Search Results for 'land'

The cellar underneath the river island was a hive of activity. The Replicator was churning out little red amphibious flying cars like there was no tomorrow, which indeed would have been the case if the recent apocalypse hadn’t been deftly diverted in the nick of time. At high tide, when the Eyot was encircled with water, the cars would slip out of the ancient portal and drive out of the river onto Chiswick Mall, and on towards the various locations of the surge diversion team members. Those that were destined for locations other than London used the portal to exit via rivers in other places, such as Brattleboro, the Huangpu River, the Guadalquivir, or the Grand Canyon.

It was important to cure the cold quickly, because the lady from North Carolina had work to do. Ed Steam was getting too big for his boots, and his policies threatened to disrupt the vital surge work. Pearl Rider wiped her nose and shoved the tissue back in her pocket and sent urgent telepathic messages to her associates. Another surge tide had landed, a white tide of snow, which was expected to herald a surge southwards of the other dimensional aurora colours. The population had been on edge for some time, seeing doom and malevolent forces of outside control in just about anything and everything, so a sudden strong surge of the aurora was expected to create even further alarm.

How would they call this new blue planet? “XAIO353-57+” had been suggested by the High Klashtram Mothtar, but it would probably take at least one gyros before the Science council would unanimously agree.

Bashashish 20-13 was actually the communication attendant who’d discovered that promising planet, thus effectively defeating promises of uninteresting and failure-ridden work at the Cosmological Administration for Variable Explorations, where she’d been sent after unimpressive academic studies. The C.A.V.E. was one of those administrative hideouts producing nil but tedium, full of crannies which had not seen a cleaning ladybug (nor any clean ladybug for that matter) probably since its creation.
BashTT (short for Bashashish Twenty-Thirteen), after many of her cocoons left there at the institute, and as much boredom, started to play with some of the old equipment she’d found in a broom closet (needless to say, all brooms had been eaten long ago), and had found some unusual waves coming from a corner of the Sector 114116.

It took her more gyri to gather more solid evidence, tinkering with the planet’s waves in order to test whether the blue marble had intelligent life. So far, it had been mostly conclusive. She’d managed to connect to broadcasting waves and also to the transportation systems. She tinkered with the stream of data in order to go local, and by replacing another’s booking with her personal information, managed to book a few craft tickets for herself. This would be perfect for when she’d visit around the planet’s locations when she would arrive with the official delegation.
She was particularly fond of the Land of the Hobbit breathtaking sceneries, and wished she could get an appointment in Rivendell with the wizard they called Grand’Alf who seemed able to talk their mothty language.

The world didn’t end that day.
But maybe it should have, or at least the endless list of senseless rules, silly obligations, half-compromises and clever-yet-too-often-outdone-by-stupidity ploys to defeat them.
Stuck in the middle of his twelfth failed attempt at booking a flight for the Land of the Long Cloud, he found himself dreaming of buying… well, no— buying was sorely overrated nowadays. With all the rules on how you could or could not spend your money, he’d found it impossibly difficult to buy his friend the new camera of his dreams.
So, let’s dream of building something instead: a dream submersible airborne trailer, or maybe just a flying house with giant wheels, to soar above the pettiness of this world, and to go unfettered wherever fancy called.
He knew why the shark tank in the department store had exploded last week, killing only the sharks and turtles. It probably wasn’t being boxed, as much as being forced to look everyday at the headless consumers that killed the creatures. Whatever the reason might have been, in all fairness, they’d managed to boldly go beyond the end of their world.

Notwithstanding the child who was asking questions to his nanny just behind them, the flight to Taipei has been rather quiet. It was a three hours flight, quite short compared to the twelve hours ones Yann had been doing lately between Paris and Shanghai. Fortunately, the seats of the Dragoneer company were big enough, which was another strange element of these Chinese planes. Instead, the French Airways’ ones had narrow seats with so little room for one’s legs. He slept for most of the trip. Awoken merely when the flight attendant brought the food. Some rice dish again.

As soon as they landed, they were welcomed by a troup of taichi dancers, resembling Tahitian dancers with their loincloth. It was hot. The weather of course, not the taichi dancers who seemed unaffected by the temperature. Their slow movements were relaxing and a bit hypnotic. It was a contrast with the rapid dance of Tahiti Yann remembered from their last trip.

A woman in a red coat and sunglasses was walking behind them, looking around suspiciously.

The shapeshifter froze instantly. How did she know? He noticed a few freshly mashed buncrumbs landing on his head.

Tal turned on the invisible-izer, and smiled as he enjoyed the idea that his spaceship would never be noticed by any human or animal alike.

He exited the ship, walked a few paces and then suddenly halted in his tracks.

Directly in front of him was no other than a large sink hole.

What the Kraken? he thought. There must have been some major Earth changes since his interstellar space traveling. Good thing he didn’t land a few feet to the north.

Tal clicked a small button on his nifty zinger-space-belt, which enabled the detection of any Earth anomalies.

The gauge was reading off the charts!

Luigi’s arthritis was amassing to an all time extreme, and he was unsure if he could take anymore of the pain, when just then, and with amazing timing, a lady walked up to him asking if he wanted any arthritis ointment.

“Well yes… I could use some at this very instant.” Luigi said, as he pondered what sort of miracle occurred that would land him just what he needed, and in the very instant he needed it.

“Your welcome.” said Marsha. She smiled and began walking towards the nearest health foods store.

– – –

The sun was shining and the leaves were green, and Marsha was worried about her health. She had just been reading about all the horrid chemicals that big pharma puts into their ointments, and thought it would be better off if she simply gave away the ointment contained in her purse.

Just then she noticed an ugly looking man clutching his right hand. He was all bent over and wailing, and screaming absurdities.

“Aha!” she thought.

“Sorry, for the tardiness dear” the dragon coughed in a midget voice. Lowering its voice, he added “I’ve been busy honing my herding sheep skills.”

“Well,” Flinella said “at least you’ve came. I was starting to think you were crushed under piles of dirt or something. Things have been rocky of late on this island…”
She looked inquisitively at the familiar snout “and I suppose you’ve smoked those poor sheep, haven’t you? The S’elves won’t be pleased.”

The dragon, actually a rather small dragon by all standards (the bane of his life was to be constantly mistaken for a karma chameleon), took the last remark in without retorting. That was ominous enough for Flinella who wasn’t accustomed to such absence of quick wit from his part.
The S’elves were a dissident faction of the Tw’elves. More ancient, some had said… though not as ancient as the Sh’elves —those went extinct or ascended a long while ago. Flinella was posted on the island to report on the shift progress and if possible, wreck havoc on any attempt at continent inuity.

“So far, so good…” she smiled pleased at her progress.

“Who else?, as a matter of fact, Dr Whoohelz,” he winked unapologetically.

“Oh, that?” he added knowingly to the glaring lady. “Did you know pink tutus made from pink panthers’ hides are a symbol of power in most old African countries.”

Meanwhile, Luigi, the hapless driver and his scooter, and the land beneath them had moved and groaned a good few meters further away from the doctor.

“Silence,” commanded a loud voice. “Speak not of the Kraken, or indeed any other matters you do not understand.”

“Well, that covers most things” muttered Flinella.

“Why the bloody hell not?” Eliza was indignant. There was nothing she liked better than to discuss things she knew little about.

The island groaned and rumbled and slowly began to move.

Flinella was delighted to discover “tatting” scored her 57 points in Wordplay, enough to put her 22 points in the lead. She stretched contentedly, and wondered how much longer the dragon would be. Not that she was unhappy on the island; it was surely a beautiful island and she considered herself blessed, especially when she considered the alternatives.