Chapter 4
The three men walked with along the cement sidewalk, huddled together in a group as their eyes guided looking around. Tall buildings and street signs of all sorts cluttered the area. Mr. Francis stood walking at the front end of their group, leading them on as Darion and Sean followed. He walked frantically along the sidewalk pointing to different sites and buildings along the way.
“This is Main City, the central city of the Mainland. I guess you could see this as the capital of Moder and Other Earth. This is centralized area where most people live.”
Sean looked around as he pointed and spoke with awe, his mouth opened wide at any sight that amazed him in some way.
“Wow, this place is great. This is nothing like what I’m used too.”
“What are you more used too, boy?”
“Me? I was very poor growing up. I’m used to living in very low income communities, places like this are like a dream to me.”
“I see, well don’t you fret we have our share of low income environments. We have a fair amount of homeless and poor people in this city, but mostly our government, The Republic, financially forces them to be in what is called the Poverty District. It’s a place where many poor people live and struggle every day. It’s more like they don’t have too many options of other places to live because they can’t afford it, and the biggest demographic in that district is African Americans, there are plenty of other races struggling there too though,” said Mr. Francis.
“Wow that sounds harsh, I’m not black but I feel for them. I certainly can empathize with what they’re going through,” said Sean.
“You don’t say? Well don’t worry that area isn’t the only place you’ll be seeing us black folks, like I said there be plenty of them runnin’ ‘round these parts, right Darion.”
“Right, pops,” said Darion with his hands around the back of his head, “we got lots of them around here, and they’re usually pullin’ in much higher incomes than the other ones. The cost of living can be quite expensive in these parts. My dad and I just barely pull through sometimes with our jobs,” said Darion.
Sean kept looking around the boisterous city with wonder. “…You don’t say…” Sean said.
“Hey, are you listening to us boy?” said Mr. Francis.
“What? Oh, yeah I hear you, sorry I’m just so amazed at this place is all, it’s so big and huge, I still can’t believe I’m at a place like this,” said Sean.
“Well, I’m glad you like it but don’t be too amazed, you have yet to see the good stuff this place has too offer,” said Mr. Francis.
They kept walking down the road until they met with crosswalk. Cars and streetlights were booming everywhere. Pedestrian’s feet stomped strong on the concrete. Pets and animals lashed around on their leashes. The city was rich with life and grace. They crossed a street to reach a big, open plaza. Park style grass areas lay on the sides of the concrete, large fountains cascaded waterfalls of water that illuminated the area. Benches riddled the area with a plethora of people at each seat, strong gusts of wind flowed through the air as they entered into the middle portion of the area. They walked past the fountains as the strong winds blew in their face.
“Now as we come through this nice scenery, I wanted to give you a little history lesson of this here place, Sean, more like an explanation of the world you’re in right now,” said Mr. Francis.
Sean diverted his attention partially over to him, his eyes widened a little bit at the curiosity he gained from his question.
“Yeah, why not. I’ve been meaning to ask you about this place, give me the lowdown.”
“All right then, well this here planet of ours is called Other Earth, I’m sure that there angel you met before named Lily already told you that much,” said Mr. Francis.
“Yep, she sure did,” said Sean.
“Well did she tell you about this here continent and the origins of our country name?”
“Yeah, I think she did but I wouldn’t mind a little refresher to jog my memory.”
Mr. Francis took a deep breath and exhaled with strong force. “Well this here continent again is called Neo-Pangaea, it’s a sort of newer form of the old one back on the regular Earth.
Sean nodded his back and forth in his direction as they continued to walk. “Yeah, yeah, I got that part.”
“And this country of ours is called Moder, pronounced mod-er not mode-er or anything else like that.”
“Really, why is it called that?”
“Because it is named after the word mother, the people chose this word because it resembles Mother Nature and just seemed like a good fit.” Mr. Francis took another huge whiff out of his cigar and blew it in the air. “I think it’s a fine name, although it can be very tricky to say sometimes.”
“Oh, I see. Yeah, sure that sounds great.”
“I’m sure you would. Now you see this country is split up into different areas, five zones to be exact. We call them the Zones of Territory. These are our separate divisions so to speak of the country, kind of like states.”
Sean continued to nod his head. “Ok.”
“Now each of these five zones each has a name of their own, the Mountain Zone, the Ice Zone, the Air Zone, the Industrial Zone, and the Prehistoric Zone. Each of these zones set a different population and certain type of people and animals. They’re very exclusive but we do our best still to live in unison and keep peace, that’s what the flag is for but I’ll get to that later when we get there.”
Sean looked perplexed. “What flag?”
“You’ll see when we get there. Anyway, so these different zones divide our nation and we try to keep friendly relations between to uphold peace. Each of these zones also represents a different type of spirit energy.”
“Spirit energy?” said Sean confused.
“Yes, spirit energy. It’s a mystical kind of energy only found here in this world. I guess that little angel girl didn’t have time to tell you about it. We use spirit energy harnessed from the Earth for everything as power and energy on this planet. We use it for our machines, phones, devices, and other technology all throughout here. It’s a renewable resource that never exhausts waste, so we don’t have to worry about greenhouse effect problems or anything like that happening now on Earth,” said Mr. Francis.
“Wow, that sounds amazing! This place sounds like some kind of dream world, can’t believe I ended up here after I died.”
“Yes it sounds nice, but you should still savor your time on Earth. Don’t be doing nothing crazy like committing suicide just to end up here, life’s too sacred for that kind of nonsense, y’know. You’ll get here when it’s your time.”
“Yes, sir I understand.”
“Now where was I? Oh, so basically spirit energy is a renewable resource here and we can use it infinitely to power all our technology and electronics. It also encompasses the air around us and even in space; it’s a very strange substance to say the least. Our scientists are doing their very best to analyze and study it the best they can. They’re discovering new things about spirit energy each day as we speak.”
“Man, that sounds really cool.”
Sean’s eyes lit up with excitement as they continued walking. As they continued chatting a loud noise burst from a faraway distance. A huge thundering noise came roaring at them as they had too little time to react. It continued to roar like a buzzing engine until it blasting noise became loud enough to discern from their voices. A little boy on a bike was buzzing at full speed on what looked like some type of automobile blasting straight at them.
“Hey, watch out!” said the car-blasting boy.
“Whoa, what’s that?” said Sean.
“You might want to get out the way!” yelled Darion.
The automobile shot right past them as they leapt out of the way from the impact. The automobile’s speed subsided as the boy riding halted it strong by shifting it sideways in a hard turning motion trying to park it in place as fast as he could. It stopped sharp and the boy wearing a baseball cap backwards looked up at them as they recovered their focus and looked toward him to discover the culprit of their sudden shock.
“Sorry about that,” the boy said, “this thing can go out of control sometimes. I’m still trying to fix the engine, and I’m still pretty new to riding this thing.”
“Jeez, man you almost ran us over. You should really watch where you’re driving that thing,” said Darion rubbing his head.
“My bad, like I said I’m really sorry for that,” the boy said again.
“No worries, I was just talking about this very thing. And now you’ve come along and now I can introduce this to Sean. Sean, can you please check out th—”
Sean’s eyes gleamed with sparkling energy. He stared at the automobile like he had witnessed the opportunity to see a shiny, new trophy. He ducked up and down while turning to look at it in every direction he could.
“Wow, what is this? This looks so cool!” said Sean in wonder.
The boy laughed. “You like it? It’s my new air bike. I just got it a few days ago.”
Sean continued looking at it with excitement. “Air bike? Really? That sounds really awesome what’s an air bike and what’s it do?”
“It’s a type of bike not from around these parts, I got it from the Industrial Zone. You must not be from around these parts, I can tell,” said the boy.
“Nope, I’m new here. I just died today.”
“You don’t say? Well, welcome to the town, it’s always great to get new people here all the time.”
Sean looked down again at the bottom wheel area. “Hey, what’s this? There aren’t any wheels here? How does it drive?”
“Oh, that? That’s because it’s a hover bike. It can fly through the air and take me wherever I want it too,” said the boy.
“Really, how does it do that?” said Sean.
“It does it through wind energy,” said the boy.
“Wind energy? I think I’ve heard something like that before, or wait I thought it was spirit energy Mr. Francis was telling me about?” said Sean
“That’s precisely right,” Mr. Francis interrupted, “that bike uses what is called wind energy to ride it. It’s a type of spirit energy.”
“Really? That sounds pretty cool,” said Sean.
“That’s right it is cool. But the best part is how it uses the wind energy,” said the boy with enthusiasm, “the wheel area uses the wind energy embedded inside to manipulate the air around it and thrust the bike forward and back, with the help of these handles and the exhaust pipes in the back, of course.”
“Wow, so it’s like having little invisible air wheels right here?” asked Sean.
“Yeah, more or less. You can stock up on wind energy at a station for a price, so using fuel for gas is no different here than it is on Earth, just the type of fuel is completely different from that place,” said the boy.
“Man, that’s really cool!” said Sean.
“Yeah, it is isn’t it?” said the boy smiling.
They continued chatting away about more details on the bike and it’s composition, until they heard a huge thud bang against the bike. The boy looked over to the other side and found a big red ball bouncing on impact at the foot area. A little black boy came running in from the distance and looked at the bike owner’s eyes with a deep childlike stare before he had a chance to pick it up. The biker boy laughed as he reached for the ball and extended his hand out to the boy with a big illuminated grin on his face.
“I think this is yours little guy,” said the biker boy, “you might want to be careful where you’re playing with this, you might get hurt if you’re not too careful.”
The boy didn’t say a word as he gave him the ball. He took it with ease and then closed his eyes with a huge innocent smile on his face as he looked up at the biker kid. A tall figure was heard running towards the boy and the group. It was a woman, a tall black woman with casual clothes and attire, she ran up to them gasping a little out of breath as she wrapped her arms around the boy’s shoulders and looked at group bowing her sporadically at them.
“I’m so sorry, I hope he didn’t bother you. My son was just playing with his ball but he sometimes runs off with it when I’m not looking. I lose track of him sometimes, I can sometimes be a bit inattentive,” the woman said catching her breathe.
“Oh, it’s no problem, really,” said the biker boy.
“Yeah, it’s ok, it’s not biggie. We weren’t doing anything important, just chatting about his bike is all. He didn’t bother us one bit,” said Sean.
“Oh, that’s good to hear.” The young black woman bent over toward the boy’s face to meet him at eye level, she placed her soft hands over his cheeks, which made the boy smile even more as he held onto his red ball. “Sweetie, are you alright? You’re not hurt anywhere are you?”
The boy continued smiling at her and then proceeded to just utter baby gibberish and simple words to her as she wrapped her arms further around him and pulled him in tight while rubbing his back.
“I’ll never let you out of my sight again. Ok let’s go now, we don’t want to bother the people anymore.”
She stood up to face them and took another bow in front of their presence. “I’m so sorry about this, I promise it won’t happen again, we’ll try to be more careful next time.”
“No it’s no problem at all, really,” said the biker boy.
“Well, we’ll be off now. Sorry for the inconvenience.” She took the boy by the hand and then looked down at him pointing at the group of boys. “Say, goodbye to the nice people.” The little black boy retained his innocent smile throughout and waved his tiny hand back and forth at them as they walked off leaving the Sean’s group in a matter of minutes. They staggered around looking at each other as they left and Sean’s face lit up a little as he faced the biker kid.
“Well, that was nice. He seemed like a nice kid, the townsfolk here seem to be pretty nice people and the diversity seems to be strong as well,” said Sean.
They soon transitioned topics and Sean’s face lit up with excitement once again as he stared at the bike with intense grace and wonder.
“Can I take it for a spin? I really want to try riding one of these!” said Sean.
“Sure, but only for a little while, I’m still trying to learn the ropes of it myself,” said the boy.
Darion stepped in upon hearing Sean’s impulsive statement. “No, we can’t, we don’t have time. We still have to get you signed up for the tournament, remember? We don’t have time for this.”
Sean looked him with intense dismay. His face flushed with disdain as he clenched his fists in tight. “What, why not? It’ll only be for a second.”
“No, Darion’s right. We have to keep going, boy. You’ll be late for registration, and I need to be there as your voucher to get you in,” said Mr. Francis.
Sean looked at him and let out a huge sigh. “Fine…”
“My bad, bro. Maybe next time if I ever see you again, or maybe you’ll get your own someday,” He got back on his bike and began to start the engine for take-off. “Good luck in the tournament, I hope you make it so I can watch you battle in the ring, you seem like a cool guy.”
“Yeah, same here. I hope we see each other again!” said Sean.
They waved at each other as the boy lifted his retro bike in the air and blasted it off in the distance, disappearing as if he were never here. The group looked at each other as the engine noise dissipated in their eyes, Mr. Francis turned and began to walk forward with a haste housed in his demeanor.
“Alright then let’s go we don’t want to be late now do we?”