parking, but once you learn to complex-park by rotating your car at 90 degrees to reality, you can park pretty much anywhere you like. Just be really careful to remember where. And stay out of the Mandelbrot set!
The human child decided not to tease their fish-tailed pal, and instead talked about marbles and their mutual love of turtles and pizza.
Decades later, the human had to admit that the siren looked so happy atop the firetruck she was assigned to, screaming her lungs out as they raced towards a blaze.