00://Golden Ticket
A/n: One on top you can play with the scene if you like. The one on bottom is a book trailer. Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Silicon Knight - You won't believe what's hiding inside ! | Wattpad | BookTrailer
https://youtu.be/QxgZRkKNtlQ
There are few things in life more beautiful than a garden in June. A garden in a striking mix of flowers, fruit, and vegetables. Hundreds of different colors pop up every day. Shades of cool blue for the cornflowers and their clove spicey taste on the tip of your nose. All those colors could give even theme parks a run for their money. Hot wind rushes over mesclun covered greens in a wave of diffused soft white. If I left the unharvested spinach growing another day in the Sacramento sun, it would wilt. Everything gets a little bigger, grows stretching towards the yellow sun. It was my idea of paradise and my thick lips curved in a tilt upwards at the sight. A famous gardener once said, "you can solve all the world's problems in a garden."
He was right.
A morning in paradise of my making. The abandoned military golf course transformed into a farm. My huge market garden is complete with my home on wheels next to it. A painted converted school bus. The bluebird isn't much, but it's ours.
My wide smile spreads even wider across my face. Those harsh rays of light bounced off my hair in its French braid and baked into my dark skin. When I was in grade school, I thought they were right that most of my body was only my lips and hair. I never minded it generally, but when I was in high school, others always had to make stupid comments. I was called Cousin Itt, it's from the TV show Addams family. It was sucky because Cousin Itt's, hair covered the whole body from head to toe. Cruel kids stuff, but they weren't completely wrong. My mother put my hair in braids from a very early age and anytime it was re-braid day it would take a long time to do. Meaning I'd have to go to school with most of my head undone in elementary. The name unfortunately stuck. The name stuck even though my best friend would throw down when anyone tried to call me that in jr. high and high school. Life, and kids are mean like that. They take whatever good they can and throw it at you like it's bad. And even a few years out of college and years in the back burner of life sticks with you. Those kids being mean want that meanness to stick to your soul. And a part of you keeps fighting it off but your brain brings it up from time to time randomly.
I let the errant thought go; it was one of those slow days. I'm never mad at the slow days. Sitting back on my heels watching my one-eyed black tom cat find another lost duck's egg in the pasture. Rolling it with his nose to his egg stash. The old cat robbed the cowbirds, cows, and squirrels of a total of 3 eggs so far. I make myself a mental reminder to pick it up and put it in the bluebird bus for him. The inky black cat races through the pasture searching out more eggs that might have been missed by us.
Out of the corner of my eye, my best friend walks back from packing the truck full of food boxes. In her hand a nice fresh beer to go along with my heirloom tomato, grilled peaches and cheese. A full boujee way to have an early lunch. Since our day starts at around 2 am or 3 am and it's almost 9am.
"It's your turn to wait for the postman. I did it yesterday," I say to my best friend in this universe and the next life.
Sticky sweat rolled down my back and that damn Sacramento sun cooked my dark skin. Sacramento has always been a bit country, one of those sprawling west coast cities. Calling it a city would be polite; it has that feel of being urban and country at the same time. You can go from downtown Sacramento to a farm or large pasture within the same breath. You wouldn't know Sacramento is a large city at first glance. And the cow bells at Kings basketball games never went away. Rural with seasoning is what we like to call it because we don't have much of a downtown to talk about. Wavy lines of heat hang in the air, heading out to the road and still no post. Those seeds have become well overdue.
In the back of my head, my mom's voice tells me, 'Akeisha Tamsin Hart! Get the mail it's almost 9:40!' Mail has been coming down this street at the same time for over twenty years. Full 90s mom voice and everything as the past waivers in my mind. The little white post truck was driven by the same driver for ages. The post driver was well past due for retirement. It passes by my childhood home directly next to this old ex-golf course. The last time this place has seen a round of golf was nearly fifteen years ago. I can't say I remember the golf balls that used to hit my mom's house, but that was all my mom always talked about when I was a kid.
When your day is done, you tend to lose track of time. That's the magic of a good garden. Even though it's your workplace, it's still the best place to be in.
I pick up the bottle of cold beer from the little cooler and crack it. Lunch is sitting out only half-eaten but not because it didn't taste good. It was delicious and as wonderfully boujee as I thought it would be. The lunch of champions. But my mind was stuck on those seeds digging into my thoughts as any thorn. I pass the beer over to my best friend and do my mom's voice for her.
"Antonia Candice Carpenter, one of you better get that mail before those seeds get cooked in the box." A copy of the whisper talk of a black woman who's freshly off work and not ready to put up with our shit. My mother did it to my best friend and me so much growing up. It wasn't about being mad it was channeling inner strength for me. When I did it both of us ended up laughing together right after the words left my lips.
Toni and I being together all our life almost like sisters. She was and is such an important part of my life. We always had plans for when we grew up. Phase one, live next door to each other. In phase two, when retirement came, we'd keep our houses bumping. And when retirement came she said that she would have blown a hip at the retirement home fucking. According to Toni, she wouldn't think she was doing it right unless she was having sex. Then one night while getting down, she'd have got to say, 'I've fallen on dick and I can't get up. Or maybe I've stumbled in to pussy,' since she's bi. On second thought, Toni has always had weird life goals. Saying that line for her someday is a life well lived for her and I don't blame her it's a classic waiting to happen.
The one good thing is phase one was actually going pretty well. We converted a school bus into a home. Then we moved in together without drama before and after college. Small moves saved tons of money in college. Plus, it advances the gardening business and food box delivery app. We created Gleen into a decent paying hustle. Toni finished college faster than me, which, of course, is what Toni does. She's always been good at that book work shit while I've been so, so. Phase one of the super friend life mate plan was going ok. The few exceptions being maybe California's drought issues. And the fact that none of the farms we managed had water rights.
Working around all of that...
Thoughts of work crowded out my brain with the list of things to harvest on all the farms. All the things I didn't need to be thinking about. Of course, it wasn't the stupid mail one of us should really be getting. It was already 105 ° and those vegetable seeds would cook in the mailbox if they were finally here.
That afternoon the sun beats down on rows upon rows of nearly ripe fruits and vegetables. It was a defunct military base golf course and the golf netting along the back 18th hole didn't move an inch. Not even an early morning breeze. The 18th hole has a family of pretty blue California scrub jays and they eyed up our harvest. Adorable little bird thieves.
With all my thinking, I can't forget the soreness in my muscles at harvesting the hell out of this farm. The two of us served three hundred customers' food boxes.
"I'll get the mail today, plus another solid week. But you have to throw in dinner for the next three days. With homemade hot sauce," she offers.
"Deal," a fast answer back.
Homemade hot sauce takes a solid two days to make. Plus, the time to ferment it afterwards. And if I want to make it in the tiny school bus kitchen just to get out of a week waiting for the mail in the heat. Well, I can make some hot sauce and it's a better deal for me.
Toni gets up and walks down the road to wait for the mail. She unties her hair from the quick braid as she walks out to the old mailbox. Toni's deep skin tone shows through just a bit as she gathers the loose hair back up into a neat braid. The natural curls that want to escape from her hair denied freedom.
She was back holding a large box, and it was too big to be the small package of seeds. Her dark brown eyes danced in her hopeful expression.
We gather around the little cooler table to open the box up. Inside are two conference badges for Disrupt Erupt Conference and some pretty writing. You are a finalist in the environmental and food tech category of the tech conference. If I wasn't already sitting down, I would have been on my butt. I never win anything but jury duty every year because my name is misspelled so many places.
"Is this real?" I asked her.
"Yes! Akeisha, yes!!" she answered me. Uncover the box filled with twenty RiHms glasses. Each pair of high-tech augmented reality glasses is in fancy designed boxes. The packaging would put Apple iPhones to shame. We have less than a year to update our Apps. We need to make them work with the extended system developer kit for RiHms. I can't move, but that doesn't stop Toni from practically jumping up and down in joy. She reads out the finalist paperwork.
"Creativity is a means for people to explore ideas and scenarios in ways that are relatively safe.
You effectively have the ultimate safe word. You can exit the program at any time and it will stop instantly.
The choice of safety and creativity or the fearless will to change the world.
Disrupt Erupt Conference Hadrian Edrick Valentine CEO Heron Inc.
Sponsors
Heron Entertainment Virtual and Augmented Reality
a subsidiary of Heron Inc. parent company Heron Holdings."
The list of sponsors is a who's who of Silicon Valley. More than a few international tech companies as well. As she kept reading the list of the sponsors, my stomach dropped to my knees. But Toni, unlike me, got even more excited.
Toni leans over to me and wraps her arms around my shocked body. "We did it," she says. I was clueless. "Do you remember that tech incubator thing I entered us into?"
"I still don't get what a tech incubator is? It sounds like the plague." Confusion froze my brain and fear crawled up my back in cold tingly waves. I knew, but I didn't remember. My thoughts were leaking out of me faster than a water trough with a hole in it. Then the concepts started to fall into place. Get a bunch of young companies together and it's supposed to propel them forward to greater heights. Almost like a reality tv show where they get a bunch of 20 some things together in a house and it turns into an orgy.
"We won." She repeats with wonder threaded through her voice. Her smile is as wide as I've ever seen it. Wider than when we got our acceptance letters to the same college.
"We what?"
"Won!" Toni reads the contest form again. Each time she read it, the idea couldn't sink in. But whether I liked it or not, this train had already left the station and I had better hold the hell on tight.
a/n: pumped to have you reading :)
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