Taterskin & The Eco Defenders: Book 2, Chapter 12
Book 2 ("Tell It to Future Generations"), Chapter 12 of 56
CHAPTER 12
The trip from Zenia to Charleston, South Carolina began merely pleasantly, but soon turned exciting. We had started out at our accustomed Methuselah speed of 969 mph, but once Ooga got the hang of piloting the Androcles (and after being ‘egged on’ by Terri, who claimed she could fly faster than that), the Gorilla gradually increased his speed.
Seeing the Androcles pull in front of the JNG he was piloting (the Zephyr), Albert — not wanting the two crafts to get separated — increased his speed, too, to keep pace. This quickly devolved into a race, as Ooga increased his speed yet more each time Albert caught up to him. Then, just for grins, Ooga began flying under, then above, the Zephyr, making goofy faces at Albert each time they made eye contact.
In case you don’t know already, JNG stands for Jetsons Next Generation, which is the model name Albert gave the time & space vehicles he designed and constructed.
The pups were loving it. They were squirming around in their seats and yipping at Albert to engage our partners-turned-competitors in a ‘dog fight.’ But Albert lost patience with the ‘monkey business,’ as he called it (more accurately, ‘gorilla business’) and floored it. Not literally, as the speed lever is on the console rather than on the floor, but ‘consoled it’ doesn’t seem to get the point across.
It took Ooga a second to react to this sudden burst of speed, but then he responded in kind, by pulling the speed lever on the Androcles all the way back.
This resulted in the two vehicles screaming along at Mach 32 (almost 25,000 mph), breaking not only the sound barrier, but also the sight barrier: both vehicles were moving at such a high rate of speed through the stratosphere that we could not be seen in the sky if a person happened to blink while looking heavenward as we passed by. And even if they did look up into the sky because of having heard us and then made an attempt to locate the source of the sound, it would have been too late, for the sound the JNGs made as they ripped through the stratosphere didn’t reach the earth from our altitude until we were long gone.
Sight and hearing are only seemingly coordinated with each other when the object making noise and being viewed is close by. Even then, sound waves move much more slowly than light waves, of course, but we probably don’t notice it: If we watch somebody bouncing a basketball a foot away from us, we seem to hear the report of the ball hitting the floor at the same time that we see it — but there is a lag time between our eyes and ears, even when it is imperceptible to us. If, on the other hand, we are watching and listening to the person bounce the ball from far away, we may not hear the “rubber hit the road” until we see the ball bounce back up to the dribbler’s hand. In a race between light waves and sound waves, the light waves are like Cheetahs, and the sound waves are like Sloths.
In fact, we were traveling at such speed that deceleration had to begin at the Missouri/Illinois border, as we flew over the Mississippi River — almost 1,000 miles from our destination!
Going from Mach 32 back down to 0 was a jarring experience: We had to brace ourselves against the seat in front of us, and our fur flew forward, against its natural warp. You could say the space warp (we hadn’t gotten to the time warp part of the journey yet) warped our fur warp. My canines (all of my teeth, I think, are canines) also felt as if they were being pulled gently out of their sockets. My skin even felt loosey-goosey.
When we finally came to a full stop (and began hovering), everything went back into place: my teeth settled back into their sockets, my skin resumed its normal form-fitting function, and my fur relaxed. We all let out our own individual sounds which indicated excitelief (a combination of excitement and relief): Rovette and I barked, the puppies yipped, Stripes roared, Marmalade miaowed, Jubatus chirruped, Ocero grunted, Alexis shrieked, and Albert hollered out something that sounded like, “Whee, doggie!”
I didn’t know if Albert was talking to me when he said that, so I looked at him to see if he would repeat it or turn back to see why I hadn’t responded. But he did neither. I was glad, because I didn’t want to be referred to as a ‘doggie.’
The Androcles was right next to us, and Ooga, especially, was grinning from ear to ear.
As we hovered, the time quickly unwound, from 2527 to 1861.
We then descended, slowly, at Mach 0.0032 (about 2 mph).
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