Scarlet Steel

“A decade after the first rocket launched, a semi-permanent base was founded on the Moon, which to this day, still stands. Twenty five years after, the first AI and humans set foot on another planet, Mars. In another forty years, faster than light travel was proven possible.” - An incomplete history of space travel, written by Kismet.

I wake up from the sun hitting my eyes.

Dad’s here! The thought floods my mind the same instant I come to consciousness. I throw on some clothes and force myself to slow down. Dad sometimes gets upset when a noise wakes him up. I have to be quiet until he wakes up all on his own.

I creep my way into the kitchen, where I find Exa lounging on the living room couch.

“Morning Kid.” She says.

“Good morning!” I instantly shrink in on myself, listening to see if I accidentally woke up Dad. I wait for a few seconds, hearing nothing. “Good morning.” I repeat much quieter.

Exa quietly laughs to herself and shakes her head.

“The three of us were up late talking.” She says quietly. “It’ll probably be a few hours before they wake up.”

“I’m glad you don’t have to sleep.” I say.

“Me too.” She agrees. “What do you want to do?”

“Can you help me with a project?” I ask. “I found a laser that works and want to see how much power I can pump into it! I know microwaves are dangerous, but I need the transformer.”

“I’ll help you take the thing apart.”

“Thank you!” I grab a breakfast bar and wait for her by the door.

She follows close behind, and I lead her down the path towards town. I take a few extra turns half way through and lead her into my hidden workshop.

“Ta-da!” I step through the metal sheet I use as a door, a door I accidentally left open, and throw my hands wide. My workshop has a few tables made of whatever flat plastic and metal sheets I’ve been able to find. On one of them sits all my tools, and all my powered tools on a shelf next to it.

A power outlet sits in the middle of the clearing, connected to a battery sitting in a small wagon that I have to regularly lug back to the house to charge. The battery was a gift from dad, able to output a variety of voltages and amps, whatever I need. Well, whatever I normally need. I want way more to pump through the laser!

“You’re lucky it doesn’t rain on this planet.” Exa says, a single sweep of her eyes enough to take everything in.

“Huh? Why?”

“What does water do to electronics?” She asks.

“Oh! Yeah. It kills them. That’d be bad. I spent a lot of time finding this stuff.”

“I’m sure you did.” She steps over to my workbench, and leans over to see my shame. “Scarlet, why is this microwave partially deconstructed?”

“I have a rubber mat on the ground!” I say quickly. “Don’t tell mom!” I add.

“Scarlet.” Exa repeats.

“And I was very careful…”

“Scarlet.” I watch through a film of tears as she steps forward and crouches down in front of me. “I would never tell you not to do something without a good reason.” She says. “I’ve seen adults get killed playing around with these things. People smarter and more careful than you, people smarter and more careful than me. No matter what, mistakes happen. And with something like this? A mistake means you die. That’s it. There’s no second chance.”

I can only nod in response.

“Oh honey, it’s ok.” She wraps her arms around me. “How about we make a deal? You save anything dangerous until we come to visit, and I’ll help you with whatever idea you have, ok? Then you can learn and be safe.”

“Are you going to tell mom?” I mumble.

“No, no I’m not.” She reassures me. “Not unless you’re a dummy again.”

“I’m not a dummy.”

“I know.” She steps back, opens a compartment hidden in her leg, and hands me a small cloth. “Now, how about we blow up that diode together?”

I nod and take what she offers me, quickly wiping my eyes and blowing my nose.

Exa grabs the microwave off the ground and places it on my table. Her fingers extend, flip around, and slide back into their sockets, replacing her fingers with a small collection of flawless tools.

“So, where’s your laser pointer?”

“Uh,” I glance around my workshop. Where did I leave it? It should be on the table, but it’s not. Exa would have seen it if it was. “I don’t know.”

“It’s beside your soldering iron.” She says.

“Oh! Right!” I grab the small cylinder and return to Exa’s side. “Why are you allowed to take apart the microwave when I’m not?”

“Because it won’t kill me.” She says simply. “It’ll hurt, it’ll do some damage, but my hard drives will be fine. But a human?” She turns to me, flips her screwdriver back to her finger, and pokes me in the forehead. “You’ve got a squishy little brain in there.”

“Hey! It’s not squishy!”

“We’ve got to go to the hospital then! That’s really bad!” She says in mock horror.

She pulls a laugh out of me, and returns to her work, showing me exactly what she’s doing, why, and what to avoid. She mostly tells me about the last one.

The important part though is that she gets it free! All that’s left to do is to wire it up to the laser pointer’s power input, plug it in, and turn up the voltage!

“So, do you have a way to protect your eyes?” Exa asks, and my entire body deflates.

“Do I need it?”

“Depends, do you want to go blind?” She asks.

“No.” I admit.

“Well I think that’s your answer.”

“No? So I don’t need it?”

“Alright smart a- butt.” She reaches out and gives me a small shove.

I can’t help but laugh.

“But what are we going to do?” I ask.

Exa taps her metal fingers together while she thinks, making a quiet clicking sound.

“Well, my eyes can handle it. Here.” She reaches under her shirt and pulls out a curved tube that fits easily even in my small hands.

I take it, and hit the single button on it. From either end of the tube a short beam of light extends, forming half of a rectangle. The beams extend horizontally, forming an opaque screen. It shows a view of me from above, seen from Exa’s eyes.

“There. Now, let’s go ahead and get this thing wired up.”

“Ok!” I open up the laser pointer and hand it to her. I’m not going to mess with the microwave, I guess it’s dangerous. Even with it out of the machine, the wires connected to it are still live due to the capacitors inside. Unless they all completely discharged when it hit the ground? I shouldn’t take the risk either way.

It only takes her a moment to attach the two wires.

“Here.” She reaches into yet another compartment and pulls out a tightly folded silver metal blanket and hands it to me. “Get somewhere out of sight, and put that over your head. Make sure there’s no gap, ok?”

“Ok!” I run around the corner and do what she asks, looking excitedly at the tablet.

The view shakes back and forth before Exa reaches down and plugs in the transformer. In one hand she holds the laser, and the other rests atop the battery.

“So, what voltage do you want to start with?” Exa’s voice comes through the tablet.

“Max!” I respond. “Put 240 volts through it! 20 amps!”

“I adore your enthusiasm, but it won’t survive that for more than a few milliseconds. Let’s try a little lower and actually get to play with it, alright?”

“Alright.” As disappointing as that is, she’s right.

She turns the dial atop the battery slowly. A small blue dot reflects off the junk surrounding us, barely visible in the sunlight. As Exa turns her hand, the dot grows brighter. Dust begins to illuminate inside the beam’s path.

“That’s why you need to protect your eyes.” Exa says. “Once a laser gets strong enough, even the light reflecting off the dust in the air can damage them.”

Her hand turns again, and the workshop takes on a blue glow, illuminated from the single dot.

“Woah.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool.” Exa keeps turning up the voltage, spreading the blue light. “Hold on, by my calculations, we just hit something interesting.” She takes a step forward and looks down at a piece of discarded cardboard on the ground. She points the laser at the center of it, and just a moment later, the cardboard ignites.

“Woah!”

“You can actually use lasers to cut through basically anything, even metal.”

“Really?”

“You think I would lie to you?” She asks. “Maybe we’ll bring you a laser cutter one day.”

“Really? That would really help! I’ve been using a big pair of shears to cut sheet metal.”

“Maybe we’ll bring you a laser cutter soon.” She turns her hand once again. “Another cool thing, what do you want me to write?”

“Write on what?”

“Anything.” She reaches down and grabs a flat piece of scrap metal. “Anything at all.”

“Scarlet and Exa forever!” I say excitedly.

“I can do that.” The laser flickers rapidly as it flicks across the metal surface, etching in my words. She adds a small drawing to it: her, me, and my parents, happy together. “How’s that?”

“That’s so good!”

“I do my best. You ready to push this thing to its limits?”

“Yeah!”

“Alright.” She turns the dial on the battery up. The laser gets brighter and brighter. Exa’s eyes adjust to the light, darkening everything else. The world dims and dims, until nothing but the blue glow of the laser exists.

The glow disappears and the world turns back to normal.

“Why did you turn it off?” I ask.

“I didn’t, it burnt out.”

“It didn’t explode?” I ask.

“No.” She lets out a few chuckles. “No, lasers just burn out when you put too much through them. What did you think?”

“Super cool! I want to do that again!” I throw off the blanket and return to her.

“If you find another one of these we can play with it when I come back, alright? But only if you promise not to mess with it without me.”

“I promise!”

“You better. Your mom’s going to kill me if we need to replace your eyes.”

“I like my eyes!” They’re just brown like everyone else’s, but they’re mine!

“Then you better listen to me.”

“I’ll be safe.” I promise.

“I know. Now come on, your dad just let me know he’s up.”

“Ok!” I grab onto her arm and pull her home.