Chapter 29: What the Maps Concealed

“Oh man, that almost cost us half our budget,” Hikaru mumbled as he watched Celia drive the airship across Rio de Brasilia to Sector Sao Luis in the control room.

“Yeah, I knew that airships were quite expensive, but I didn't know they would cost that much,” Celia agreed, “when I saw the price without the 60% discount he gave us, I nearly had a heart attack.”

Hikaru shudders as he remembers the price he saw on the screen.

“I wish they told us the price of the airship before getting us attached to it,” he said.

“Unfortunately, that’s a sales tactic they use. Getting us attached to the ship before dropping the price on us so it’s harder to refuse,” Celia pointed out, “freelancers can be great allies, but even to their friends they can definitely be very tricky to deal with. I’m sure An only never conned me out because I was doing her a huge favor.”

“This ‘An’ girl doesn’t sound like a very good person,” Alto mentions as he listens in on the conversation, “nor are her connections very good. With how much the two of you praised freelancers before, I had expected the operation to go well, but it doesn’t sound that way to me.”

“I suppose freelancers are only ever nice to each other,” Celia says, “but enough about that, why is everyone in the control room with me? It’s getting quite crowded in here. There’s tons of space around the deck and hull of the ship.”

“I was just curious about how airships operated,” Hikaru shrugged, “but if you need space, I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to go take some pictures of the skyline around us.”

He leaves the room with Alto and Kyomi following behind, and makes his way over to the railings on the deck, holding onto them for safety. Upon seeing the towering skyscrapers and buildings below the airship, he gasps out in wonder and amazement at the view before pulling out his phone and snapping pictures.

From where he stood, the buildings seemed to stretch on endlessly; a patchwork of glass and marble that looked like it came straight out of a picture. The airship soared just above the tallest ones, their peaks so close that he felt like if he stretched out his arms he could touch them, but far enough away so that he couldn’t.

Alto stands next to him, gazing over at the overwhelming scenery.

“Every now and then I am reminded of how far humanity has come,” he suddenly says, “I remember back when simple apartment buildings averaged between 3 to 8 stories tall, but nowadays it seems rare to find something that’s less than 10.

“Buildings with less than 10 floors…” Hikaru murmured, “I don’t even remember the last time I went into one. Even buildings that don’t seem that tall on the outside have extra floors built into them underground like the library I visited. Actually, a lot of the buildings here in Gran Andes seem to be built that way. Maybe it’s because the buildings have to be shorter so the skyway is more open for airships.”

“It does seem that way,” Alto says, looking back down at the city below, “unlike the other cities we’ve been to, the cities in Gran Andes don’t seem to have very many sky roads, if any at all. Most of the subways we’ve taken seem to strictly only travel underground.”

He then looks over to Hikaru and asks, “do you think the same applies to the cities in the U.C.A? I’m a little curious to know what my country looks like nowadays.”

“I’m not sure actually; I’ve never been there before,” Hikaru replied, “but if you’re curious I can use the world map app to show you if you want. It has a feature that lets you explore cities in a 3D view.”

“That would be great,” Alto says in a thankful manner.

Hikaru opens up the map and the two of them continue chatting on the deck while Celia navigates their way back to Sector Sao Luis.

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“Aaaand there we go!” the park ranger says as he uses a large machine to stamp a symbol to the bottom of their airship, “that stamp should tell other park rangers that you have access through the Amazon Rainforest for up to a year. You guys should be good to go now.”

“Thank you!” Celia says as they climb back onto their airship and begin taking off from the stamping platform it was docked on.

Once they were in the sky, Alto and Hikaru make their way to the seats on the inside of the airship as Celia begins to accelerate the airship to its top speed. After a few minutes, the airship begins traveling at a constant speed as it soared through the sky over the Amazon Rainforest.

Hikaru unbuckles his seatbelt and takes a peek out the window onto the deck of the airship.

“It’s probably best to stay inside throughout the trip,” he says to Alto, watching the green drapes on the sides of the ship flutter dramatically in the wind, “even if we don’t take into account how fast the wind is blowing, I can’t even begin to imagine how cold it’ll feel.”

Celia puts the airship on autopilot as she exits the control room, overhearing the conversation.

“Yeah, the speed we’re going at can be quite troublesome if we want to sightsee, but we’re not really here to do that right now,” Celia reminds them, “once we get to the area we think is the fake part of the rainforest, I’ll slow the airship down so we can properly scout around the place for the space center. If we do manage to find it, then we can always just go back and explore the Amazon at a more relaxed pace.”

Hikaru nodded his head in agreement as Alto goes over to look out the window as well.

“I don’t even think we need to slow down for that,” he mentions before turning back to them, “my frame and systems were built to withstand extreme temperatures and winds. If we open the door right now however, you guys will be blown backwards and it’d be hard to close it again, so we can slow down once we get to the area, and I’ll go out to the deck to scout for a space center while you resume traveling at top speed.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Celia says.

A sudden silence then fills the room.

“So uhh… what do we do now?” Hikaru asks.

“Well, at the speed we’re going at, it’d take us around 7 hours, so I guess we just… wait?” Celia says.

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Celia rolls over on her makeshift bed that she constructed in the bottom parts of the ship. Her ‘bed’ was actually just a rectangular sleeping bag splayed out on the floor in one of the corners of the room. Along with a table and a refrigerator, she and Hikaru had added a few extra modifications to the hull of the ship in preparation for a long journey. 

She lazily browses through social media and news circles, catching up on the latest news regarding advancements in technology.

Hoverboards with less drift… another support drone function I don’t need… a new cure for a rare disease I don’t have… she reads through them, all of these are things I’ve already seen before or don’t need…

Suddenly, Hikaru interrupts her, noisily entering the hull of the ship.

“Celia!” he calls out, “take a look out the window. It looks like we were right.”

She quickly gets up off the floor and peeks outside the window. It was starting to get dark outside with the sunlight barely peeking over the horizon, but she still managed to see a field of smaller trees in the distance, just at the edge of the rainforest.

“So the maps did lie…” she murmured out, making her way up the ladder to the control room.

Once she gets there, she starts slowing the airship down to a gentle drifting speed, and angles the direction of the ship towards the ocean.

As Alto makes his way out to the deck, Celia reminds them of their objective.

“We’ll start gliding the airship near the coastlines, and start our search there,” she says, “since that’s where it’ll most likely to be. We can search the other areas if we don’t find it, but it’ll be pretty late by then, so we should call it quits for the night and camp out inside the airship once I land it if we don’t find anything.”

Hikaru nodded and Celia finished steering the ship before she returned to browsing on her phone. As she does so, Hikaru peers over nosily.

“Browsing news about the Tropodome?” he asks, as she reaches an article talking about new nano drone technology, “I didn’t think you’d care about that type of stuff.”

“Nah,” she replied, “I don’t. I just like looking up new technology in general; it’s just interesting to me that’s all.

“Oh, I thought you were the type of person to secretly be a New Genesis fanatic,” he joked, “but I guess that wouldn’t make sense given that we’re trying to make a rocket and all that.”

“Ha,” she laughed, “well I do know that they have a headquarters in Carama, which is the city we’ll be mainly staying in for a while since Rio de Brasilia is further away from here. It’s actually where one of their lead researchers, Vitoria Santos, works at.”

He narrows at her, “are you sure you’re not a New Genesis fanatic?”

“I’m not,” she reaffirms her previous statement, “I’m just a big fan of Vitoria that’s all. You know how I dislike the fake stars in the Tropodome and everything? She’s the one actively working on improvements to the light pollution in sky so that we’re able to see the real ones again.”

“Ah, so she’s kind of like your favorite celebrity huh?” Hikaru asks.

“You could say that,” she said, “I do know a lot about her, and I often like to watch her speeches. In fact, we should go see one in Carama when we can.”

“No thanks,” Hikaru said, “I’m not interested in anything that company does. There’s lots of more fun things to do in Carama anyways, like visiting the Avila Mountains in the Avila National Park.”

Suddenly, Alto’s voice calls out over their Neurolink.

“Celia, Hikaru, you should come take a look outside,” he says.

The two of them look at each other, wondering if what he was implying was the same thing they had on their minds. Celia quickly runs into the control room to slow the ship down, before exiting out onto the decks with Hikaru.

There, just on the horizon, was what looked to be a small structure in the distance. To them, they’ve never seen a building so relatively small and preserved; their minds too used to the towering skyscrapers of the metropolises they lived in.

“That… has to be it… right?” Hikaru mumbles out.

“I think so…” Celia agrees.

She runs back into the control room and prepares the ship for docking as Alto and Hikaru run to sit on the benches for safety. Once the ship reaches the ground, they took a closer look at the building.

There, at the front of the building on a blue and yellow sign, were the words in French, “Centre Spatial Guyanais”.