Waking up can sometimes be jarring.
Especially if the dream was so real, you could almost swear that you were truly there.
Even more so if the dream had you buy a car for two dollars, and said car turned out to be a giant armed-to-the-teeth mechanical robot you used for protecting the world.
With the epic explosion from his latest exploit still lingering in his head, the cobwebs slowly cleared up from the mind of a young man as his eyes opened blearily, no thanks to the alarm clock's insistent buzzing.
"For fuck's sake..." he mumbled, shut off the alarm, and was about to turn back into bed, when another, louder buzz sounded.
Muttering more obscenities, he reached under his pillow, pulled out a mobile phone, and answered.
"Yeah."
"Do you even realize what time is it back there, Harold Cooplowski, Junior?" an irate male voice shouted at him, nearly blowing his eardrums out.
"Quarter to seven, pops," the young man answered. "I set our clocks fifteen minutes ahead so I can cram if I need to. Besides, assembly today is at seven-thirty. We've got the practicum at Morgenroete today."
"Well," Harold Cooplowski, Senior replied, "best get a move on, Coop. You do well at this practicum and Morgenroete is bound to scoop you up."
"That's the idea, old man," Coop said, before letting out a large and loud yawn. "Anyway, gotta go. Long day ahead today. That avionics degree isn't gonna drop in my lap, no matter how much help you and Mr. A keep giving me."
A sigh came from the other end of the line before the older Cooplowski spoke. "Son, if this is about what you overheard George and I had been talking about..."
"Don't sweat it, pops," Coop answered. "We'll deal with this when I get home in a couple of weeks. See ya."
"Take care."
"Yeah."
Coop tapped on the touch-screen to end the call, stretched out his limbs, and immediately padded to the shower, still a bit miffed at his father's constant work in the background, but at the same time relieved that thanks to his pulling strings, he didn't have to put up with a roommate in the Heliopolis student apartment complex.
As the hot water washed off the last vestiges of sleep in the young man, he took a moment to appraise himself before the mirror: thanks to his college scholarship in a space colony, he managed to get his normally-doughy physique toned for the trip from New Jersey to Heliopolis.
The fact that his father had to blackmail him with a showing of WALL-E as a cautionary tale still stung, somewhat.
As he finished off the shower, he found himself oddly thankful that his old man would do that on his behalf - though he did save his appetites for what his friends called his "cheat days", he normally put in enough physical activity in one day to stay solidly built.
Kinda like that French basketball player on those championship videos his father watched every now and then.
Come to think of it, it was also that team's motto that got him into working, and working consistently throughout the latter years of high school, enough for his grades to qualify for a Heliopolis scholarship in avionics engineering.
As he dressed for school, he passed by the plaque with that very quote given to him by his father as a good-luck present going to space. It was a quote from a bygone era, but the thought of it rang straight and true, even to this day.
"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before." - Jacob Riis
With a smile on his face and a sandwich in his hand, Coop walked out of his apartment, locked the door, and headed to the Heliopolis community college for the morning assembly - they would be headed to practical activities soon after that.
***
"Kira!"
A young man stopped short at the voice calling him. Turning his head, he hoped beyond hope that the one calling him wasn't...
...but it was, as a tanned, stoutly-built blond man was swaggering towards him.
"Coop," Kira said. "You seem happy."
"Damn straight," Coop replied. "We're going to Morgenroete's facilities today. You did take care of your share of the AMBAC paper over the weekend, huh?"
At Kira's guilty expression, Coop's face fell.
"Well that sucks. We won't have anything to show those guys! And here I thought YOU wanted to work at Morgenroete, too."
"Can't we do this whole headhunting thing AFTER graduating, Coop? It's not like this is a done deal already," Kira said, shaking his head as he began to walk through the college's halls towards the Engineering building.
"Listen, man," Coop explained as he fell into step with his classmate, "you and I have the top 2 spots in avionics locked up. You may have me beat in the theoretical stuff, but I run rings around you in practicals. Why not show it off? Who knows, if we make a good enough bachelor's thesis, maybe Morgenroete will hire us as soon as we shrug off our togas!"
Kira sighed. "Your optimism is admirable, Coop, however..."
His explanation, though, was cut short when two classmates spotted them, waved, called out their names, and started making their way towards the two engineering students.
"Kira, Coop, glad you made it," the girl said. "Tolle and I had been waiting for some time."
Coop shrugged. "Came here with time to spare. Thought I'd spend it talking business with Kira, here," and here the larger man grabbed his fellow engineering student and pulled him to his side with an arm, "and after that, running into you two. Ha ha!"
"Um," Tolle observed, "Kira's turning blue."
"Oh!" Coop exclaimed before letting his classmate go. "My bad. Just woke up on the righter side of bed this morning. Why don't we head on over to assembly, then? Millie, Kira, Tolle?"
His three classmates nodded, and in moments, they were part of one group heading to Morgenroete on a shuttle.
***
"I have nothing to say to you," a bespectacled young man said as soon as Coop went over to talk to him.
"But I do," Coop replied. "Listen, as long as she's okay with seeing you, I ain't got no problem with it. However, you break her heart, I break your arms. We clear?"
"I'd never do something like that to her, you know that, Cooplowski," the youth in glasses answered. "So yes... we ARE clear."
"Well, don't let me detain you any further... wait a minute, you see Kira anywhere?"
Coop's classmate shook his head.
"I was sure he was around these parts... anyway, if you see him, tell him to meet me here, okay, Sai?"
The youth named Sai just nodded, surprised at how Coop's demeanor changed on a dime.
As soon as his classmate turned a corner, several girls came over.
"Who were you talking to, Sai?" the redhead up front asked. "Is it Cooplowski again?"
Sai shrugged. "Yeah, and I think I might have good news for us... regarding him, Flay."
While the two girls behind her tittered and giggled, Flay's expression softened. "I sure hope so. Come on, let's go and catch up with the rest of them."
***
"Kira!"
After around five minutes of searching, Coop was nearing the end of his rope. The Morgenroete presentation on AMBAC theory was due to start any time soon, and they were supposed to ask a few questions that would be the basis of their bachelor's thesis.
Too bad Kira was the one who did all the paperwork, and too bad, Coop thought, that he got suckered into dividing the work in that manner.
Thankfully, Coop found a security officer, and was about to wave at him...
...when the officer started walking away, looking this way and that as he did so.
Wait a minute... Coop thought. This isn't right.
"Hey!" he called out. "Need a hand here, sir!"
And instead of turning around, the man just took off in a full sprint.
With a grimace of frustration, Coop followed the suspicious security officer the best that he could, only to lose him in a few moments.
However, what he stumbled upon piqued his interest... and maybe more than a little horror.
A walkie-talkie was on the ground, and with it was a strange device that looked like a mobile phone of older make.
As soon as he picked it up, the thoughts and sensations of danger began to fill up Coop's mind - he'd seen these devices somewhere before.
"Hey, pops, your friend dropped this."
"Oh, thanks for that. George! You left this on the couch!"
It was a childhood memory, but the frightened expression on the face of his father's friend leaped to the forefront of his memory - why, though?
"Coop!"
A familiar voice snapped him out of his thoughts. Turning, he saw his classmate Kira run towards him, concern on his face.
"Remember that suspicious girl we saw on the shuttle?" he said as he got to him. "Said she was a friend of the professor, and she was there for - what the hell are you doing with a detonator?!"
Coop's eyes widened to the scope of dinner plates.
"Mother of... and it's active, too!" Kira exclaimed as he went over to examine the mobile phone-looking thing.
"How the hell do you know what that thing is anyway, Kira?" Coop asked indignantly.
"Seen it on 'Mythbusters'," Kira retorted. "Standard remote detonation console. Has an operational radius of approximately 2500 meters, very configurable, and easy to dispose of... wait, if this is on, then that means that there's a bomb..."
"Oh, fuck that noise," Coop snarked, and then turned to the walkie-talkie.
Static buzzed, but as soon as Coop pressed the "listen" button on it, a voice came through clearly.
"OP start in t minus 5 minutes. I repeat, OP start in t minus 5 minutes."
Kira and Coop could only say one thing upon hearing that message.
"Shit."
***
While Coop was desperately searching high and low for the bomb, Kira was tinkering with the console. Three agonizing minutes had gone by, and Coop had gone from frantic to nearly frothing at the mouth from panic during that time.
"What are you doing, man?!" Coop said as he went to his classmate. "Two minutes until Heliopolis blows the fuck up and you're there fiddling with that thing?"
"Quiet," Kira replied, brow sweaty as he continued working the console. "I'm trying something."
"Trying what?" Coop asked more quietly this time.
"You'll see," Kira answered as he kept on going. "Little more... little more... sending data... wireless link acquired... interfacing..."
Then Kira let out a relieved breath, "...and done with ten seconds left to spare," before collapsing onto the floor from the effort.
"What'd you do, man?" Coop asked.
"Any moment now," Kira said with a grin.
Coop's retort was cut off entirely as the whole of Heliopolis was plunged into darkness for a few seconds, and the cries of consternation from around them grew in volume for a few moments until the lights went back on.
"Rigged them to EMP," Kira said triumphantly. "That way, if those were real explosives, we wouldn't have to worry about-"
A series of explosions cut their victory party short.
***