Red Entaries

Twelve

The night was young as Cliff would say, and in the chairman's case, Lorena, which Trevor believed was her real name, but she was half Trev's age with the plus of having an equal maturity in character. Joanna was given secretary work aiding the chief information officer, working with him to develop a website for hiring a new security chief and three more security guards. Tyrone was spending his off-duty time with his wife and son Jr. at home, while Clifford was handling engineer work assembling ore scanners.

Edward was worried about Trevor's date with Joanne. Trahern received a text message on this muddy January night of the fourteenth; the scheduled day for dinner and the day before the spaceship launched for the Moon. Trevor saw a blurry flash in his mind, possibly about a future for Lunar Life Corp when his com began to message him. It was twelve meters before the next stop light when bending streetlights came into his vision to make him squirm for a shadow. Trev's eyes squinted until he flipped the dark visor of his hover motorcycle's helmet. Then stopping to read this urgent com text message from Joanna, to meet her at a diner and search for oncoming traffic, a gust of wind helped steady the beast of a hover bike when Trevor stretched out his legs.

All eight tail pipes plunged into a gushing white cloud until vaporizing on the hover car's windshield flanking him. The hover bike was quiet and had a wider arcing turn than the smaller hover motorcycle that flew down Dahlgren Plaza Street as Trahern turned in the very same road.

Nearly two-hundred and fifty meters awaited the next intersection. Trevor's vision became clear behind the streetlights as he briefly passed Lunar Life Corp. Trev enjoyed a deep inhale as he took in the scenery: Pine oaks, london plane trees and honey locusts curbed the embankments of many driveways, drive throughs, and parking lots, then, another flash in Trevor's mind became pristine hearing a hover fire engine's siren and seeing a view of the front gate of an all-night police operation. He saw the long billowy tails of a stubborn fire as it appeared to be a mile in length, and almost forty meters from Lunar Life Corp's front entrance. Trevor was split wondering if his skyscraper could be salvaged.

Covering the sun's rays in Trev's flash-forward, the black smokestacks were driven under to reach an intersection where he waited for several vehicles passing by, then finally, he made a left into Eighty-sixth Street. From here it was a minute and thirty-second drive to Fifth Avenue then a short turn on Eighty-seventh Street, which was also the name of a small diner now taking carry out with a machine waiter. Here he decided to meet the text messenger in the parking lot.

The diner came into view as Trevor cornered Eighty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue. He saw the awning of the building near four parked vehicles and found a woman standing in the wind next to a parked silver car, which had etched marks along its side and holes through the back windshield.

She had blue jeans and a wild violet blouse with auburn sunglasses while nodding to him before removing them. Trevor saw her chestnut brown irises as he drove alongside the parking spot and didn't remove his helmet until he was toe to toe with the woman who text messaged him.

Trahern grasped her hands shoulder to shoulder and gasped in dismay, "Lorena you're hurt."

Trevor noticed both a two-inch scrape along her shoulder and a dry blotched bloodstain across her neck. Trev hugged her shivering body as she dropped her sunglasses and he lost his bike helmet, feeling the length of Joanna's hair along her back to calm her down as she couldn't help from heaving weak hacks. He comforted her for forty-five more seconds until a group of customers opened the diner interior doors.

"I ordered coffee, we should take a seat," Joanne said, as she cringed to hold her neck.

"What happened Lorena," Trevor said, in bewilderment.