Super Ball
Chapter 2: Into the Drop or Better Late than Never
It is stated in many-a sci-fi / horror
teaser that: In space no one can here you-
“YEEEAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!”
A blurred face belted.
The pod was a frozen bullet,
people-sized, spiraling down and down towards the surface of Io. This particular blurred face might have
belonged to a one Jeremy Narwallis, at this point in his journey it
is difficult for we the perceiving to yet perceive correctly. The pod
definitely belonged to the recruitment arm of the Department of
Defense (DOD henceforth). A dodpod if you will allow.
Dodpods, or at least their wreckage,
account for at least 23% of the space junk that drifts in Jupiter's
space-space (or orbit or as it would be put in space slang: otho).
Two things, first there is a god kingdom's worth of space junk in
Jupiter's space-space. Second: Jupiter's gotta whole lotta otho going
on.
Still with us blurface?
“RRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH,”
blurface maintains.
Go go good!
The sound bounces resonance within the
barreling silvery chamber. Veins squeeze. Blood moves hot, freezing
to a slow at the tributaries edge. Fragile capillaries solid. Thick
space glass cold and mere inches from his ocular jellies. Pupils
irregularly dilated and stretched from exposure to ultrasonic speeds.
Certainly a candidate for cuttlefish eye syndrome. That part ain't in
the brochure.
Every hero has a beginning, and this isn't it. The beginning was
actually technically a little bit before these writings and the
machine has just become a bit too self aware and must take hit of
monkeywrench to (CLANK) settle....back...in -inu th..into the..ah-
Silent impact. An
orange light casts into the frozen porthole of blurface's pod.
Collision achieved. The mind inside the
blurred head within the freezing pod stirs. The screams in deep space
have dried the windpipes to chilled rawhide and the voice box has
blanked out. The mind twists quick like an eel in a small jar.
WhatamI, whatamI, what am I, 581,
whatis, what is this?!
Green trenchcoat. The grinner coated
in gel. Dollface.
Recent memories of
a wet fist slamming a huge red button. The teeth. The blasting of a
20th century tunes on a 20th century tunebox /
crossfading into his guttural fright screams.
This was
the mind of Jeremy Narwallis reeling in new kinds of space terrors.
Sure he was an experienced (even skilled) loyal space traffic
choreographer for Earthtent's LaGrange Point 2's jumpgate, but he was
spacebreed. He has never been on a terrestrial world or moon and he
now realizes that he may never set living foot upon one at this rate.
For this true terror that has dawned is not because of the collisions
directly but because he knows the cause. His understudy: Klees Klo
Aylass the worst traffic choreographer in all of Sol.
Another semi-distant explosion. Neon blue with a hint of goldenrod. Say goodbye to the W.L. Jenkins account.
Klees was a
brainsack, a real space berk. Where Narwallis took pride in his work,
Klees would just show up
and press buttons. He literally worked for peanut stamps. Central
would usually sling him over to Planet Freedom's orbit (aka charred
junk-o-sphere 2) to slog through evens and odds while skilled workers
would usually be delegated to gas giant detail. Good luck explaining
the concept of magnetosphere correction contingencies to a ripe-skull
like Klees.
Re-entry. Pure
yellow light. A new warmth unlike any other. The colliding hits were
getting closer. But so was Mr. Narwallis, to the outer atmosphere of
Io, that is. High orbit was the easy part. Now he could start to
smell the sulfur. No doubt the radiation belt has already carved it's
minutely notched paths through the dodpod, Narwallis, everything. The
pod was beginning to sweat its freeze.
He tried to swallow
but his upper internals felt caked in sulfur powder and not unlike a
bald overused tire. His pod made contact with a trash satellite and
started wobbling unnervingly. His mind grasped itself and turned on
its fear inhibitors. Immediately a ragged breath of unnatural calm
left his pipes and fogged the icy glistening viewing hole in front of
his mostly immobile face.
Okay J. we've survived incidents
that, depending on how one looks at them, could be considered worse
than this. Take 'The Second Quarantine' for starters. That was a real
frightfest, but here We are, relatively, safe and soundless. What
with the vacuum and all.
One thing to note
about open source augmentations is that the parameters are not immune
to the inevitable wry lameness trite clusters that collect from the
act of a high horse group effort that worked together to create these
Lifemods for the betterment of all humankind.
You know, come
to think of it, Klees isn't such a bad person. Sure his work ethic
rivals that of a REFERENCE MEMORY NOT FOUND, but that doesn't
make him a bad person at heart. And J. really, it's been awhile since
you installed RivioVision's Fear Blaster III, would you like to take
this moment in the clouds to re-register and connect to the cloudmind
so that we here at RivioVision can make sure, for a nominal fee, your
version of Fear Blaster III is up-to-date and free of all invasion?
YES NO LATER (grayed out)
“N..Na-.” He
attempts.
Keep in mind Jerem, the only thing
keeping your fearmind from tearing itself out of your brain Jerem,
and bursting out of the front of this pod Jerem, and burning up on
re-entry Jerem, before it's smoking twisted heap Jerem falls into a
sulfuric volcano Jerem is the word YE-”
“No,” Narwallis flatly states.
The inhibitor deactivates falling away
from his mind like a two dimensional square.
Two day cooldown. Harsh, but it took
the hits it needed to in order to keep Narwallis out of the gibbering
idiot territory. And fuck Klees! That ratbrain slack. Narwallis
always hated the way augmentations would make him think perpendicular
thoughts, especially about people he hated. Speaking of which, he was
quite surprised he wasn't dead by now. He was certain the
advertisement layer in the upper atmosphere would be too much for
Klees to orchestrate. Good on ya Klees! Huh, that wasn't even
an aftershock of the inhibitor. I guess was making him out to be
worse than he really-
SMASH!
“Oh.” Narwallis outed.
SMASH! SMASH-ASH-ASH-ASH SMASH!
Ad-layers 17 through 34 were cascading
into the pod of Mr. Narwallis.
SMA-SMA-SMA-SMA-SMA-SMA-SMA-SMA-
“KLEES!!!!!!” Narwallis yelled at the heavens. “YOU FOOL OF BUFFOONS!!”
SMA-SMA-SMASH! SMA-SMA-SMASH!! SMA-SMA-SMASH!!!
And so, with each orbital advertisement
logo that crashed into the fabled dodpod of Jeremy Narwallis, his
calculated trajectory shifted from at least 12 to 280 degrees. True
enough, it's rare to connect to your pre-defined drop zone and
achieve successful alignment, especially in a dodpod, but to land so
far beyond touchdown is just straight ridiculous...yo. These
collisions would do little harm to this military grade capsule but
the chances of landing in one of the many active volcanoes is getting
pretty probable.
Narwallis instantly grew indifferent.
He was flummoxed beyond caring about his own safety. Part of living
in this dream world is the ennui of endless insanity. There are
flashes of intensity but at a certain point everything is permitted
and to be expected. It is the way of the Super Ball. The dreaming
Gorgon.
His once blurred face now stone and
without affect. The frozen capsule now irradiated and baked in yellow
stinking flame. Still spiraling down and down but closer. This land
of volcanoes his first world.
You always remember your first. And he
would remember this world. As it would remember him.
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