TTTG: Going Where

What Went Before:
He suddenly realises how lucky he is to also have what seems to be a complete avionics instrumentation system in the tiny cabin of the dirigible. He’s suddenly seized by a doubt – is this a dirigible, an airship, or a barrage balloon?

And Now:
Not tethered. So, not a barrage balloon. Or is it a bli … – he stops himself. What does it matter? Darn it’s hard to stay on mission when your Author’s off watching music videos. At least, he consoles himself, it’s not those &^#!@ Tik Tok things. (Strangely, that odd assemblage of punctuation was the actual “swear words” that he thought in his brain as he tried to refocus himself.) He decides he doesn’t give a darn. But a sneak peek surely can’t hurt, can it?

“Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH, Deutschland”

Darnit, now he’d gone and sneaked a look up at the manufacturer’s plate in the ceiling of the cabin. He isn’t sure why that sends chills of foreboding up and down his spine. The small ex-XXXX-beer-tinnie rerebrace on his right upper arm makes a small pinging sound and springs open.

He snatches up another USB cord out of his bum bag and winds it around the recalcitrant segment of armour. His phone pings and a notification pops up: “both right arm braces connected.” Out of habit he also checks the vam part on the forearm but it’s sound and somehow still attached to the rest of his “arm”our. (He wonders vaguely why this rigid airship runs on hot air…)

Argh! Sir, you are frustrating me! Please just this once, finish an outline before plunging in to write the story!

His rigid airship (that was it! a rigid!) had cleared the floor of the open cut he was now in, the walls rising up to a pinkish sky.

He looks towards the brightest direction. Afternoon, so that was west. He swung slighly to his left and headed southwest. Marble Bar. (His inner geologist is screaming “Chalcedony! It’s not marble it’s Chalcedony! AKA jasper! Or chertsite! And it’s not a bar, either! But how catchy is ‘Chertsite Hill’ or ‘Chalcedony Ridge’? Yeah – the whole place is a big fat fib.”) And he’s headed for (he chokes slightly) Marble Bar.

His inner geologist also begins to wonder how he’d gone into a dragon’s cave – a dragon’s cave FFSMS! – in the green hills of Emerald in the state of Victoria, Australia, and ended up in the Argyle diamond mine, nearly 3000 kilometres northwest. How had he gone under Lake Eyre and not gotten wet? He knew dragons had some neat interdimensional tricks, but wow… This was potentially a commercial breakthrough, a 3000km/hr shortcut across the country. He checks the navigation system. 1,773km. In an hour. While flying at 15 knot airship speeds.

Come to think of it, even here above ground, 15 knots airspeed seems to be producing an awfully high ground speed. Pickle surfaces from the depths of the cabin and opines that some kind of gravity-compressed relativity may be the cause. He scratches Pickle’s head and Pickle purrs. “But mate,” he says to the rather large and powerful feline, “How does that account for there being time/velocity differentials below the surface and identical differentials above the surface? Surely there should be a difference?”

“Mmmm ai dunno” Pickle vocalises, “Mmmmm justagato.” It turns its attention to the remains of the questing knight’s bibimbap-style breakfast bowl and scarfs down rice and chilli that would leave many humans scarred for life, and purrs approval. “MmRrMmRrMmRr nice! Jurrrst salty errrrnough and MmRr good chunk of MmRrMmRrMmRrrrkimchee.. You’rrrrre Grrrmmmgood cook!””

TTTG reflects on his unusual (for the day) habit of eating a cooked meal at breakfast, but reflects also that in the past, people generally had similar breakfasts almost always consisting of yesterday’s leftovers cooked with some kind of carbohydrate like oats or wheat or indeed rice. It made sense, and loaded the body up with carbohydrate energy and long-lasting protein to stave off feelings of hunger for a good eight hours. There’s a reason TTTG has that third T in his initials.

Now he looks out of the cabin window and sees a small white oval zipping past. Clackertech transport. Ho hum and a bottle of rum.. Darn their Zorganistic advertising jingles! Get stuck right in your head, those adverts do. Still, he wondered who (or what) was in that particular egg. Gorramnit.

His eyes widened. “Frell,” he said, not quite believing his ears when it came out as he’d spoken it. “Author has taken off some level of profanity filter. I hope it’s not because some bad dren is gonna go down.” He feels a little bit farfotzed by the prospect of possible troubles ahead. But he checks his armour is laced tight, checks that he has a few escape chicke- he checks himself and uses the right terminology – a few escape shemozzles – and that they have enough feed pellets and water to keep them in tiptop clackering form. They cluck and chirrr happily. Well they are just chicken-brained.

(to be continued. Natch.)