***
Before he knew it he was in front of the Earth Confederation Force base that was located close to the orphanage. The ECF backed by China and the European Union, was very much a part of New York in the year 2120. Due to various natural disasters occurring over the past fifty years, New York was now an overcrowded city with little food and fewer jobs. The only living beings the children knew of were humans; there weren’t any animals on the earth any more. When food became scarce, it was inevitable that it would have been the animals that would have been eaten first. The last real animal had been killed more than twenty years before, making the children of this era having only heard of the various animal species that had lived long ago, never having seen them. The only meat that was ever available was fish and it was hard to come by so most of the population of Earth was vegetarians.
As Edward approached the base he saw Oscar in a distance, seeing him made him stop right below a scrawny apple tree. Oscar was an officer of the ECF working in New York. From the very first time he had seen the pathetic and lonely figure of Edward peeping at him through the high fence while he was repairing his flying machine, he had felt drawn to the boy. Oscar had a boy a little younger than Edward, who was now almost eleven years old. His family was back in France and this left Oscar missing them terrible and wanting to go home.
However, after meeting Edward they had become fast friends. Edward had told him the story of his father leaving him and how nobody knew how he was faring on Orleanais. The lost and vulnerable look in Edward’s eyes touched the older man. Oscar went to a lot of trouble to try to trace the father. Unfortunately he could not locate the whereabouts of Richard Finnegan in Orleanais, but he did find confirmation that Richard had arrived there safely over ten years ago.
As Edward stood under the scrawny apple tree next to the large wired fence of the ECF camp Oscar hailed him from inside.
“Hiya Ed!”
“Hello, Lieutenant Oscar, how are you today?” Edward ran close to the edge of the fence to talk to his friend.
“Feeling good, Ed! I have been transferred to my hometown” the man spoke cheerfully, but his eyes were on the child’s face, dreading the misery he knew his words would cause.
“You are going away from here?” the unhappiness and the disappointment in the voice were very evident.
“Yes, I have to go, Ed. My family is missing me very much as you know and I miss them too. But I hate having to go away since I will then miss you very much. But that is life, son!”
Edward nodded sadly. “If I knew where my father was, I would go to him too. So naturally you want your family” Edward sighed heavily. “I wish I knew where my father is!”
“Edward, you know we managed to trace that he did go to Orleanais. So he must be there. I am sure he will come back for you some day. He may just not have enough money to come and get you yet. You know it is difficult to start a new life anywhere now.”
“It has been ten years since he has gone, Sir. If he was coming, he would have come back by now. Maybe he is being held prisoner there by some wicked people and he can’t come!” Oscar had to smile at the resilience of the boy. Hope was the one commodity essential for life to go on. If the boy managed to find some hope, Oscar was willing to encourage him.
“Yes, Ed, there may be something like that. Would you like to see the space flyer I am going to fly to France tomorrow?”
Even the bait didn’t work. Edward went very still. “You are leaving tomorrow?”
“I am afraid so.” He added trying to distract the boy, “Come and climb up into the machine Ed, its awesome! We received these two machines last month and this one has been acting up so they needed it returned to France for a diagnostic immediately. That is why I am flying it out there. I have been waiting for my transfer to France and they thought they will let me go with the space flyer.” Talking all the time to distract the boy, Oscar opened the little gate to which only a very few officers had access and took Edward inside the camp. Edward had been in several times before and quite a lot of Oscar’s friends knew him well. Once Oscar unlocked the gate and took him in, Edward was allowed to run pretty much wild in that section of the camp.
When they came near the two neat little flying machines parked close to the runway, Edward forgot his troubles. They were beautiful pieces of work, each large enough for four people to ride in. It looked very much like a car with two wings on the sides and four large wheels touching the ground.
Oscar climbed onto the machine, asking Edward to come round from the passenger side. The vehicle was not locked and the two of them took their seats.
“Can we please go for a little ride?” begged Edward.
“I’ll probably get dismissed for doing this, but yes, I will take you up for a minute” Oscar picked up the speaker and informed the ground control that he was trying out the machine once more before leaving. Then he pressed the self-starter and the machine started moving forward. Good nature as he was, he answered the questions about the operation of the machine tumbling out from the excited boy’s lips. When they approached the end of the runway Oscar pressed another button and the flyer immediately started going up in the air.
“This is so great Sir! I’ve never had such a great time in my whole life”
“I enjoyed my first trip aboard a spaceship just as much as you are doing now. Okay, now we have to go back. I don’t want to waste the fuel; it is all stocked up for tomorrow, because I’m flying out at dawn. Now you saw how easy it is to fly this machine, didn’t you?”
“Yes Sir, I never realized just how easy it would be!”
“Well, it is easy, if all goes well without hitches. The real knowledge in flying these machines is to know how to handle problems!” laughed Oscar, amused by the boy’s words as he landed the space flyer neatly next to the other similar craft.
Very soon, bidding goodbye to his friend, his eyes sad, Edward left the camp to go back to the orphanage with lagging steps.