Lifter: Proton Field #2 Read online

  Myr said, “Hey! Who said you could mess with that?!”

  Connor gave her a dubious look, “You did. You said you brought me a toy.” He looked back down into the splayed open backpack, “But I’m not finding one.”

  “Hah! The whole backpack’s your toy.” She glanced at the distance between his chair and the coffee table where the backpack had been, “You’ve gotten pretty good at getting from one place to another, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he said brightly, but then his mood fell a little. “I just need you to install antigravity everywhere.”

  “Well,” she lifted an eyebrow, “that’s what you’re holding in your hand.”

  Connor felt goosebumps as his eyes dropped back down to the backpack, “Really?!”

  “Portable Antigravity R-Us!” Myr said, her eyes twinkling.

  When Carol got home from work, she felt a little jolt of happiness to see Myr’s car parked in one of the guest slots in the condo parking lot. It always lifted her spirits when Myr came over to eat dinner with them. As she walked up the ramp to the condo she started wondering whether there was anything interesting to cook in the fridge.

  When the door opened, she saw Connor’s wheelchair sitting by the door. That wasn’t unusual. Since Myr put the lifters all over the ceiling, Connor’d started leaving the chair there, only using the chair when he left the house. Carol was a little surprised not to see either Connor or Myr in the great room of the condo, but she decided they must be doing something in Connor’s room. “Connor? Myr?” she called out.

  No one answered, so she called out again. Wondering if they might have earphones in, she stepped to the door of Connor’s room. She stopped, staring in shock. The room was empty. Stepping back into the kitchen she confirmed that they weren’t in the kitchen’s back corner. The bathroom door was open, but she stepped over to confirm—it was empty too. They couldn’t be upstairs—there weren’t any lifters on the ceilings up there. Or on the stairs themselves for that matter. What the hell? she thought wonderingly.

  Movement in the little yard out behind the condo caught her eye. Since Connor’s heavy chair didn’t do well on the softer soil of the lawn, the Seviis rarely went into their backyard, but as Carol leaned her head to the side, she saw that someone was sitting in one of the big lawn chairs. Actually, there were people in both of the chairs! For a moment, Carol forgot the mystery of where Myr and Connor were, and stepped over to the door to look out…

  Is that Connor’s hair?!

  Sure enough, she recognized Myr’s hair through the slats of the other chair, standing up like it did in a proton field. She turned and checked to be sure Connor’s power chair was over by the door. How the hell did they get Connor outside?! Carol told her AI to open the back door and stepped out. Walking with a sense of unreality, she slowly moved out and around to the front side of the chairs where they faced out over the tiny little lake the condos surrounded. Her son and daughter turned to smile at her, then lifted their beers in salute. “What the hell?!” she asked, noticing that Connor had something strapped to his chest.

  “Myr built me a portable lifter,” Connor said beatifically, reaching up to pat the pack on his chest. “Now I can go anywhere I want.”

  Feeling lightheaded, Carol thumped down onto the bench beside Myr.

  Myr held out a beer and Carol took it.

  Connor said, “When you feel better, maybe we could go for a little walk around the lake?”

  Connor and Myr explained that the pack on Connor’s chest was something that normal people could wear as a backpack. “It’s just that the field projector makes this big lump at the top,” he said, pointing. “It wouldn’t be comfortable for me, leaning back against this thing when I sit. Normal people would take the pack off when they weren’t flying, but I’ll need to wear it to help me breathe and…” he gave her a grin as he lifted his bottle to take a sip, “lift my beer.”

  Carol stared for a second. Since they’d installed the proton fields on the ceiling, she’d almost gotten used to Connor lifting bottles, something that had been very difficult for him before the lifters. She poured whatever he wanted to drink into plastic bottles because nearly weightless watery liquids tended to splash out of a wide mouthed glass. Besides, glass wasn’t lifted by the field, so it was heavy for Connor to lift. After a moment she asked in a mystified tone, “Why would normal people wear one?”

  “To fly,” Connor said serenely. Setting down his nearly empty beer he spoke to his AI. A moment later he grimaced a tiny bit. Then he floated a couple of feet up into the air. The proton field that was lifting him started to lift the back of the wooden chair he was sitting in, but Myr grabbed it and held it down. Carol had enough experience with lifters to know his flinch had come from his ears trying to tell him he’d turned upside down. It’d happened to her once when she’d been cleaning and had climbed up onto a desk in the condo with the lifters set on high power. She’d had them turned up to slow her fall if she lost her balance. It’d seemed like a smart move, but… When she got her head up close to the lifters, she’d had a vertiginous experience that actually made her fall. With her weight low, fortunately, she hadn’t gotten hurt. In retrospect it seemed obvious, but she hadn’t been able to understand what happened until that evening when Myr had explained the inner ear effects to her.

  Speaking to his AI, Connor moved forward from the chair and lowered down a little to hang so his feet were about three inches off the ground. He drifted forward; then he seemed to wobble a little bit like a top spinning down. Thinking that the lifter was going out of control or failing or something,

  Carol started to jump to her feet to catch him. He didn’t fall or even descend though. At the end of the wobble he’d turned around to face Carol and Myr. Surprised, Carol said, “What the hell just happened there?”

  Myr said, “Lifters lift, but they won’t rotate you. If you bank around a corner, you can turn, but that only seems to work if you’re moving fairly fast when you do it.” She shrugged, “Probably eventually we’ll have small secondary focal points that help position your body in space, but for now we’ve found that if we whirl the focal point around over your head at the right frequency, it’ll turn you around.”

  Connor said, “Makes me dizzy though. Hope you come up with something better soon.”

  Myr sighed theatrically as she stood up, “Ah yes. Our consumers’ demands are never-ending.” She jerked a thumb out at the condo development’s little lake, “You guys want to go out for a walk around the pond?”

  “Yeah!” Connor said enthusiastically, turning his head a little to look out that direction.

  Myr stood and headed into the condo, saying, “Hang on a minute, I’ve got to get a piece of safety equipment.”

  Carol looked at Connor, but he seemed to be as mystified as she was.

  A few minutes later, Myr came back out of the condo carrying an eight-inch red ball. “I’ve got this solid chunk of plastic to put in the field projector’s focus.” She tossed it into the air over Connor’s head. It spiraled quickly in to hang in the focus of his projector, a couple of feet above his head. “People will see it and instinctively keep away from it.” Carol saw that it also had “Caution” and “Stay back” printed on it in several locations.

  “Oh, like that won’t make me look like a freak,” Connor said, tilting his head back and staring up at it in disgust.

  “Better that than someone getting hurt,” Myr said. “I’ve had my hand stuck in a focus and it wasn’t pleasant. I’m worried that a focus strong enough to lift you off the ground might do serious injury to someone’s brain if they got their head stuck in it.” She pointed to the ball, “the polyethylene that ball’s made out of is so hydrogen dense, and therefore so strongly attracted to the focus, that you’d have to push really hard to move the ball out of place and get your hand or head all the way into the focus.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Connor said, trailing off unhappily.

  Carol stood up and her little fam
ily headed out of their condo’s small yard and down toward the diminutive lake in the center of the condo complex. After a few commands to his AI, Connor floated serenely along beside her, red ball over his head, reminding her of a sailboat moving in a faint breeze. When they got down to the edge of the pond, Carol and Myr turned to follow the trail around the edge. Carol’s heart skipped a beat as Connor kept going straight down toward the lake. Thinking he’d lost control, she turned to grab him but realized that the water wouldn’t pose a problem for him since he was actually flying. Sure enough, a moment later he was sailing placidly along, his toes a couple of inches above the water. “See you on the other side,” he called back to them.

  “Cheater!” Myr responded with a chuckle. She waved to Carol, “Come on Mom, we’ll go the long way.”

  Not surprisingly, before Connor reached the middle of the pond, the few people outside had turned to stare at the man who looked like he was walking on water with a red ball over his head. A few people started coming out of their condos. Some stood staring, others started heading toward the lake too, the kids at a run. By the time Carol and Myr got around to Connor on the other side of the lake, a little crowd had already gathered around him. He was slowly floating a few feet up into the air, then drifting back down, demonstrating what the flyer could do. More people were on their way.

  Carol studied her son. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it looked as if he was delighted to be at the center of so much attention. Since he’d always been shy and embarrassed by his disability, she felt like this was a wonderful change. People were almost shouting questions, some asking who made the lifters and where they could get one for themselves. Myr mumbled to her AI, then said, obviously speaking to her brother through his AI, “Don’t you dare sic these people on me!”

  Connor glanced over at Myr and grinned. Since his muscular dystrophy meant he couldn’t speak very loudly, Carol suspected he had his AI locally broadcasting what he was saying to the other people’s AI’s. She asked her AI to let her hear what Connor was saying and heard, “… I’m lucky enough to have an in with the woman that invented this technology. It should be available to everyone someday soon, but I’m afraid I don’t know how long that’ll take.” There was a pause as he evidently listened to another question, then he said, “I’d like to let you borrow it for a ride,” Carol could see a kid start to grin excitedly, “but you look like the kind of reckless kid who’d wreck the flyer, then blame me for it.” He paused for a little laugh from the crowd, then went on, “Actually, with my muscular dystrophy, I need it to hold me up, so I can’t actually share it.”

  Carol felt bad that she knew so few of the condo association’s residents, despite having lived there for over ten years. She thought the small crowd was surprisingly respectful and wondered whether that was because they recognized Connor’s disability and perhaps even recognized him as the young man they’d seen now and again in his wheelchair. She told her AI to connect her to both Connor and Myr, then said, “I’m going to head home and start dinner. Myr, can you stay with Connor in case problems crop up?”

  Connor said, “I want to go out to dinner!”

  “Yeah,” Myr said, “let’s do that.”

  Carol’s initial reaction was that she didn’t want to do it. Restaurants were so difficult with Connor’s wheelchair, first getting there, then finding a table suitable for Connor to pull up to in his chair, then having to help Connor eat in front of people… but then she realized all that’d just changed. After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “Sure, let’s try it.”

  Slowly rising up into the air, Connor said, “Hey folks, been nice talking to you, but we’re going out to dinner now.”

  Carol saw Connor getting higher and higher. When his feet were above the heads of the crowd, he did the little whirligig thing he’d done before to turn around. Facing the other direction, he moved off across the lake toward the condo with his toes dangling about eight feet above the water. A couple of kids started running around the lake to meet him on the other side. Carol and Myr started that way as well.

  Somehow, Carol had expected that when Connor got to the other side of the lake the kids would be there waiting for him and would pester him all the way to the patio door of the condo. She snorted in amusement at herself when Connor gained even more altitude and sailed right over the roof of the row of condos. She had to admit to herself that it was a lot easier way to get out to the parking lot than going through the condo.

  By the time Carol and Myr entered the lake side of the condo, grabbed Connor’s new plastic utensils and drinking bottle, and exited on the parking lot side, Connor’d had his AI open the power sliding door on the driver’s side of the van. His wheelchair normally locked into place just inside the power door on the passenger’s side of the van, but Connor had floated himself to the other side so he could ride in the captain’s chair behind the driver’s seat. Not that anyone ever actually drove the van manually, but there were controls on the left side for emergency situations, so people still called it the “driver’s seat.”

  The red plastic ball in his focal point was hanging a foot or so above the roof of the van, which looked kind of bizarre.

  When Carol started to lean in the door to buckle his safety harness, she realized Connor wasn’t quite straight in the seat. She needed to move his knees over to get him into the seat correctly. Pointing upwards she said, “Turn down your lifter. It’s trying to pull me in on top of you. Worse, it’s messing up my hair.”

  Connor spoke to his AI and the upward pull on Carol diminished. This settled enough weight back down on to her feet to let her shift Connor’s knees around straight so she could buckle him.

  He said, “Myr needs to hurry up and build some small field projectors into my harness so I can turn myself into position.”

  Carol had her AI drive them to the Fishbone Grill, a restaurant Connor loved. As he floated out of the van after Carol’d unbuckled him, Connor floated up high enough to put his head on the level of someone fairly tall. He proved he’d been giving more thought to the problem than she had. “When we’re sitting in the restaurant, I’ll need to be seated back by the wall so the server can’t get his head too close to my lifter’s focus. Even with the ball up there to keep people from getting their head all the way into the focus, we wouldn’t want them getting their head stuck to the ball.”

  Myr said, “I had my AI call ahead to get us that booth in the back corner. That way, no one will be able to get their head close enough to get in trouble.”

  “That’s a big booth for just three people.” Carol said, “I’m surprised they were willing to give it to you.”

  Myr snorted, “They’ll do anything for the monkey boy…” she lowered her voice, “and a hundred-dollar tip to the hostess.”

  For a second Carol instinctively reacted in horror to the thought of a hundred-dollar tip; then she relaxed. “I’m having a hard time adapting to having all this money.”

  “I’m not,” Connor said smugly. “I’m doing fine with it. However, I am psyched to be able to sit at the back of the booth looking out at the people in the restaurant instead of having to sit at the outer edge of the table facing back to the wall.”

  When they got to the entrance of the restaurant, they faced a couple of new problems. First, when Connor started through the door, the red ball over his head whacked into the wall and stopped. When Carol saw it happening, as usual, her gut reaction was that it was going to stop Connor from going through the door. As Connor kept moving without difficulty, she recognized the error she’d instinctively made so many times before. The focus that the ball had been attracted to wasn’t affected by whatever happened to the ball. Therefore, the focus moved through the wall, probably tugging on the wood of the wall’s framing, though not hard enough to do anything to the wall since the wall’s components were stably anchored. Myr had obviously anticipated the problem because she was behind Connor, waiting to catch the ball when he got far enough ahead for it to fall
free.

  What Myr hadn’t anticipated was the kitschy little picture hanging on the wall above the other side of the door. The wood of the picture’s frame pulled it off its hook. When Myr came through the door with the ball, evidently intending to toss the ball up over Connor’s head and back into the focus, the picture was swirling in the focus, suspended clumsily by its wooden frame. She stared up at it and snorted, “Dang, the American Disabilities Act’s going to have to make it illegal to hang crap over doorways, isn’t it?”

  Like everyone else in the entrance area of the restaurant, Connor was staring up at the picture as it twisted back and forth over his head. He said, “I suppose there’s going to have to be some kind of ‘doggie door’ above the doorway of public buildings to let handicapped people’s red balls go through?”

  Myr was rubbing her forehead like she had a headache, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.” She looked back at the doorway, “I suppose you could lower yourself when you’re gonna go through a doorway, but your feet’d drag.” Her eyes glanced back at the whirling picture in his focal point, “And the damned focus’s still going to be pulling things off the wall.”

  They went on back to their booth. Once Connor was seated in the back corner, he turned down his lifter enough that Myr could pull the picture out of the focus without pulling its frame apart. She tossed the red ball back up into the focus to remind everyone to be careful around it.

  Connor said, “I was really looking forward to sitting in a booth rather than being the freak in the wheelchair.” His eyes tilted up, “Instead, I’m the freak with the red ball dancing over his head.”

  Carol said, “Don’t forget, you’re also not the freak whose mother’s having to feed him in a restaurant. Don’t be the kind of jerk who’s always complaining, no matter what kind of amazing things his sister does for him!”