Engines in the Ether

“I never thought survival would sound like an engine coughing to life—but sometimes the future begins with a roar, not a whisper.”

The morning sun struck the truck with dazzling intensity, its metallic skin gleaming as though it had been polished for display rather than burdened with labour.

The reflections shifted and danced across the driveway, unintentional fragments of splendour in an otherwise ordinary scene. Gladys's small truck—borrowed, really, though I suspected she'd phrase it as "commandeered for the cause"—sat patient and waiting, its cargo bay stuffed with everything Paul's list had demanded and more.

I wrestled with the back door, its stubborn weight resisting until it finally gave way with an abruptness that startled me. The clang reverberated through the stillness of the hour, far louder than I'd expected, a metallic shout that jolted me to attention and made the quiet morning seem suddenly fragile.

Machinery and I had never been natural companions.

To me, vehicles existed in the same intimidating category as aircraft—complex, unknowable, and faintly hostile. The small truck loomed with a presence I found uncomfortably commanding. Where Jamie might have relished the intricacies of its mechanics, coaxing engines into obedience with ease, I was reduced to the role of passenger—helpless in both the literal and figurative sense.

It wasn't just ignorance. It was something closer to distrust. Machines demanded a kind of faith I struggled to give them—faith that pressing this pedal would produce that result, faith that the brakes would hold, faith that several tonnes of metal and glass would behave as expected rather than hurling itself into disaster.

The interior yawned before me in stark contrast to the sunlit exterior. Shadows clung to the cargo bay, its packed contents a dark mass until my eyes adjusted. I lingered on the threshold, gathering myself before I dared to step closer, as though entering demanded more than just the physical act.

Inside, the sheer volume of goods bore silent witness to Gladys's thoroughness.

Bags of concrete mix stacked against tools that glinted faintly, their edges dull but promising work. Timber beams. A cement mixer, disassembled into manageable pieces. Even entire garden sheds, flattened into their flat-pack slabs of possibility. It was a catalogue of intention, each object a future building block, a piece of the fragile foundation for Clivilius.

I drew a deep breath, the cool morning air cutting sharply down into my lungs, bracing me.

The enormity of the task loomed, pressing in with suffocating clarity. This wasn't just logistics. This wasn't merely the shifting of goods from one side of town to another. Each item had to pass through a threshold between worlds, carried across boundaries no blueprint had ever accounted for.

The thought weighed heavily, more crushing than the cargo itself.

Every sack of mix, every beam of timber, represented not only effort but time. And time, I knew with grim certainty, was the one resource I could least afford to squander. The scale of it all pressed into me, the enormity rising like floodwater. Moving these supplies wasn't just daunting. It was overwhelming—an impossible task made unavoidable by the dream I refused to let go.

Hoisting myself into the truck's shadowy interior, I was instantly swallowed by its close, stale air.

The space smelled of newness and effort—sharp hints of fresh concrete mix, the dry tang of sawn timber, and the faint metallic undertone of tools still untouched. Dust motes drifted in the thin shafts of light that pierced through the cracks, giving the place an almost cathedral-like hush.

My eyes darted over the tightly packed cargo, scanning for the best place to begin. The sheer density of it made the task feel monumental before I had even touched a single item. One bag at a time. One trip through the Portal at a time. Back and forth, back and forth, until my arms gave out or the sun set—whichever came first.

Then came the vibration against my thigh.

The abrupt, insistent buzz of my phone yanked me from the fog of contemplation, jerking me back to the present.

"Hello, Luke speaking," I answered, forcing my voice into steadiness, disguising the slight breathlessness that lingered from clambering into the bay.

The call was brief, stripped of any unnecessary words. A simple message: my latest tent order would be arriving within the hour.

The news struck me like a match to dry tinder.

Excitement flared, bright and momentary, filling my chest with visions of Clivilius dotted with structures, a living community unfurling where there had been only barren dust. For a second, the cramped confines of the truck seemed less oppressive. More tents meant more shelter. More shelter meant more possibility. The settlement was growing, taking shape in my imagination even as it struggled to take shape in reality.

But reality pressed in again as quickly as the hope had risen.

My gaze swept over the stacked cargo—heavy bags, unwieldy beams, awkward shapes all demanding to be shifted. The scale of it sobered me. There was no way all of this could be transferred before the delivery arrived. The hour would vanish in the blink of an eye, leaving me overwhelmed, still ankle-deep in logistics.

"There has to be a quicker way," I whispered, the words falling flat against the steel walls.

The truck echoed them back at me, mocking, as though the space itself understood the futility of my predicament. My thoughts flickered to Gladys—her blunt efficiency, her knack for seeing through snarls I tangled myself in. Resourcefulness was her currency, and perhaps here, in this logistical mire, she might once again be my beacon.

Sliding out of the truck, I perched myself on the retaining wall.

The concrete's cool firmness pressed into me, grounding, if not exactly comfortable. Phone in hand, I began tapping out a message—half request, half apology, the desperation veiled under polite phrasing.

Hi Gladys, I know it's early but I was wondering if—

My thumbs hesitated mid-sentence.

My eyes had lifted almost absently, drifting across the length of the driveway, to the large gate standing at its end. The sight rooted me in place. Fingers stilled above the screen as a thought began to coalesce, an idea rising sudden and insistent, halting my plea for help before it could be finished.

The gate.

The truck.

The gate again.

My gaze flicked back and forth between the two, the rhythm of it quickening as the gears in my mind spun faster. Something was taking shape—an answer forming in the shadows of doubt.

The corners of my mouth tugged upward, the beginnings of a grin breaking through as clarity surged in. That old wooden gate, so ordinary, so overlooked, suddenly loomed as something more. Not a barrier. Not a limit.

But a frame.

A chance to cut through the Gordian knot of labour that had threatened to overwhelm me.

The seed of the plan rooted deep and fast, blossoming into something bold.

Simple. Elegant, even.

I had pulled things from Clivilius before—Paul's scrawled list, their wallets, the phones. I had thrown garbage bags through, hurled firewood into the void. Proof enough that the Portal did not discriminate by size or substance. So why should I waste precious hours breaking my back, shifting each load by hand? Why should I reduce myself to drudgery when the solution was right there, staring back at me in painted steel and weathered hinges?

Drive the truck through.

The thought landed with the brilliance of revelation, as though it had been waiting for me all along, hidden in plain sight. My chest tightened with the thrill of it, a sudden rush of energy flooding my veins.

This wasn't just efficiency—it was ingenuity. A shift in the rules of engagement.

Of course, it also meant driving. Actually driving. Not just sitting in a stationary car waiting for the engine to fail, but manoeuvring a vehicle—reversing it, no less—through an inter-dimensional gateway.

The fear stirred, predictable as sunrise. My palms grew damp at the thought. But beneath the fear, something else kindled: determination. Necessity. The stubborn refusal to let my own limitations become the bottleneck through which Clivilius's survival had to squeeze.

Jamie's mocking voice echoed in my memory: Perhaps it might be a good time to start liking it.

Fine. Fine. If driving was what the universe demanded, then driving was what I would give it.

Basking in the glow of that clarity, I raised the Portal Key, its weight steady in my hand.

I aimed it toward the gate, that mundane surface of flaking paint and stubborn bolts, and pressed the button.

Light bloomed instantly.

Colours spread like liquid fire, washing across the timber in a cascade of brilliance. The gate rippled, transformed, its frame swallowed by swirling hues that bent and folded, bleeding into one another in mesmerising arcs. The Portal grew, stretching wider, taller—larger than anything I had conjured before.

It filled the entire gateway, a shimmering curtain between worlds, its edges kissing the brick pillars on either side as though the very architecture of my home had been repurposed for inter-dimensional travel.

I stood rooted to the spot, awe tightening my throat.

No matter how many times I witnessed it, the sight of the Portal always unsettled me, always astonished. This time, though, it was something more. The vibrancy, the sheer audacity of its size, felt like a triumph. A leap forward.

Each shimmer of colour was a promise. Each swirl a reminder that I was balancing on the knife's edge between science and magic. Each time I crossed, it had felt like a journey. But this—this was more than crossing.

This was evolution. Innovation that could reshape everything about how I moved between worlds.

With a cocktail of excitement and raw nerves coursing through me, I hauled myself into the driver's seat of the truck.

The interior greeted me with its plain, utilitarian face—no leather trim, no digital screens, just hard plastic and scuffed fabric, every surface humming with function rather than comfort. Yet today, it felt transformed. To my mind it became a cockpit, every lever and dial reimagined as instruments of a spacecraft, the seat beneath me the command chair of a mission on which everything rested.

Jamie's voice drifted into my thoughts, his teasing words about automatics echoing as if he were sitting beside me. Glorified go-karts, he had called them, rolling his eyes at my lack of ease behind the wheel.

I latched onto that joke like a lifeline.

Go-karts were child's play, after all. If children could manage them, surely I could guide this lumbering machine through a gateway between worlds.

I turned the key.

The engine coughed, then roared to life, the sound reverberating through the cab like the awakening of something feral. The vibrations thrummed through the seat, into my spine, a visceral reminder that I now held brute force at my fingertips. When I brushed the accelerator, the truck responded with a sudden lurch, the power of it startling, reminding me that control here was not a given but something to be earned.

Forcing myself to breathe slowly, I wrapped both hands around the wheel and eased the gear into reverse.

My focus narrowed to a point I had never quite known before. The rearview mirror, the shimmer of the Portal, the line of the driveway—they became my world. Inch by deliberate inch, the truck crept backwards, tyres crunching over the gravel, the heavy frame groaning with the weight it carried.

The sight ahead was like nothing I had ever experienced.

A great shimmering threshold where reality bent and bled into colour. The Portal's edges flickered as though alive, beckoning with every pulse of light. I guided the truck toward it, heart hammering, the sensation impossibly surreal.

Here I was, steering a vehicle crammed with the raw materials of survival—cement, tools, the bones of a future—into a world no map could chart.

The boundary between worlds gave way beneath me, and I felt, with equal parts terror and wonder, that I was truly crossing over.