Final Gifts for thunder_nari
Hi there, thunder_nari! I was your secret Santa and I had a great time writing pre-series Wash fic for you. I have two fics, the first one fairly short and the second a little longer. (Neither are slash, for some reason I wasn't inspired in that way.) Merry Christmas!
Title: “Lunch Rush at The Dropsy”
Rating: PG
Words: 992
Characters: Wash, a little Kaylee and River at the end
Summary: Did you ever wonder why Wash was fired from the fry-cook opportunity?
Lunch Rush at The Dropsy
“Dough well done with cow to cover, put it on the bridge!” somebody yelled, and a hand hit the order bell with a crisp ding!
Hoban Washburne looked up at the waitress who had yelled the order. “What?”
“I said, dough well done with cow to cover,” she repeated. Her name was Flo. Or Wanda. Or Gladys. Or something hideous like that. Anyway, she wasn’t too bright. “You got that?”
“Yeah,” he assured her hurriedly. “Sure thing.”
It was rush hour, lunchtime at the greasy-spoon diner known as The Dropsy. Business was good and every employee was kept hopping. Even the newest fry-cook, Hoban Washburne himself, who knew less about diner lingo than he did… well, just about anything else.
Somebody hit the order bell, another ding, and yelled out, “Clean up the kitchen, make it a bridge party, with sinkers and suds in the alley!”
“You got that one?” one of the other fry-cooks demanded.
“Oh, yeah! I’m… on it.” In the alley? Did that mean from the garbage can? He reeled at the thought. This couldn’t possibly be that kind of diner, even if it was named after a less-than-savory medical term.
Flo/Wanda/Gladys was back. She was frowning at him. “Yeah?”
“I don’t see my…”
“Buttered toast,” one of the other fry-cooks said. Wash thought his name was Mac. Or Buddy. Anyway, he slid the buttered toast, four slices, across to Flo/Wanda/Gladys. “Wash, you got the…”
“On it!” he said before either of them could repeat the confusing order. Okay. Take it slow, like reading. Sinkers? That must be fish. Suds? Beer, of course! He filled a large stein with beer as the fish was frying. Now, clean up the kitchen? That must mean hash browns, he decided, because in order to procure hash browns, one had to “clean” off the grill. He scooped hash browns onto the plate with the fish. Make it a bridge party? That must have something to do with fancy nuts. Didn’t people at bridge parties eat fancy nuts? He filled a small bowl with the fanciest nuts he could find… which were peanuts. He hit the order bell and watched as Flo/Wanda/Gladys strolled over, impassive in her pink-and-white uniform.
“What the hell’s this?” she asked.
He pointed to the order slip on the carousel. “What you asked for?”
Flo/Wanda/Gladys looked as though her brain was going to implode. “Honey,” she said, “I asked for four hamburgers with doughnuts and coffee on the side.”
“Oh.”
“I doubt they’re gonna want this,” she said, scoffing at the platter he’d prepared.
“Oh.”
“Hey, Benny!” she yelled at the other fry-cook. Not Mac or Buddy. “You think you can do this one better?” She indicated the order.
“Sure thing!” the fry-cook yelled back.
Flo/Wanda/Gladys made a frowny-angry face at Wash. “Look, buddy, let me make myself perfectly clear. I did you a favor, hiring you `cause your uncle asked me to, you bein’ out of work. He appealed to my soft side; I ain’t gonna let a kid starve. But your uncle don’t own this diner; my husband does. This here’s the lunch rush, we don’t have time for your screw-ups. You get the next order wrong, it’ll be your farewell lunch. Got it?”
Wash nodded. “Yes’m,” he replied shakily.
“Now, I need you to put out the lights and cry, wreck me up a cowboy, scoop up some fish eye, burn the British, and give the lady over there Eve with the lid on and some nice fifty-five. You got that?”
Wash nodded again, his eyes wide. Flo/Wanda/Gladys was a diner Amazon. She slapped the order slip on the carousel and hit the bell. Ding! Funny, but it seemed to Wash a death bell, tolling his inevitable doom.
“Okay. Put out the lights and cry.” He knew the last part had something to do with onions, so he prepared the only thing he knew went with onions - liver. Then “wreck me up a cowboy”? Cowboys liked… beef jerky? He chopped up beef jerky into little pieces and put it in a fluted bowl. He remembered Mac/Buddy/Benny telling him that “fish eye” was diner slang for tapioca, so he threw some of that into another bowl. Burn the British? What did British people eat? Sausage? He charred a sausage and put it on a plate.
Eve with a lid on? Apples? Applesauce, he decided, and slopped some of that into a bowl, then covered it in plastic. That’s a lid. And fifty-five? Did the diner even carry wine? He settled for some beer in an old-fashioned bottle. Tentatively, he slapped the bell. Ding!
Flo/Wanda/Gladys came over and looked at the plate. There was no stopping her, the laugh started in her eyes and came barking out her mouth. “Hoban,” she said, “it’s been nice knowin’ ya. Give my best regards to your uncle.”
Wash sat on a park bench and ate the best meal he’d had in awhile. Truth be told, it was a bit odd and slapdash, but it had all been prepared lovingly and with the utmost attention to detail.
“… and that’s why I became a pilot,” he finished.
“Regular meals?” Kaylee asked, a teasing look on her face.
“No! No confusing lingo!” he answered, grinning back at her, obviously forgetting about “Crazy Ivan” and “barn swallow” and other such aeronautical phrases that made ordinary heads spin.
She smiled. “Well, that’s a lovely story… but I still need you to help me finish preparing lunch or we’ll never eat. So, wreck me up a cowboy, throw on a bridge party of rafts, and party up some birdseed for Jayne.”
He groaned.
“It means scramble an omelet, put on four pieces of toast, and put cereal in a bowl,” River said without looking up from the book she was reading.
“Where were you when I was working at The Dropsy?” Wash asked in awe.
“Writing my novel. By the way, her name was Lois.”
“Right. Lois.”
Title: While the Dinosaurs Watched
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3030
Characters: Wash
Summary: Final exams drive everyone crazy, especially Wash.
While the Dinosaurs Watched
Hoban Washburne leapt from his bunk in the crowded flight school dorm, narrowly avoiding cracking his head on the bed above him. The accommodations were sparse, with small bunks stacked four-high and even smaller storage for personal possessions. An odor of socks and cheap hand-rolled cigarettes permeated the area, tempered infrequently by the tawdry, piney scent of the tiny bars of soap the students showered with.
Wash tumbled to the floor and landed amongst his bunk mates’ dirty laundry and forgotten textbooks. A quick glance at the clock on the dorm’s wall let him know that, unless time slowed and he moved faster than the speed of light, he was going to be late for his flight maneuvers final exam.
Most of flight school came easily to Wash. There wasn’t a mathematical calculation that confused him, and he was often chosen as the Math Department’s “Head Boy” (an antiquated term, now that Sheppard’s School of Space Flight admitted women). The honor bestowed upon the best and brightest included dinner with the Dean of Mathematics, a small, wrinkled man in his late eighties, and a small ceremonial plaque. Wash had several of these plaques on the wall behind his bunk, held there with immense quantities of silicone wall-tape.
He excelled at the physical components of flight as well. In his first week at flight school he had hooked his foot awkwardly over a hurdle and fallen face-first into a water hazard, but several hours of late-night hurdle-jumping practice had made him practically a natural. He could run short distances and long, perform the long-jump and the pole vault, throw and catch several sizes of balls, throw the hammer and the discus, and flip and tumble across a mat nearly as neatly as the tiny female gymnasts of Earth-That-Was. He enjoyed calisthenics and aerobics, and was captain of the school’s netball team. While he didn’t quite know what all the physical activity had to do with piloting a spaceship, he was glad to spend time out in grassy fields or on running tracks. Being in peak physical shape didn’t hurt, either; Wash had never been quite so fit.
Mechanics and engineering science were second-nature to Wash. He could often be found examining screens or repairing engine components. He knew how to measure ships’ captain’s chairs, and had taken great pride in winning the Inter-‘Verse Wire Repair Contest for two years running. Students were presented with a seemingly impossible tangle of wires and challenged to find the single wire causing any number of faults. After reading a manual or textbook just once, he could remember the exact placement of every single part.
For electives he had chosen cooking and musical performance, and spent a few hours each week devoted to those pursuits. In the school’s mess hall, under the watchful eye of the head chef, he and several other students prepared meals for their classmates. Wash had grown fond of peeling potatoes and chopping vegetables, and could prepare a succulent risotto that rivaled the head chef’s for tastiness. In the Sheppard’s Wind Ensemble, he gave his attention to the trumpet, and was often selected for solos. He and the rest of the group had performed at a banquet given to the school’s board of trustees, and Wash had performed the solos in “Children of Sanchez” and “Bugler’s Holiday.”
But there was one aspect of flight school in which Wash was not the golden boy, and that was flight maneuvers. He wasn’t sure why, but for some reason, every time he entered the cockpit of his flight simulator with a flight maneuvers card in his hand, he felt as though he would pass out. And no matter how many times he read the textbooks or how many sets of flashcards he made, he could not remember the subtle differences between a Crazy Ivan and a Candlelighter’s Fancy. Even a simple series of Loop Turns sent his stomach into paroxysms of despair.
The problem was compounded by his flight maneuvers professor, a crotchety middle-aged man who favored brightly-colored knitted sweaters and battered loafers. In some other era, Professor Glass had been a flight maneuvers master, consulting for several private militias. He had written all of the flight maneuvers textbooks used by the students at Sheppard’s. All of the students at Sheppard’s vied for his attention and fought to get into his classes; he was hailed as a “genius” by all who knew him.
He was Wash’s worst nightmare.
Wash had not signed up to be in Professor Glass’s flight maneuvers class. He had actually been hoping for the section taught by Professor LaQueen, an elegant woman who was rumored to be a Companion on the side, and his schedule card had contained her name. But two days later, when he went to the flight simulators bay, a young man there had informed him curtly that he had been transferred to Professor Glass’s class, which was meeting in Bay Eight in six minutes. New to the campus, it had taken Wash twelve to get there and two more to end up in his simulator, by which time Professor Glass had assigned him six demerits and a detention, to be spent cleaning out the G-force simulators.
Professor Glass’s harsh words and persistent mockery of Wash compounded the situation. Three days into the course, Wash was hopelessly and utterly failing. The thought of Professor Glass emptied his mind immediately, and he forgot everything he knew once strapped into the simulator.
He had tried his best, of course, but short of a miracle, there was no way he was going to pass flight maneuvers. He was going to end up being a planet-side pilot, no better than a common rickshaw driver, shuttling the rich and lazy between two not-so-distant points. He was never going to see the black.
Running now, throwing on a wrinkly shirt and two shoes, which may or may not have matched and which may or may not have been his own, he sprinted full-out towards Flight Simulator Bay Eight. As he ran past the gatekeeper, who checked students’ ID cards and handed out helmets or goggles, he threw his ID packet at the man and grabbed the nearest (too-small) helmet, jamming it onto his head as he swung into the simulator.
Breathless, his chest heaving, sweat dripping down his face, he strapped himself into the seat and hit the biggest button on the control panel, the one which would start the simulator. Seconds later, Professor Glass’s gravelly, irritated voice filtered through the com channel. “You’re late, Hoban,” he said. “Even if you receive a perfect score on this exam, I will still be deducting ten points.”
Too angry to speak, Wash just gripped the controls mutely, waiting for his assigned exam maneuvers.
“Break yourself out of atmo,” Professor Glass said dully, “and I’ll be back to give you your maneuvers.”
The com channel clicked off and Wash frantically looked around his simulator for an escape. His dinosaur models looked back at him with their blank plastic eyes. The gatekeeper had his ID packet and he had their helmet; Professor Glass knew he was in the simulator. There was no way out now.
Taking a deep breath he pulled the steering yoke back towards him and hit a series of switches, starting the launch sequence. Garbled radio transmissions bounced around him, but he ignored them. If he was going to fail the flight maneuvers exam, which seemed awfully likely, at least he was going to do it with full points in the launch sequence portion. It was the one thing he could do correctly.
At last the simulator broke atmo and Professor Glass’s voice crackled over the com again. “You have three maneuvers, Hoban,” the older man said. “First, I would like to see a series of Ruchard’s Loop Turns. If you execute less than the full amount of variations, you will be docked five points. Second, perform a Candlelighter’s Fancy with two double-backs and a third-level evasion technique. Your third maneuver is a barn swallow.”
The com channel went silent and panic began to eat at Wash. Professor Glass’s disdain for his abilities was evident. Wash couldn’t even remember all of the variations on the Ruchard’s Loop Turns. His chest went tight. He was going to fail.
As the assignments popped up on one of his screens, Wash noticed something strange about the simulator’s front panel. Usually it showed a complex model of the black the students were flying through. The display was uncomplicated. But this time there was an instrument attached to the inside of the front panel. Wash recognized it immediately; all of his time spent poring over textbooks and parts manuals told him exactly what it was - a Preuss pressure gauge, used to balance the pressure between the inside of the cockpit and the black.
Which meant only one thing. Professor Glass had replaced the flight simulators with actual flight pods. Wash had heard about things like this happening to other students at Sheppard’s, but he never expected it to happen to him, especially during his final exam.
Half of the panic he felt dissipated immediately as his mouth dropped open. He was in the black. He was in the black!
Gobsmacked with an unnamable thrill, Wash pulled up on the steering yoke and gave the engines a quick buzz. They roared beneath him, their sound nearly bringing tears to his eyes. If this was what it felt like to be a pilot, he was going to be one, flight school be damned. If he had to buy a pilot’s certification off the black market and forge a commissioner’s name on the line, he would do it.
On the ground Wash was nothing special, an ordinary fellow who enjoyed music and physical activities. Up here in the black he felt free. He was thinking things he hadn’t thought of since grade school, and things he had never thought of. He was suddenly gripped by the desire to either read all of Proust’s works in one sitting or find a really hot girl and kiss her until his lips went numb.
He had never partaken in recreational drugs, but he thought he knew what being high would feel like. His blood had turned to fizzy champagne, his limbs tingling pleasantly. Warm energy coursed through him. Simply put, he was star-struck.
Suddenly his hands were warm and skilled on the controls. The flight pod shot forward, then spun in a series of Ruchard’s Loop Turns. As Wash banked out of the first turn, he added a Rooster-Tail Dive. After the second turn he performed the tricky up-then-down, up-then-down pattern of a Log Flume. The third turn was capped off by Ruchard’s toughest variation, a Bucket Roll.
Excitement hit Wash like a sudden jolt of electricity. His mouth still wide open, he hollered out, “Whoo-hoo! Yeah!”
His communication screen beeped, showing him the score for his Ruchard’s Loop Turns. It was a perfect 20 - five points apiece for each set of turns and five for the set of variations. The first maneuver disappeared from the list of assignments.
The Candlelighter’s Fancy was up next. His excited hands somehow steady on the controls, Wash threw the ship into a sharp descent. Sweat dripped down his back and a tinge of fear threatened to infect his excitement. He had done this before, back when the simulator was just a simulator. Now he was playing for keeps.
He saw Wanderlust, the planet claimed by Sheppard’s School of Space Flight, rising up before him in the front panel window. When his screens showed that he was eight klicks from atmo, he abruptly leveled the ship out and swung it around in a quick one-eighty. He let the pod go forward a few more klicks before wheeling it around again, performing the second of the two required double-backs.
Now for a third-level evasion technique! Wash nearly laughed aloud as he thought of the one he had chosen - a Sightseer’s Ticket. Not only was it the only third-level evasion technique he could remember, it was definitely a flashy choice.
Again he threw the pod into a nosedive. Thirty feet from the ground alarms began to blare as though to say, “What are you, nuts?”
Undaunted, he grabbed the steering yoke and gave it a sharp yank. The ship leveled and Wash flew, almost blindly, through several groves of fruit trees, trying to find the perfect mark. He selected a tangerine tree at two klicks and sped on towards it. The tree grew up large before him, and he nearly lost his cool. His muscle memory took over, though, and he skimmed the top of the tangerine tree, just as it had been written in the flight maneuvers textbook.
He laughed right out loud when he saw two bright tangerines pop up through the Catcher Hatch in the floor of the pod. Not only would the fruit taste good, but he had just thrown off whatever imaginary tail he had had and aced the second maneuver.
A stegosaurus slid to the side, taking out a brontosaurus as Wash pulled the pod close to atmo and prepared himself for the final maneuver - a barn swallow. It was a Chapter One maneuver, practically the first thing wet-behind-the-ears flight students learned, but it could be dangerous if not performed correctly.
Well, he thought wryly, all flight maneuvers are dangerous if not performed correctly.
That wasn’t going to stop him now, though. He felt as though he had been born in this very pod cockpit chair, as though the controls were extensions of his limbs and the movements of the pod extensions of his thoughts. Though he’d laughed at several other students who tried to “be one with the ship,” he now knew exactly how they felt.
Ahead of him he saw a mule, one of the smallest models made. It was obviously his quarry for the barn swallow. A grin on his face and looseness in his limbs, Wash threw the pod into third shift and gave the engines a little roar. “Opening Catcher Hatch,” he reported over his com channel. He didn’t get a reply, but he wasn’t expecting one.
He gunned the engine and skimmed gently towards the mule. Steady on the yoke, he dipped down until he was level with the mule. Then came the most gut-wrenching part of the barn swallow - driving straight at the stranded vehicle until he caught it. In previous simulator flights, he had only done it correctly twice; the other times had ended badly for the simulated vehicles.
This time it felt as though he was giving the mule a gentle caress. He didn’t even need the screens to tell him he’d caught the mule and it was safely in his Catcher Hatch.
Gleeful, he threw the hatch closed and pulled the pod out of atmo, taking the mule with him. The second break into the black didn’t startle him quite as much, and for some reason it seemed bigger and brighter. He wondered if it would always do that, growing and growing until it was endless and glowing on like a kind face in the darkness. If so, he could definitely get used to it.
Wash threw the pod into another series of Bucket Rolls and followed it with a Rooster-Tail Dive. He was ephemeral, limitless, liquid, just floating and dancing through the black. They would have to pry him out of the cockpit when he died, because he was going to fly and fly and fly and fly until that very minute.
Somehow, though, after twenty minutes of rolling and dipping, he landed the pod in Bay Eight and shut down the engines. He switched off the lights and gathered up his dinosaurs. It was time to go face the music.
He stepped out of the pod, putting dinosaurs into his various vest pockets, and was suddenly aware that all of his classmates were standing on the simulator dock with their mouths open, gaping at him like a freak in a sideshow.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
One of the guys said, “Didn’t you get the wave? They moved the final exam to eleven.”
“Why would they do that?” Wash wanted to know.
He turned around, hearing a groggy moan from the open Catcher Hatch. Professor Glass was sprawled over the doorway to the mule Wash had picked up.
“A professional pilot was coming to test one of the new flight pods,” Wash’s flight school classmate said, mouths still open all around him. “They were prepping the pods, so they moved our exam back.”
Professor Glass managed to pull himself to a standing position, propping himself on the mule’s hatch. There was something crumpled in his fist. “Hoban,” he croaked, “get your ass over here.”
Wash complied, drawing closer the professor, who seemed suddenly small and unimportant. “Yes, sir?”
Glass thrust a crinkly piece of paper at Wash. It was his flight school diploma, and it had been signed with a long jagged red mark. There were several dark spots that Wash thought might have been tears or snot; he wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t going to ask. “Get out of here,” Professor Glass said weakly.
“Yes, sir!” Wash said, happy to obey.
“And for God’s sake, don’t let me see you again. Flying with you once is enough for a lifetime. You should just join the gorram aerial circus… you ever try that with passengers and you’re gonna find yourself homeless and friendless. And don’t think you’re going to score a wife that way - there ain’t a woman out there who thinks what you just did is attractive! Must be nice to be so young and so careless with life! I haven’t seen anything that crazy since I was in flight school! I knew a hotshot like that… what do you think happened to him?”
Wash’s spirits fell a little as he turned to leave. Professor Glass cleared his throat, though, and Wash looked back at him just in time to see the professor wink at him, a small smile rising on his flushed face. “He became a professor,” Glass said softly. “Well done.”
Title: “Lunch Rush at The Dropsy”
Rating: PG
Words: 992
Characters: Wash, a little Kaylee and River at the end
Summary: Did you ever wonder why Wash was fired from the fry-cook opportunity?
Lunch Rush at The Dropsy
“Dough well done with cow to cover, put it on the bridge!” somebody yelled, and a hand hit the order bell with a crisp ding!
Hoban Washburne looked up at the waitress who had yelled the order. “What?”
“I said, dough well done with cow to cover,” she repeated. Her name was Flo. Or Wanda. Or Gladys. Or something hideous like that. Anyway, she wasn’t too bright. “You got that?”
“Yeah,” he assured her hurriedly. “Sure thing.”
It was rush hour, lunchtime at the greasy-spoon diner known as The Dropsy. Business was good and every employee was kept hopping. Even the newest fry-cook, Hoban Washburne himself, who knew less about diner lingo than he did… well, just about anything else.
Somebody hit the order bell, another ding, and yelled out, “Clean up the kitchen, make it a bridge party, with sinkers and suds in the alley!”
“You got that one?” one of the other fry-cooks demanded.
“Oh, yeah! I’m… on it.” In the alley? Did that mean from the garbage can? He reeled at the thought. This couldn’t possibly be that kind of diner, even if it was named after a less-than-savory medical term.
Flo/Wanda/Gladys was back. She was frowning at him. “Yeah?”
“I don’t see my…”
“Buttered toast,” one of the other fry-cooks said. Wash thought his name was Mac. Or Buddy. Anyway, he slid the buttered toast, four slices, across to Flo/Wanda/Gladys. “Wash, you got the…”
“On it!” he said before either of them could repeat the confusing order. Okay. Take it slow, like reading. Sinkers? That must be fish. Suds? Beer, of course! He filled a large stein with beer as the fish was frying. Now, clean up the kitchen? That must mean hash browns, he decided, because in order to procure hash browns, one had to “clean” off the grill. He scooped hash browns onto the plate with the fish. Make it a bridge party? That must have something to do with fancy nuts. Didn’t people at bridge parties eat fancy nuts? He filled a small bowl with the fanciest nuts he could find… which were peanuts. He hit the order bell and watched as Flo/Wanda/Gladys strolled over, impassive in her pink-and-white uniform.
“What the hell’s this?” she asked.
He pointed to the order slip on the carousel. “What you asked for?”
Flo/Wanda/Gladys looked as though her brain was going to implode. “Honey,” she said, “I asked for four hamburgers with doughnuts and coffee on the side.”
“Oh.”
“I doubt they’re gonna want this,” she said, scoffing at the platter he’d prepared.
“Oh.”
“Hey, Benny!” she yelled at the other fry-cook. Not Mac or Buddy. “You think you can do this one better?” She indicated the order.
“Sure thing!” the fry-cook yelled back.
Flo/Wanda/Gladys made a frowny-angry face at Wash. “Look, buddy, let me make myself perfectly clear. I did you a favor, hiring you `cause your uncle asked me to, you bein’ out of work. He appealed to my soft side; I ain’t gonna let a kid starve. But your uncle don’t own this diner; my husband does. This here’s the lunch rush, we don’t have time for your screw-ups. You get the next order wrong, it’ll be your farewell lunch. Got it?”
Wash nodded. “Yes’m,” he replied shakily.
“Now, I need you to put out the lights and cry, wreck me up a cowboy, scoop up some fish eye, burn the British, and give the lady over there Eve with the lid on and some nice fifty-five. You got that?”
Wash nodded again, his eyes wide. Flo/Wanda/Gladys was a diner Amazon. She slapped the order slip on the carousel and hit the bell. Ding! Funny, but it seemed to Wash a death bell, tolling his inevitable doom.
“Okay. Put out the lights and cry.” He knew the last part had something to do with onions, so he prepared the only thing he knew went with onions - liver. Then “wreck me up a cowboy”? Cowboys liked… beef jerky? He chopped up beef jerky into little pieces and put it in a fluted bowl. He remembered Mac/Buddy/Benny telling him that “fish eye” was diner slang for tapioca, so he threw some of that into another bowl. Burn the British? What did British people eat? Sausage? He charred a sausage and put it on a plate.
Eve with a lid on? Apples? Applesauce, he decided, and slopped some of that into a bowl, then covered it in plastic. That’s a lid. And fifty-five? Did the diner even carry wine? He settled for some beer in an old-fashioned bottle. Tentatively, he slapped the bell. Ding!
Flo/Wanda/Gladys came over and looked at the plate. There was no stopping her, the laugh started in her eyes and came barking out her mouth. “Hoban,” she said, “it’s been nice knowin’ ya. Give my best regards to your uncle.”
Wash sat on a park bench and ate the best meal he’d had in awhile. Truth be told, it was a bit odd and slapdash, but it had all been prepared lovingly and with the utmost attention to detail.
“… and that’s why I became a pilot,” he finished.
“Regular meals?” Kaylee asked, a teasing look on her face.
“No! No confusing lingo!” he answered, grinning back at her, obviously forgetting about “Crazy Ivan” and “barn swallow” and other such aeronautical phrases that made ordinary heads spin.
She smiled. “Well, that’s a lovely story… but I still need you to help me finish preparing lunch or we’ll never eat. So, wreck me up a cowboy, throw on a bridge party of rafts, and party up some birdseed for Jayne.”
He groaned.
“It means scramble an omelet, put on four pieces of toast, and put cereal in a bowl,” River said without looking up from the book she was reading.
“Where were you when I was working at The Dropsy?” Wash asked in awe.
“Writing my novel. By the way, her name was Lois.”
“Right. Lois.”
Title: While the Dinosaurs Watched
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3030
Characters: Wash
Summary: Final exams drive everyone crazy, especially Wash.
While the Dinosaurs Watched
Hoban Washburne leapt from his bunk in the crowded flight school dorm, narrowly avoiding cracking his head on the bed above him. The accommodations were sparse, with small bunks stacked four-high and even smaller storage for personal possessions. An odor of socks and cheap hand-rolled cigarettes permeated the area, tempered infrequently by the tawdry, piney scent of the tiny bars of soap the students showered with.
Wash tumbled to the floor and landed amongst his bunk mates’ dirty laundry and forgotten textbooks. A quick glance at the clock on the dorm’s wall let him know that, unless time slowed and he moved faster than the speed of light, he was going to be late for his flight maneuvers final exam.
Most of flight school came easily to Wash. There wasn’t a mathematical calculation that confused him, and he was often chosen as the Math Department’s “Head Boy” (an antiquated term, now that Sheppard’s School of Space Flight admitted women). The honor bestowed upon the best and brightest included dinner with the Dean of Mathematics, a small, wrinkled man in his late eighties, and a small ceremonial plaque. Wash had several of these plaques on the wall behind his bunk, held there with immense quantities of silicone wall-tape.
He excelled at the physical components of flight as well. In his first week at flight school he had hooked his foot awkwardly over a hurdle and fallen face-first into a water hazard, but several hours of late-night hurdle-jumping practice had made him practically a natural. He could run short distances and long, perform the long-jump and the pole vault, throw and catch several sizes of balls, throw the hammer and the discus, and flip and tumble across a mat nearly as neatly as the tiny female gymnasts of Earth-That-Was. He enjoyed calisthenics and aerobics, and was captain of the school’s netball team. While he didn’t quite know what all the physical activity had to do with piloting a spaceship, he was glad to spend time out in grassy fields or on running tracks. Being in peak physical shape didn’t hurt, either; Wash had never been quite so fit.
Mechanics and engineering science were second-nature to Wash. He could often be found examining screens or repairing engine components. He knew how to measure ships’ captain’s chairs, and had taken great pride in winning the Inter-‘Verse Wire Repair Contest for two years running. Students were presented with a seemingly impossible tangle of wires and challenged to find the single wire causing any number of faults. After reading a manual or textbook just once, he could remember the exact placement of every single part.
For electives he had chosen cooking and musical performance, and spent a few hours each week devoted to those pursuits. In the school’s mess hall, under the watchful eye of the head chef, he and several other students prepared meals for their classmates. Wash had grown fond of peeling potatoes and chopping vegetables, and could prepare a succulent risotto that rivaled the head chef’s for tastiness. In the Sheppard’s Wind Ensemble, he gave his attention to the trumpet, and was often selected for solos. He and the rest of the group had performed at a banquet given to the school’s board of trustees, and Wash had performed the solos in “Children of Sanchez” and “Bugler’s Holiday.”
But there was one aspect of flight school in which Wash was not the golden boy, and that was flight maneuvers. He wasn’t sure why, but for some reason, every time he entered the cockpit of his flight simulator with a flight maneuvers card in his hand, he felt as though he would pass out. And no matter how many times he read the textbooks or how many sets of flashcards he made, he could not remember the subtle differences between a Crazy Ivan and a Candlelighter’s Fancy. Even a simple series of Loop Turns sent his stomach into paroxysms of despair.
The problem was compounded by his flight maneuvers professor, a crotchety middle-aged man who favored brightly-colored knitted sweaters and battered loafers. In some other era, Professor Glass had been a flight maneuvers master, consulting for several private militias. He had written all of the flight maneuvers textbooks used by the students at Sheppard’s. All of the students at Sheppard’s vied for his attention and fought to get into his classes; he was hailed as a “genius” by all who knew him.
He was Wash’s worst nightmare.
Wash had not signed up to be in Professor Glass’s flight maneuvers class. He had actually been hoping for the section taught by Professor LaQueen, an elegant woman who was rumored to be a Companion on the side, and his schedule card had contained her name. But two days later, when he went to the flight simulators bay, a young man there had informed him curtly that he had been transferred to Professor Glass’s class, which was meeting in Bay Eight in six minutes. New to the campus, it had taken Wash twelve to get there and two more to end up in his simulator, by which time Professor Glass had assigned him six demerits and a detention, to be spent cleaning out the G-force simulators.
Professor Glass’s harsh words and persistent mockery of Wash compounded the situation. Three days into the course, Wash was hopelessly and utterly failing. The thought of Professor Glass emptied his mind immediately, and he forgot everything he knew once strapped into the simulator.
He had tried his best, of course, but short of a miracle, there was no way he was going to pass flight maneuvers. He was going to end up being a planet-side pilot, no better than a common rickshaw driver, shuttling the rich and lazy between two not-so-distant points. He was never going to see the black.
Running now, throwing on a wrinkly shirt and two shoes, which may or may not have matched and which may or may not have been his own, he sprinted full-out towards Flight Simulator Bay Eight. As he ran past the gatekeeper, who checked students’ ID cards and handed out helmets or goggles, he threw his ID packet at the man and grabbed the nearest (too-small) helmet, jamming it onto his head as he swung into the simulator.
Breathless, his chest heaving, sweat dripping down his face, he strapped himself into the seat and hit the biggest button on the control panel, the one which would start the simulator. Seconds later, Professor Glass’s gravelly, irritated voice filtered through the com channel. “You’re late, Hoban,” he said. “Even if you receive a perfect score on this exam, I will still be deducting ten points.”
Too angry to speak, Wash just gripped the controls mutely, waiting for his assigned exam maneuvers.
“Break yourself out of atmo,” Professor Glass said dully, “and I’ll be back to give you your maneuvers.”
The com channel clicked off and Wash frantically looked around his simulator for an escape. His dinosaur models looked back at him with their blank plastic eyes. The gatekeeper had his ID packet and he had their helmet; Professor Glass knew he was in the simulator. There was no way out now.
Taking a deep breath he pulled the steering yoke back towards him and hit a series of switches, starting the launch sequence. Garbled radio transmissions bounced around him, but he ignored them. If he was going to fail the flight maneuvers exam, which seemed awfully likely, at least he was going to do it with full points in the launch sequence portion. It was the one thing he could do correctly.
At last the simulator broke atmo and Professor Glass’s voice crackled over the com again. “You have three maneuvers, Hoban,” the older man said. “First, I would like to see a series of Ruchard’s Loop Turns. If you execute less than the full amount of variations, you will be docked five points. Second, perform a Candlelighter’s Fancy with two double-backs and a third-level evasion technique. Your third maneuver is a barn swallow.”
The com channel went silent and panic began to eat at Wash. Professor Glass’s disdain for his abilities was evident. Wash couldn’t even remember all of the variations on the Ruchard’s Loop Turns. His chest went tight. He was going to fail.
As the assignments popped up on one of his screens, Wash noticed something strange about the simulator’s front panel. Usually it showed a complex model of the black the students were flying through. The display was uncomplicated. But this time there was an instrument attached to the inside of the front panel. Wash recognized it immediately; all of his time spent poring over textbooks and parts manuals told him exactly what it was - a Preuss pressure gauge, used to balance the pressure between the inside of the cockpit and the black.
Which meant only one thing. Professor Glass had replaced the flight simulators with actual flight pods. Wash had heard about things like this happening to other students at Sheppard’s, but he never expected it to happen to him, especially during his final exam.
Half of the panic he felt dissipated immediately as his mouth dropped open. He was in the black. He was in the black!
Gobsmacked with an unnamable thrill, Wash pulled up on the steering yoke and gave the engines a quick buzz. They roared beneath him, their sound nearly bringing tears to his eyes. If this was what it felt like to be a pilot, he was going to be one, flight school be damned. If he had to buy a pilot’s certification off the black market and forge a commissioner’s name on the line, he would do it.
On the ground Wash was nothing special, an ordinary fellow who enjoyed music and physical activities. Up here in the black he felt free. He was thinking things he hadn’t thought of since grade school, and things he had never thought of. He was suddenly gripped by the desire to either read all of Proust’s works in one sitting or find a really hot girl and kiss her until his lips went numb.
He had never partaken in recreational drugs, but he thought he knew what being high would feel like. His blood had turned to fizzy champagne, his limbs tingling pleasantly. Warm energy coursed through him. Simply put, he was star-struck.
Suddenly his hands were warm and skilled on the controls. The flight pod shot forward, then spun in a series of Ruchard’s Loop Turns. As Wash banked out of the first turn, he added a Rooster-Tail Dive. After the second turn he performed the tricky up-then-down, up-then-down pattern of a Log Flume. The third turn was capped off by Ruchard’s toughest variation, a Bucket Roll.
Excitement hit Wash like a sudden jolt of electricity. His mouth still wide open, he hollered out, “Whoo-hoo! Yeah!”
His communication screen beeped, showing him the score for his Ruchard’s Loop Turns. It was a perfect 20 - five points apiece for each set of turns and five for the set of variations. The first maneuver disappeared from the list of assignments.
The Candlelighter’s Fancy was up next. His excited hands somehow steady on the controls, Wash threw the ship into a sharp descent. Sweat dripped down his back and a tinge of fear threatened to infect his excitement. He had done this before, back when the simulator was just a simulator. Now he was playing for keeps.
He saw Wanderlust, the planet claimed by Sheppard’s School of Space Flight, rising up before him in the front panel window. When his screens showed that he was eight klicks from atmo, he abruptly leveled the ship out and swung it around in a quick one-eighty. He let the pod go forward a few more klicks before wheeling it around again, performing the second of the two required double-backs.
Now for a third-level evasion technique! Wash nearly laughed aloud as he thought of the one he had chosen - a Sightseer’s Ticket. Not only was it the only third-level evasion technique he could remember, it was definitely a flashy choice.
Again he threw the pod into a nosedive. Thirty feet from the ground alarms began to blare as though to say, “What are you, nuts?”
Undaunted, he grabbed the steering yoke and gave it a sharp yank. The ship leveled and Wash flew, almost blindly, through several groves of fruit trees, trying to find the perfect mark. He selected a tangerine tree at two klicks and sped on towards it. The tree grew up large before him, and he nearly lost his cool. His muscle memory took over, though, and he skimmed the top of the tangerine tree, just as it had been written in the flight maneuvers textbook.
He laughed right out loud when he saw two bright tangerines pop up through the Catcher Hatch in the floor of the pod. Not only would the fruit taste good, but he had just thrown off whatever imaginary tail he had had and aced the second maneuver.
A stegosaurus slid to the side, taking out a brontosaurus as Wash pulled the pod close to atmo and prepared himself for the final maneuver - a barn swallow. It was a Chapter One maneuver, practically the first thing wet-behind-the-ears flight students learned, but it could be dangerous if not performed correctly.
Well, he thought wryly, all flight maneuvers are dangerous if not performed correctly.
That wasn’t going to stop him now, though. He felt as though he had been born in this very pod cockpit chair, as though the controls were extensions of his limbs and the movements of the pod extensions of his thoughts. Though he’d laughed at several other students who tried to “be one with the ship,” he now knew exactly how they felt.
Ahead of him he saw a mule, one of the smallest models made. It was obviously his quarry for the barn swallow. A grin on his face and looseness in his limbs, Wash threw the pod into third shift and gave the engines a little roar. “Opening Catcher Hatch,” he reported over his com channel. He didn’t get a reply, but he wasn’t expecting one.
He gunned the engine and skimmed gently towards the mule. Steady on the yoke, he dipped down until he was level with the mule. Then came the most gut-wrenching part of the barn swallow - driving straight at the stranded vehicle until he caught it. In previous simulator flights, he had only done it correctly twice; the other times had ended badly for the simulated vehicles.
This time it felt as though he was giving the mule a gentle caress. He didn’t even need the screens to tell him he’d caught the mule and it was safely in his Catcher Hatch.
Gleeful, he threw the hatch closed and pulled the pod out of atmo, taking the mule with him. The second break into the black didn’t startle him quite as much, and for some reason it seemed bigger and brighter. He wondered if it would always do that, growing and growing until it was endless and glowing on like a kind face in the darkness. If so, he could definitely get used to it.
Wash threw the pod into another series of Bucket Rolls and followed it with a Rooster-Tail Dive. He was ephemeral, limitless, liquid, just floating and dancing through the black. They would have to pry him out of the cockpit when he died, because he was going to fly and fly and fly and fly until that very minute.
Somehow, though, after twenty minutes of rolling and dipping, he landed the pod in Bay Eight and shut down the engines. He switched off the lights and gathered up his dinosaurs. It was time to go face the music.
He stepped out of the pod, putting dinosaurs into his various vest pockets, and was suddenly aware that all of his classmates were standing on the simulator dock with their mouths open, gaping at him like a freak in a sideshow.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
One of the guys said, “Didn’t you get the wave? They moved the final exam to eleven.”
“Why would they do that?” Wash wanted to know.
He turned around, hearing a groggy moan from the open Catcher Hatch. Professor Glass was sprawled over the doorway to the mule Wash had picked up.
“A professional pilot was coming to test one of the new flight pods,” Wash’s flight school classmate said, mouths still open all around him. “They were prepping the pods, so they moved our exam back.”
Professor Glass managed to pull himself to a standing position, propping himself on the mule’s hatch. There was something crumpled in his fist. “Hoban,” he croaked, “get your ass over here.”
Wash complied, drawing closer the professor, who seemed suddenly small and unimportant. “Yes, sir?”
Glass thrust a crinkly piece of paper at Wash. It was his flight school diploma, and it had been signed with a long jagged red mark. There were several dark spots that Wash thought might have been tears or snot; he wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t going to ask. “Get out of here,” Professor Glass said weakly.
“Yes, sir!” Wash said, happy to obey.
“And for God’s sake, don’t let me see you again. Flying with you once is enough for a lifetime. You should just join the gorram aerial circus… you ever try that with passengers and you’re gonna find yourself homeless and friendless. And don’t think you’re going to score a wife that way - there ain’t a woman out there who thinks what you just did is attractive! Must be nice to be so young and so careless with life! I haven’t seen anything that crazy since I was in flight school! I knew a hotshot like that… what do you think happened to him?”
Wash’s spirits fell a little as he turned to leave. Professor Glass cleared his throat, though, and Wash looked back at him just in time to see the professor wink at him, a small smile rising on his flushed face. “He became a professor,” Glass said softly. “Well done.”