KARA & KAL; THE TRUE STORY
Chapter 16

 

With the first day of the new school year uneventful, starting the second day, things began to get going. While Journalism was a blast, five of my classes gave homework, usually reading the initial couple of chapters of the schoolbook for that class.

Kara and I developed a pattern. We had a dresser in our room that usually had nothing on top of it. We put our schoolbooks on it, in letter order ... with just enough space to put eight different classes of books. No book for PE! With my own money, I got a book to help me get learn and understand how to get around on the Internet, with a few chapters on how to build a website!

With our ability to read quickly along with our eidetic memories, once we read something we knew it. We asked questions of one another, making sure we could answer in class without stumbling over hard-to-pronounce names and places.

We adjusted to this quirky new schedule. Kara helped me with typing skills. I would place my hands on the home keys and I had asked her to start talking, slowly at first:

“Well, today at school I saw Lindsey and she told me that her brother had come home from college with a girlfriend who was pregnant.” She said, “You could have heard my mother in the next county, yelling and screaming. David could hardly get an edge in wordwise!”

I stayed with it, only messing up on her purposeful play on words. I checked it, by reading it back to her, including her syllable exchange. I don’t know how fast I went, but I ran a spell and grammar checker over it and it seemed all right.

The rest of our homework was relatively easy. Reading was always fun. Kara didn’t enjoy it, as much as I did, but she understood the importance of a complete education. By the weekend, we were doing great keeping up with everything.

Saturday morning, we got up and did our chores, then went and worked on our powers. We thought we could practice flying again. So, we decided to take a return trip to the Troposphere. We asked Mom, who said, “OK, but be careful!”

We promised we would. Again, we traveled straight up. We stopped at the edge of it and I checked with my sister.

“Hey Kara, how do you feel?”

“Wonderful, it feels very comfortable, even my face is just fine. Let’s go higher, Kal?” she asked excitedly.

“OK,” I said needing to catch up to her as she jumped the gun a little. Now we were in darkness. We could still see one another. Looking down, I took a moment to telescope my vision, calculating we were now nearly nineteen miles above the Earth.

We checked with one another and all was still well. We next got up to the point that we could see the outline of the United States of America, including the Great Lakes. I couldn’t readily calculate our distance, due to cloud cover, but it must’ve been close to 57 miles up, putting us up into the Mesosphere.

We checked and our suits were working fine, no ill effects so far. I asked my blonde beauty if she wanted to go higher. Silly me!

Of course, she did. I reminded her of the temperature of the Thermosphere, but she said, “Bring it on!”

The stars above us were too beautiful to describe. I was getting worried, so I decided we should stop and head for home. K was bothered by my decision, but she came home with me. That next level higher is probably easy enough. We just need to mature a bit more. We took our time, getting home in plenty of time for lunch.

Afterwards, I went online to find out how far above our adopted planet we would need to travel to see it as the globe the moon flights always showed. The answer to that question is 844 miles. That’s nearly 15 times higher than we went!

I also found out that when you reach an altitude of 62 miles, (320,000 feet above sea level, or 100 kilometers), there is something called the Karman Line.

It is considered the ‘Edge of Space, ‘ an international definition by the FAI (Federation Aeronautique Internationale). Named after Theodore von Karman, a Hungarian-American engineer and physicist. The Karman Line is where ‘aerodynamics stops, and astronautics begins. Below this line space belongs to each country, above it, space is free!

Over the last number of months, we stopped being really hungry all the time. My best guess was that our body’s metabolisms took that long to correct for our ‘alien’ differences.

Since there was no data on the Internet about Kryptonians, that would be our answer if we ever had to talk to someone about our physical characteristics. At least we were humanoid!

We told Mom and Dad how high up we flew. They were shocked, but happy that we got home all right.

Mr. Haney called our place, wondering when we might get him some more packages of Kent Family Butter. Mom told him, there would be some in the morning. She pointed outside to us, to ‘get to it, ‘ so we did.

I carefully, but quickly milked all ten head of our cows, and then we went to work on the rest of the process, using our super-skills. Within two hours, we had 72 packages of our Family Butter to deliver the next morning. We still only milk them once a day, but they could be milked more often, but the need hasn’t developed. We used to have fourteen cows, but over the years, they became older and went from providing us milk to providing us food. There is a portable butcher that comes to the small farms, like ours, and for a fee, does the necessary kill, and leaves us the flank steaks, the sirloin flat meat, and so on and so forth. It takes all day!

Mom and Dad had gone into Smallville the previous day, while we were in school, so we were allowed to take ourselves by truck into town the next morning. We both had driver’s licenses, but Kara never liked driving as much as I did. She liked cuddling up close to me, instead.

We arrived and knocked on the front door of the market. Mr. Haney let us in.

“With school starting, we can’t get to this until Saturday now. We brought a larger than usual load for you, Sir. This next week, if you get below 20 packages, we’ll deliver enough to get you back where you need to be,” I said.

“Sounds good to me kids, there has been something of a run on your butter,” he said.

“Well, Sir—I told everyone, in most of my classes, that Kent Family Butter was the best in the county and where to find it. They must all want to taste it for themselves. When did you run out?”

“On Thursday afternoon,” he replied, “I had at least a dozen people asking for it, on Friday. You may need to crank up and make 85 packages at a time. Maybe more!”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Haney, we’ll never let you run out again. How much would you suggest we get you to last a whole week?” I asked.

“I don’t want you spending all of your time working so hard, take your time to be kids. To answer your question, honestly, 120 two-pounders should be more than enough.”

“We would just need to schedule our homework time better, then we can keep up a lot easier,” Kara said carrying in the last of our load.

“Did our mother collect the cash from last week on Friday?” I asked him.

“Yep,” he said. “Thanks for the delivery. Tell your folks ‘Hello’ from me.”

“We will, Sir—glad to be of service.”

She climbed into the passenger’s side and I got in the drivers ... and we headed home.

After backing it into position for whoever used it next we went inside to catch some breakfast with Mom and Dad.

“Did you get the money from him for last week’s sales?” mom asked.

“He said that he paid you on Friday, Mom?” Kara said putting some bacon on her plate.

“He did—Did he!” she said with much ferocity.

“Mom, let Kara and me handle this, please?” I asked and as soon as we were done eating, I got the keys, grabbed my sister by the hand and drove back to Haney’s General Market.

I backed in, opened the back of the truck and went inside picking up some of our delivery. Kara got some as well. Mr. Haney came over to where we were, asking what we were doing.

 
There is more of this chapter...

To read this story you need a Registration + Premier Membership
If you have an account, then please Log In or Register (Why register?)

Close
 

WARNING! ADULT CONTENT...

Storiesonline is for adult entertainment only. By accessing this site you declare that you are of legal age and that you agree with our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.