This is a 1,000-word challenge piece written based on an image prompt.
“What is that for?” Kila leaned forward on the railing. She was standing on its bottom edge to get a few more inches off the ground, and her position looked precarious. Definitely not worth it for a better view of the rotating death trap, but then, she’d always been fond of anything monstrous or frightening. At least she claimed to be. Pilau had started wondering if she was just one of those people who liked to be thought of as edgy.
He glanced out at the wheel. The thing was, it wasn’t only found on Earth. (He’d fallen for that before, making a big fuss over skateboards only to have Kila tell him, in the apologetic but firm voice of someone correcting an errant inferior, that they were all over the League of Planets and he’d just never noticed.) There was a big, spoked wheel with cabs hanging off it in Industry Park near his headquarters back home, but he’d never gone near it.
Kila had never been to Industry Park that he knew of, and maybe she’d never seen one of these wheels before. He sure wasn’t going to tell her there was one a mile from his place and he didn’t know what it was for any better than she did. “People are riding in it,” he said.
“Why are they doing that for?”
“I don’t know… they’re just getting spun around the wheel and put back where they came from.” None of this was at all helpful. He looked for some engineering thing to talk about. “The cars are suspended at the top like that so they stay upright as the wheel turns around.”
“Ah.”
She was probably a second away from asking why again. “Because the people don’t want to be upside down.”
She pointed to another machine on the horizon. “That one puts them upside down.”
“Okay, so the people who want to be upside down go in that one, and no, I don’t know why they want to.” He frowned at the machine. It had a big rotating arm that lifted into the air and spun around. “Have you ever gone into one of those?”
“No, never.”
“They’re screaming,” said Pilau, as the machine dipped again and another swell of sound rose from it. “They don’t like it, right? But everyone’s-“ He gestured to a nearby human running past and whooping in delight, a juvenile with tired parents following behind. “Everyone’s happy and they’re here by choice as far as I know. Except for the chaperones, of course.”
She shrugged. “And we had to pay to get in, too.”
“They’re waiting in line to go on these things. Is there some kind of reward they get that we’re not seeing?”
She gave him a lopsided grin that showed fangs. He still hadn’t managed to get their hologram disguises to hide teeth. Fortunately, she didn’t smile that often. “You could go on one and try it.”
“I can’t, there’s a height limit.”
“You would go on if there wasn’t, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” he lied.
“Ach,” she said, turning away and shaking her head, “I shouldn’t press you, though. I wouldn’t want you to really do it, to be honest. Look at that thing! They’ll shake you apart.”
“I’d be fine,” he said, wondering why he was acting like he cared what she thought. He was pretty sure he didn’t. “Although I don’t think the restraints would fit.” He rubbed his lower set of hands together. The hologram hid them from view but didn’t make them not exist. The ‘rides’ seemed to use clamp-style restraints that slammed down on a human’s torso and would smash his lower shoulders.
Twelve was coming back, holding a puff of cotton candy. The humans cleared her path like magic. Pilau always had to dodge and weave to avoid getting clobbered by people’s legs. He’d never figured out how much psionic ability her species had. Was she telekinetically scattering people out of her way? Telepathically telling them to move?
Probably not. She was a foot taller than Pilau and much more visible.
“Sorry I took so long, there was a line,” she said, taking up a place on Kila’s other side. “Are you two watching the Ferris wheel?”
“The what?”
“It’s called a Ferris wheel… not related to the Ferris you know.”
Right, right. Kila had had some kind of personal assistant-cum-chauffeur named Ferris, a Stronian. He’d worked for Pilau a little while in one of the satellite offices until he made enough to retire and start his own business on his homeworld. According to the reports from the office on that satellite, he’d been a phenomenal employee… maybe Pilau should have worse retirement plans.
They hadn’t worked with each other directly, so he still thought of Ferris as Kila’s minion. She was staring bemusedly at the Ferris wheel now, as if trying to divine a connection where she’d just been told none existed.
“We were just trying to figure out why the humans ride that thing,” said Pilau, keeping his voice low so none of the humans would hear him talking about them in a way that made it clear he didn’t consider himself part of their group, although Twelve said it was common for humans to pretend not to be humans and if they overheard him they would assume Pilau was doing that. That didn’t make any more since to him than the Ferris wheel.
She smiled. “It’s fun.”
“Fun?”
“I’ve been up there three times.”
Kila turned to her. “Don’t do that again. Look at it- it looks like it’s going to collapse!”
“It’s not as flimsy as it looks,” said Pilau, “the struts are pretty good support- but what’s fun about it?”
“Why, you get a great view.”
“I get a pretty good view from my ship.”
“It’s nice,” she mused. “You should try it.”
Pilau glanced at Kila. He usually thought Twelve was the most level-headed of them, but this was a glaring exception.
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