Slantboard

/S/ L/ A/ N /T/ B /O /A/ R/ D/

Copyright 2015 by Connie Boje

SMASHWORDS Edition

characters

Arthur Regal…….The Author

Andrea Level….The Woman

Connor Level………The Brother

George........The Boss

Reff………The Guest

Mr. (Reginald) Pink….The Realtor

Mr. Charlie Noto….The Courier

Lent….One of the Men in Dark Shades

Grant….One of the Men in Dark Shades

Allison Makeshift…The Neighbor

Jeff Makeshift….The Neighbor

Don Makeshift…….The Neighbor’s Son

Chance….The Author’s Friend

Beck ….The Friend of the Author’s Friend

table of contents

(What appears IN CAPS happens in the FUTURE)

1: INTRODUCTION TO /S/L/A/N/T/B/O/A/R/D/

2: Introduction to the Author

3: THE TRAFFIC

4: THE HISTORY

5: The Author Cries

6: THE MEETING

7: The Author Discovers a Piece of String

8: GROSS ANATOMY

9: The Author Gets the Mail

10: GROUD BREAKING

11: The Author Receives Potentially Human Visitors

12: CLOISTERED

13: INTERSTATE TRAVEL

14: The Author Gets Going

15: DEVILED EGGS

16: The Author Has Company

17: MEGA BORED

18: The Author Goes for a Walk

19: ANDREA

20: Going the Distance

21: DOWNHILL

22: The Author Loses His Appetite

23: Grasping at Golden Straws

24: The Author Has a Breakdown

25: ANDREA GOES ON THE TRAIL

26: Mr. Pink Digests Baked Goods

27: The Author Goes on a Walk

28: Mr. Pink Has the Author Followed

29: Mr. Pink Eats More Cake

30: ANDREA SMILES

31: The Author Gets Lucky and Finds a Buyer

32: ANDREA GETS ENGAGED

33: Mr. Pink Gets Confused

34: The Author Speaks to Aliens

35: ANDREA GOES SHOPPING

36: Mr. Pink Buys a House

37: ANDREA HAS A BAD DREAM

38: The Author Signs on the Dotted Line

39: ANDREA AND REFF HAVE COMPANY

40: Mr. Pink Gets an Oil Change

41: ANDREA RIDES HER SLANTBOARD

42: Mr. Pink Orders the Men in Shades Out

43: GEORGE CONVERTS

44: Mr. Pink Gets a Flat Tire

45: ANDREA’S DREAM

46: Mr. Pink Sees Red

47: ANDREA WORKS OUT A DEAL

48: The Author Makes a Discovery

49: ANDREA HITS A SNAG

50: The Author Gets to New Mexico, Almost

51: ANDREA’S WELCOME HOME

52: Mr. Pink Does Not Go on a Vacation

53: ANDREA SEEKS REVENGE (THE NEXT CHAPTER)

54: MR. PINK MEETS MR. PINK

55: The Author Stays

56: ANDREA LOSES SOMETHING

57: The Men in Dark Shades Come Back

58: ANDREA SAVES THE DAY

59: The Author Unpacks

60: GEORGE RELEASED FROM PRISON

61: The Author Comments (The Conclusion)

1: INTRODUCTION TO /S/L/A/N/T/B/O/A/R/D/

Writing now that I am mature must be MANY things, most of all change. Of course writing changes people and of course they have a HUNGER to write just as much as some people have a hunger to read or let’s just say be entertained. It is rationed out and it is necessary to living maybe not up there with breathing but we came with a brain for a reason.

Reading brings us closer to other people in a way that is not possible otherwise. We need people. And fiction is our go to slant in, which brings my tie in to /S/L/A/N/T/B/O/A/R/D/. We are not there yet but it may be a bumpy ride or the ride could be SMOOTH. It all depends on the air. And reading if full of air. Each word it a small world unto itself with puffs of air in between each space filling in like putty SENTENCE GLUE. And so it is with /S/L/A/N/T/B/O/A/R/D/. Only in this case the glue is gravitational and works from the ground up to the board itself.

It would be more accurate to say anti-gravitational but that sounds so NEGATIVE. The board is fed by the Earth. The board slants because we have most of our weight concentrated on our rear end when we sit down or lay down and slantboards look something like surf boards and they float on a wave of air (called air ride) using electromagnetism with close contact with rock (such as contained in concrete or naturally-occurring limestone) which is close to the surface of the ground in many places. ANY other kind of rock works, too. The internal guts of the boards are patented technology that came AFTER computers, since they of course rely on batteries and plastic, both lightweight enough to be fabricated in factories once the schematics of the internal drive function was grasped. And yes, someone invented the working design but this story is not about them.

And yes, I am already getting restless about writing about anything with people in it. So the book is called /S/L/A/N/T/B/O/A/R/D/ because of the board. People fell in love with the concept of lying down on their stomach and floating to work even when they became aware that the boards could be dangerous on occasion just like cars or bikes or planes and people started dying in novel ways. It didn’t help that boards were dangerous especially if someone decided to stand up while traveling on them and maybe getting crushed or torn in half. Oh yes, there were inherent dangers with the boards that was every bit as dangerous as any fast-moving sports car. The chiropractic business was in great demand as people learned to apparently float on their stomachs, their sides, their backs (the most dangerous daredevils did this move). The boards were brilliant in design but without a seat belt or a handle strap to grab onto except for the tether, which is a steering mechanism for guidance of the board. It would not insure that you could stay afloat. So like getting bucked off of a horse you could flip off of a board right onto the hard concrete below. And don’t think these boards flew. They did not. They were relatively CLOSE to the ground (because that was the only way they COULD work). Their magnetic bond had to be fairly close to about two feet. So they were in the danger zone for injuries mostly minor but jutting out INTO traffic was a scary proposition just like with any other VEHICLE. Slantboard accidents topped all of the traffic fatality reports and people still kept riding them. Slantboards were not a way to move THINGS. Slantboards were a way to move people. Yes, you could put a few boxes of things on them and use the TETHER and move stuff that way but you walk alongside walking a donkey. And they took up considerable real estate so many people considered them a nuisance on the sidewalk much worse than skateboards.

2: Introduction to the Author

The author was writing at a console that was thumb-scan to log in and onto the keyboarder which sat at a desk in a lonely alcove above a small running stream that provided background music of gurgles and splashes in advance of words that spilled out on the page not as freely as water flowing but as freely as the author was able to type them. Each sentence ended up like a wet stone that lined the stream bed and hopefully as polished. This particular town the author lived in was isolated and the residents liked that but it was also the setting of the story and the author liked that since it left nothing to the imagination to have to produce into the author’s fiction. The town was mainly on bluffs that overlooked wind and the nearby trees rattled each other in familiarity each evening. Towns in New England are picturesque but potentially the setting for many goings on since the residents were busy in the act of commuting to big cities, usually New York or Boston, on a weekly basis. The author made some coffee. It was early spring. Snow was still in the hills in Massachusetts which was nearby to Sharon, one of three towns with the same name in one of three interlocking states. The author lived in one of the Sharons. The one in Connecticut.

The author’s personal story was familiar to those who read science fiction. On a year past an event happened that defied explanation. The author was not literary in the slightest but one day having gone to bed early and sleeping very restlessly had awoken in a trance-like state during the night, gone out to the porch and met the bright lights of not the police as the author had supposed but the lights from an alien craft landing in the driveway in the front of the building. The next morning it became clear that the author was changed and started writing a screenplay based on instructions given when with these strange beings also known as aliens. This story is one of those instructions. Or at least that is what the author believes.

3: THE TRAFFIC

Oh my God, she screamed, I don’t think I am going to make it down this hill. The slantboard was going a respectable ten miles an hour and the trail ahead on the mountain track plummeted in front of her down an embankment so that the grade was steeply pitched downward. She was laying flat on her stomach and gripped the sides of the board with all of her strength. Her hands were wet with perspiration so she was losing her grip as well as her nerve. Too late now to back out. She flipped nose of the board down so that if you were standing on that trail you would only for a second see her feet and then nothing. Slantboard riding was for the brave of heart as well as the foolish. She descended more rapidly than she would have liked. At the bottom was rock, plenty of rock and trail and a few other slantboarders who were coming up the trail but had stopped off to enjoy the view.

I do not think I am going to make it. She yelled down to them about a hundred feet ahead of her down below. Her board leaned precariously to the left as the front of the board went RIGHT. It was a primitive way to brake if at all possible on the steep terrain.

Keep going. You are almost down now. One of the travelers admonished her, a male climber. We are looking to get up that trail once you descend safely. Some of the loose rock fell away below her as the words or shouts came up to her when she was about half-way down.

I am going to close my eyes. She said seeing outcropping of regular stone steps in front of her. The mountain was a perfect candidate for trail-hopping, as it was made up of rock, mainly limestone under the turf of composted pine needles. The board spun into a 180 degree arc so that at the bottom she was facing up the trail she had just came down. Shit. She exclaimed when she opened her eyes.

It’s all yours she yelled sounding more confident than she really was.How is the trail on your end? she asked.

Nothing bad, as you will see. A woman explained. We heard about this hill from someone else who told us it was nothing but trouble and told us we would either love it or hate it.

Yes. She said That seems to be the case for me as well. And she got off her board and righted it so that she lead it with the tether to the direction of the two boarders who were parking on rock at the cliff's edge.

Anyway this outlook is worth any climb we may have to endure to reach Sharon. The man said. It won’t be long to get there according to my screen.

Yes. The woman boarder agreed, Since it is lunch you have time. I usually take the shoulder road which is somewhat steep and long and this is the first time I have come by the trail. I wish I had more trail experience but unfortunately this is how to gain it.

The couple smiled and offered her a few more insights into the weather and further traffic conditions up ahead towards Canaan.

Just watch us, we are going up now. Wish us luck. They said as the man went first on his board which was black and somewhat scuffed. His eyes had a determined look to them and he cast himself upward at the steepest pitch possible and hung on in a fashion similar to rock-climbing having installed what looked like diaper netting that he stepped into on his board to secure him in with a snap. The board propelled itself up the trail slowly and he reached down with his arms with his sticking gloves and he scattered loose rocks and dried out handfuls of dirt that further detailed the trail bed.

His partner had a yellow standard board, the rental kind, that sometimes breaks down and she started up behind him only a minute or two behind, but her board struggled to gain any of the steep climb and she had to back off and veer off of the trail into some bushes so she was wedged.

These yellows are not pretty. She said as she broke off a branch with a snap and worked her way over to the trail again. Luckily there is no poison ivy here but you will see some where you are going. She got off her board and circled around so she was back where she started and took the tether and led the board up the hill by that means, sending much loose dirt into her shoes and down below so that a few rocks rolled down to the cliff and fell off. Good luck on your journey! she yelled down to the woman boarder as she got to the top and waved, quickly disappearing after her male companion.

I hope I don’t need luck! she yelled after them and forestalled her getting back on her board, which was multi-colored. Her screen had a slight malfunction that morning which was why she was taking it in to be looked at Canaan, since Sharon was too remote and that was also why she was off-roading it today to stay away from car traffic. She had a few more miles to go to get to that bigger town. She touched her screen and used voice command to start up her board to connect to the trail head again which looked to be at the edge of the cliff. This was as remote as you can get and she sat herself down on the board and gripped it between her legs similar to riding a horse. The tether was loosely in her hands and it had a slight ball at the plastic end of it which ensured it did not snap its rope-length back into the inside of the board. It also functioned with a push button that could shift gears as it were to take the board at a lower grade or level terrain, similar to shifting gears in a car but this was a numeric readout that corresponded to whatever terrain was encountered. No boarder expected a one hundred percent free ride. They knew that part of the time they might have to carry their board on their side to gain what was called a rock base so they could hitch a magneto-ride on their board, similar to catching a wave on a surfboard.

4: THE HISTORY

It was the year 2040 when slant boards were first invented. The technology was put into service with other applications of course but the inventor grew up in San Diego, attended Stanford and was a surfboarder by nature. The buzz was she never left home without an analogue album of her on her favorite wave so radical in design that she usually blew away the competition. Her carefree attitude fed into the whole slantboard culture taking down many actual surfboarders who wanted to see how slantboards felt, not that it benefited anyone by standing on them because that was foolhardy. They had no stabilizers to dispel subsequent wobblings nor thrusters ,so they acted like an incoming tsunami wave hit them. And the slantboard phenomena also caused some people to choose to head out into the ocean even if waves were not readily available as another means of transportation, such as through channels and in brief ocean passageways on regular surfboards. World records were set for around-the-world navigation on boards of all kinds where it was allowed to stopover on dry land, or even island hopping became fashionable however difficult. No one was more surprised than the inventor as to how boarding of all kinds took off. She became a household name and soon everyone wanted one. The question of storing the boards was up to the user. Most were stored in outside buildings added to the property, sort of like mini garages or lean-tos or people opted to actually clean out their over-stuffed garages permanently and only store their cars and boards in there. Most were stored in horizontal racks but they could be positioned like surfboards in vertical racks. As these boards could also float they did become handy for crossing streams, but as they did not function without rocks almost directly underneath, they had to go on what became known as manual power (this meant NO POWER) or offline magneto in order to cross rock-free stream beds. That they could go in reverse was simply a matter of using the tether to switch gears. The worst of travel was getting separated by landing downstream of a rough current and having to go off-trail to get back to your group. Towns, because of public outcry decided to if they had not already done so, to complete their sidewalk construction so that everyone had fair access to board lanes. At the start of the twenty-first century they had instituted bike lanes on the right side of the road and these were built on upon so that the lanes were one way or two-way and took up an entire lane in some downtown areas and were used for both bikes, boards and magneto-powered skateboards. It was in the works for sidewalks in the Midwest to be totally constructed to connect neighboring towns so that this traffic in between towns would be made successfully by board, or the rare and occasional, walkers. The technology was also in the works to race slantboards. As such they did not have a top speed over ten miles per hour but people being who they are, the inventor wanted more juice to match the phenomenal thrill of surfing so bigger magneto tracks pulling more EARTH JUICE out of the rocks was in development (the rocks never lost their juice, they just sucked up more power from the earth). Typically a standard slantboard had nine strips running its length internally (each board opened up like a clam shell) and this allowed for up to two hundred pounds of total carrying capacity. This early on was an issue for anyone overweight and those not necessarily unfit. For once those beefed up body builders sought weight reduction (the business was booming) so that they also could become boarders. Most trails had hikers trying to max out at 190 pounds. And unfortunately there were now people threatening to kill themselves because of weight issues. It seemed everyone was into streamlining their life so they could go places they never had before.

5: The Author Cries

The aliens had left the author in bed again (the next morning) and it would have been fine except for the blood. That part was the worst thing, no wait there were multiple worst things: the author could not remember about each experience. They were either repeated or unique. Why the aliens wanted to turn the author into some WORD ROBOT was a question the author pondered. Words became friends to the author and the words which to other people were just words, became or just were thoughts of powerful allies like friendly ROPES tossed down to comfort the author whenever he needed mental sustenance such as a story to tell to other people so they could get themselves READY for the future, which meant practical change. I can’t do this anymore the author said to no one in particular as he got out of bed and looked in the mirror over the sink in Sharon at a relatively recent time period compared to the story. Actually the year was 2015. The story obviously is in the not so far ahead in the future (thirty-three years in 2048) and the author considered the events that he wrote about to be wonderful if they were to come true some day but they were fiction now implanted into the author’s memory. Why me? the author moaned still looking into the mirror.I don’t have anything to do with this, do I? as tears streamed down his face, and wiping away the blood that was crusted under his right ear lobe.

Writing was scary because it had no sense, no direction until the next day when he was compelled to type the lines from the night before so that anything could be legitimate to the story. The author was as HOOKED as the reader. The author wanted to know the story inside and outside. The author was oddly the best fan of the story because so far nothing out of the ordinary (for science fiction) had happened and the author sense his personal safety was not going to be compromised even though the blood suggested otherwise. It was a bad dream. The story somehow became the way out of nightly alien encounters.

6: THE MEETING

I made it to the next big town. The woman said into her screen, speaking to her brother. I am approaching the board surgery clinic now. I’ll check back with you before I am up and running again. She spoke as the screen lost some of its composure and broke up and the board died with a warning countdown. It started to deactivate so she got off it in time and grabbed its sides and carried it into the clinic. The doors opened with the press of a button, but she had to use her knee, since the button was geared towards riders entering the building, not walkers.

And what do we have here? asked a man from behind a console. He looked at her expectantly, gauging the severity of the board by the expression on her face.

She had been upbeat moments before the total system crash, but this happening so close to her final destination was a problem because her emotions were too recently inflamed and at the surface. Her face flushed. I don’t know what happened. The slantboard was acting up yesterday, so I brought it in on a whim, but I didn’t expect a total failure right outside your door.

That means it is serious. Glad you came in when you did. He said. The man at the console motioned her to a diagnostic table where he helped her to put down the board. He clamped on the four positioning posts (once he opened the clam shell) at each end to lock the board into place. I will run a complete diagnostic to see what if any clues there are presenting. He added, You said it was acting up yesterday? Can you give me some idea what that was about?

Well, not much to go on, just a bleep in the screen, a little static in the transmission, and it threw me off the other day without warning, she said I got fairly bruised, I can tell you! Luckily she had had the tether out slightly to shift gears so the board did not take off without her and she had landed like a wet noodle on a pile of leaves.

Sorry to hear that, this shouldn’t take more than an hour normally and if it is major we can send you home with a loaner board. Please have a seat in the waiting room and you can watch something or do some reading at one of our terminals. Please help yourself to some coffee. I will be back to you when I find out what it is. He said as she