By now, most passersby had encountered the scene of Charles' helicopter often enough to not be entirely thrown off guard whenever it appeared. A pair of teenage boys, however, gawked as they passed the hydrant beneath the helicopter.

"Just a little competition around the work place. Nothing too big," Anna finally offered in answer to Charles' question. It wasn't technically a lie. Anna started for the ladder dangling next to the hydrant. "But what's this?" she pointed at the small yellow paper affixed to a rung a few feet up the ladder.

Charles approached and snatched the paper, giving it a once over before fixing Anna with a worried expression. Tears of concern pooling in the corners of his eyes.

"I... I got a ticket."

"Let me see that." Anna snatched the citation and glossed over it. On the line of offenses was a sloppily handwritten, Illegal parking?. Beneath that, We'll get back to you was scribbled where the cost of the fine should've been.

"Hmm." Anna had wondered about the legal restrictions in place for personal helicopter use, and it seemed she wasn't alone in doing so. "Guess you should work on your parallel parking?” She shrugged. “Either way, I wouldn't worry about it too much. You're rich, remember?"

"But, but... I've never had a run in with the law before."

Anna patted Charles on the back, shaking her head with a smile. "Come on. It'll be fine. Let's go get some lunch."

At the word lunch, Charles perked right up and grabbed hold of the ladder. "Well come on then!" He shouted while scaling it with ease.

Anna sighed.

"Well come on!" Charles repeated, already halfway up the ladder. "Come on!"

"I'm coming." Anna tucked the ticket in her purse and made after him.

In truth, Anna was a little annoyed at Jill, but the reality was Jill had no way of getting in contact with Charles; Anna could handle that situation easily enough. The bigger problem was Charles stopping by her office with increasing frequency, and – as now seemed to be the case – occasional surprise. If things continued this way, it would be much sooner than later her little secret finally got out.

Charles helped Anna into the cabin, closing the door as she took a seat.

Anna buckled herself in, and asked, “So what do you have in mind for lunch?”

Charles took a seat next to her, looking quite impressed with himself. “I was thinking we could have a picnic!”

“Really?”

“Yeah! Why? Do you not like picnics?”

“It's not that, it's just...” Anna trailed off. It would be easier if I could avoid being somewhere alone with him. If they were in public, Anna could use that as an excuse to hold back on talking about herself any more than she had to. “I mean, I'd rather...” And then Anna noticed the f*cking basket and blankets all packed up nice and careful and neat in the corner of the cabin.

Dammit. “It's nothing. A picnic sounds fun.”

“Excellent! So anyway, Anna. I believe you were just telling me about your job. You work at that magazine, right? Are you a writer or something? I do so love to read!”

Anna sighed.

I should just level with him, right? I mean, he's not exactly the kind of guy who would hold it too against me, right? He's gonna find out eventually anyway... I should level with him now, and minimize the damage as much as I can.

Anna looked down at the shrinking city through the window next to her, and said, “Editor, actually. There's an ongoing competition amongst us editors to see who can find the next big talent. The series of stories written by this new writer I discovered a few weeks ago has been the most popular segment over the few weeks since.” Anna's cheeks felt very hot by the end.

“That's great! What magazine is this again?” Charles was altogether far more enthused for Anna than she'd ever been for herself, concerning lie or reality.

Didn't really think that one through, huh?

Charles drew a worried expression, leaning in and placing a hand on her shoulder. “Anna, you look really flushed. Are you sure you're feeling alright?”

Anna was halfway to nodding when she found herself shaking her head instead. She closed her eyes. “It's nothing big. I'm just feeling a little hot and dizzy.” It wasn't entirely inaccurate.

“Well... we might have little problem then.”

“Hmm?” Anna turned her head and opened her eyes. “What're you talking about Cha-” Anna froze. After the few seconds it took her to process what she was seeing, her jaw dropped. “The f*cks the ocean doing out there!?”

Anna could see nothing but the rolling waves of an eternal expanse of water stretching out to the horizon through the window behind Charles. Glancing behind through her window, she confirmed the end of said ocean at some exotic locale. The sun was setting far in the distance.

Charles scratched the side of his head. “I was just thinking it would probably be nice to have a little picnic over the Great Barrier Reef, is all.”

“No shit. Really?” Anna scooted closer to the window and looked down. Sure enough, there was a huge ass reef just below the surface of the ocean below. "Well f*ck me."

"Anna, I've been meaning to ask: you seem to have absolutely no qualms about expressing yourself with more.... colorful language, but you always censor yourself whenever it comes to that particular word. Why is that?"

Anna smiled a little as she remembered her lackluster youth.

“Heh. Just something stupid I do. Daddy swore like a sailor, so I picked it up at a young age. My mother didn't like it, but she could never get him to quit, so she could never get me to quit. Eventually, she ended up drawing the line at that particular word. Everything else was fine, but I couldn't say fuck. I started censoring it on a whim one day, and that was apparently enough to satisfy her. When I went off to college, I kept it going cause I thought it'd be a fun quirk. What can I say? It's stuck with me.”

Charles looked ecstatic. “Interesting.”

“Pretty stupid actually, but whatever. I don't like talking about myself.”

“Listen, Anna...” Charles hesitated.

“You know, you don't always have to wait for me to acknowledge you before saying things, right? You can just say them.”

“I know, it's just... I know I'm a really open and honest person, and I know I tend to expect the same of others... but I understand that not everyone else's the same way. I'd like to know more about you, but I don't want you to feel like you have to say anything you don't want to.”

Goddammit Charles. You're gonna get taken advantage of your entire f*cking life.

“Don't worry about it.” Anna moved a stray hair out of her face. “So what's for lunch?”

“Oh! I'd nearly forgotten!” Charles grabbed the door of the helicopter, swinging it open. A warm breeze flowed in. “Come over here real quick.” Anna did so. “Look down there.” He pointed just beneath the helicopter.

“Am I supposed to be looking at something other than a whole lot of reef?”

“Just watch.” Charles reached into a metal bucket sitting next to the door and produced a fistful of sand.

Anna scrunched her brow. “Why do you have a bucket of sand-”

Charles pressed an unsanded finger to his lips before dropping the handful out the door. It fell about ten feet before hitting something between the helicopter and the water, and bounded down an invisible surface until it came to rest on precisely nothing, like magic.

“Anna,” Charles said with his head cocked to one side, his elbows straight out from his shoulders, and his open palms facing up, like he was Atlas holding up the world, “have you ever had a picnic on a beach on an island floating in the sky over the Great Barrier Reef?”

“Once. My auntie took me when I was about thirteen or so.” Anna brushed another strand of hair behind her ear.

“Oh.” Charles' body slumped alongside his grin, his arms falling to rest at his sides. “Uhm, well... how... Hmm.”

Well would you look at that. I think I broke him.

After a few further confused seconds during which Charles screwed his face up in multiple different arrangements, he asked, “Was it fun?”

“Stop that. I was just f*ckin with ya.”

“Oh, well. Okay then.” A grin resurfaced as Charles said, “I'll get the beach to pouring then."

Charles grabbed the whole bucket and tipped it over out the door, where it began pouring far more sand than a container of its size could reasonably have held. Charles walked over to the other side of the copter, but the bucket remained stationary in mid-air, and continued pouring. Sand struck the invisible barrier, gradually filling a half-sphere-shaped recess.

Anna had gotten used to these sorts of things over the past few weeks. She tapped the side of the bucket, but it didn't budge in the slightest.

“So how does this bucket here work? I mean, I'm assuming the sand is a similar situation to what's going on with your house, but how'd you get the bucket to just... stay there?”

“Simple enough really. It's made of a material I invented, which has essentially infinite inertia, unless it's being manipulated by human hands.”

“Makes perfect sense.” Anna rolled her eyes. “Course I just touched it and it didn't budge.”

“Hand-s. Plural.”

“Makes sense that would matter.”

Anna had gotten used to these sorts of things. Didn’t mean she no longer found them fascinating, however.

Anna turned from the self-pouring sandbox in time to see Charles whipping the cloth off the top of what she'd previously assumed was an ordinary picnic basket. By the way he stuck his entire arm inside and produced a silver platter several times wider than the pic-a-nic basket itself, set with fresh steaming lobsters and sides, it appeared she'd been mistaken.

“Lobster picnic. Solid choice Charles.”

He grinned.

Anna checked on the sand pit again. She was a little confused to see a tree trunk sliding free of the bucket. More and more trunk emerged from the bucket until branches and leaves snapped free, and an entire palm tree dropped the ten or so feet to bury itself in the sand at the perfect angle you'd expect to find on one of those beach postcards you receive in the winter from some asshole friend who's on vacation while you're stuck at home somewhere it's still cold outside. More sand poured free to top off the basin, and fully secure the tree.

How quaint.

A few minutes later the floating island finished its pouring. Charles proceeded to lower the platter of lobster and side items to the island using a simple pulley system. Next he kicked the rope ladder out the door and the two descended. Charles spread a blanket out beneath the tree, and they took a seat in the shade atop it.

Anna and Charles ate and talked, and it was quite relaxing and nice.

And just as Anna was cracking open the tail of a fresh lobster on that sandy embankment with its lone palm tree, on an island suspended in midair by seemingly nothing over the Great Barrier Reef, within a period of no more than half an hour after leaving her office building in America, she was struck with but a single thought.

I should've brought my f*cking camera.

Now of course, her phone had one built-in, though it was far from the best. But as opportunities weren't going to get much better than this, Anna grabbed her purse. Just as her fingers wrapped around her phone, a short crackling buzz of electrical feedback from somewhere in the distance caught her, attention. She left the phone in her her purse, and slid it under her arm.

"Attention!" A loud voice said from somewhere, and seemed to echo from everywhere else. "Attention sir with the, uh. You, with the helicopter!"

Anna followed Charles close enough to the edge of the island to get a good look at the official looking boat idling in the surf near one end of the reef, maybe a dozen or so yards away as the bird flies. There were two men standing on deck. One of them was holding a large red megaphone in his hand.

Charles cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, "CAN I HELP YOU WITH ANYTHING GENTLE SIRS?"

“We're with the Royal Aussie Reef Guard, and you can't do... that, sir."

Anna inched closer to the edge and shouted back, "The Royal Aussie Reef Guard, huh? You don't honestly expect us to buy that shit?"

"We're quite official ma'am, I assure you. We've got fucking papers."

Charles breathed deep before bellowing, "WHAT EXACTLY IS THE PROBLEM REEF GUARD SIR? HAVE I DONE SOMETHING WRONG?"

"I-" Another whirring crackle sounded from the megaphone as the two men bandied back and forth for a handful of seconds. "You're currently in violation of Article four under Reef Ordinance nineteen sixty four point seven. Please desist your current activities and come down from there.”

Tears of worry and all that returned to Charles' face as he rounded on Anna, saying, “Anna... I don't wanna go to jail...”

“Don't worry.” Anna patted him on the head. “I got this.” She said it quietly, so only Charles could hear, before turning her full attention back to the Reef Guard Sirs. “So you're telling me there's specifically an ordinance about creating floating ass islands in the sky?”

The reef guard speaker hung his head. “Listen, I'm sorry about citing the ordinance about parasailing too close to the reef in an unregistered speed boat, but m'am, it's the closest thing we could think of in the moment. But I'm pretty sure you can’t just... go and create floating islands all willy nilly. I'm still more than a little confused about that particular detail, but-”

“And another thing,” Anna interrupted, “Are you even Australian? You don't talk like any Australian I've ever heard.”

“What? So am I to assume that all Americans speak with the exact same cadence, accent, timing, inflection, and universally shared knowledge of their language's lexicon? What? You want me to start prattling on about wallabies, and dingos, and didgeridoos, and throwing shrimps on barbies, and blimey!”

The megaphone screeched as it reverberated from the man's shouting towards the end. The Reef Guard Sir lowered the device and rubbed his brow. “Sorry. I lost myself for a moment there, and I do apologize, but ma'am, I would really have no complaints if you had nothing further to add to this exchange.”

“I have everything further to add. You get your boss on the horn, and you cite me a specific law we're actually breaking. Then we'll talk.”

The pair on the boat conferred again. Crackle. “We'll have to get back to you get back to you on that.”

Anna stepped back towards the center of the island. “Hey Charles, let's get outta here.”

“Wait, what about the Reef Guards?”

“Screw them. We're finished eating any-” Anna stopped, hearing a few chachunks beginning to chachunk behind the chachunk of Charles's helicopter. She looked around towards the mainland, and sure enough she spotted several dots growing larger along the horizon.

Guess they are legit.

“SHIT WE GOTTA GO NOW!” Anna started for the ladder, but the sand shifted beneath her feet, and in correcting her balance her purse slipped out of her hands. “SHIT MY PURSE!" She screeched and grasped as it tumbled free of hand, then floating isle, and finally plummeted the dozen or so yards to the water beneath. It landed with a splash, and there it would forever sleep alongside the world's largest coral reef system.

Double shit! My phone was still in there! But on the plus side, at least there wasn't time for a photo op anymore.

Charles stopped to pick up the platter he'd carried the food down on.

“We don't have time for that! Come on!” Anna grabbed Charles' hand and dragged him to the other side of the island, immediately beginning to ascend the ladder.

Charles looked up at her, conflicted. “But...”

“Charles, now! Please. Trust me on this.”

Closing his eyes, he nodded. “I do.” Charles followed her up and into the copter.

Anna saw four helicopters out the far window, closing in on their location.

“Charles. Get this thing going now!”

“Charles, initiate return trip!” Charles said as Anna helped him inside. He closed the door behind him and made for the front to check something on the front console as the helicopter began to move. “Hmm. Unfortunate,” he said calmly.

“What? What's unfortunate?”

“There seems to have been a malfunction in the dimensional flux driver. It's hindering our return trip.”

“The hell's that supposed to mean?”

Charles nodded once, confidently. “It means I'm gonna have to wing this.” He crawled into the driver's seat and took the controls. He flipped some switches and adjusted some dials. Meanwhile, Anna buckled herself into the back. “Anna, I'm gonna need your help with something. If you look over the seat behind you, you should see a large black box. I need you to open it.”

Anna turned in the seat and sure enough, there was a large box set just below the back. She undid the latch at its front and flipped it open. The right half of the box had several buttons and switches inlaid on a black plastic backing. On the left side was a small rectangular device, consisting of a pane of glass covering three tubes that looked like small fluorescent bulbs, which sprouted from three small silver cylinders which converged at the center, forming a Y-shape.

For a second, Anna froze. “Is this a f*cking time machine?”

“What? No. But you'll have to reset that dimensional flux driver if you want us to be able to make it back home. On the right side you should see a gray switch. You'll have to throw that to prime the circuit.”

Anna found the switch harder to flip than she'd been expecting. She had to use both hands before it finally flipped up and clicked. She lowered it back into place. A green button lit up next to it.

“Did the green button light up?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, now push it to close the circuit, and reset the driver.”

Through the back window, Anna saw the Reef Guard helicopters closing the distance. She pushed the button. A heavy click sounded and a series of four red buttons lit up on the left side of the controls.

“Alright. Four red buttons just lit up.”

“Start at the top and push each of them in order. I'll begin entering the coordinates for the return trip.”

Anna flipped up the individual plastic covers housing each button and pushed each of them in turn. Upon pressing the last button, the box hissed, and light began pulsing down the tubes towards the center of the Y on the left side of the box.

“Okay. The flux capacitor appears to be fluxing now.”

“It's a Dimensional Flux Driver, Anna. Hold onto something. This might get a little bumpy. I had to input the return coordinates from memory.”

The windows showed the ocean before, seamlessly, the helicopter was hurtling over the sprawling city of their home turf. Anna relaxed, shifting back into the seat proper. “Why the hell did you make restarting that thing so damn involved?” she asked.

“Inconvenience, Anna. It makes it thoroughly inconvenient.”

“...that's why I was asking.” Anna rested her head on the back of the seat and laughed. “It's never dull, that's for sure. I should probably be getting back to work though. Can you drop me off?”

“It would be my pleasure. Sorry things ruined the picnic there at the end.” Charles crawled out of the driver's seat as the other Charles took over, guiding the helicopter back to Anna's place of employment.

“By the way Charles,” Anna followed his trek across the few-foot-long interior with her head, “what's gonna happen with that island you just made?”

Charles rounded on her, grinnin' from ear to ear. “Oh, you'll see.”

Anna couldn't help but laugh as a little baby grin formed on her face. “I'm sure I will.”

Once the helicopter returned, Anna thanked Charles for the picnic, he thanked her for the grand adventure of it all, and she descended the ladder to the street. Charles waved, and nearly stumbled out the open door as the helicopter veered off towards Casa de River Phoenix.

Next Chapter: Chapter 7