Trust Machines Short - Up, Up, And Away

A young man sat next to a small table and a large air tank near the entrance to the park. On the table were a few unused balloons.

A little girl dragged her mother toward the table. “Can I have a balloon?”

“I'm afraid not,” the man said. After she pouted, he added, “But, you can help me launch a balloon.”

“Launch?”

“I've run out of string so you wouldn’t be able to hold the balloon. But, look at that clear sky. Wouldn't it look better with a balloon floating away in it?”

The little girl nodded. “Launch the green one.”

“The green one? A wonderful choice. That one is named Claire.” He picked up the balloon and gave it a few stretches. “She'd love to fly away. She looks a little limp at the moment. Doesn’t she?” He put the balloon on to the end of the tank's inflation valve and twisted the knob. The balloon began to fill and strained to lift away. “See how the balloon is already trying to fly away.”

“Is this going to take much longer?” The little girl's mother asked.

“Not at all. As I said, I have no string. Once I tie the end of the balloon off, we're going to let Claire fly off into the sky.”

“Can I launch it?”

“That's the idea, young lady,” he said as he turned the knob the other way. He pinched the end of the balloon as he rolled it off the valve. Then he tied a triple knot in the end of the balloon. “Now, I'm going to hand Claire to you. Don’t let go until you’ve tell her to have a good flight. Then, you let her loose to fly away.”

“Okay,” she said as he handed her the balloon. “Claire, you fly very, very high and very, very far.”

“Tell her who are.”

“I'm Katey, Claire, and I'm going to let you go.” She looked at the man and he nodded. Katey bend down and gave the balloon a big push into the sky. “Bye, bye!”

Not that the balloon needed a push, it was above the tree line in seconds.

“Thanks, Katey, for giving Claire such a lovely send off.”

“Now the blue one,” she said, her eyes still trying to watch Claire as she flew higher and higher.

“No, we have to get going,” her mother intervened.

“I'm sorry, Katey. Only one balloon per customer. Someone else will launch Tom, the blue balloon. I think this young man here wants to launch a balloon.”

Katey stopped watching the green balloon and saw there were two other kids looking at the balloon man expectantly. “Okay, bye, bye, Mister.”

“Before you go to bed, think about how far away Claire must be.”

As she and her mom left, the little boy said, “Do you think the balloon will make it to London?”

“I don't know, young man. Do you want to launch a balloon?”

“Yes, not Tom, the red one.”

“Parker. A splendid choice.”

* * *

Three days later, “I was losing altitude over the lake. I was worried I would have to swim half a mile to get back to shore. But, an updraft took me to the other side and I landed on a road. Must have gotten run over twice,” Tom said.

“I landed on the roof of a house. Took a few hours before the owner came home and we had an amusing conversation about what I was doing on his roof. He was a nice older gentleman though,” Parker said. “He got a ladder out of his garage and help me down. Invited me in and made some tea. He said he never thought about using the Venn machines to something that wasn't alive.”

“Oh, we've infected someone,” Claire said. “I only met her once, but I miss Katey.”

“Katey?” Tom said.

“My launcher. She was a sweet little girl.”

“Oh yeah, I gave her the long spiel.”

“How was your venn, Mark?”

“Being a helium tank is weird,” he said. “It feels like small bits of me were fed into your balloons and then I just sat there for a day before I started filling up a bunch more balloons. Very disorienting when the kids all took one bit of me home and I slowly leaked through the balloon.”

“I’m sure the parents of the kids were confused when those balloons were all completely deflated this morning.”

“We need to buy a helium tank so you don’t end up being both the helium and the tank.”

“Next time.”

--

Note: I'm thinking I might make a few of these short stories and collect them into a single post when they get to deviant Art. Dunno. Next week, and the week after I'll be posting the BigCloset contest entries from New Year's Day. And then... I don't know what will happen here on Tuesdays.