NOVEL NEXT Chapter 51: Hammer Meets Ice
With my jacket and gloves on and with my girlfriend wrapped up hot and nicely into some good but slightly ill-fitting winter gear, we made our way outside. I was already carrying the tools I would need to fix the heater with because going back inside would be a waste of precious time in the not so light Antarctic daylight.
I sat my tools up against the wall and went over to the garage where I had my good old trusty sled parked. Cars were not that useful in Antarctica and my snow cycle would not be very easy to ride when transporting cargo, especially not for someone who would be riding a snow cycle for the first time.
“Is that it?” Luna pointed at the sled in the corner of the garage.
“It is.” I nodded and walked her over. My sled had a small stand to stand on at the back behind the grip, in front of it was a cargo bed that curved up at the edges. I had the box bed set up against the wall. It was interchangeable but I didn’t really see the need for that right now. She’d only had to grab us some wood after all, and the food wouldn’t really roll out either.
Luna laid her hands on the holding bar and tried to move the sled, the small wheels underneath made it relatively easy to move around on small concrete. They were worked into the frame so that if you went over snow or ice, they didn’t really resist. “It’s slightly heavier than I expected.”
“Can I take your holostick for a second?”
“Sure.” She nodded.
I took her holostick out of her jacket and slid it in the side of the sled’s handlebar. When I did a holographic screen popped up after which I needed to apply the 6-number pincode that was connected to the sled. When I had done so, at the edges of the handlebar, the handlebar widened just a bit.
I pulled the sled out and turned it around so the front faced the outside world. “Put your hands here.” I then gently guided my girlfriend’s hands towards the edge of the handlebar. “And now give it a squeeze, you don’t need to squeeze it hard.”
Luna did as I asked and with a tiny popping sound the sled started moving forward, not that fast, mind you, just at a somewhat brisk walking speed. “Oh, wow.” She looked down to look how it worked, but the moment she let go of the handlebars, another soft pop sounded, and the sled lowered just ever so slightly. “What was that?”
I smiled. “The way it works is that when you squeeze the handlebars, the wheels that are underneath pop out a little and gain extended nubs on their tires for traction in snow. The wheels then are driven by the battery that’s in your holostick to propel you forward. It’s quite efficient so you don’t need to worry about the battery power too much.”
“Ah, so that’s how you can push it uphill?”
“Yep, you let the sled do all the work for you, you just need to steer it. When you come back downhill, you can stand on here to let gravity be at play.”
“And how do you break and steer when doing that?”
“You can just squeeze it again. The velocimeter in your holostick will make sure the wheels know they need to break instead of just turning it. As for steering it, you can use your body weight. The bit of suspension this thing has is enough to help you steer it. Besides that, Farncombe doesn’t really have steep hills so you will be fine either way. The steepest slope is the one we climbed yesterday to get here from the station. You can try it out and have some fun with it as you go. There’s not much that can go wrong. If you think you are going too fast. Just squeeze the bar, it’ll stop.”
“Okay.” Luna’s facial expression was a bit hard to read, it was somewhat between excitement and worry if I had to guess, but the little smile at the end proved to me that it probably was more of the former than the latter.
“You think you can handle it? Offer still stands to go together.”
“No, I think I can.” She smiled brightly at me.
I smiled back and took my own holostick, tapping on the map to send the location of the store to her holostick. “See you in a bit then?”
“Yes!” She hopped on the sled’s step, preparing to squeeze the handlebars. Before she could leave, however, I did quickly tap her ass with the palm of my hand, gifting me with the glorious sight of a pouting girlfriend just as she rolled off into the snow.
“Ah, she’s so going to pay me back for that later.” I put my hands on my hip. “But it was totally worth it.
I did wave at Luna when I exited the garage, but she was a bit too busy getting a hang of the sled, at least it looked like she was having fun. As for me, it was time to finally fix up the heating system. So I took my tools and made my way to the back of the house, closing the garage behind me of course. When I arrived at the back, I immediately saw what the issue was. During my absence, there had been a buildup of snow and ice around the outside unit’s containment shielding. The system’s defrosting alert had been a bit of an understatement. To be fair, these systems were not really meant to be idle for months on end, and in hindsight I probably should’ve opted for the subterranean version. But those were a lot more expensive and also way harder to maintain by yourself.
At least this issue could be solved relatively easily, it’s just a tiny bit inconvenient. I rubbed my hands and got to work getting the snow off first, after which I had to use the sledgehammer I had brought to knock off the bigger chunks of ice. The shielding could take quite a pounding, so I didn’t need to worry about the shocks damaging the internal systems, that was what the shielding was for after all. It did make quite a bit of noise, though.
So much so that I had drawn the attention of my neighbor, who came peeping over the fence.
“Gosh darn, when I heard banging, I wouldn’t have ever thought it would be our Lauren who would be back!” The gray man in his mid 70s looked at me with a big smile on his face. His head was adorned by a very puffy red bobble hat. “Martha, come, look, Lauren’s back!”
“Hey Roland, how are you doing?” I stopped pounding the shielding for a moment, resting the head of the sledgehammer on the ground and leaning on its handle. Roland and Martha had moved here not too long after the war, our house was halfway being reconstructed when the contractor started on theirs. They were originally from the North American region but they had decided to move here to move closer to the remaining family they had. With house prices in this area having been as low as they were, they probably made quite the profit selling their house back up North.
“I told you I saw her yesterday evening!” The squeaky voice of Martha followed with the crunching of snow approaching us. Martha could only barely look over the fence. She was wearing pretty much the same red bobble hat her husband was wearing.
I chuckled, it was quite the comical sight to behold.
“We are doing mighty fine.” Roland answered my question. “We didn’t know you were returning so soon, otherwise we would have had our handyman clear it for you.”
“It’s no biggie, it’s a great workout. We just had to come back for our ship to be retrofitted.” I smiled back.
“Who was the lady who was walking with you yesterday?”
“Martha!” Roland called out.
I chuckled once more. “Don’t worry, I don’t mind.” I switched my weight from one foot to the other, I started blushing a little too. “She’s my girlfriend.”
“Oooh! How long are you staying? You should bring her over to eat cake.”
“We’re staying at least for a while. I’m sure Luna would like to come and have some cake. She’s a bit shy, though.”
“Ah, well, tell her that she’s free to decline too.”
“I definitely will.” I nodded.
Roland then started softly pushing his wife back towards their house. “We are going to continue watching our show now. Feel free to come over if you need anything.”
“Thank you.”
“But I wasn’t done talking with her yet!”
“Martha, leave her be for now. She needs to work on the heater. You can talk to her later.”
The discussion went on in the distance until I heard them enter their house again. It made me chuckle one last time before I started swinging my sledgehammer once more.
I needed to get the house nice and warm for Luna, after all. That way she would need to have less clothes on and that was quite the plus for both of us.