Captain Eeelenore-Janes Saga - Component 1 - Valve 1 - In the Beginning
Imagine a splintered plank of wood sticking out of the middle of a barren dusty plain. Nobody for miles, nor any other living creature or plant. Not a cloud in the sky and no sign of human interference with the orange vista you are viewing - that is, except the plank of wood.
It reaches seven feet into the sky, jaunty, as if slouching in fatigue because of the blazing heat. You notice that attached to the plank at the top are many different arrows all pointing in various directions and all made from different materials – metal, wood, plastic and so on. The arrows were obviously installed at different times over however long this monument has stood there. When you read the arrows you notice that whilst they may all point in every conceivable direction, they all say the same thing - in different fonts, handwriting, languages and various misspellings, they all say "nowhere".
If you're feeling a kind of fear combined with wonder at the thought of this sight, imagine how Captain Eelenore-Jane felt when she was tossed out of the back of a speeding sand-skimmer to roll though the dusty wake it left. She hit her head on the signpost at full speed causing an arrow to fall into her lap.
Whatever your reaction may have been to this situation Eelenore's was most probably different because, after reading the dry rotted wood which had fallen across her legs, she leapt to her feet and reattached her hydraulic arm via the leather strap which held it to her right shoulder. She continued to clench it into a fist and wave it at the now distant sand-skimmer.
"DAMNIT!" was the first thing she shouted as she kicked at the dirt, causing a small cloud of dust to rise up. She rubbed her head and noticed her trusty hat was gone then bent over and picked up the broken arrow, stared at it for a couple of moments, and with frustration threw it hard into the sky. It soared up high and became a black silhouette against the sun, inexplicably hanging there for a short while. Instead of plummeting back down to the ground, the wooden slab spun slightly and started heading back the way it had been thrown. The sun suddenly became a duller shade of yellow and the overwhelming silence across the plain changed to a rustling which transcended into a loud howl. Eelenore did not have luck on her side...
Now, I need you to take the time imagine being upon this still wasteland - lost, annoyed and sweltering hot. You feel the kiss of a light breeze upon your cheek. You might be relieved. But not Eelenore, she knew the desert plains of Contarbar and they were not her friends. A kiss from the wind was a kiss of death; anyone who had lived a day upon this barren planet would know that being outside during a sandstorm would be akin to begging for death from the gods.
So now you have all the information. You're stranded in the middle of a boundless wasteland and coming from an easterly direction you can see grit starting to flare up. The sun grows a dark hue of orange and fades toward brown as the air becomes thicker. Panic.
For Eelenore this was an event for which she was prepared, and as she muttered "bloody hell this is all I fucking need.”, she calmly reached for the large brass goggles on her head and pulled them over her eyes. By now her hair, long and purple, flew behind her like the tail of a bird in flight billowing persistently as the wind tore at it with seemingly endless force. Her second manoeuvre was to stand with her feet apart facing the wind. She raised her hydraulic right arm to her chest and began pulling pushing and twisting different parts of it.
Her hydraulic arm had once been brass plated, and used to look like a human arm, but after constant battering, several upgrades and bolt ons it looked more like a mechanical bird's talon. The inner framework was visible as a steel bar which had several large tubes entwined round it pumping water to various other parts of the structure, the rest was made up of a menagerie of cogs, bolts and screws. The arm was capable of doing a lot of things - many of which Eelenore was uneven aware of yet. It was operated by the stump of her right arm transmitting what she needed it to do via an electric diode placed in the end.
The sandstorm was now only a few hundred metres away. Eelenore sped up what she was doing. After she had finished fiddling with the arm she shook it and a large piece of metal fell off, or to be pedantic, unfolded. As it hit the ground. there was a moment of nothing and then, with a loud hiss and a metallic creaking, the metal unfolded some more to the right and left and slightly upward creating a shield in front of her - slightly rusted and dented in places, but adequate protection nevertheless. With the storm now upon her, she braced herself. She could see the sand whirling viciously. Fearing for her life, she felt the shield shaking and the noise of the scraping sand, magnified by the metal drum she'd created around her. Terrified that her shield would give way to the horrendous winds she started to speak to herself "C'mon Eelenore. Stand strong. Only a couple of minutes". She stopped... she had heard herself speak. The Contarbarian sand storms are so deafening that hearing anything other than the winds' nauseating flurry is impossible, Eelenore retracted her shield, noticing all the scratching had stopped. Her arm ricocheted up into the air as if she were celebrating, but she was far from doing so, because in front of her was a sand steamer, slave-trade class, and it had stopped directly in front of her as if looking for a new piece of merchandise.
At seventy feet tall, the behemoth of a ship loomed over her casting a shadow even longer than it was in height. It ran on treadmills which pulled it along the sand causing a lot of noise. Ships like these were capable of holding over seven-million slaves whilst still having adequate room for a full crew to live in and a food store to last them 2 years. Although this sand-steamer was huge, it looked old and overused. Eelenore stood perfectly still in the vain attempt to become invisible, something that wearing a pink blouse and purple tie doesn’t really allow for when in the desert.
It was just when Eelenore was about to faint that a loud, echoing voice boomed. "Alright captain? You actually wanna come aboard? Or are you gonna stand there all day?".
Eelenore looked stunned, bent slowly to the left and saw that a hatch had been opened. "Ah. it's my ship." she whispered embarrassedly to herself. Forgetting your own ship is a strange state of affairs I agree – and so did the ships pilot, R.
When Eelenore was reunited with him in the ship's cockpit, their conversation went along the lines of this;
R.: "How the hell did you not recognise your own ship?"
Eelenore: "Maybe, just maybe, I thought it wasn't my ship... because it approached me with it's sand-cloak on!"
R.: "Haha, you know full well ours is stuck in the on position. Can't turn it off!"
Eelenore: "Besides, I told you not to come after me!"
R.: "Good job I did! Not gonna say thanks?"
Eelenore: "Do I ever?"
R.: "You know, one day I'm just gonna leave ya for dead."
Eleenore: "I did tell you to."
R.: "You stubborn idiot... did you get the goods?"
Eelenore: "Does it look to you like I got the goods?"
R.: "Well, maybe they're awaiting collection?"
Eelenore: "Oh yeah, that's a good business plan. ‘Yeah come pick them up tomorrow I'll give you a lift home... to the middle of nowhere.’"
R.: "Well if you don't get hydrogen tanks, there's no way we are ever going to get this thing airborne."
Eelenore: "I know! It is my plan after all."
Eelenore and R. were the only two inhabitants of this particular sandsteamer. They both had a common goal in which they were working towards and that was that they were both fed up of Contarbar. Its inhabitants: villains and scum, its food: tastless and dry, its cities: fascist and few and far between, not to mention the lack of water supplies. They wanted off. Their latest plan had been to bargain for hydrogen to power large balloons to float themselves right off the planet. The sandsteamer was huge though so they would need a lot of fule.
R. conceded his place in this heat discussion and began anew "Well... what's the next line of action then, captain?"
"Well." Eelenore leaned toward the massive glass window that made up the front of the cockpit and scoured it for a sign of which way the sand-skimmer went. There was nothing. The sand was identical no matter where you looked. The only thing for miles was the signpost with the now missing "nowhere" sign. "Ah-HA that way, R." Eelenore's arm creaked as she pointed "I hit the sign post on that side! 'Cause look, the sign fell off!"
"So we are following the guys who left you here?" R. rolled his eyes is disbelief.
"Of course! They said they didn’t have hydrogen. But they have something else very important. If we follow them...we might just find out where they keep it.", Eelenore had taken a sudden urgent tone, and was giving R. the look she gave him when she wanted something done.
"Alright! Tally Ho! HOLD ON BECAUSE ITS GONA BE A BUMPY RIDE" The pilot of the ex-slave ship jumped back into his custom made leather seat swivelled round to a massive faux-wooden steering wheel. He had started shouting because the noise of what sounded like a thousand lawnmowers all starting at once had begun to drown out his voice. He swung the wheel to the right throwing Eelenore off balance and causing her to fall the floor. With a hearty laugh she pulled herself to her feet and started climbing the nearest ladder to the roof.
Next Vavle - Friday 25th May 2012 - Vavle 2 The Sandsteamer Lives