by Robert Brown
Also, I have to admit this was no less the motivation; somehow now my life had become an adventure. Scary, cold, wet and confusing, but isn’t that how so many adventures begin?
Doctor Calgory wrinkled his brow at my proposal. “That’s a noble cause, trying to retroactively save the lives of your friends. One we possibly can’t grant. How can you, as a result of meeting us, alter time so you never crashed into us to begin with? That’s an unpredictable paradox. I know quite a few Belgian Hares who would agree that ‘unpredictable’ is a bad thing, when it comes to moving through time.” (This last comment didn’t make sense until we later learned of his time travel experiments with rabbits. The Belgian Hares didn’t all survive).
“It’ll take some thinking,” I said “I’d rather stick with you now and hope to eventually find a way to undo their deaths rather than just walk away having known I caused their deaths and did nothing.”
“Before we accept your offer, I’d like to hear how you plan to acquire these things for us,” Daniel said, bringing us back to task.
“The food part is easy. All we need is money. I don’t actually have any, but Kristina and I have a job…a gig…tomorrow night. We’re professional musicians, and assuming we can find a way to still perform the show, we’ll be owed about $500 for it.”
“Krimny! That’s a bloody fortune!”
“No, it’s really not. Not anymore, but it should get us a fair share of groceries, if we keep things simple. For a crew this size I think that’ll only feed us for a week or two on canned foods, and that’s if we’re careful. However, that’s not going to be enough to get all the supplies needed to repair and fuel this ship. The problem is, most of our band is dead.”
“I play a few instruments, if it would help. So does Jean-Paul,” offered Tanner.
“Actually, that’d be great! We’re supposed to be a five-person band. The audience, and the concert promoters are expecting fives people, and very specific songs and arrangements. We’ve only got two of our five musicians left! We need to give them what they are expecting, or we won’t get paid.”
Tanner was getting excited. “I’m sure we could follow along with your music!”
“All right, you can sort out your quintet later. Many of these sailors play music, maybe not the way you are used to, but I’m sure we can work something out for your recital tomorrow night. For now, let’s lay some plans for fuel and repairs. We need wood and metal, in large quantities” said Daniel.
“…and some sort of flammable oil for the burners,” Dr. Calgory interjected. “I kept the fuel specifications simple, so that we could still find something suitable if we went quite a ways backward in time”, Calgori said, now slumped over in a chair, sipping black tea from a copper mug.
“Flammable oil? Would vegetable oil do?” Kristina asked. “The kind you deep-fry in? If so, I know where we might get some of that around here.”
“For spare parts I’m thinking wrecking yards and lumber yards – they should be pretty easy to spot from the air, and they keep most of their stuff outside,” I offered .“We should be able to fly in at night, and just pick stuff up. Without entering a building, we won’t have to worry about security systems or video cameras.”
At this the rest of the crew looked blank. They had no idea what I was talking about. I had them! Without me, they were lost, and they knew it.
SCAVENGER HUNT
Somewhere in the middle of a vast deserted highway southeast of Boise, Idaho, there is an odd diametric contrast. On one side of the road was a massive home and garden store. Wealthy people (or their contractors and gardeners) drive from all over the state to buy the lumber stacked outside, the swimming pools, garden statues that looked as if they were from an Italian villa, or even a Victorian-style greenhouse with real leaded-glass and wrought-iron framework.
On the other side of the road was a vast field of four hundred eighteen rotting cars, thirtyfour abandoned boats, six grounded airplanes and one long dead submarine, the latter of which was mounted on a huge sign over the front gate, which read “Dave’s Wrecking – used parts for anything”.
At 1:18 a.m., nobody saw our sails on the horizon. At 1:26 a.m. nobody heard our propellers overhead. At 1:43 a.m. nobody saw the rope with a massive hook, and two gloved and be-goggled men being lowered from the ship. One of those two men was me, the other was Daniel.
They reeled us right into the heart of the rusting graveyard. Our boots touched earth, crunching on the mix of gravel and old washers, bolts, bottle caps, spark plugs, and flattened beer cans that made up the path between stacked vehicles. Daniel had a list of oddly described parts. It was my job to help translate the list into modern parts. For example:
Item 6: a device to generate electricity from the motion of a turning axis.
Item 17: A device that creates varying degrees of forward thrust by converting electricity into the spinning of wheels.
From that I knew we were looking for a car alternator (which creates voltage from a spinning axis attached to your car motor), and a golf cart motor (which converts electricity into forward thrust). Somehow, all these parts would be repurposed by Dr. Calgori in order to fix the Airship, and hopefully allow more stable travel.
Actually, the first part of this scavenger hunt was going to be tools. You can’t pull the alternator out of a pale blue ‘74 Mustang Gia with Victorian-era tools, so our first stop was going to be the shop.
We headed by flickering lantern light over to a series of garages. The least run-down seemed the most promising, so Daniel and I lifted open the massive rolling garage door. Inside was a series of tool benches that Daniel headed towards, but I stopped, mesmerized by a vintage 1936 Chang Jiang motorcycle and side car. I had dreamed of this bike all my life, and here it stood before me, right in the middle of my big adventure.
This isn’t a “fancy” bike. It’s not expensive, or powerful, or luxurious. But it is exactly the kind of thing you’d see a 1940s tomb raider speed away from Nazis on. It wasn’t on Dr. Calgori’s list, but we were here stealing stuff, right? Typically, I wouldn’t jump to stealing something so quickly, but this week we seemed to be about bending rules a bit. Context seemed to be reshaping my morality.
To be completely honest, this did start a “problem”. Later that night crew helped themselves to a lot of devices and trinkets from the twety first century, probably following my lead. This did come in handy later on, but I’m still stunned how fast all the rules drop from your mind when your world gets a little off its beaten path. Is this what causes looters to loot? Rules of life change, so you stop following your morality? Anyway, lets hope this isn’t habit forming.
“Daniel, I think we will need this,” I said, pointing to the motorcycle.
“That on the list?” Daniel asked.
“Not sure, but it won’t hurt to have,” I said.
“What is it, some sort of small wheeled, motorized Boneshaker?” he asked.
“Um. I have no idea what that is, but yes, we need it. I need it,” I said.
“Okay, let’s push it out to the hook,” he said.
I started to push on the handle bars, and suddenly the bike growled at me. At least, that’s what appeared to have happened. In truth, the bike wasn’t growling, it was a large brown dog in the sidecar.
Daniel reached for the dog’s collar, but the dog bared long, yellow teeth and snapped. So I tried talking lovey-dovey to it, “Eh dare, widdle doogy. Wanna get out? Out? Down! DOWN!!”
The dog laid back down into the sidecar, its head on its paws.
“Fine, we’ll take the dog, too,” Daniel said.
GREASE
Three days later, Lilith Tess stamped furiously into the cabin, covered in engine grease from her ratted red pig-tails to her bare feet. She was smaller and younger then the rest of the crew, a fact that she reveled in, since in her mind youth, beauty, smallness, intelligence and success were all the same thing. She wore a flared, pleated skirt, and a tiny corset, which would have looked inappr
opriate on an adult woman’s figure, but on her just-past-girlish figure it looked closer to a cheerleader uniform then lingerie. She dropped a five pound crescent wrench on the floor, and the resounding clang was still echoing as she began to unbuckle the various harnesses she was wearing.
“Finished the cleaning?” I asked, not looking up from a book the Doctor had given me (a handwritten book on piloting this airship), while holding the main captain’s wheel in my spare hand.
“Yeah, and I’m gonna be scrubbing bugs off my goggles for a week! Not to mention that it will take forever to brush out my hair,” she said. “Hey, watch what you’re…”
While reading, I was also holding the Captain’s wheel inattentively with my other hand, and trying to wrap my head around what handle created lift, what lever tipped the nose up or down, and which throttle pushed us left and right without changing our direction. There were so many handles, chains, levers, and wheels, it could take weeks to learn. I would have been better with a keyboard and mouse, or an xBox controller. “Honestly, no one was cross-trained on this?” I asked Tanner.
Tanner quickly glanced at the newly-repaired window behind where I stood, the spot where blood had been hastily cleaned from the floor, and said unconvincingly, “Um, nope,” and then added in a monotone, “Thank god we have you.”
“Look, this plan is lame. I don’t have a damn thing to do in it!” Lilith said.
“Well, we don’t need you for this one. This is a small plan, and it only needs a couple people,” I said, wondering who this girl was, and exactly how she became a member of the crew.
“Maybe she could hold on the rope?” Tanner broke in. “She really should be included.”
“What? Jean Paul is going to hold the rope,” I was baffled. “It needs to be someone strong enough to…”
“She could do Kristina’s part,” Tanner volunteered, while Lilith stare at me defiantly, hands on her hips.
Still baffled, I said, “Yeah, but Kristina cooks. This plan needs someone who cooks, and Lilith doesn’t…whoa!” The cabin was slowly starting to tip. The portholes along the left side were filling with pink sky and white fluffy clouds, and the on the right, hills.
“Little to the left,” uttered Tanner. “And perhaps level it off as well, Captain?” He caught a shot glass just as it rolled off the bar, and stuck it in his waist coat pocket.
“Yeah, that’s just fantastic piloting…” Lilith jeered, and stormed out.
“I got it, I got it…” I glanced out the periscope that substituted for a front window on this lower bridge. The Ophelia also had a flying bridge on deck, but this was less windy, and therefore afforded easier reading. “It looks like we are nearly there anyway.” I grabbed a brass handle on the ceiling, and yanked it down. There was a far-off wooshing sound, and a sickening drop. Far below in the endless acres of dirt and prairie grass, a small diner could be seen slummed like a beaten dog, with a flickering sign post reading, “Momma Chiffon’s House Of Lard”.
“I heard you’re looking for musicians or something for tomorrow night.” Lilith had come back in, and stood facing me as if nothing in the world should have my attention but herself.
“Not ‘or something’, but yes, we are looking for musicians,” I said, trying not to make eye contact with her.
“Well, I dance. Beautifully. Mesmerizingly. I can dance while you play behind me – as my band.”
“Thanks, but we aren’t really looking for a dancer. Honestly, at this point, we are just trying to be as close to what is expected of us so we’ll get paid. I’m not really trying to make a bunch of big changes, this is just the easiest way I can think to get $500 for groceries for the crew.”
She stood glaring, so I asked, “Do you sing?”.
“I’m sure I can,” she said.
And Tanner added, “I’m sure she’s a great singer!”
“Well, we can try that, in moderation, if you really need to help.” But I was beginning to realize this girl was going to be trouble.
A few minutes later, a small bird sitting on the roof of “Mamma Chiffon’s House Of Lard” watched as the sky filled with a massive copper-colored Zeppelin, covered with patches, rust, dangling ropes, and emitting regular puffs of steam and smoke from various vents and chimneys.
From somewhere under the dangling ship-shaped cabin – a mismatched composite of what might have been trailer homes, submarines, part of a Victorian glass green-house, and what must have been the original navel construction – a hatch opened. Out of it came a rope ladder on which hung Jean-Paul. Upon reaching the roof top of the diner, he thrust a long greased hose down the kitchen chimney and started feeding it in yard by yard.
Down in the kitchen, Mamma Chiffon was barking orders at the new cook she’d hired the day before. “Girl, ain’t nobody driving this highway gonna order a frilly thing like that. These people want chicken fried steak. They want waffles and mashed potatoes, they ain’t gonna be ordering your high falooting pastries! I mean, what’s this crust made out’a, layers a’ wax paper??”
“Filo,” corrected the girl – tall, knobby-kneed and pig-tailed. It was Kristina. Behind her back, she stealthily grabbed the greasy hose, and guided it into the fry vats – all without Momma Chiffon noticing. Once the hose was in the grease, and as soon as Momma turned her massive behind toward her, Kristina gave three tugs on the hose, and quietly headed toward the back door.
The large slurping noise went unnoticed (as it was hardly out of place in this restaurant) and the vats began to empty.
Out in the gravel lot, Kristina swung one leg over my vintage motorcycle, and pulled a helmet out of the motorcycle’s sidecar. A large brown dog took the helmet’s place. She revved the already running engine once, and sped off down the gravel highway.
Momma Chiffon heard this, rolled herself around and noticed the kitchen was empty. She also noticed the fry vats were empty, and a flicker of movement drew her eyes to the ceiling just as the hose slipped back into the chimney hole. None of this made enough sense to her to inspire an immediate reaction, and as she stood there trying to decide what flavor of mad to become (her default emotion), the sound of barking dogs and surprised red-necks started echoing from outside. She ran to the back door, and hearing what sounded like massive outboard motors roaring from above her, she looked up in time to see a huge tail-fin slip out of view behind the roof’s overhang.
Men were running from the diner to their rusted pick-ups, grabbing their requisite guns from their requisite rear window racks, while stubby pit bulls and Dobermans ran in circles barking at the sky.
A few shots were fired, as the huge oval silhouette slid over the parking lot and headed down the road. Trucks and bikers filled the lot with dust as they sped out after it.
Not too far down the road, Kristina and motorcycle screamed in angry acceleration, as Jean-Paul came up behind her on the still dangling rope ladder and attached a huge hook to the bike. Slowly, motorcycle, sidecar, girl, man, and the dog with ears flapping in the wind lifted from the dusty road and glided upward into the silent crimson night.
THE BEST GIMMICK EVER
The next night was the concert. Dr. Calgori had, in addition to overseeing the repairs and modifications to the Ophelia, spent some time repairing an upgrading our instruments. Our modern electric guitars, and synthesizer’s were, in his humble opinion, abysmally ugly. The doctor took it upon himself to correct this lack of design, and the result made our salvaged twentieth century instruments look like something from Captain Nemo’s Nautilus.
That night as we packed up our instruments, Lilith had come to us with a “new song” she had “written”. But far from being a finished song and arrangement, this was merely the start of some sophomoric poetry. It was about a beautiful dancing girl, so beautiful the whole world loved her. I was supposed to finish this song for her, and then sing it while gazing at her as she danced before our audience.
“We do not have time to learn a new song! We’ve only got three hours until the show!
” Kristina said coldly, as the rest of our make-shift ensemble continued to pack, avoiding eye contact with Lilith.
We arrived at the dingy roadside club at night. We doused all the lights onboard, Daniel dropped down on a huge mooring hook, and attached the airship to an abandoned water tower a few dozen yards out of the reach of the light. After that, we lowered our gear and ourselves into the parking lot, just outside the ring of light created by the club. As long as we left before dawn, no one would know we hadn’t just arrived in one of the many cars parked here.
The “festival” we were playing was called the Utah Dark Arts Festival. It was a once-a-year music event for Goths, and we were the third of four bands to play that night. Kristina, myself, Jean-Paul, Tanner, and Lilith entered in our strange Victorian attire, dragging our bizarrely modified equipment.
We told the stage manager we were the band Abney Park, and we were directed to the “dressing room”, which in this case meant there were a bunch of mirrors propped up against beer kegs in the basement.
We stood out. The room was filled with tall shadowy musician-types; pale faced, in black eyeliner, black vinyl pants, turtle necks, mohawks, and massive black boots. In contrast we were comprised of: one kilted and top hatted Tanner, Jean-Paul in his silk genie attire, myself in a tattered brown tailcoat I found in the previous captain’s closet, Kristina wearing a borrowed (and too small) khaki military uniform, and Lilith looking like we stole her from a harem.
Musicians from other bands began to crowd around, gawking as we unpacked. I’d been afraid the clothes and instruments would draw attention in a bad way. Now I realized they were drawing attention in a good way.
As I unpacked my gear, the lead singer from the headline band called The Last Dance came up to me. “I absolutely love your new shtick! The band looks fantastic! I’ve never seen anything like this! Look at that guitar!” Jeff exclaimed, as Tanner pulled out a solid brass seven string guitar, complete with spinning clockwork, and firing sparks.
