The Green Machine

John was not surprised to see that Rose owned one of those little micro-compact mini cars you hear that all the environmental freaks owned, he was shocked to see it covered in solar panels. Rose leaned out the window and waved at John.

“John! Come on, I’d use the horn but that will drain the solar battery!” She hadn’t stopped but she had begun to slow down as he approached the car. “Just jump in! Starting the car up takes up the majority of my power and a full day charging in the parking lot is required to make sure it’s ready.”

John grumbled as he opened the door, following the car at a light jog before hurling himself into the car with a loud grunt. He pulled the door shut. “Thanks for stopping to get me, without you know...stopping.”

“No problem science buddy.” Rose said a cup of coffee grasped in one of her many tendrils. She sipped at it. “Ahhh, you’d think knowing the owners of CONA we’d get a discount, I swear they charge us extra.”

“They do.” John said as he belted himself in, tossing his pack in the backseat of the cramped little car. “Cora sends every place in the city photos of us and tells them to charge us an extra dollar per purchase. They also spell our names wrong every time,” he looked at Rose’s cup, “I mean yours says Ronald.”

“...I thought that was because the barista was French.” Rose said quietly. “Well they’re jerks!” She slapped the wheel of her car and the horn wheezed. The car stopped dead. “Crud. Solar battery went dead.” She leaned out the side of the car and slapped one of the solar panels on the roof a few times.

The car coughed back into life. “There we go!” Rose said with a big grin. “We’re still doing fine.”

“Rose,” John said slowly, “I get wanting to save the planet but don’t you think this is a little much? I mean can your car even get over forty?”

“In this city? I don’t think the roads have ever been clear enough to get to twenty.” Rose said with a nod. Sipping at her coffee. “Besides we could have carpooled with your car if you hadn’t...what did you do with it again?”

“Tried to build a fighting robot body for Cheapo.” John said. “It sounded like a good idea after twelve five hour energy drinks and a Robot-Wars marathon. Sides Cheapo was into it.” He shrugged his shoulders and went to roll down the window. As he pressed the button the car...actually slowed down.

“Can...can you not.” Rose said as the car almost screeched to a halt. John had the window half down when he stopped. “Th-thanks.” Rose said slowly. “I might have went a little overboard with the solar powered stuff but I saw a documentary-”

“Oh no.”

“A documentary about how bad fossil fuels are for the planet!” She continued on pointing at him with a tentacle. “It’s honestly horrible so the GREEN MACHINE was my method to fix it.”

“What did Leandross say about it at the vehicle meeting?” John asked and Rose vibrated a little in her seat, lips pursed. “He turn it down Rose?”

“He turned it down!” Rose snapped slamming the wheel, the two held their breath but the car didn’t stop. It trundled onward, valiantly. “Said it was unfeasible to get it working. Said in this city the skyline and muggy air means that it would never reach appropriate charge levels. I told him that was crazy talk. So to prove it I’m driving it to work everyday this month.”

“Slowly.” John said. “I mean he does have a point, did it get any charge at dawn?” John looked at her wiring job from the inside, the connections were all made correctly so if there was a decent supply charge wouldn’t be hard.

“I mean a little,” Rose said, “but there’s that big apartment block opposite me so it blocked most of it. At lunch I’ll get a charge that can do me till I get to work tomorrow,” she hissed as she saw a red light ahead, “but it’s all the starts and stops that makes the mornings hard.”

“So it’s never charged to a full...tank?”

“It’s just a full charge, no tank to fill just battery acids to energize.”

“Oh okay,” John said the terminology was important, “so it’s never hit a full charge?”

“If we had a super sunny weekend we could probably get it there.” She pointed at the cloudy sky above. “So far we’ve not been lucky.” John pulled a note-book from one pocket and made some quick sketches.

“U.V. an option? Perhaps plug it up next to a tanning salon or a growth lamp?” He asked looking at her. “A very big growth lamp yes, but they do filament bulbs in UV now.”

“It might work,” Rose said, “but at the same time I don’t have ready access to a sunbed and I don’t have a garage. So I refuse to be that lady who covers her car in heat lamps, I mean, if anything that’d do just as much damage to the environment as the car would normally.”

John scratched at his note-pad and nodded. “True. True. Focusing lense, maybe build a small tracking extension onto the car or your house to track the sun and magnify it onto the car? Sort of like a way to guarentee the car gets a ready supply of energy?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Rose said with a nod. “I’d worry it might scorch the solar panels. But I suppose with a focused stream of light I wouldn’t need like.. Twelve panels on the car.” She said.

“Might have been easier to just make the car out of the material. I know they’re marking some roads out of it now.” John began to sketch out a quick schematic for a magnifying array. “Might even be a good idea to plug it up to the solar converter in the car, so when it reaches a level it stops charging. I mean there’s no way to overcharge.”

“It holds a finite amount of energy,” Rose coughed, “well...the final model would. This one...well.”

“Rose...what did you do?” John looked around his seat in case it might explode at any moment. “Are we SAFE in this car Rose!?”

“We are!” She slapped at him. “Stop that right now. It’s just with all the panels I felt like I could attach more batteries. Leandros might not know MUCH about the science of it but he was right that I’d need to scrimp and save power as much as possible.” She tapped the dashboard. “So there’s two batteries up front, three in the under carriage and five in the trunk.”

“So there’s TEN engines worth of power in the car...just...we can only use a fraction of one?” John sucked air through his teeth, the engineer inside him was HORRIFIED at such a mismanagement of power usage. “That’s pretty terrible, Rose, I mean really bad. I mean you’re probably already kneecapping the car by forcing it to share what little it gets with every engine.”

“I know!” Rose hissed. “I put this thing together out of spite and necessity,” she coughed, “I didn’t make the best engineering choices. I shoulda maybe come to you, yes. But I had to prove a point to Leandros.”

John wanted to say something but Rose squealed and killed his train of thought. “Oh no!” She wheezed. “There’s traffic!” John looked ahead and yes there was traffic. Gridlocked traffic as ever.

“Yes…”

“There’s no way we’re gonna make it to Blast co.” She said all at once. “I mean looking at these gauges.” She leaned up to the wheel, squinting some in concentration. “We’re never going to make it, there’s like...no fuel at all….I mean it always says that cause I took out the gas tank but like...my point stands.”

“Right, okay,” John reached into the back and grabbed his bag. “Let’s see what we’ve got to work with. I’ve got some unstable chemicals, some flashlight, some of those crystals my hippie next door neighbours keeps giving me screaming about chakra. Do you have any,” John was going to ask chemicals or spare science gadgets but Rose just pointed at the glove box. John popped it open.

“Okay so you’ve got a scanner matrix, fabricator screen and a sampler.” He grunted a few times. “I’ve got something, it’s crazy.”

“Well we’ve got time for crazy,” Rose said as the traffic slowly got closer, “whatever you’re thinking do it fast.”

“So like. My plan,” John said as he waggled out the half open window to look at the solar array on the roof. “Is to build my lense idea albeit with some modifications.” He bit down on his finger tip and pulled at it until the false skin slid off his robot hand.

“Such as?” Rose asked using her tendril arm to hold John steady as he worked.

“First of all I remove the lens from the flashlight I had,” his robotic hand clamped the fingers together, a thin light emanating from the tips of his fingers neatly sliced the lens free from it’s housing, “replace it with my hippy neighbours crystal. It’ll act as our lens and a heatbank, lord knows we’ll need one.”

“John what are you thinking of doing?” Rose had a sneaking suspicion but she had to be sure. “I mean I’m good for anything that isn’t us breaking down in public and me crying.”

“Well I figure,” he grabbed the discarded flash light lens and slotted it the sampler and used his laser finger to graft that into the fabricator matrix. “We need sunlight so my plan is to get us a sample using an ad hoc lens system, plug that into a fabricator and use our chemicals to generate a miniature sun laser to charge up the car.”

“Oh,” Rose said nodding, “have you considered that creating a tiny sun to charge up my car might, you know, fail and light our atmosphere on fire and kill all life on Earth?”

“Oh Rose,” John said with a laugh, “it’s a micro-sun at worst it will vaporize me into a skeleton and destroy the surrounding three blocks.” John paused. “Would you rather I didn’t do this and the project is scrapped?”

“No I didn’t say stop!” Rose hissed. “Just make sure that you’ve got the sample before you start the fabricator it’s going to burn those chemicals making up nothing.”

“Rose this isn’t my first time building a miniature sun.”

“It isn’t?”

“ I really wanted midnight burritos one night and the microwave was broken.”

“You tried to turn the microwave into an interdimensional radiation TV again didn’t you?” Rose said and when John said nothing back she knew she was right. She just focused on slowing down enough to keep them from having to stop.

John held up the lens and sampler trey to try and reflect some sunlight. There was a brief ping to tell him a sample had been collected. “Okay, sample collected.” He unscrewed the back of the flashlight, tipping out the battering into his hand- never know when you might need batteries.
“Okay, hold onto something Rose we might be about to explode.” John attached the fabricator matrix to the back of the torch and leaned back, switching it on. He was super happy not to have exploded but he hissed at once at the heat, putting the torch in his robotic hand quickly.

“Let there be light!” John commanded with a laugh as he fanned his little ray of sunshine across the solar panels on the roof. “Is that charging us up?”

“Ha ha it is!” Rose crowed as the car began to pick up speed. “We should be fine, starting and stopping so long as you keep blasting us with that thing when we need it. You can stop now.” Rose said and John’s legs kicked. “John?”

“So..bad news,” John squeaked, “the on..button has melted and I can’t turn it off.”

“Oh…” Rose said noticing they were still speeding up. “John! John don’t point it at the solar panels John!” The cars ahead were getting closer and closer and slamming on the breaks didn’t seem to do anything.

“Rose don’t panic! DON'T PANIC!” John screeched as the two batteries in the back of the car exploded and their car LAUNCHED over the morning traffic. “I think we’re gonna shoe Leandros just how fast and efficient a turbocharged solar car is!”

The car sailed over the traffic and hurtled off into the distance. Spewing sunlight and warmth as it shot overhead.

---

Leandros stood there and nodded. “I can’t argue with results Rose, your car beat mine into work. Not only is it more fuel efficient but it’s clearly maintained all of it’s speed.” He tore free a slip of paper. “Here’s a cheque to start a high scale product scheme, thinking maybe make it a bigger car or lessen the solar panels.”

“Of course!” Rose said happily taking the cheque and backing out of the office slowly. John was sat outside waiting for her, every piece of him sunburnt red raw. “We got the project.”

“Hooray.” John said. “He didn’t notice the car was half melted or on fire?”

“No too surprised it beat him to work.” Rose said. “Now we just gotta iron out all the kinks and power stuff. Like you said one larger battery makes more sense and maybe see if we can’t make the top of the car from solar panels.”

“Maybe add a tiny sun to everyone’s car?”

“HA HA no.” Rose said without humour. “No. Let’s not.”

“That was a joke Rose.”