accepting the proffered bundle from Paul. “Do I put these on right over my clothes?” he continued, without waiting for an answer to his first question.
“Just pull the flaps over and the magnets will seal everything tight,” Paul said. “There’s a towel on the belt if you need it. I’m not flying today because I’m in charge.”
“I’m not afraid of flying,” Samuel announced, appearing at Daniel’s elbow. “Banger flies all of the time, and he says that it’s just like riding a bicycle.”
“Have you ever ridden a bicycle?” Daniel inquired.
“Of course,” the boy replied. “Grandma sent me one.”
“In the diplomatic pouch,” Aisha added, answering the junior consul’s unasked question. “Shaina must have stayed home with your baby and I don’t blame her. I would never have brought Fenna if Paul hadn’t found her these cute ear protectors.”
“I’m surprised anything short of a suppression field can keep out the sound of those steam whistles.”
“The ear muffs are just a fashion statement,” Paul explained. “That volume of sound would go right through a baby’s skull without a suppression field, so I put a miniature Dollnick generator in the headset. Speaking of which, Joe must have ripped another roll or we’d be yelling to make ourselves heard right now.”
“I know it’s a theme park and all, but does it have to be that loud?” Daniel asked. He finished securing his leggings and moved on to the long-sleeved top. “And Joe said it’s going to be a while to fix whatever went wrong, so you’d better have Libby play something over the station system.”
“The music was actually Dorothy and Mist’s idea,” Paul told the junior consul. “We had them invite some of their friends to serve as beta-testers last week, and we ended up with hundreds of teenagers flying around in here. The girls asked Libby to pipe in some music because they said it was like watching an immersive without the sound. It hadn’t occurred to me that magnetic suspension fields would make the ride so silent, other than the screaming, of course.”
“Well, I’m as ready as I ever will be,” Daniel said, flexing his arms in the garment.
“Pull it all tight,” Paul instructed him. “You want the suit to act as a second skin. And put on the helmet. It’s not just to shield your eyes from spatters and to protect your head from accidental kicks. It also neutralizes the weight of your head.”
“So your neck doesn’t get tired,” Samuel added.
Daniel hesitated a moment, helmet in hand. “I get the bit about accidental kicking or a poke in the eye, but what kind of spatters are we talking about here?”
“That’s from the game part,” Paul told him. “Swimming around in the air is fun, and we’ve got the magnetic fields all tuned so it doesn’t feel that different from being in a pool or an ocean, but that’s not enough to keep kids coming back. I’m going to start bringing up the power now.”
“It’s great exercise,” Aisha told the junior consul. “I’ve been stopping in and swimming for a half-hour before going to the studio. Libby has already agreed to set aside two hours in the early morning on the human clock for grown-ups who just want to fly laps without getting shot at.”
“Shot at?” Daniel suddenly felt light-headed, and then he realized his feet had drifted up off the deck and he was beginning to turn a slow somersault. Samuel flew a small circle around him, doing a modified version of the breast-stroke that his father had taught him a few years earlier on the wastewater treatment deck.
“Put your helmet on,” Paul yelled, just as the deck came alive with the recorded sounds of a calliope from Libby’s library.
Daniel pulled on his helmet, which didn’t do enough to cut down on the blaring carnival music. Then he stretched out his arms and legs like a skydiver, which had the effect of stopping his slow rotation. The feeling was very much like swimming in
Daven Hiskey, Today I Found Out.com