11/18/00
It
had taken them ten days to build a suitable raft wich they could use as
transportation. The Scouts had a long way to go before they
made it to their destination, and so they had to bring supplies along.
The adventure might take all day, or even two or three. There were
wads of sheets and blankets to use as bedding. Food and water were
put in the motley containers the Scouts could find. The raft was
a 10 foot by 12 foot square of pine tree trunks burned down by Sailor Mars.
They were bundled together with the cable modem and phone wires Mercury
could find throughout the small office building the scouts inhabited.
Now, in the chilly predawn darkness it was loaded up and they were ready
to go.
Their mission was to retrieve and repair the Moon Crescent Wand. To do that, they’d have to row the raft where the Anderson residence stood flooded. Amy would them have to dive down and find the wand if it was still in her room.
“Ready to push off?” Reiko Hino asked her friends. They both nodded, and Rei pushed the heavy raft off with the branch used as a pole.The wooden vessel slowly drifted from shore, with Rei, Amy, and Serena propelling the craft along witn their poles. Soon, they pulled those in and began using improvised paddles.
“Do we know where we’re going?” Serena asked.
“Yes,” Amy replied, “I have my computer tracking the wand.” and the little Catholic popped her computer open to prove it. There was a dot flashing on and off in the middle.
“It’s still giving off a signal?” Serena was surprised.
“Yeah.” Amy confirmed, “Although I’m not sure why.”
“Just so we don’t get outselves lost.” Rei chided and the rowed over the black waters. Behind them, the sky began taking on an orange hue as the sun began rising.
She pulled it up and did some figuring on it. The Moon Crescent Wand had not been operational because all of its energy was drained. Apparently, the recharging mechanism required nuclear reaction to re-energize the wand. All of the componeets had once been readily available from a hardward store or from someplace. The only thing that was a problem was that she had no way to get a hold of Uranium 238 with which she could make the reactor core. Now, that there was no way for her to get anything, the U238 might actually be easier to locate than some of the other things.
Still, if she could build a water distiller that ran on its own work from scratch, she could create this.
Somehow.
For a little bit, she tuned into Serena and Rei’s conversation. “You know, you look very wrong without your pigtails.” Rei was saying.
“Oh, you just can’t call me meatball-head anymore.” Serena snorted playfully.
“No, I mean really.” Rei argued, “What’s Sailor Moon without her meatballs. I’m telling you, they’re, like, a vital part of you.”
“You think so?”
Amy tuned them out to look at the grungy refletion of herself in the water. Her blue-black hair was all mangled again from using a knife to trim it just the other day. The sad eyes had regained a little luster, but where still not as bright as they used to be. How long had that black smudge been on her cheek? She rubbed it but it wouldn’t go away. She shrugged, and left it there.
That smudge was nothing. She had worse things to worry about. Just yesterday, she had found a blister on her labia majora. That meant that she had both HIV and Herpes simplex II. She’d had simplex I, which caused cold sores, since she was young. But simplex II affected other areas, mainly the genital blister such as the one she found yesterday. She was less worried about that than she was the birth defects Herpes simplex II could cause. She was soon to enter her second trimester. At least the puking every morning would stop then. Morning sickness was such a bitch and a half.
Another thing that bothered her was that she was already showing signs of Herpes. That meant that her immune system, already weak from malnutrition, was beginning to fail. The HIV virus was working much faster than she could have thought. Usually, it takes a person years to show any sign. With Amy, it had taken little over three months. Maybe hers was a particularly malvolent strain. Or maybe it was her own stress. Stress did, after all, cause cells to begin undergoing mitosis more often. Herpes was a lysogenic virus, meaning that it spliced its genetic coding into that of the host cell. When the host cell replicated, the viral DNA was replicated with it. Eventually, this DNA would be read, or translated, by ribosomes and new virus particles would be produced until the cell lysed, releasing the newly-created viruses into the surrounding area. When this occured in multiple cells at once, the result was a blister such as a cold sore or the one Amy had between her legs at this moment.
She began thinking about the her baby. It was now just under twelve weeks old. It would be about six centimeters long, but it would have arms, legs, and head. It would outwardly sexless. Still, she was hoping for a girl. She didn’t think she’d be able to handle a son.
“You guys ready to start up again?” Serena asked, pulling Amy away from the thoughts. “Ams, you steer this time.”
“Okay.” and the little genious took hold of her paddle.
Since Amy knew where she had hidden the wand, she would have to dive after it. She stripped herself to her underwear and slid into the water. It was cold and a little slimy, but the fantastic swimmer quickly got used to it.
“Okay,” she said, “I can hold my breath for at least two minutes at a time. If I’ll surface in about that space of time.”
“Doesn’t give you a lot of time to look.” Serena noted.
“Yeah, what if its been swept away or something?” Rei asked.
“No, it’s definitely here.” the blue-haired girl shook her head, “I’ll find it. But If I’m not back within two minutes, don’t come diving in for me. Wait for about a half hour, then start heading back to shore.”
“If you say so.” Serena nodded. With that, Amy slipped silently into the water. She dove about ten feet to find a window to her room. She always kept one unlocked incase she had to sneak out in an emergency. She found it and slid it up and open. By this time, she had to go up for air.
“Find anything?” Serena asked. Amy shook her head and dipped back under. She slipped into the window to her room, now filled with water and sea life. Some coral had begun taking to the carpet, and there was a large fish hovering rather comically over her bed. The poster of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue was still on the wall, though it had deteriorated quite a bit. A sea slug was crawling on the blank computer screen, blissfully ignorant that it was not in natural surroundings. Her molecular models were still all in place, and she picked up the one of adenosine triphosphate before dropping it to the floor.
The wand may have been hidden in one of the drawers on her large computer desk. She swam over to it and slid out every one of the drawers and opened all of the cabinets. Still no sign of it. Where had she hidden it?
Logically, she began to scratch out locations. It was somewhere her mother wouldn’t look. That meant that it had not been hidden in any of her clothing drawers. If Amy had been thinking at the time, she’d have cut out a place in one of her many books to hide it in. She had all those vials of ashes under her mattress...
She glanced at the watch she had stolen several months ago. Her time was up. She shot out of the window and up to the surface to breathe.
“Nothing?” Rei asked.
“Nothing.” Amy confirmed and dove back down again to find the wand. She began remembering that day. She had popped upstairs, turned on the TV to wait for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and sat down at her desk to work on the ancient weapon. She gave another glance at her desk which was scattered with computer boards and the half-built mainframe she had been working on. It wasn’t in her tools drawer. Her writing desk was over next to the bed, but it had no drawers in it. She just couldn’t remember.
“Note to self,” Amy thought, “Never hide Easter eggs.” She looked over at the half built computer again. Amy’s mother had a personality conflict with all computers, but Amy loved putting things together, and had built the last two computers she had owned. Diane Anderson was never curious about these projects and never touched them. On a hunch, she slid the case open.
And there is was. Amy snatched it and raced for the surface, landing the Moon Crescent Wand on the deck of the very makeshift raft. “Found it.” She announced triumphantly. “Let me just get a few things from my room and I’ll be right back.” and she dove back down again. From her closet she retrieved her school bag and shoved all the tools on her desk drawers into it before bringing them back up.
“Okay.” She hauled herself out, “Let me dry off and them we can head back in.”
“What the devil is this?”
“The soldiers sir,” Jekter said in amaizment, “They’ve been sick for the past few days. They all just melted.”
“Melted?” Flute was shocked, “Are you saying that my entire army is gone?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How..?” the red eyed general gazed on, vexxed. “Meredith! She must have put some kind of mechanism into her creations so that if she died, they died too.” Flute slammed his fist against a wall. “Damn!”
“I think you’re getting the hang of that thing.” Rei smiled, watching Serena train herself.
“You don’t think I’ll go unprepared into another Negaverse stronghold again, do you?” Serena smiled and stopped to take a break. She tossed her pigtails (yes, they were back) behind her and retracted the bo into a foot long tube. “How’s the wand coming?” the blond asked Amy.
“Badly.” was the blue-haired Catholic’s only reply. She was bent over the wand with it’s parts strewn across the floor, poking an electrical reader into it.
“What’s wrong with it?” Rei asked, sitting down beside her to pick up a glowing yellow rod about the size of a tootsie roll.
“The power cells are totally run down.” Amy replied, “Seven months under water didn’t help either, I’m sure.”
“Can’t you just build new power cells or something?” Serena asked, looking over Amy’s shoulder. The other girl shook her head and explained that she didn’t have the materials available to do it. She then proceeded to explain how the power cells worked more like small nuclear reactors than batteries and how they got fuel.
“So all I can really do,” Amy finished, “is find a way to get a fission reaction going.”
Serena took the wand. “You mean this sucker’s nuclear? What happens to the radioactivity? From what I know about nuke reactors, there doesn’t seem to be a cooling system or anything. And how does it heal people?”
Amy blinked, embarrassed that she didn’t know the answers to those questions.
“And how does this clear little rod do the same thing as a nuclear power plant?” Rei held one of the amber objects up to the light and saw nothing inside.
“I...don’t...know?” Amy shrugged.
“And why do we know so little about this thing anyway?” Serena poked her finger into the wand, touching the wires and what must be computer chips. “I knew I didn’t believe in magic.”
“Well,” Amy blushed, “the only way to recharge it calls for a mushroom cloud.”
“What!” the other two went wide eyed.
“That’s what I said.” Amy smirked.
“What if we just use the Silver Crystal?” Serena asked. “Could that work?”
“I don’t think we should do that, though.” Amy shook her head.
“Why?”
“It might take all of the energy in the crystal to make the wand work.” blue-haired girl told her. “I don’t think we should take that chance. Besides, I want to get your tiara working too, if we can. That will require the Silver Crystal’s power.”
“And you didn’t tell me this before because..?” the blonde gave Amy a suspicious glance. Amy only went a deeper shade of crimson.
“I guess you just never asked.” Rei answered for Amy, who was in too much of an embarassed sweat to talk. “I mean, it’s not like she can keep up with her school, her scout business, and save your sorry ass all at the same time.”
Serena knew her Japanese friend was being playful, so she smirked and said, “I don’t know about that. Darien once told me I had a rather nice ass.” And she instantly began rubbing her backside. It made Rei giggle.
“Anyway...” Amy chirped, clearing her throat, “We need to do something to fix this thing.”
“I say we use the Silver Crystal.” Serena insisted.
“I’m with meatball-head.” Rei agreed, receiving a jab in the ribs from Serena.
“Okay.” Amy shook her head, unsure that this was at all a good idea. Serena opened the locket and took the Imperium Silver Crystal from its mount, holding it by the sphere of white energy the crystal projected around itself. With a “here you go” she handed the glowing orb to Amy. The little genious immediately set to work.