🌈 ☯️Teresita🐧👭

November 2026 #maga

One book to rule them all #c64

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My #Microsoft #Basic code was impenetrable just like my Python code is today, but still short and sweet. @BunnehUsagiChan@techhub.social

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"It doesn't hurt anywhere," she replied. "It didn't happen today." Kincaid leaned over the cockpit rim, his thick fingers reaching down to her knees. He took the heavy handle of his brass-tipped flashlight and sharply tapped the patellar tendon just below her right kneecap. Nothing. Not a twitch. The quadriceps remained entirely soft and unresponsive. He struck the left knee with identical precision. The leg hung limp, completely dead to the stimulus. Beside him, Harlan watched her eyes. As an academic who had studied indigenous ceremonies and mental discipline, he knew that shock or trauma usually caused involuntary flinching, dilated pupils, or a tightening of the jaw. There was none of that. "She's telling the truth, Frank," Kincaid said quietly, looking back at the sheriff. "Zero motor response. No reflex arc at all. She's completely paralyzed from the waist down." "Look down there," Brawley interrupted, pointing his Winchester toward the base of the gravel slope twenty paces away near a clump of dry rabbitbrush. Sitting upright in the dirt was a wheelchair.

Caldwell looked at the footprints all around the downed vehicle. "Light frame. Small boots. But I don't see which way they lead. He turned back toward the cockpit, his face darkening. "Who was in that left seat with you, miss?" Remiel looked down at him from the high cockpit rim. Her pulse, visible at the hollow of her throat, didn't accelerate by a single beat, and she said nothing. Before Caldwell could press further, the sound of heavy combustion engines rumbled over the eastern mesa. It wasn't the sweet, whistling hum of Harlan’s Power Wagon or the sputter of Kincaid's water truck. It was the crushing, low-gear roar of a military convoy: six-by-six GMC troop transports and heavy Dodge command cars churning up a cloud of dust along the ranch fence line. "Army," Brawley spat, levering a round into the chamber of his Winchester with a sharp, oily clack. "They're cutting my wire." "Put that rifle down, Red," Caldwell commanded, stepping between the rancher and the crest of the hill. "Walter, get that girl out of the cockpit right now. Put her in that wheelchair and we'll thrash out who gets her when company's all here."

Harlan walked down to inspect it. It was made of varnished ash and bent oak, with heavy spoked wheels and leather armrests. It looked sturdy, practical, but strangely unused. "It came out of the rear stowage bay," the girl said, her voice carrying easily down the slope. "My friend took it out before leaving so it would be ready for me." Sheriff Caldwell's eyes snapped up from the wheelchair to the aircraft's cockpit. He lunged two steps around to the port side, his hand dropping straight to his revolver. The command pilot’s seat was entirely empty. The harness straps lay splayed across the bucket cushion, unbuckled and cast aside in obvious haste. But the physical evidence of an immediate departure was everywhere: On the left-side aluminum floorboard, a dropped flight-log pencil lay snapped in two. A leather sheepskin-lined flying helmet rested on the seat pan, its intercom wire dangling loose. "Frank," Brawley said, his voice dropping an octave as he raised the muzzle of his carbine. "Someone took off on foot. Couldn't have been more than ten minutes ago."

She was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick, dark reddish-brown hair tumbling in disarray over the collar of a plain canvas flight jacket. Her hands rested flat and relaxed across her lap. As the cluster of dusty, armed men emerged over the lip of the slope, she didn't flinch, scream, or reach for a weapon. She merely turned her head toward them, her icy green eyes cool, unblinking, and entirely devoid of fear. "Hold on, miss!" Kincaid yelled, surging down the loose gravel slope, his boots sending cascades of red beads rattling against the polished hull. "Don't move! We're the Jemez Springs Fire Crew! Help is here!" Caldwell, Harlan, and Brawley followed closely behind, sliding down the loose embankment. "Stay back until we check for electrical shorts!" Kincaid ordered his crew. When he reached the right side of the craft, his boots sank four inches into the odd volcanic gravel. He laid a bare hand tentatively against the aircraft's hull, expecting scorching heat or an electrical bite. It was cool to the touch. Cooler than the ambient air.

Painted across the curved flank in fluid, hand-brushed lettering was a single name: Remiel. There was no propeller. No radial engine cowling. No trailing exhaust pipes or supercharger scoops. And most unnerving of all, there was no stench of scorched metal, no dripping puddle of high-octane avgas, and no airframe crumple. Except for the left-side cant into the loose volcanic beads, the craft sat on the desert floor like a jewel placed deliberately on a velvet cushion. "Look at the glass," Harlan breathed, stepping forward, his archaeologist's eye immediately dissecting the anomalies. The dual bubble canopies were unsealed. The left-side canopy was thrown completely open, resting wide against the fuselage. The right-side canopy had been popped up and latched open a few inches, catching the dry breeze. "Sheriff," Kincaid said, dropping into an instinctive rescue crouch. "We've got movement in the right seat." Inside the starboard cockpit sat a young woman.

"Can you hear me, miss?" Kincaid asked, reaching up to the canopy sill. "I hear you fine," she said. Her voice was remarkably steady, smooth, and delivered in unaccented, Midwestern American English that sounded as if she had grown up in an Ohio farmhouse. "You don't need your axes. I'm not trapped in here." "Then let's get you unbuckled and down onto the ground before something cooks off," Sheriff Caldwell said, stepping up to the cockpit rim, his badge catching the glare. "I'm Sheriff Frank Caldwell, Sandoval County. Who are you, young lady, and whose airplane is this?" The girl offered a faint, enigmatic half-smile but nothing in the way of answers. "What you see is what you get, Sheriff." "She's in shock," Kincaid declared, reaching in to release her shoulder harness. The heavy webbing snapped free. "Come on, miss. Swing your legs over the side. Lean on my shoulder." But the girl didn't move. Her expression remained entirely neutral. "I can't," she said plainly. Kincaid frowned. "What do you mean you can't?" Kincaid’s demeanor shifted from cautious firefighter to gentle medic. "Did the crash break your back? Where does it hurt?"

"Which is precisely why we need to hustle," Harlan insisted. "A plane that hits at two hundred knots and doesn't explode is either carrying something worse than gasoline, or there are folks pinned inside who need a hacksaw and a field dressing before they bleed out." "Grab the first-aid kit, boys," Kincaid barked to his men. "Axes, pry bars, and the stretcher. Pick 'em up and put 'em down." The six men struck out on foot across the blistering expanse of the borrow pit flats. It was a punishing, ankle-breaking march. The earth was covered in loose, shifting volcanic scree that slid like ball bearings under heavy work boots. The heat radiated off the ground in wavy, nauseating shimmers, smelling of baked pine needles, alkaline dust, and hot iron. Every yard had to be negotiated through dense clusters of prickly pear and stiff yucca bayonets that tore at canvas trousers. By the time they crested the low volcanic ridge overlooking Brown’s Lake, Harlan’s shins were bleeding and the volunteer firemen were gasping under the weight of the steel rescue gear.

Down in the basin, waiting for them beside a weathered fence post, was a solitary figure in a faded blue denim jacket and a sweat-stained Stetson, a scarred Winchester .30-30 carbine resting loosely in the crook of his arm. William E. "Red" Brawley had not waited for the law. "Took your sweet time, Frank," Brawley drawled as Caldwell stumbled down the loose embankment. The old rancher tilted his chin toward the bottom of the gravel slope. "Thought you boys might like to see what the Army dropped in my heifer pasture." The group stepped onto the rim of the depression and stopped dead in their tracks. "Mother of God," Kincaid muttered, letting the heavy steel pry bar slip in his leather grasp. Resting thirty yards below, canted hard on its port side on a bed of loose, pea-sized brownish-red volcanic beads, was the craft. Up close, the machine was even more alien than it had appeared through Harlan’s binoculars. It was broad and hexagonal, its seamless aluminum hull gleaming under the high desert sun without a single visible rivet, weld bead, or seam.